Go figure! What's really going on?

A highly recommended website ... really .... go check it out .....Gregpalast.com

RUMSFELD SOLD NUKES TO THE NORTH KOREANS

(from Salon) Rummy's deal
Not only was Donald Rumsfeld a director of ABB, the Swiss firm hired by Kim Jong Il to build nuclear reactors in North Korea, but he may also have sought Washington's help to secure the contract for the construction conglomerate. In the current issue of Fortune, Richard Behar closely scrutinizes Rumsfeld's role in the North Korean nuke deal. What he discovered demolishes the rote denials served up by Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke, who has told reporters that her boss "does not recall" any discussion of the $200 million project while he sat on the ABB board.

According to Behar, the usually very voluble secretary "declined requests by Fortune to elaborate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjoern Edlund has told Fortune that 'board members were informed about this project.' And other ABB officials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involving complex questions of liability, would not have come to the attention of the board. 'A written summary would probably have gone to the board before the deal was signed,' says Robert Newman, a former president of ABB's U.S. nuclear division who spearheaded the project. 'I'm sure they were aware.'

"The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked 'to lobby in Washington' on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's 'pretty sure that at some point Don was involved,' since it was not unusual to seek help from board members 'when we needed contacts with the U.S. government.'"

Here's the most amusing part. In March 1998, Behar reports, Rumsfeld gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation warning that the Clinton administration's 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea "does not end its nuclear menace; it merely postpones the reckoning, with no assurance that we will know how much bomb-capable material North Korea has."

By then, the framework designed to forestall a nuclear North was highly controversial in Washington, partly because Kim was known to be developing long-range missiles. That same year, Rumsfeld chaired a congressional commission on ballistic missile threats, which concluded that North Korea could strike the U.S. within five years. In a "subtle swipe" at the ABB reactor deal, the so-called Rumsfeld Commission also said that North Korea maintained its nuclear weapons program. Behar notes that "Rumsfeld's resume in the report did not mention that he was an ABB director," a position he held until 2000.

That Rummy sure is sharp. He knows how to grab the financial advantage at one end and the political opportunity at the other. And as long as nobody knew that he was working both ends, it was easy to get away with it. Such is the standard of patriotism in our nation's highest offices today.

Vilified weapons inspectors may have got it right

Condoleezza Rice has talked her way into a U-turn, writes Marian Wilkinson. President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is now acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is less clear-cut, and probably more difficult to establish, than the White House portrayed before the war. Sydney Morning Herald

SHREDDING THE TRUTH ... (and quite a few Iraqis .... "unfortunately")

"The coalition fought probably the most merciful war in the history of warfare" ... so said U.S. General Jay Garner (retd.) in Baghdad this week.

In the course of this 'most merciful war', according to the Pentagon, U.S. forces dropped 1,500 cluster bombs, of which 26 hit targets within 1,500 feet of residential areas. (ref. Gen. Richard Myers, chief of general staffs). “In some cases we hit those targets knowing there would be a chance of collateral damage (civilian casualties)” he said “They were tough choices. War is a very ugly affair”

The Red Cross has condemned the use of cluster bombs and Human Rights Watch has said their use in populated areas may violate the ban on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law.

A 1,000 pound CBU 87 cluster bomb, of the type used by US forces, breaks up into 202 bomblets, each the size of a soft drink can, that float over an area of several football pitches and explode a short distance from the ground, penetrating the entire area (and anyone in it) with steel shrapnel. [source/ The Irish Times]

Thank goodness they fought such a merciful war !!

Satelite TV gig for Comical Ali ?

DAMMAM, 30 April 2003 — The Al-Arabiya satellite channel has confirmed that it has offered employment to the former Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf. Ali Al-Hudaithi, director general of Al-Arabiya, told Arab news that Al-Sahaf would be free to work for the channel whenever he wanted ... Arabnews.com

US troops 'kill 13' after shooting at Iraqi crowd

US troops opened fire on Iraqi demonstrators near Baghdad last night reportedly killing 13 people including three children. Seventy five more Iraqis were injured in the incident in Fallujah. Times Online

"We went to war just to boost the white male ego"
Norman Mailer
With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in... Times Online

British website rallying support for a "dump Blair" campaign also has THIS interesting site about the 9/11 cover-up

Bumper stickers of the month ..... go check this out

"Democracy for sale" - tales of Bush, Bin Laden and dirty little secrets
By Greg Palast

"I'm from Los Angeles. Actually, the scum-end of LA, in the San Fernando Valley, raised in a pastel house between the power plant and the city garbage dump. It was not as glamorous as abject poverty, but not far above it. Half the kids in my school were Mexican-American, and, brown or white, we were pretty much tagged America's losers. You graduated, worked minimum wage at Bob's Big-Boy Burger, got your girlfriend pregnant, and if Vietnam didn't kill you, overtime at the Chevy plant would. America was a carnivore, and we were just food. Am I bitter?

Why shouldn't I be, when I look at the privileged little pricks that call the shots on this planet, whose daddies could make the phone calls, write the checks, make it smooth? Daddy Bush, Daddy bin Laden - I've got a list." More at : Sunday Buisiness Post

Millions trapped as Beijing shuts gates
April 27 2003

China has been forced to deny it is about to declare martial law in Beijing to counter the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) threat, but has begun erecting roadblocks around the capital. As the SARS virus claimed 12 more lives yesterday and hundreds more people were diagnosed as infected throughout the country, authorities were fighting an increasingly desperate rearguard action to try to stop the illness from running out of control. The Sun-Herald

Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies

Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war, By Raymond Whitaker / London Independent

Bush: Maybe Iraq did destroy WMDs

A desperate Bush is starting to conclude that maybe, just maybe, Saddam told the truth about its WMD program.

"It's going to take time to find them," Bush said of Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons as well as a nuclear weapons program Washington insisted Saddam Hussein was pursuing.

"But we know he had them, and whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. And one thing is for certain, Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction."

Except that Hussein never threatened the US with mass destruction, and if he had destroyed such weapons, as Bush himself suggests, then the entire invasion was predicated on nothing but lies. Daily Kos

Crony capitalism goes to war
Capitalism's crown jewel: The Iraq contract.
--------------------------------------------------------------
By Arianna Huffington

April 23, 2003 | Quick quiz: What's the most exclusive club in America? How about the Augusta National Golf Club, whose 300 members withstood the slings and arrows of Martha Burk with nary a scratch earlier this month? Or maybe it's the U.S. Senate, where a seat at one of the historic roll-top desks can go for as much as $60 million?

Nope, not even close. Our proud democracy's most select body is the tiny group of contenders invited to bid for capitalism's crown jewel: The Iraq contract.

Talk about cozy. Sneaking a peek through the blackout curtains the Bush administration has used to cloak the awarding of contracts to rebuild Iraq is like catching a glimpse of a very special incest episode of "ElimiDate": a bunch of muscular, cash-drunk, hand-picked corporate Lotharios vying for the affection of their governmental kissing cousins.

The relationship between those doling out these fantastically valuable deals and those receiving them is so intimate taxpayers should demand that the participants be checked for STDs before the first mega-buck check is left on the dresser. An orgy of unsafe corporate intercourse has been going on.

For full impact, this column should be a flow chart. Like the ones the FBI uses to show the inner workings of a Mafia crime family. But instead of illustrating the interrelationships of the "Sopranos" crew, this chart would lay out the connections that guaranteed that the big winners in the post-Saddam sweepstakes would be those two ultimate Washington insiders, Halliburton and Bechtel Group.

We all know about Halliburton and its former CEO in the very highest of secure and undisclosed places, Dick Cheney. But the Bechtel chart is really Byzantine -- starting with George Shultz, former Bechtel president, former Reagan administration secretary of state, and currently both a Bechtel board member and chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Then there is Jack Sheehan, a senior V.P. at Bechtel and a member of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. And then we have chairman and CEO Riley Bechtel, who in February was appointed by Bush to the hoity-toity President's Export Council.

Of course, using access, influence, and positions of ostensible public service to make a buck or two -- or, say, 680 million of them -- off Iraq is nothing new to the fine folks at Bechtel. They offer their customers the most precious commodity of all: experience. Back in the 1980s, the company wanted to build a pipeline to carry oil from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba -- a project ardently supported by the Reagan administration, which included Shultz and a fellow Bechtel alumnus, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

Backers of the Bechtel pipeline lined up a veritable who's who of former Reagan-Bush power players to push for the scheme, including former secretary of defense and CIA chief James Schlesinger, former National Security Advisor William Clark, former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese. I guess the thought being that all that political star power might help people forget Saddam's annoying little habit of gassing people.

And even though he wasn't on the Bechtel payroll, one of those working hardest to convince the Iraqis to hop into bed with the company was the macho man himself, Don "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Antiquities" Rumsfeld. While working as Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East in 1983, Rumsfeld met with Saddam personally and tried to convince him to sign on to Bechtel's pipeline pipe dream.

And Rummy isn't the only current administration official with a close encounter of the Bechtel kind on his C.V. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the agency responsible for handing the lucrative Iraqi rebuilding contract to Bechtel, used to be in charge of overseeing Boston's "Big Dig," a massive highway project managed by Bechtel that went from a projected cost of $4.5 billion to an actual cost of $14 billion.

In a scathing letter sent to Natsios, the Massachusetts inspector general called Bechtel's handling of the Big Dig "an invitation to fraud, waste and abuse." Apparently, this amounted to a sterling recommendation in Natsios' eyes because, three years later, when the time came to draw up the very short list of companies invited to bid on $1.5 billion in Iraq contracts, he didn't hesitate to include the old gang at Bechtel. Hey, what's a little "fraud, waste and abuse" among chums?

In today's business-loving Washington, a propensity for playing fast and loose with taxpayer money clearly qualifies as "no harm, no foul." It certainly hasn't hurt Halliburton, which, despite being fined $2 million for routinely over-billing the Pentagon, continues to land hugely profitable government contracts -- like the $2.2 billion it scored to provide troop support in the Balkans. According to a GAO study, the company boosted its bottom line by charging the Army $85 for plywood that cost $14, and racked up profits by cleaning the same base offices up to four times a day.

It goes without saying that everyone involved in these cushy deals denies any impropriety. In fact, they are downright offended by the suggestion that these contracts -- bid on by a very select group of well-connected companies, and awarded based on secretive, unexplained criteria -- were anything but on the up-and-up.

"We won this work on our record, plain and simple," crowed Riley Bechtel in an e-mail to employees, making it sound as if their record of scheming and insider dealing was something to brag about. And a spokesman for the company assured reporters that Bechtel had not "attempted to bring any political pressure to bear." They didn't have to. When the fix is in, no one has to remind the referee to count to 10 when the chump takes his dive. It's all done with a wink and a nod. And sometimes not even that.

The perfect explanation for how this all works came from none other than Our Man in Baghdad, retired Gen. Jay Garner. When asked about his uncanny success as a businessman following his long military career -- especially how he helped Sy Technology boost its government contracts from $8.5 million in 1999 to $46.8 million in 2001, with much of that business coming from the Army division he used to run -- Garner replied: "I do not go to friends for business. I get business from my friends, but it's not solicited by me." Don Corleone couldn't have put it any better.

Here's another way of looking at the process: "The purpose behind the abuse," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, "was so that cronies of the president could win the spoils of political gain for themselves." Although Grassley's description suits the Bechtel pact to a T, he was actually talking about Bill and Hillary's Travelgate.

Let's hope Sen. Grassley -- or anyone on his side of the aisle -- can muster a similar fit of indignation over a case of crony capitalism that makes Travelgate seem like a tempest in a Teapot Dome. (salon.com)

"I'm Right, You're Wrong, Go To Hell" - Religions and the meeting of civilization - by Bernard Lewis - ATLANTIC MONTHLY

The end of civilization
The sacking of Iraq's museums is like a "lobotomy" of an entire culture, say art experts. And they warned the Pentagon repeatedly of this potential catastrophe months before the war. Salon

Terrorism or hate crime?
U.S. authorities apply different labels to crimes committed by two extremists -- one Muslim, the other Jewish.

April 17, 2003 | On Independence Day last summer, a depressed 41-year-old Muslim immigrant by the name of Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, whose views on the Arab-Israeli conflict had become increasingly extreme, approached the ticket counter of the Israeli-run El Al airline at Los Angeles International Airport. Loaded down with a recently purchased .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun and a 6-inch knife, he opened fire. During a 30-second rampage, Hadayet emptied the 10-round revolver, killing two people and injuring scores more, before an El Al security guard shot him dead.

Six weeks later, in Tampa, Fla., a depressed Jewish podiatrist by the name of Dr. Robert Goldstein, 38, who wanted to send a message on behalf of "his people" following the attacks of Sept. 11, and to express his anger over the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, was arrested after police raided his home. There they discovered a detailed plan to blow up 50 local mosques and Islamic centers, "kill all 'rags‚'" and "liquidate" Muslims during the attacks if necessary. Police also uncovered a vast illegal stash of weapons, including 30 explosive devices, light-armor rockets, hand grenades, a 5-gallon gasoline bomb, .50-caliber machine guns, silencers, and sniper rifles.

After initially angering critics by downplaying the possibility of terrorism in the Hadayet case, the FBI confirmed that it had categorized the LAX shooting as a terrorist act. The final determination, according to Laura Bosley, spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles office, was made in Washington by FBI Director Bill Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The handling of the two cases, and above all their conclusions, raised the concerns of Muslim and Arab leaders who have suggested that, since Sept. 11, a double standard has emerged in cases that might be construed as acts of terror. They believe that defendants with a Middle Eastern background are far more likely to be labeled terrorists.

"There's a political will to charge terrorism on certain cases and not on others," says Khurrum Wahid, a criminal defense attorney and legal advisor to CAIR, the nation's largest Arab-American advocacy group. "And it's being used against anyone that's consistent with who we're going after for the 9/11 attacks." Full story at Salon

SYRIA's NEW CHALLENGE TO THE U.S.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Al Shara has said his government is willing to sign a treaty making the entire Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. Gulf News

Missing 1998 Time article by Bush, Sr. on why a full-on Iraq war would be a bad idea

The March 2, 1998 issue of Time ran a piece by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft titled, "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam." Recently, the piece became unavailable on Time's archive page. No explanation why. But Bruce Koball scanned the microfilm from his library's archives and posted a jpg of the article on his site. Why did Time take it off? Boing Boing

Rupert Cornwell: Has the war left the world a safer place? link

Iraq has fallen. Saddam is deposed. But, after 27 days of war, little else is resolved

Click HERE for the London Independent's exploration of these and many more good questions :

Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Where is Saddam? What about the alleged links to Al-Qa'ida? Where is the anti-war alliance now? Do iraqis feel liberated? Is Chalabi just a crooked US stooge? Is the UN relevant any longer? Why did so many journalists die? Who was really responsible for the two marketplace bombings? Is North Korea next on the american hitlist? Is this the first step to reordering the Middle East? ... etc etc ....

Spotlight on Garner is the critical glare of Arab eyes

When he arrives in Nasiriyah today to oversee his first meeting inside Iraq on the country's future, Jay Garner will finally step into the spotlight as the new American administrator of Iraq. Link

Oil ministry an untouched building in ravaged Baghdad

Since US forces rolled into central Baghdad a week ago, one of the sole public buildings untouched by looters has been Iraq's massive oil ministry, which is under round-the-clock surveillance by troops. Sydney Morning Herald

Baghdad Snapshot

The head of the Committee of the International Red Cross in Baghdad, interviewed on Irish radio today, complained that despite repeated requests, no US forces were provided to protect hospitals from looters, yet he noticed US soldiers standing guard at the offices of the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Oh dear, your true priorities are showing, guys ...

US troops defend 'killing 10' in Mosul crowd

US forces denied being to blame today after at least 10 people were reported shot dead and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul. Witnesses said US troops fired on a crowd. Sydney Morning Herald

Would President Assad invite a cruise missile to his palace?

... but Syria just might have provided a transit station for the Baath officials from Iraq. To where? My own favourite is Belarus – because its capital, Minsk, is awash in whisky, corruption and damp apartments (the first two of which would appeal to most Iraqi Baathists). Vladimir Putin, of course, would be asked to help to retrieve them and hand them over to Washington. And he would have a price, no doubt, a price involving oil concessions and Russia's already signed oil contracts in Baghdad ... Robert Fisk:

Bush vetoes Syria war plan

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. The Guardian

Bush ready to fight war on two fronts

Defeat of Saddam does not end US ambitions in the Middle East. The friends of President Bush have grand plans to create an American Imperium - and to consolidate their power at home

The last shot of the war in Iraq will be the starting pistol for two further campaigns by the administration of President George W Bush. One will be fought in the region: no one really believes America's project is confined to Iraq. The toppling of Saddam is first base in what Michael Ledeen, leading thinker among the neo-conservatives driving foreign policy, calls 'a war to remake the world'. The Observer

Onward Christian soldiers
Conservative fundamentalists with close ties to President Bush are planning a new missionary push in Iraq -- and they might already be converting U.S. troops to their cause.

"The government is ordained by God with the right to promote good and restrain evil," Stanley said in his sermon. "This includes wickedness that exists within the nation, as well as any wicked persons or countries that threaten foreign nations ... Therefore, a government has biblical grounds to go to war in the nation's defense or to liberate others in the world who are enslaved." And sampling from a scattershot of biblical passages to inform his argument, Stanley warned that those who oppose or disobey the U.S. government in its drive to war "will receive condemnation upon themselves." salon

Thought for the Day

This week, the United States controls FIVE TIMES the oil reserves it did last week. Can anyone seriously suggest that they're about to hand that kind of economic muscle back to ANYONE ... least of all the people of Iraq ??

A culture of fear

"The fear created by 9/11 has already cost the lives of several Iraqi women and children. The car bomber has managed to turn the US troops deeply suspcious of the Iraqis, who were actually greatful Saddam has been set running. Having lived through 9/11, and believe me, there is nothing like seeing an F-15 fly over Central Park at 3,000 feet armed, I'm mystified at the sense of fear which has gripped this country. The whole freedom fries debacle and the boycott of French food is not a rational reaction" Daily Kos

Financial scandal claims hang over leader in waiting

Pentagon's choice to succeed Saddam was found guilty over $200m bank losses The Guardian

Baghdad did not fall -- it was handed over

The Arabic media is rife with speculation that the Saudi regime brokered a secret deal between the White House and Iraq's ruling party. By Jalal Ghazi

April 14, 2003 | Arabic media are speculating that a "safqua" -- Arabic for a secret deal -- was arranged between the United States and Iraq's Baath regime to hand over Baghdad. Although nobody can pinpoint the exact terms, there are three clear outcomes. First, the lives of many American and British forces as well as most senior Baath officials were spared. Second, Baghdad itself did not turn into the blood bath widely anticipated by military experts. Third, the war was shortened dramatically, saving the region -- especially Saudi Arabia -- from catastrophic consequences.

The following clues, gleaned from Arabic and U.S. media, suggest why the fall of Baghdad was premeditated.

1. None of the seven rescued POWs was hurt. On the contrary, all seven were found in good condition. All were found dressed in pajamas rather than the standard uniforms for prisoners of war, indicating that they were being treated as guests rather than as POWs. Usually, Arabs give pajamas to guests who sleep over in their houses.

Arab reports point out that POW Jessica Lynch was similarly treated; she was kept in the cleanest room in an Iraqi hospital until she was rescued on April 2. In both cases, American forces were tipped off about the location of the POWs by unknown Iraqi citizens. Kuwaiti prisoners, by contrast, who were captured during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait more than 12 years ago, are only now being discovered.

To date, none of the seven war prisoners has spoken directly to American TV reporters, unlike U.S. soldiers injured in the fighting, who became instant media sources. We are told the seven POWs were taken to Kuwait for medical treatment and intelligence debriefing.

2. American tanks rolled into Baghdad with very little resistance while Basra, nowhere near as heavily fortified as Baghdad, sustained almost three weeks of fierce resistance.

The fall of Baghdad was so sudden that it left many of the Arab and Muslim volunteers who went to Iraq to fight the coalition forces in total disarray. Initially given weapons and uniforms, thousands of these volunteers -- who came from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere -- wound up having no one to tell them what to do. Al-Jazeera reports that some are now still fighting U.S. forces while others are actually attacking Iraqi civilians.

3. Baath forces refrained from destroying a single bridge in Baghdad, which could have blocked U.S. tanks access to the city, at least temporarily. Moreover, only a handful of Iraq's oil fields were set on fire, leaving the vast majority intact almost in accordance with Bush's demands.

4. None of the senior Baath officials has surrendered to date, with the exception of two high-level scientists. Instead, tens of thousands of Baath operatives managed to disappear without a sign of internal divisions. This strongly suggests that the departure of the Baath regime was ordered from the most senior levels and was highly organized. It also explains why most of the Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, were nowhere to be found when U.S. forces entered Baghdad.

5. Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Al-Douri, a high-level Baath functionary, was quoted in both American and Arabic media as saying, "The game is over," and that he had not been in contact with Saddam Husssein for weeks. When asked why he used the word "game," the ambassador replied, "The war is over." Meanwhile, al-Jazeera reported that Al-Douri has been allowed to travel to Syria and that he may be asked to represent the new Iraqi government at the United Nations.

While Arabs all over the Middle East now routinely talk of the deal that saved Baghdad, they also speculate that the same deal may have saved Saddam. Unlike the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, which preoccupied U.S. forces for months, the hunt for the dictator no longer appears to be the top priority for U.S. forces in the wake of Baghdad's fall.

Where could Saddam be if he is still alive? Some Arab media experts speculate he may have sought refuge in Mecca, the most sacred Islamic place in the world. No non-Muslims ever lived in and very few have even set foot in this holiest of Muslim cities.

If it turns out that Saddam is indeed in Mecca, it would be one further clue that the architect of the "safqua" or deal between the Baath and the United States was Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah -- a trusted intermediary of the Bush family and the only Arab leader invited to President Bush's Crawford ranch.

For the Saudis, as well as for many other Arab leaders, the deal offers the one hope of sparing the Middle East the consequences of a bloody and prolonged war of resistance in Iraq. For the Americans, the deal offers a chance of stabilizing postwar Iraq and its neighbors, leaving the door open for what Bush calls the road map to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

© 2003 Pacific News Service

Canada to join the Euro ?

.... and other interesting thoughts about the nature of transatlantic cultural dislocation ... Jim Griffin

"We Broke It, We Own It"

If this were the end, if these were the means, can we walk away with a shake of the head, accept the result, the way it came about? How will we know? How do we judge? What shall be the criterion by which we weigh the pros and the cons and declare this war worth its cost? ... Who will audit the war? Which accounting firm has earned the right to fool us one more time? Will we count fingers, toes left behind, limbs? Will Geiger counters register numerical levels of depleted uranium for inclusion on a chart? Can the soil be cleansed? ..... some questions worth pondering. Jim Griffin

Victory in the war is not victory in the argument about the war.

"The serious case involved questions that are still unresolved. Factual questions: Is there a connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11? Is that connection really bigger than that of all the countries we're not invading? Does Iraq really have or almost have weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States? Predictive questions: What will toppling Saddam ultimately cost in dollars and in lives (American, Iraqi, others)? Will the result be a stable Iraq and a blossoming of democracy in the Middle East or something less attractive? How many young Muslims and others will be turned against the United States, and what will they do about it?" SLATE

No Looting - now it's official

American Information Minister, Don Al Drumsfeld, has announced "There are no looters in Baghdad. Never!", adding, helpfully "My feelings - as usual - we will arrest them all." He then went on to say "Our initial assessment is that they will all go home. I blame the BBC - they are marketing for the Leftists. The European press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!"

Glad that's all cleared up then :-)

Looters turn on priceless artefacts

Iraq's national museum held artefacts from thousands of years of history in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, widely held to be the site of the world's earliest civilisations. Before the war, the museum closed its doors and secretly placed the most precious artefacts in storage, but the metal storeroom doors were smashed and everything was taken. Full story

QUOTE OF THE DAY
Given this descent into savage lawlessness, one is reminded of the words of Clint Eastwood's Marine sergeant character in 'Heartbreak Ridge'. When asked by a General "What's your assesment of the situation here, Sergeant?", he replied "It's a clusterf**k ..... Sir"

Iraqi Info Minister - mirror site

Due to a flood of traffic crashing the welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com - apparently it peaked at an incredible 4,000 hits per second. It's creators sought more powerful servers and decided to shut down after crashing four. A number of mirror sites are up, of which this is one. It's a slow load, so be patient !

Action on the new Iraq 'Vice Consul' ?

"Former weapons maker Jay Garner will be in charge of rebuilding Iraq - unless we take action now to replace him." so says the new website stopjaygarner.com

Go Figure! Consider this ....

Police Arrest Brooklyn Man In Slayings of 4 Shopkeepers

"Police have arrested a Brooklyn man who they believe has shot and killed four shopkeepers without provocation in Brooklyn and Queens since early last month. The suspect, Larme Price, 30, confessed on Saturday to the four slayings, which terrorized residents and small-business owners. Mr. Price said he was motivated by a desire to kill people of Middle Eastern descent in revenge for the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. [Metropolitan Desk / New York Times / March 31, 2003]"

Bush & Co have "shot and killed shopkeepers without provocation" in Baghdad & Basra, "terrorized residents and small-business owners", and have killed more than 1200 "people of Middle Eastern descent in revenge for the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001" - people who had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH September 11th.

Bush is (to some) a national hero. There are no warrants out for his arrest. Larme Price languishes in jail. What a loser! He should have run for the White House.

Frenzy over Ali, but there are thousands of children like him

"Why do you all want to talk to Ali? There are hundreds of children suffering like him, and we are getting more every day," said Moufak Gabriel, the hospital director, as we arrived to see Ali Ismail Abbas, the injured 12-year-old boy who has become the centre of a British media frenzy. By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad

Rough Justice on the streets of Baghdad

We are indebted to Karlin Lillington's Technoculturefor the following transcript of a conversation between reporter Lindsay Hilsum of major UK network Channel Four, and Irish broadcaster Pat Kenny, on Irish national radio. Listen yourself here (starting 2 minutes in).

Reporter Lindsay Hilsum: [The American soldiers] tell vehicles to stop, but people in Baghdad don't know they're being told to stop because they don't have any megaphones and they say stop in English, not in Arabic. It's very hard for people to know what they're being told to do. So the Iraqis quite often speed up, because they think, oh gosh, we don't know what the situation is, let's get out of it, and they speed up. When that happens, the Americans shoot. Now we witnessed them doing this. And then we heard some sounds of women crying. And I have to say the marines seemed to be indifferent to this, and we didn't know what to do. And then our translator Mohammed Fatwan, who I now think is one of the bravest men I've ever met, said, I want to go and see what happened, and the marines said OK, and he walked across the road to the opposite side. And then we saw the most terrible scene, because a few minutes later he came running back with this small 6 year old girl in his arms, and she had been shot by the marines in a car which had failed to stop. And then he said, there's two more, there's two more, and then we went across and we found out that the driver of the car was injured, as well as the little girl; her aunt was also injured and a man who had come out on his balcony to see what was happening had been killed outright... [goes on to describe a second incident they witnessed of a van being riddled with bullets].

Pat Kenny, Irish radio presenter: It seems to suggest a lack of experience and gross indiscipline by the American troops.

Channel 4: Well, I think what it shows is that they really don't understand the situation here. They can't really tell who is a civilian and who isn't a civilian, and that of course is partly the policy of the Iraqi fighters who are left... they don't care about civilians either, that's why they use the cover of civilians to mount their attacks on the Americans. And also the Americans don't seem to know what they are shooting at, and they seem to shoot at anything. They seem to shoot before they think, such is their fear that they are going to be attacked themselves, and the consequences are just terrible.

Once we had brought those wounded in -- because they didn't want to go and get the wounded, it was our translator who brought the wounded people to them -- they did start to patch them up, they brought out their paramedic and then they arranged an airlift in a helicopter to a field hospital for the little girl and for the other people who were badly injured. So they did eventually respond when they had to. But I have to say, if Mohammed hadn't been there, they would never have found out who they'd hurt or who they'd killed.

PK: It does seem as if procedures had not been thought through. I do know from pictures we've seen from Basra, that after initial difficulties, that the UK field forces were putting up signs in advance of the checkpoints in Arabic indicating that they wanted vehicles to stop; that sort of thing, but it does demonstrate quite clearly that some attempt to restore the civil power in Baghdad is urgently necessary.

Channel 4: Absolutely. Some [format?] like that would be excellent, signs in Arabic would be excellent, megaphones would be excellent, an Arab translator with each unit would be very good as well. We often find it difficult to do our work, because every time we turn up near the Americans, they realise we have two Arabic-speaking people with us, and they need translation. They should have their own translators. But certainly the issue of law and order is the major one here in Baghdad today. The looting we saw yesterday was terrible. We watched the university being looted. You had young men driving donkey carts taking computers away, and they were taking just everything they could find... You had other people watching, just horrified. And one young woman said, we need government. We must have government. It's the only way we can stop this miserable situation.

PK: Those who are experienced in these matters though would probably say, look, these are the early postwar days in Baghdad. It must have been very like this in many cities that were subject to an invasion, or a liberating force, and because there's so many journalists there we're hearing about this far more emphatically than we did in other wars, but it always happens.

Channel 4: That may well be true. But under the Geneva Convention it says that an occupying force has the responsibility to keep law and order. So it is the responsibility of the Americans here and of the British in Basra in the south to stop this kind of lawlessness. And it's in their own interest to stop this kind of lawlessness, because if this goes on, Iraq will be ungovernable and there will be more vendettas and anger. You have to remember that nearly all Iraqi men are armed, everybody has a Kalashnikov in the house, and so what goes from looting one day turns into fighting the next. It's in their own interest if they want to truly bring some sort of liberation or at least, peace to this country, that they put a stop to this as soon as they can.

PK: American Lt. Col. Brian McCoy said he wasn't really bothered by the looting of ministries or homes of the Iraqi leaders. He said what we must protect is the civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, power staions and water plants... In one way, the looting of the house of Tariq Aziz is just sort of a metaphorical blood-letting isn't it?

Channel 4: Well, you can say that. But then, one day you have one lot looting the house of Tariq Aziz and setting free Saddam Hussein's son's Arab horses, but then in another part of town, you are seeing the universities being looted, as we watched, and the hospitals. It all becomes part of the same thing, which is this atmosphere of anarchy and lawlessness. And really, the Iraqi people -- the Iraqi people who said to me on the first day that they felt so relieved and happy that maybe peace had come at last, they're now fearing to go out of their houses. And also, of course, people aren't opening their shops up. Many people took the goods from their shops back to their homes before the war started, for fear of exactly this. And until they feel they can put those things back in the shops again, no one's going to be able to feel they can start commerce, to start economic life, and to get back to any kind of normality.

PK: The final question, Lindsay, is what is going to happen in the future? The suggestion is that the Americans had too few troops in any event to cope with this eventuality, and the advance was more rapid than they expected, so they arrived before they had put any plans they might have had for civilian infrastructure, in train.

Channel 4: Well, it's not known how they're going to deal with it, but I know they should have thought of a plan before they got here, because it's not unpredictable that this would happen.

Israeli army sniper leaves British peace activist brain-dead

A British peace activist was pronounced brain-dead yesterday after being shot in the head by an Israeli army sniper. Independent

US blueprint gives Iraqis little comfort

Iraq's new leader is part of a Pentagon plan that keeps control in America's hands, writes Marian Wilkinson.

The Mystery of Baghdad's collapse

"In the days since, Baghdad residents have asked the question: Why did their city collapse with barely a fight? Senior Baath officials insist orders were given to disband, and residents confirm that the departure of higher-level officials seemed systematic and deliberate. But the circumstances of that order -- in particular, who gave it -- remain a mystery. "There is something dubious, something unclear, something unexplainable about what happened that night," said Wamid Nadhme, a professor of political science at Baghdad University and a rare voice of criticism of the government under Hussein's rule." Washington Post

The Lie Of Liberation
Cheering Iraqis are just a diversion, folks. BushCo's real goal is only just beginning Yay! The gorilla has crushed the mouse. The bazooka has blown apart the BB gun. The dinosaur has stomped the fly. Yay! Rejoice in the streets! The bright shiny righteous angry Christian god has obliterated the angry sullen foreign god. Or something.
SF Gate

Photo-ops and the rebuilding of 2 countries

What an amazing coincidence that the young Marine who placed the steel-cord noose around the head of that Sadam statue (anything from 20ft high to 60ft high, depending on 'who's nooz' you read/believe) just happened to have THE actual stars-n-stripes flag which had flown over the Pentagon on Sep 11th 2001, as it was hit by that hijacked flight ... What an amazing coincidence that he just happened to first drape the US flag over the statue's head, step down to give global media a clear shot, then step up and drape an Iraqi flag, again carefully step down ... this image carefully scripted for a different audience ... the Arab world, and the finally remove that to clear the way for the demolition of the statue. It was an extraordinary performance, carried out in front of the Palestine Hotel, the global media epi-centre of Baghdad .. anyone who watched the events in their entirety cannot have failed to appreciate the obvious choreography of it all ... giving each audience an image appropriate to their market.

Hapless journalists now witnessing the orgy of looting taking place under the noses of the US and UK forces are as incandescent with indignation as the soldiers are laid-back and bemused. How quickly they forget that this war is about BUSINESS. It's about U.S. business, and specifically, about business for Bush & Partners. For every table, chair, desk, door, sofa, computer, TV or fishtank we see stolen, there is a table, chair, desk, door, sofa, computer, TV or fishtank manufacturer back in the US who contributed to the Bush campaign who is delerious with joy and cross-eyed with dollar signs ! The US has a clear VESTED INTEREST in allowing the newly 'free' locals to go wild and rob & loot with impunity. All that stuff has to be replaced ... what a great market opportunity ! And the beauty of it is that it'll be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues ... thereby further impoverishing the very people who think their lot is about to improve ! God help them for their innocence of how big-business actually works.

Bush now starts on his 2004 re-election campaign. Nation building is good for business, and he is determined to morph the rebuilding of Iraq into the rebuilding of the US economy. Just watch, wait, and see how he spins it out from here ! Go Figure!

Brussels to investigate US contracts in Iraq

The European Commission is examining contracts awarded by the US for reconstruction work in Iraq to find out whether they breach World Trade Organisation rules and discriminate unfairly against European companies. FT.com

Liberty bites ... the reality

"We'll move the cars eventually the bodies will be taken care of"

Lara Marlowe on the already infamous "highway of death" in Baghdad following the arrival of the US 3rd Infantry Division.

Some two dozen carbonised vehicles, including a bus, litter the motorway interchange 5km south of Baghdad. I saw at least 10 decomposing bodies there yesterday, 24 hours after the battle in which they were trapped ended. Iraqis said relatives had removed many of the bodies already, and 30 to 40 is a reasonable estimate for the number of motorists and passengers who died there, many of them civilians.

Just beyond two burning Iraqi petrol tankers, and Abrams tanks on the watch for gunmen hiding in the Daura grain silos, you find the first civilian victim of the battle for the south Baghdad interchange. His charred, rotting body is crouched sideways in the front seat of a wrecked white Mercedes. A little farther on a blackened body, ballooned to several times its normal size with the summer heat, spills out from a mauve Mustang, possibly the victim of an airstrike that provided cover for the 3rd Infantry Division's advance.

A column of Humvee jeeps, one with the name Rough Riders painted on its window, drives by, but no one seems to notice the bodies strewn along the highway. "The Red Crescent has been contacted. They will take care of them," a US officer told me a few minutes later. The bodies have already been there for up to four days. To the right of the road someone has mercifully thrown blankets over four corpses, but the black stain of their blood extends from under the blankets, which are swarming with flies. The outline of a child's body lying face down can be clearly made out.

One red car had been nearly vapourised; only the rear fifth of it was left. Half of a leg, with a shoe on it, was all that remained of its occupant. The form of a naked woman - her clothes were burned off - lay face down in a destroyed pick-up. The woman's body looked the consistencey of charcoal, but was better preserved than what could barely be recognised as a man beside her. As you walk up the incline, where a fork in the motorway merges into the road to Karrada, the US army has made a barricade of concertina barbed wire and three wrecked Iraqi cars, one of them an orange and white taxi.

Just beyond the barbed wire, on the bridge parapet, lies a dead Iraqi soldier, in uniform, his face mangled and a river of dried blood flowing from his lower face and neck into the gutter. Several US tanks and armoured personnel carriers are parked on top of the fly-over. US soldiers force Iraqi men to lift their shirts, lower their trousers and turn around, one at a time, at a distance of 10 metres, before allowing them to cross to the Saidiyah-Baya neighbourhood on the other side of the highway.

This is the method used by Israelis to discourage Palestinian suicide bombers, but is certain to be experienced as a humiliation in this Arab country. Capt Dan Hubbard of Bravo Company, 464 Armour, Infantry Task Force 315, climbed down from his Abrams tank in the centre of the fly-over, to explain how the Daura highway came to resemble a scene from hell. His unit had travelled up Highway 8 from the south on the morning of April 6th.

"We reached the overpass, and we received fire from 360 degrees around. It was RPGs (rocked-propelled grenades) and AK-47s (assault rifles), between 7 and 7.30 in the morning." The troops had been fired on during most of their journey from Kuwait, Capt Hubbard said. "But the biggest concentration started when we got here and stopped. It was an amateur type of ambush - the Iraqis were trying to hit targets of opportunities. They had no real positions."

Most of the men firing RPGs were in fox-holes in a sloping, landscaped inlet in the motorway. "We fought solid for two days, though the fighting calmed down after dark," Capt Hubbard added. "The civilians were caught at the very beginning. When we seized this interchange, we had to stop the traffic to hold the ground. We're here to fight the Iraqi regime, not civilians. Warning shots were fired. "Ninety per cent of the vehicles turned around when we fired over their heads. But in these situations, a lot of things go through people's heads. A lot of them speed up."

Craig White, an embedded journalist with NBC News who witnessed the battle gave a similar explanation. "Most of these vehicles were shot driving towards the Americans. I'm sure there are innocent people here. But one of the insidious things about RPGs is that if you don't get them in time, they get you." Yet Capt Hubbard's tank, named after his wife Rhonda Denise, was hit five times by RPGs and was barely dented. It took more than an RPG to destroy an Abrams, he said.

Capt Hubbard sounded sorry for the charred bodies up and down the highway, most of them killed by fire from the 10 Abrams tanks and four Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. But at the end of the day, American lives were more important. "I've got to protect my soldiers, because we don't know if it's a car laden with explosives or RPGs. We put signs up in Arabic to warn people that this is a coalition forces area. We'll move the cars eventually, and the bodies will be taken care of."

The dead Iraqi soldier still lying on the parapet was killed in different circumstances. "There was a motorcycle coming towards us at dusk, with two guys with AK-47s on their backs. So I shot them," Capt Hubbard said. "I went over the next morning and found that the driver was still alive. I'd hit him in the knees. We laid him on top of the tank and gave him water and took him to the medics. He was a Republican Guard in uniform."

© The Irish Times

Humour: The Full Service Pentagon (animated cartoon) Salon

House Passes Bill to Block Gun Lawsuits

WASHINGTON - The gun industry, which has fought repeated lawsuits accusing it of allowing weapons to fall into criminal hands, would get help from Congress with its legal troubles under legislation approved by the House. Associated Press

How Iraq could devolve into Civil War

"The looting of hospitals is a bad sign. Taking things from a hospital, which is designed to help people, is not only mere greed. It is the suggestion that there is no respect for civil authority. Most people will loot a store or a government office, but a hospital? That's more than just greed" Daily Kos

After Saddam 'Nightmare' Baghdad Wants U.S. Out Soon

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad residents expressed relief Thursday at the collapse of Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule but said U.S. forces should restore order quickly and leave, or face the wrath of an emboldened population. Reuters

Armed Men Roam Streets of Baghdad, More Looting

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Armed men roamed the streets of Baghdad on Friday as the Iraqi capital descended deeper into anarchy, Reuters correspondents in the city said.
Khaled Yacoub Oweis saw a young man wielding a Kalashnikov assault rifle shoot the driver of a passing pickup truck in central Baghdad, drag him from the vehicle and drive it away. It was not clear whether the driver was killed or only wounded. Reuters

"I NOW INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE TOO FAR FROM REALITY."

"Iraq will not be defeated. Iraq has now already achieved victory - apart from some technicalities."

"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"

"My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all"

"Our initial assessment is that they will all die"

"I blame Al-Jazeera - they are marketing for the Americans!"

"God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."

Ya gotta love the guy ! For more Classic Quotes from Iraqs Information Minister (currently on Administrative Leave) go to welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com

Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists? By Robert Fisk in Baghdad - 09 April 2003

Marines may have broken seals on known radioactive material

"American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the US troops may have broken UN seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material" link here

Freedom for the Iraqis*
(*terms & conditions apply. Not available in the U.S.)

George Bush [based on your feedback, we've been asked to cease calling him President since he was not elected] spoke to the people of Iraq today by video [full text here]. We wonder does he 'get' Irony ? Here are some of his comments, and his obvious subjext to his compatriots ...

"You will be free to build a better life, instead of building more palaces for Saddam and his sons ...."
[Fellow Americans, you could build a better life, except that you're too busy funding gigantic Enron-type scams for my buddies, the richest 1% of the country]

"....free to travel ..."
[no, not you guys. Thanks to CAPPS II, the second generation of the "computer-assisted passenger prescreening system", WE will decide who can travel. link here]

".....and speak your mind, free to join in the political affairs of Iraq."
[..unless you're anti-war... or anti-anything that WE decide is a no-no. Remember the Patriot Act, and don't get arrested for wearing a dumb-ass 'Peace' T-shirt]

".....American and coalition forces are now operating inside Baghdad -- and we will not stop until Saddam's corrupt gang is gone"
[..and no, there are no UN forces operating inside Washintonia who will not stop until my corrupt gang from the Oil & Gas industry is gone. forget it!]

The man who would be president of Iraq [from Irish Times, Wed 9th April]

Who is Ahmed Chalabi, the man some in the US say is the best hope for Iraq? This is the make-or-break moment for Ahmed Chalabi, the US-educated banker and convicted felon who has both impressed and alienated a string of US administrations by portraying himself as the Spartacus of Iraq, a warrior-politician who could mobilise tens of thousands to oust Saddam Hussein.

Airlifted by the US military into southern Iraq on Sunday, he now has a chance to prove his claims. Pentagon allies hope Mr Chalabi can demonstrate his popularity and emerge as a leading figure - possibly the head - of a transitional authority replacing Saddam. Critics at the State Department and CIA predict that Mr Chalabi and his band of hastily recruited troops will fail to attract widespread support. No one who has dealt with him is neutral on Mr Chalabi. Although he fled Iraq in the 1950s as a youth, his backers view him as the country's hope in the 21st century.

"He's a man of courage and devotion and honour. I've known him for 12 years and the better I get to know him the more I respect him," said renowned Middle East scholar, Mr Bernard Lewis, of Princeton University. Supporters say he shares with the Bush administration a common vision for a democratic, secular Iraq that encourages free enterprise, eschews extremism and is pro-Western. Mr Chalabi, a member of Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim sect, is certainly an unusual blend of the traditional Arab orient and the modern West.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, where he studied mathematics, he has a home in Washington where he once kept a small green leather Koran next to a large book on the architect Le Corbusier on his coffee table. His detractors portray him as a catalyst for political calamity in post-war Baghdad. "There's almost no one who would be worse either for Iraq or for the Arab world. I can't think of a single Arab country that would really welcome him even as a visitor," said the Foreign Minister of one Arab country, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Government officials from four of the six countries bordering Iraq have cautioned the US against giving Mr Chalabi too much power. American critics cite as warning signs his conviction in Jordan for bank fraud in the 1980s and his close ties to Iran, which he recently has played off against the US. They also say his political ambitions and sometimes haughty, imperial ways are flash-points for squabbling among the already fractured Iraqi opposition.

Mr Chalabi, leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, has repeatedly claimed that he has no ambitions beyond liberating Iraq, after which he intends to get out of politics. And US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said on Monday that Mr Chalabi's presence in southern Iraq was no indication of any special political support for him. "Clearly, the United States is not going to impose a government on Iraq," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters. "The Iraqi people are going to sort out what their Iraqi government ought to look like."

But Mr Chalabi's detractors in the Bush administration aren't buying the denials.

"Then how come not one of the many other exiles who want a role in post-Saddam Iraq were also brought in?" asked one administration official who, like many interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified. Some State Department officials in Kuwait were privately furious that Mr Chalabi had been airlifted into southern Iraq, charging that it amounted to an unwarranted push to secure him a top role in the post-war government.

"It's really outrageous," said one official. "It means they're throwing their lot in with these Iraqi National Congress guys. It amounts to taking sides." Mr Chalabi's spokesman in Kuwait, his nephew Mr Feisal Chalabi, said on Monday that the INC leader and co-founder's influence is already being felt "everywhere". "Most of the programmes within the civil administration" that the US is now designing, "most of the ideas and strategies, you can sense a lot of his influence", he said. Few Iraqis have worked harder to convince successive US governments that Saddam had to go - and that Washington had to help make that happen.

Mr Chalabi, who once taught maths at the American University in Beirut, later headed the Petra Bank in Jordan. In the 1980s, a Jordanian court convicted him in absentia of embezzlement and sentenced him to 22 years in prison. He still is subject to arrest in Jordan, according to senior Jordanian officials.

Mr Chalabi has ties with senior Republicans on Capitol Hill that go back more than a decade. A Republican Party aide estimated that the Iraqi had met key Republican senators at least half a dozen times since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, when the INC emerged as a coalition of disparate factions melded into one group - in part to win US support.

"I worked with him for a good five years. He is the only guy I've seen that is able to organise the Iraqi opposition and hold them together," said Sen Sam Brownback, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "He's bright and tireless and he really works at holding the big principles together. The big focus has been bringing democracy into Iraq and on that he does not alter."

Mr Chalabi, a British citizen and London resident, works Washington better than many politicians, both allies and critics say. Vice-President Dick Cheney is one of his supporters. He's worked closely with former CIA director, Mr James Woolsey, and Gen Wayne Downing, who served on the Bush administration National Security Council, to develop political and military plans to topple Saddam.

"A lot of people in his situation might have devoted themselves to their own selfish pursuits. Chalabi could have lived comfortably without spending a day on the effort to liberate Iraq," said Mr Richard Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has long advocated support for the INC and overthrowing Saddam.

But Mr Chalabi may have stronger backing in the US than in Iraq. A recent CIA report on Iraqi sentiments about a post-Saddam government concluded that "overwhelming numbers" of Iraqis were suspicious and sceptical of Mr Chalabi and the INC, according to a US official familiar with the assessment. The report came to the same conclusion about the Iran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has been an on-again, off-again INC ally. They are the two largest exile groups and both have ties with the US.

In an interview in September, Mr Chalabi dismissed accusations that his group lacks support in Iraq. "That's an old mantra," he said. Until Saddam is toppled, he asserted, it would be difficult for any exile group to prove its popularity.

"It's hard to demonstrate support in a country with a totalitarian system. Was Stalin beloved of the Russians and Georgians? Was he or not? Was Hitler beloved of the German people? It's difficult to get people to cross the line between their own personal experiences and their own sense of political support in their own societies and how these symbols and mechanisms can be manipulated by such modern totalitarian methods."

But even Iraqi allies are highly critical of Mr Chalabi's political manoeuvrings. Kurds who have variously been in and out of the INC umbrella are sceptical of him, and some don't trust him at all. Many view him as a carpetbagger who fled Iraq and showed up again on the eve of change, while others stayed and suffered through Saddam's regime.

Many Kurdish officials chafe at what they describe as Mr Chalabi's towering ego and princely air, but they don't underestimate him. Many admire his intellect and his political shrewdness. At a recent opposition meeting, one Kurdish official fumed at his alleged arrogance.

"He's tenacious and articulate," said a senior Kurdish official. "He's already promising ministry posts. He's cultivating the Turks. He's playing games in Washington. He's smart, you have to give him this. But the opposition is not liberating Iraq. The US is liberating Iraq." Other long-standing INC allies say Mr Chalabi is a good tactician and power broker but accuse him of being a self-absorbed showman who has trouble maintaining relationships vital to long-term political stability.

© The Irish Times

US Tank commander who fired at Media Hotel felt threatened 'by binoculars'

Centcom are now rapidly back-peddling from their story about 'sniper fire'. US army Colonel David Perkins, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, which deployed the tank, claimed Iraqis in front of the hotel fired rocket-propelled grenades across the Tigris river. "Soldiers fired back with a tank round aimed at the hotel after seeing enemy "binoculars," Col Perkins said. British Defence Secretary Jack Straw today declared he was "very concerned" about the killing of journalists in Iraq and said he would demand detailed information about their deaths. Guardian

Here Come the Fat Cats
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?" By LINDA HEARD

Where is Sadam?

Unconfirmed reports that he is holed up in the Russian Embassy ... the Russians will neither confirm nor deny this ... who would want to be in *that* building now??

Hearts & Minds time

So finally come the scenes that the US & British administrations hoped for - Iraqi people welcoming troops and openly celebrating the downfall of a despicable regime. Certainly these are irresistable scenes, and one cannot but feel happy for the ordinary Iraqis involved. Ironically, the extraordinary scenes of Sadam's statue being torn down, being watched live worldwide, cannot be seen by the people of Iraq - the very people who need to see them most ... since their TV and radio facilities were blasted by coalition bombs last week.

Anyone opposed to the war may feel conflicted now. Did the end justify the means? Was it worth all the suffering & death? Was it correct for the 'allies' to press on with an illegal incursion into a sovereign state rather than keep faith with diplomatic efforts, arms inspectors and the gradual, successful, strangulation of Sadam's regime? Only time will tell. The shape and legitimacy of the new regime are most important. What's critical is that the hopes and dreams of the Iraqi people, so high & animated today, be not betrayed by a stooge regime which fails them in any way.

It's a happy day for Iraq, and it would be churlish not to applaud it. We note, however, that the much trumpeted WMD - the reason given for invading Iraq - have still not been found. It appears, more and more now, that the UN and the weapons inspectors were correct. Sadam did not in any way represent any real threat to the US ....

After Sadam, an Arab Congo?

"The US war against Saddam may soon be over, but that may only be the start of the Iraq war. There are millions of guns, rockets and mortars, billions of rounds of ammo, scattered across the country. No one knows who controls them or what they have planned. The Shia want control of their destiny, as do the Kurds, and the Sunnis may not be happy to lose power." Daily Kos

Israeli strike kills at least eight Palestinians in Gaza Strip

An Israeli warplane fired a missile at a car in Gaza City after sundown Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding at least 25, reports said. One of the men targeted and killed in the strike was Sa'id al Arbid, one of the heads of the Hamas military wing. Women and children were among the casualties brought to the hospital. Residents said two Israeli F-16 fighter planes circled low over Gaza City, breaking the sound barrier, in the minutes before the air strike at the Zeitoun neighbourhood. The Israeli warplanes appeared to be targeting a car, but their first missile missed the target, witnesses said.
(Albawaba.com)

War Claims Lives of 10 Journalists in 21 Days

During the 43 days that comprised the Persian Gulf War in 1991, no journalists lost their lives in the conflict. The current war in Iraq, now just 21 days old, has claimed the lives of 10 journalists, three of whom were killed today in United States military strikes in Baghdad. By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN (free sub req'd)

Death, fear, grief at Baghdad bomb site but no sign of Iraqi leader

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) A young woman's severed head and torso and a small boy's body were pulled Tuesday from a smoking crater carved into the earth by four U.S. bombs, so powerful they yanked orange trees from their roots. But there was no sign of the man those bombs were aimed at: Saddam Hussein. By Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press

Russian Intelligence on Iraq

Russia, superpower that it was, still has spy satellites, state-of-the-art interception technology and (unlike the CIA) men on the ground. The beauty of GRU is that it does not (like the CIA) report directly to the leadership but to the Russian ministry of defence. Daily English-language versions of the Russian military intelligence reports on the situation in Iraq are published by Iraqwar.ru, on a one-day-delayed basis at www.aeronautics.ru

Are U.S. forces now out of control ?

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Reuters journalist was killed and three were wounded in Baghdad on Tuesday when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the media hotel where they were working. A Spanish journalist was also wounded. Earlier, the Al Jazheera offices were shelled by U.S. forces, killing one journalist there.

U.S. officials said their forces had been fired on from the hotel but a British reporter there who saw the tank take aim said he had heard no other firing. "I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel," British Sky television's correspondent David Chater said, adding "That tank shell, if it was indeed an American tank shell, was aimed directly at this hotel ... This wasn't an accident. It seems to be a very accurate shot." Reuters

Robert Fisk: It seemed as if Baghdad would fall within hours. But the day was characterised by crazed normality, high farce and death

"The US Marines and special forces who spread out along the west bank of the river broke into Saddam Hussein's largest palace, filmed its lavatories and bathrooms and lay resting on its lawns before moving down towards the Rashid Hotel and sniping at soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children were brought to Baghdad's hospitals in the hours that followed – victims of bullets, shrapnel and cluster bombs. We could actually see the twin-engined American A-10s firing their depleted uranium rounds into the far shore of the river." 08 April 2003

War ‘Against Iraqi People’

NAJAF, 8 April 2003 — This is no longer a war against Saddam and his regime, if it ever was. It has become a war against the Iraqi people. The number of civilians killed since the invasion began is massive, and is rising dramatically as American and British forces continue to make their way north through densely populated areas. Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab News War Correspondent

Police Attack California Anti-War Protesters

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Police opened fire with non-lethal projectiles at an anti-war protest at the Port of Oakland on Monday, injuring at least a dozen demonstrators and six longshoremen standing nearby. First Coast News

'They bring water for troops. Why not us? Don't we matter?'
From Daniel McGrory in Basra

“This is the kind of atmosphere where the young men you see will quickly turn against the allied soldiers, believing they are deliberately starving Iraqis of water. They don’t know what is going on. All they know is life is a lot worse than it was a month ago,” Professor McKenzie said. London Times

TRUTH IN THE NEWS : Murdoch's "generals" still on message

As pointed out in a Go Figure! posting, March 30th, Media Baron Rupert Murdoch must be the Iraq invasion's biggest cheerleader by far and his minions are certainly nothing if not consistent! See this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, and indeed, this earlier piece.

RTE Radio reporter Richard Downes has given an extraordinary eye-witness account of 2 U.S. cluster bomb attacks in a residential area of Baghdad which took place on Sunday. It's unknown how many civilian deaths and injuries occured, but Downes said he saw people in a marketplace 'falling like nine-pins' as they were sprayed indescriminately with shrapnel. "It was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen. I was certain we were going to die. Certainly the Iraqi's have been deeply cynical in placing tanks and artillery pieces in residential areas - in some cases hiding them in houses and even in greenhouses ... it's incredibly reckless and inexcusable behavior. Having said that, I cannot think of any justification for using cluster bombs or weapons of that type in such areas. It's simply unconscionable"
Listen to Richard Downes Interview

IRAQI WAR-CRIMES GENERAL, SUSPECTED OF GASSING KURDS, EARMARKED BY THE U.S. FOR NEW REGIME

CIA's favourite now in Kuwait - Danish paper -

The former Iraqi general Nizar al-Khazraji, considered by some as a possible successor to President Saddam Hussein, is in Kuwait after escaping from Denmark last month with the help of the CIA, the Danish daily Politiken reported yesterday. Citing a report by the former head of the CIA's counter-terrorism department - a copy of which was obtained by the Irish Times newspaper - the paper said the US security services see Mr al-Khazraji as their preferred successor for Saddam in a post-war Iraq, a view that is not shared by the Pentagon.

The ex-CIA official, who completed the confidential report on March 28th, said the US intelligence services secretly extracted Mr al-Khazraji and that he was currently helping US forces in the war against Baghdad, according to Politiken.

On March 22nd, it was first reported by another newspaper that the CIA may have been behind a move to spirit Mr al-Khazraji, believed to be the highest-ranking officer to have defected from Iraq, to Saudi Arabia. The ex-CIA official who wrote the report, Mr Vincent Cannistraro, has declined to comment on the document.

Mr al-Khazraji, who has been charged with war crimes for alleged chemical weapon attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, went missing from his house arrest in Denmark on March 15th.

He was head of the Iraqi armed forces during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He fled to Jordan in 1995 and, three years later, applied for political asylum in Denmark. In February last year London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted opposition sources in Syria as saying the US had chosen Mr al-Khazraji to run Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. Additional Reporting : AFP. © The Irish Times

light relief ... link to cartoons on the Iraq invasion

Welcome to the Surveilance Society ...

"The Bush administration's attitude, assisted by a Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to liberty, is that government has the right to know absolutely everything about you and that government can violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as the cause is deemed worthy.
You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know what the government is doing in your name and with your money, unless the information is deemed harmless by people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds. Bush and his people have turned secrecy into a mantra, and too few people recognize the danger that poses to our freedoms, much less our pocketbooks". Dan Gilmor / siliconvalley.com

Don't Count Me In
There's no use polling for 'American opinion.' In this war, it doesn't exist. By WALTER KIRN

"Because I live here and I have opinions, I have always considered myself a bona fide member of the American public. It's quite a group, incredibly influential and powerful -- the only large organization I've ever belonged to. Depending on what we think about an issue, markets fluctuate, bills are passed or vetoed and companies alter the flavors of major soft drinks. It's a huge responsibility, this membership, and though I don't remember ever asking for it, I've always been perfectly willing to do my duty when the phone rings during dinner and it's the Gallup folks asking me to speak for millions of other people so someone can write a headline the next morning purporting to tell America what it feels.

But please don't call and ask me about this war. Don't ask if I strongly approve or partly approve or strongly disapprove; I'll cut you off. And don't ask my demographic stand-ins either. I don't trust their answers in this matter, and I refuse to vouch for their ability to communicate anything but their own confusion, particularly if they feel anything like I do: gung-ho at breakfast time, heartsick by lunch hour, angry at supper, all played out by bedtime and disembodied in the middle of the night when I wake up to check the cable news scrolls. If I'm the American public, and it is I, then no opinion poll, however probing, can drill down into the tar pit of emotions churning and steaming at my core and dredge up a representative sample of anything. Opinions come off the top layer of the brain, released into the air like mental scents, but who can capture what goes on in the stomach -- especially in the cramped, acidic stomach?

The ''numbers,'' as pollsters like to call them (thereby exposing their insulting working premise that human behavior is a digital affair), have been all over the place since the war started. It's not worth citing any particular numbers, since they probably did a back flip yesterday evening depending on the news from the front lines, but the overall trend has been toward volatility and away from settledness. The public backs Bush. The public backs away from Bush. The public expects higher casualties, or doesn't, by this or that much and within this margin of error.

Lately what the polls seem to be demonstrating is their own pathetic inadequacy in the face of events that cut deeper than the cranium -- events that can be processed only in the soul. What's your opinion of a soldier with a head wound staggering through a sandstorm at 3 a.m.? What's your opinion of a missile blast that collapses eight stories of reinforced concrete on top of an unknown number of civilians who were either inside the building by accident or because they'd been herded into it at gunpoint? What's your opinion of mass panic brought on by the noise of unrelenting artillery fire and a chronic shortage of clean water? What's your opinion of nerve gas?

The Gallup folks (meaning opinion pollsters generally) would have us believe that we are, in fact, a we -- a citizenry, a public, a collective capable of providing guidance to leaders and feeding back our reactions to their decisions in a mutually beneficial endless loop. As I've said, I usually don't mind this. It's cheap entertainment, and it makes me feel included, even when I'm not. If a poll refutes my own views and places me in the minority on some question, I can always argue that no one telephoned me, not to mention any of my friends, and if this isn't enough to give me solace, I can simply say to hell with polls, the way politicians who wish to look courageous do. On the other hand, when the numbers do go my way, I tend to feel strengthened, supported, lifted up. What's the downside to maintaining your membership in the American public? None that I could see.

But the war has changed this. I don't want to be part of a body of opinion now. I don't want to be lumped with strangers of the same income level, race, locale, sex, party, faith and age. I don't want them to speak for me, or me for them, about feelings so abdominal and agonizing that reducing them to statistics feels faintly blasphemous and foolish to boot. On a scale of 1 to 5, do you personally approve or disapprove of double-amputee U.S. marines?

Sorry, not playing. I'm turning in my card. What's more, I'm turning off the polls. To keep tabs on what ''we'' think before I know what I think, and perhaps to risk shaping my own thoughts in the process, whether out of some secret longing to fit in or an unconscious desire to stand out, strikes me as a form of spiritual cheating, of shirking my obligation before the cosmos to pass through this fire naked and alone, without checking to see who's with me and who's not and by what magnitude and over how many days.

Someday, perhaps, I'll reactivate my membership in the American public whose views and attitudes are so important to market researchers and aspiring presidential candidates, but for now, as I stand witness to this war, sleepless, not eating well, jumpy, touchy, scorched, that margin of error that pollsters are always talking about and dismissing as insignificant? That's me". (from the New York Times Magazine, April 6th 2003)

The Iraqi Time Bomb
By JEFF MADRICK

"The denial of economic reality that permeated Wall Street a few years ago has now migrated to Washington. On Wall Street, when companies did not generate the promised profits to justify the bubble in stock prices, many analysts told investors that profits did not matter. A new economy would be gauged by other measures, they insisted. Today, in similar fashion, as the federal budget has plunged into the red over the past two years, President Bush's economic team is telling the nation that deficits no longer matter." New York Times Magazine (free subscription required)

Bush's next battle will be fought on the home front
By Stephen Robinson

There is a strange thing about this war against Iraq when it is viewed from America. Switch on a television set and the network big shots reporting on the progress of the American forces do so with much more patriotic gusto than the BBC. Telegraph

US begins the process of 'regime change'

The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday. The Observer

The new rebuilders of Iraq - their apartheid past

Fluor Corporation, the US building firm tipped to land a massive reconstruction deal in postwar Iraq, is facing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit claiming that it exploited and brutalised black workers in apartheid-era South Africa. Observer

Land of the 'Free', and ....

Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists: An Oregon anti-terrorism bill would jail street-blocking protesters for at least 25 years in a thinly veiled effort to discourage anti-war demonstrations, critics say. Reuters

... Home of the Brave ?

Just what all freedom-lovin' patriots need in their homes ... a 'Defender of Freedom' figure ... (note to all non-Americans: This is NOT satire ....) Freedom Figure

Meet and Greet

"Within a very few weeks of the United States' occupation of Japan the civic leaders of Nagasaki, eager for good relations with the conquerors, were boosting a Miss A-Bomb contest. Can a Miss Daisy Cutter contest be far behind for the people of Baghdad?" Website of the Week: Counterpunch

John Pilger: "We see too much. We know too much. That's our best defence." Independent

Kurdish and US fighters hit in latest 'friendly fire' tragedy

A US warplane bombed a convoy carrying US Special Forces and Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing several men, according to a BBC reporter with the troops. BBC correspondent John Simpson [who sustained a shrapnel injury and a punctured eardrum] said he counted at least 10 bodies amid the burning vehicles. "An American plane dropped the bomb right beside us. I saw it land about 10 feet (three meters) away," said Simpson. Independent

Privatise this war!
John O'Farrell, Friday April 4, 2003,
"The war is now two weeks old and it seems incredible to many of us on Capitol Hill that Saddam Hussein has not yet surrendered. Has his translator not explained to him exactly what George Bush said? That "Baghdad will endure bombardmentalisation". That "the Iraqi people must be freed from this tyrannosaurus regime". What bit of "non-conditional capitulisation" does Saddam not understand?" The Guardian

Who is the president?
"I've been watching, increasingly disturbingly, how Donald Rumsfeld keeps making foriegn policy pronouncements: Syria's next, Iran better watch it, we'll only accept an unconditional surrender. Excuse me, but isn't that the President's job?" Daily Kos

Scenes From the Burma Railway
"Ever see The Bridge On the River Kwai? Alec Guiness, sans light saber, plays a British officer in a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Railway. His men have been turned into slave laborers building the title of the movie, and Guiness, in the classic stiff-upper-lip tradition, is trying his best to keep them alive............One of these days, I suspect, Tony Blair is going to have an Alec Guiness moment. But for now he’s still working on the neocons' bridge, hoping for the best and trying to keep up his team’s morale." Hilarious yet insightful piece in the Daily Kos

Emperor George

What has become of American values and idealism? All swept away in this thoroughly un-American war : Jonathan Freedland

Stocks Slip On Saddam Speculation

Who said one man cannot move the markets? Maybe Sadam's game is to hide out, call his broker and short-sell his portfolio, then pop up on TV and buy back at depressed prices? Associated Press

How will we know when it's over?

The Bush administration has devised a strategy to declare victory in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein or key lieutenants remain at large and fighting continues in parts of the country, officials said yesterday. Washington Post

Blood Remains on the Hands

The least blood, a small squirt when removing a needle, two drops, that's all, no more than two drops, and suddenly it is everywhere Jimmy Breslin

'Smart' bomb myth

Professor Paul Franklin of the Iraq Body Count project (iraqbodycount.net) - currently claiming 700 civilian deaths in the Iraq conflict - has compiled statistics on civilian deaths versus tonnage of bombs dropped in major conflicts since Gulf War 1. Paradoxically, as the % of munitions said to be "precision guided" has risen dramatically over the period, the numbers of civilians killed has also risen. His study indicated that civilians killed per 1000 tons of bombs dropped were: Gulf War 1: 400; Kosovo: 600; Afganistan: 800; Iraq Invasion: 1500 (to date).

Amnesty blasts cluster bomb use
Thursday 3 April 2003, 12:05 PM

International human rights watchdog Amnesty International warned the use of cluster bombs will lead to indiscriminate killing of civilians, the day after the bombs were suspected of killing 33 civilians in central Iraq. [nb. In addition to US cluster bombing, British Forces have today admitted they deployed cluster bombing in heavily-populated areas of Basra] The Age

'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off'
April 2 2003, 11:38 AM

An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family. Sydney Morning Herald

US Presidential Candidate calls for war to be stopped

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich took his anti-war campaign to the House floor Tuesday, calling for an end to the fighting in Iraq to allow weapons inspectors to return. Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, repeated the phrase, "Stop this war now," 10 times in his brief speech. He said the U.S.-led military campaign was built on "falsehood." link

Hearts & Minds
The coalition leaders have so far been winning hearts and minds at home but losing them almost everywhere else. Economist

Jemima Khan: I am angry and ashamed to be British
As a dual national of Pakistan and Britain, it is the loss of British credibility I find hardest to stomach 02 April 2003

Military Families Speak Out
... is an organization of people who are opposed to war in Iraq and who have relatives or loved ones in the military. "It is our loved ones on the battlefront. It is our loved ones who risk injury and death. It is our loved ones who will return scarred from having injured innocent Iraqi civilians." MFSO.org

Rumsfeld scuttles administration team

In an effort to ensure the Pentagon controls every aspect of reconstructing Iraq and forming a new government, the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has rejected a team of postwar administrators proposed by the State Department. SMH

Civilian deaths rock campaign
By Bradley Graham and Marian Wilkinson in Washington

Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaj showed an AFP photographer the coffins he said held the bodies of his wife, his six children, his father, mother and three brothers and their wives.
"Which one of them should I cry on?" Khafaj said, before throwing sand in his face "so I don't have to see" the remains of his 15 relatives before him. SMH

US resorts to Cluster bombing civilians

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, says the bombings around Hilla are a "veritable horror". "Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad and what it saw there was a horror," Mr Huguenin-Benjamin said. "There were dozens of smashed corpses."

He says he believes the air attacks have left "dozens of dead and 450 injured". "We're asking about the type of weapons used in these air strikes," he said."There were women and children. All of them are civilians, farmers and their families who were on their fields or at home."

At the hospital, 23-year-old Mohammad Karim explained that when residents "saw the warplanes flying at very low altitude, they rushed out of their homes toward the nearby plantation fields". "Then it started raining cluster bombs everywhere," he said. "People were being slaughtered like sheep."

At the scene of the bombing, dozens of what seemed to be parts of cluster bombs equipped with small parachutes were peppered over a large area, an AFP correspondent said. Australian Broadcasting Corp

Death squads the CIA ignored

"They were taken to the Fedayeen barracks, where four men accused of some transgression against the regime were led out in front of a crowd of 300. 'They were hog-tied, carried in like sheep. One of them was accused of slandering Saddam. They pulled out his tongue with a fork, and cut it off with a pair of shears. Then all four were beheaded with a sword.'

It may be that Western intelligence has simply failed to take account of these and other sources about the threat from the Fedayeen. More depressingly, it is also possible that the deep disdain which both the CIA and MI6 have long felt for the Iraqi National Congress has led them deliberately to disregard the existence of this potential threat."

The Observer

A ‘Truly Remarkable Achievement’
Robert Fisk, The Independent

BAGHDAD, 1 April 2003 — So it’s a “truly remarkable achievement”, is it? Gen. Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going “according to plan”, according to the British. So it’s an achievement that the British still have not “liberated” Basra. It is “according to plan” that the Iraqis should be able to launch a Scud missile from the Faw Peninsula — supposedly under “British control” for more than a week. It is an achievement — truly remarkable, of course — that the Americans should lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant farmer, should spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nassiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf. link: Arabnews

Militiamen may be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay ... Independent

For a Saudi perspective on the war ... go to Arabnews.com

"Even we surrender-monkeys are confused"

"The not-in-my-name war has turned out to be in our name after all - and it is a discomfiting experience". Terence Blacker 01 April 2003