Yahoo had this grim story last night:

A radical right-wing Jewish group claimed responsibility for an explosion which injured 29 Palestinian children in a school in the northern West Bank.

The group, calling itself "Revenge of the Babies," said in a message sent to the beeper of one of the radio's journalists that the blast was "to avenge the Jewish children killed by the Palestinians."

The blast occurred in a school in the village of Al-Jarba, 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Jenin. Four of the injured were in serious condition, Palestinian medics said Wednesday....

Great.

This today, from Reuters:

Two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israelis in the West Bank's Jordan Valley before being shot dead on Thursday in a fresh surge of Middle East violence ahead of an anticipated U.S.-led peace drive....

And on and on...

(First link from Phil F.)

I love this nugget from a Toronto Globe and Mail story about evangelicals who claim they understand that they should go easy on the proselytizing ("We are not there to preach; we are on a predominantly humanitarian mission") when dealing with Iraqis:

In one major project, Baptist families have been asked to put together "gift of love" food boxes designed to provide a month's worth of basic nourishment to a family of five. "Please do not place any additional items/literature inside the box," the families are told. Mr. Porter, who runs the program, explained that this is to prevent them from being seen as missionary packages.

However, on the outside of each box will be a label bearing an Arabic translation of John 1:17: "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

(Jim Carrey voice: "I CAN'T LIE!")

(Thanks to T.D. for the link.)

Top four stories on the Yahoo title screen as I type this:

•  Marines in fierce firefight at mosque

•  Bodies litter streets of Baghdad suburb

•  Iraqi Shiite leader, aide murdered in Najaf

•  ICRC: Baghdad hospital looted, others shut

(A previous story reported that a pro-Saddam cleric was killed in addition to the pro-U.S. cleric and his aide.)

Things are not looking good in the 51st state today....

(Subtle-as-a-flying-mallet irony department: In a more innocent time -- i.e., a few hours ago -- MSNBC.com headline writers put up this headline: Reveling in new freedoms: With coming of U.S. troops, Iraqis feel free to disagree.)
 

Hey, quit bitching -- it's not called Operation Kurdish Freedom, is it?

US assures Turkey it will replace Kurdish forces in oil-rich Kirkuk

Turkey said it had won a pledge from the United States to send reinforcements to Kirkuk to replace Kurdish fighters who captured the strategic oil-rich city in northern Iraq.

The assurance came after Ankara threatened to send troops to the region if Kurds were allowed to take control of Kirkuk and northern Iraq's other major city Mosul, a move that could encourage them to declare independence.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave the pledge after US and Kurdish forces entered Kirkuk earlier Thursday following a popular uprising in the city, Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said.

"He said they would send new US forces to Kirkuk in a few hours. They will take out those who have entered," Gul told reporters after speaking by telephone with Powell....

--Agence France-Presse

(Thanks to Leonard for the link.)

The soldier who wrapped the Saddam statue's face with an American flag seems to have gotten the message about American triumphalism -- he removed the flag quickly.

Rupert Murdoch apparently hasn't gotten that message.

Does he think Arabs and Muslims don't use the Internet, so they won't see this? Does he think using one of his front pages to rub our flag in their faces is a good idea?

PRIORITIES

Here are two paragraphs from an AP story on anarchy in Baghdad. I've left off the first sentence of the first paragraph:

...But the nine-story Ministry of Transport building was gutted by fire, as was the Iraqi Olympic headquarters, while the Ministry of Education was partially burned. Near the Interior Ministry, the office building of Saddam's son Odai stood damaged, its upper floors blackened.

A building on fire near the Interior Ministry was rocked by deafening explosions apparently caused by ammunition and rockets stashed inside. The blasts went on for more than 15 minutes. No immediate injuries were reported.

Here's the sentence I cut:

U.S. troops occupied the Oil Ministry.

Of course.

A few days ago I linked a post in which a gentleman named Kim du Toit delighted in the facial injuries of an antiwar protester who'd been hit by rubber bullets. An e-mailer has pointed out to me that in another post Mr. du Toit calls for the murder of U.S. government officials -- and offers to knife them to death himself. The post is here.

Um, isn't it illegal to make such a threat?

Of course, the people Mr. du Toit threatens to kill are the limp-wristed internationalists at the State Department, not, y'know, anyone really important to the functioning of the U.S. government, so I guess it's OK. (Though the feds will probably come to my door and ask me why I linked the post.)

Just bluster?

Palestinian militants vowed on Thursday to intensify attacks on Israel after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, saying they were the Arabs' last hope against American and Israeli military might in the Middle East.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, senior political leader of the Islamic militant faction Hamas, said he was shocked by the rapid U.S. conquest of the Iraqi capital but that there would be no knock-on collapse of the 30-month-old Palestinian uprising.

"There will be a change. Resistance will escalate and will become more violent. Resistance in Palestine will never stop because it is the last remaining hope for the whole Arab and Muslim nation," he told Reuters in Gaza City....

--Reuters

He's not at 90% yet -- or even close. Polling Report has Bush's approval rating actually dropping slightly in two recent polls 71% to 69% in a Pew Research Center and 71% to 70% in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. As Gulf War I ended, Bush senior's approval rating was a lot higher.

Wow, that was fast.

Shi'ite Group to Boycott U.S. Talks on Iraq

The main Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group said on Wednesday it would boycott a political meeting the United States is trying to arrange in southern Iraq next week because of the U.S. military presence.

"We are not going to take part in this meeting in Nassiriya. We think this is part of General Garner's rule of Iraq and we are not going to be part of that project at all," said Hamid al-Bayati, the London representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

The Bush administration has appointed retired Lt. Gen Jay Garner to run civilian affairs in Iraq alongside the U.S. and British military presence.

...Analysts say the attitude of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority will be crucial to the success of U.S. plans in Iraq.

If Shi'ite clerics and politicians reject the U.S. military occupation, it could be hard for Garner and his future Iraqi allies to govern the country effectively, they say.

Bayati noted that Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has not endorsed the U.S. presence....

--Reuters

And in the north, are we still trying to keep the Kurds from seizing Kirkuk?

I liked Hart Seely's "Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld" in Slate. Here's my attempt:

"He's either dead, or he's incapacitated, or he's healthy and cowering in some tunnel someplace trying to avoid being caught. What else can one say?" Rumsfeld said.

--CNN

He's either dead, or
he's incapacitated, or
he's healthy and

cowering in
some tunnel
someplace
trying to

avoid being
caught. What

else can
one say?

"It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." --ascribed to General Robert E. Lee

Right now, for one country on the planet, war is not so terrible. Will we grow fond of it?

Yesterday, from the comfort of Tennessee, Glenn "InstaPundit" Reynolds airily dismissed concerns about Iraqi civilian casualties in his MSNBC blog:

The latest Iraqi claim I could find was for 500 civilian casualties and it’s almost surely inflated. Various antiwar groups are claiming to keep count, but their numbers, as several different commentators have observed, appear to be bogus. So I think it’s very possible that Iraqi civilian casualties, too, will turn out to be under 500.

These folks seem a tad less sanguine:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday it had temporarily suspended humanitarian operations in Baghdad because the situation in the city was "chaotic and unpredictable." ...

ICRC spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin in Baghdad told CNN that ambulances had been unable to approach casualties in many parts of the city due to heavy crossfire as U.S. troops battled sporadic Iraqi resistance.

...The delay in reaching casualties in Baghdad could prove fatal in many cases, Huguenin-Benjamin said.

"The problem is not the lack of medicine in the hospitals. The problem is the lack of respect for ambulances and respect for casualties, to give a chance for a minimum of security for people to be evacuated," he said....

--Reuters

The Iraq Body Count, regarded as bogus by Reynolds, counts at least 961 Iraqi civilian casualties and as many as 1139 as I type this.

You know what? I don't care which side kills civilians. Iraq Body Count does (it lists only those casualties attributable to U.S. and allied military action), and so does Reynolds (he thinks Iraq Body Count inaccurately blames the U.S. and the coalition for some deaths) -- but I don't give a damn. We started this war. Every death or injury we prevented by toppling Saddam is on our ledger as a credit -- but all harm to noncombatants that wouldn't have happened if there'd been no war is our responsibility.

The United States on Wednesday warned countries it has accused of pursuing weapons of mass destruction, including Iran, Syria and North Korea, to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq." ...

--Reuters

3rd Stray Rocket Hits Iran, Kills Teen

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran reacted angrily Tuesday after a stray rocket struck its territory near the Iraqi border, killing an Iranian teenager.

It was the third time Iranian territory has been hit by a rocket since U.S.-led troops went to war in Iraq.

The rocket had "apparently been fired by U.S.-led coalition planes," said Mohammad Kianoush-Rad, who represents Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan province, in the Iranian parliament.

He said it landed outside Abadan, a port city about 30 miles east of the Iraqi city of Basra.

A 13-year-old boy was killed by the explosion, which left a 5-foot-deep crater in the road, state-run Tehran television said....

--AP; also at Fox

Coincidence?

During the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, as the senators signed their names in the oath book swearing they would be fair and impartial, Peter Jennings, who was anchoring ABC News’s live coverage, made sure his audience knew which senators were conservative—but uttered not a word about which ones were liberal.

--Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, p. 57 quoted at the Daily Howler, 2/1/02


Number of times the word "conservative" appeared in George Gurley's profile of Ann Coulter in the 8/26/02 New York Observer: 6.

Number of times the word "liberal" appears in George Gurley's profile of Eric Alterman in the current New York Observer: 17.

It's hard to smile when there's no water. It's hard to applaud when you're frightened. It's hard to say, "Thank you for liberating me," when liberation has meant that looters have ransacked everything from the grain silos to the local school, where they even took away the blackboard.

That was what I found when spending the day in Umm Qasr and its hospital, in southern Iraq. Umm Qasr was the first town liberated by coalition forces. But 20 days into the war, it is without running water, security or adequate food supplies. I went in with a Kuwaiti relief team, who, taking pity on the Iraqis, tossed out extra food from a bus window as we left. The Umm Qasr townsfolk scrambled after that food like pigeons jostling for bread crumbs in a park....

That's from Thomas Friedman's column in today's New York Times. Yes, he's the annoying Pangloss of globalization, and yes, he gave aid and comfort to the war party for most of the buildup. Read the column anyway.

Andrew Sullivan has had great fun sneering at Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Said al-Sahaf (as have others), but it's not enough for Sullivan to chortle at Sahaf's rosy scenarios of Iraqi steadfastness -- he has to add this swipe at his hated BBC:

BBC UPDATE: A new low. The World Service just described this goon as "the public face of Iraqi resistance."

Why is this "a new low"? Is there or is there not "Iraqi resistance"? There certainly was at 5:41:43 P.M. yesterday, when Sullivan posted, and The Washington Post reports right now that "small formations of Iraqi fighters, some wearing uniforms, some in civilian clothes, continue to mount resistance in pockets." And Sahaf continues to try to buck up the holdouts, or at least he did as of 5:41:43 P.M. yesterday. So he is, in fact, "the public face of Iraqi resistance," or was as of late yesterday afternoon. So what's the problem?

Sullivan really needs to dial it down. He's become like one of those annoying hypersensitive car alarms that go off in a strong gust of wind.

Well, this happened at a convenient time for the U.S.:

An American warplane mistakenly bombed a house, killing 11 civilians near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Wednesday....

--AP

Oh, and there's this:

Forces loyal to ethnic Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and those of his Tajik rival, Gen. Atta Mohammed, battled with automatic weapons for four hours Tuesday in Maimana, the capital of Faryab province, said Sayed Noor Ullah, one of Dostum's senior officials.

Weren't both these guys on our side in the war? These things are never as neat as we're told they are, are they?



*********

Hey, that's what I do in this blog -- I say, "Excuse me, on the other hand...." I've posted a lot of negative things about the Iraq war, and now it looks as if that war is really winding down and people are singing Bush's praises as they drag ministry-building furniture through the streets. Hey, I hope this worked. I hope their lives improve. And I hope the damn supplies get into the hospitals soon. I'd be happy if no one felt the need to fire another shot.

I read a lot of lefty Web sites and blogs, and I haven't seen a single one that's mentioned the British army major who cheated his way to the top prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? If the cheating soldier had been French, can you imagine what the reaction would have been at Free Republic, Lucianne.com, InstaPundit, andrewsullivan.com, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

Ariel Sharon has brushed aside an appeal by the White House to stop an unprecedented move by Jewish settlers into a Palestinian district of Jersualem which his critics say will further hinder a political settlement.

After more than two years of legal and political wrangling, Mr Sharon's office approved the plan last week and the first Jewish families have moved into new flats in the Ma'aleh Ha'zeitim settlement, beside the densely populated Arab district of Ras al-Amoud.

It is the first time a Jewish settlement has been built in a Palestinian area of Jerusalem since Israel seized control of the entire city in 1967...

--Guardian

Eric Alterman's gloss on this:

Sharon to Bush, Blair, “coalition”: Drop dead.

(Or does that naively assume that Bush gives a damn about the peace process?)

Pro-war celebrities (scroll down for full list).

Heather Locklear! Chad Everett! C.C. DeVille! Quite an assemblage of talent and gray matter there.

The folks who compiled this list whine that actors and rock stars shouldn't comment about politics, but clearly they think it's OK as long as the celebrities do it the, er, right way.

Re the attempt to kill Saddam:

UK security sources believe the Iraqi leader escaped it

--BBC

 Iraqi rescue workers said three bodies had been pulled from the wreckage so far — those of a boy, a young woman and an elderly man.

--MSNBC

Lovely, huh?

I should have linked this a long time ago: Slate's 1999 compilation of anti-war statements by Republicans opposed to U.S. (read: Clinton) military involvement in the Balkans. (Example, from Tom DeLay: "The bombing was a mistake. ... And this president ought to show some leadership and admit it, and come to some sort of negotiated end.") Politics absolutely did not stop at the water's edge then. And Atrios has more quotes.

Do the Bushies simply not give a damn about Arab and Muslim public opinion?

President Bush has named controversial Middle East commentator Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace to the dismay of a major American Muslim organization, which described Pipes on Monday as a ``Muslim-basher'' with bigoted views....

Last year, Pipes aroused criticism when he launched Campus Watch, an organization that collects complaints against professors and academic institutions deemed to be biased in favor of Islam, Muslims and Palestinians.

In a commentary in the New York Post on March 25, Pipes wrote that a grenade attack on U.S. troops at a camp in Kuwait that killed two soldiers and for which an American Muslim has been charged, ``fits into a sustained pattern of political violence by American Muslims.''

``There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces. Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks,'' he added.

--Reuters

Tarek at The Liquid List directs us to this statement by Pipes, in which he says that 10 to 15 percent of Muslims "must be considered potential killers." Elsewhere, Tarek links this rundown of statements by Pipes and reviews of his books (some statements: "I worry very much from the Jewish point of view that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews"; "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene....All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most").

Yeah, that ought to win a few hearts and minds in the Arab/Muslim world.

But there's more: Tarek also notes that, according to this Guardian story, Michael Mobbs "will supervise civil administration in Iraq once Saddam Hussein is removed." Who is Michael Mobbs? The Guardian explains:

In his role as a legal consultant to the Pentagon, Mr Mobbs has been working behind the scenes to help determine the legal fate of terror suspects and other detainees held by the US military in Cuba and Afghanistan.

He was also author of what has become known as the "Mobbs declaration", a document presented to the US courts on behalf of the Pentagon claiming that the US president has wide powers to detain American citizens alleged to be enemy combatants indefinitely.

Unbelievable.

'American Idol' Finalists Record Benefit Single

New York, 4/7/2003. The finalists in the second season of the U.S. talent show "American Idol" have now come out with their own benefit single. Its publisher, RCA Records, reports that 50 cents of every single sold will go to the American Red Cross. The CD contains the two American classics "God Bless the U.S.A" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love," which the finalists first presented in the "American Idol" show on Mar 26. The hit "What the World Needs Now Is Love" was written in 1967 by the famous songwriter/producer Burt Bacharach, who also produced the song now, 36 years later, with the "Idol" finalists. "It had meaning when we wrote it, but it has so much more meaning now at this time," declared Bacharach.

I guess if Saddam's not dead and we want to force him out of a building the way we did Noriega, we can just blast this CD at him until he surrenders.

Brussels, April 8, IRNA -- The second round of political dialogue between the EU and Iran will be held in Brussels on Thursday, spokesman for the current Greek EU Presidency, Roussos Koundouros, told IRNA Tuesday.

...The spokesman said the aim of the political dialogue is to promote tactical contact between the EU and Iran.

He noted that the dialogue is being held in parallel with the trade and cooperation negotiations (TCA) between Tehran and Brussls.

...The third round of EU-Iran negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) begins in Brussels Tuesday afternoon.

The first round of TCA talks between the EU and the Islamic Republic of Iran was held in Brussels in December and the second round in Tehran in February.

--Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran)

Tehran, April 5, IRNA -- Spainish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ana Palacio here Saturday stressed that although Iran and Spain may differ in their perspectives and approaches to certain issues, there was a need to continue the current dialogue.

"We have to work on our dialogue, the dialogue between the European Union and Iran and the dialogue between Spain and Iran, that is a full dialogue without having subjects that you do not touch upon," she said....

--also from INRA

Given the fact that Iran is one of the countries U.S. hawks are trying to cow into submission right now, I'm surprised these contacts aren't considered more newsworthy in the West -- the Iran-EU meetings were mentioned briefly on the "Marketplace Morning Report" that gets tucked into NPR's Morning Edition here in New York, but I can't find other mentions of the meetings in searches of various news sites. The EU's continuing dialogue with Iran suggests that the whole world is apparently not yet with the American neocons' program.

Syria now top US target for 'regime change'

One of the main subjects on the agenda of the Belfast summit yesterday was Syria, the Pentagon's next likely target for "regime change" amid suspicions it allowed Saddam Hussein to transfer weapons of mass destruction within its borders.....

--Telegraph (U.K.)

The article goes on to say,

American officials stress, however, that regime change can be achieved without military action. There are strong hopes in Washington for a popular revolution in Iran by democratic opposition groups inspired by what has happened in Iraq.

I guess this is supposed to be reassuring. Never mind that the Bush White House was saying pretty much the same thing about Iraq even as everyone on the planet recognized that the Bushies were hell-bent going to war there.

Current results of an online poll about the Georgia state flag at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Web site:

What's the best way to resolve the flag debate?

1. Adopt this latest design and be done with it? 19% 4503 [votes]

2. Adopt it and then ratify it in a March 2004 vote? 3% 709 [votes]

3. Keep the current flag? 5% 1199 [votes]

4. Go back to the flag with the Rebel emblem? 73% 16932 [votes]

Total Votes 23343

(Emphasis mine.)

Yeah, these things are unscientific, but really now...

(Thanks to Roger Ailes for the link.)

...in one measure of just how badly the city’s finances are being strained by the demands of civil defense, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has quietly undertaken a fund-raising drive designed to bring in money for the department from private benefactors.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that New York City’s police commissioner has to spend his time passing the tin cup for private contributions to support the technology, equipment and other needs associated with protecting the city from further acts of international terrorism," Mr. Kravis said. "New York City is at the highest risk, and our Police Department plays an important role in providing intelligence information and security for the country."

The Bush plan has been assailed in recent days by New York elected officials—Republicans as well as Democrats—who argue that it would provide New York with less federal security money per capita than every state except California.

That's from an article in the New York Observer. New York City, the most obvious target of any likely terrorist apart from D.C. itself, is still getting shortchanged, and things are so bad that even city plutocrats such as Henry Kravis, a co-founder of the Wall Street firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, are dissatisfied with the Bushies. Sorry if I seem like an NYC chauvinist for bringing this up, but we generate a hell of lot of wealth here, which you'd think would mean something to Bush. Apparently it doesn't, perhaps because we don't wear boots while doing it.

Rubber bullets were fired at anti-war protesters in Oakland today. What does this high-minded American have to say about it?

"If this picture doesn't make you giggle, you have a heart of stone."

The picture is in the link. It won't make you wince like a battlefield-injury photo, but it's not pleasant.

More lead-footed right-wing wit....

THE WILLING COUNTRY

(With apologies to The Little Red Hen)

One day as the Willing Country was going about its business, she found a very mean man with lots of soldiers who so enjoyed killing his own people that now he wanted to kill the Willing Country's people, and the people of many other countries too.

"This evil man should be defeated," she said. "Who will defeat this evil man?"

"Not I," said France.

"Not I," said Germany.

"Not I," said the UN and Russia.

"Then I will," said the Willing Country. And her people and her friends went into harm's way to do it....

Gosh, I bet you can't imagine how it ends, can you?

If the suspense is killing you, the whole thing is here. (Favorite line: "Finally the dying was done, the evil man was no more, his countrymen could live in peace and a great danger to the world was past." Then again, this is a fairy tale, isn't it?)

Oh, those pesky Turks.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Iraqi Kurdish control of oil-rich Mosul and Kirkuk would constitute grounds for Turkish military intervention in northern Iraq, Anatolia news agency reported....

--Yahoo News/Agence France-Presse

 Turkey on Monday insisted that a flurry of contacts with Iran and Syria over the war in neighbouring Iraq did not mean it was forming a tripartite grouping with countries viewed with suspicion by the US....

--Financial Times

Nothing to worry about, right?

AND PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS EITHER.

Taliban Reviving Structure in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Before executing the International Red Cross worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior for instructions: Kill him?

Kill him, the order came back, and Ricardo Munguia, whose body was found with 20 bullet wounds last month, became the first foreign aid worker to die in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster from power 18 months ago.

The manner of his death suggests the Taliban is not only determined to remain a force in this country, but is reorganizing and reviving its command structure.

There is little to stop them. The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away.

At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.

Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

``It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem,'' said Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president and his representative in southern Kandahar. ``What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business.''...

--New York Times/AP

****

George W. Bush has given our soldiers something to be proud of, something they can understand and respect. He is, now, after all he's been through the past two years, Mr. Backbone. He has demonstrated to a seething and skeptical world that America can and will stand and fight for a cause, see it through, help the tormented and emerge victorious.

--Peggy Noonan in today's Wall Street Journal

(Thanks to Atrios for the Times/AP link and TBOGG for the Noonan link.)

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS. EVERYTHING IS GOING WELL. REPEAT -- PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS.

Baghdad doctors overwhelmed by arrival of 100 patients an hour

Hospitals in Baghdad are in danger of being overwhelmed by the huge numbers of wounded people brought in for treatment, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned yesterday.

An average of 100 patients an hour had been taken to the Yarmouk hospital, one of about five in the city that can treat the war wounded, it said.

Medical staff working round the clock without breaks were also hampered by power cuts and the lack of clean water....

Some of the attacks were so close to the hospitals that the wounded were walking in for treatment. The ICRC said they had not kept figures for those injured because emergency admissions had kept coming in. One doctor, Osama Saleh al-Duleimi, 48, who has witnessed two previous wars, said: "I've been a doctor for 25 years and this is the worst I've seen in terms of casualty numbers and fatal wounds."...

--Independent (U.K.)

(Thanks to the Rational Enquirer for the link.)

I’ve been thinking recently that in the future people will look back at this moment in history with astonishment -- a moment when this country went to war with popular approval because the president successfully persuaded us to confuse one man with another.

But I realize I shouldn’t be surprised that most of the country fell for this nonsense, because back in the 1980s most of the country fell for stories of outrageous, baroque, often literally impossible attacks on children in day-care centers. A reporter who helped bring that period of mass hysteria to an end -- a right-winger I consider a hero, Dorothy Rabinowitz -- has written a book about that period, called No Crueler Tyrannies. The New York Times review is here.

The best-known of these cases might have been the McMartin preschool case in California. Here’s a partial list of what investigators said took placed at the preschool, based on interviews with children that were later shown to be coercive (The full list is here): that the children

* were required to participate in "major, major sacrifices" connected with the "Satanic Church."

* saw an AWOL Marine sodomize a dog.

*saw dead and burned babies, flying witches, movie stars and local politicians.

* were taken to the airport, traveled to Palm Springs either in an airplane or hot air balloon, sexually abused and returned.

* were flushed down toilets, traveled through sewers to a place where adults sexually abused them, cleaned them up and later returned them to the pre-school so they could be picked up by their parents.

In some cases, grotesque and brutal acts were said to have taken place in rooms without doors, and yet people in adjoining rooms saw and heard nothing. Acts that would have left blood, bones, or other forensic evidence (including corpses) left nothing behind, according to investigators, yet these acts were readily assumed to have taken place.

Anyone who doubted the stories was told, "Believe the children.” This was a rallying cry. The irony, of course was that, as the Times review notes, “crusading child-abuse investigators ... alternately hounded and coaxed children into accusations they did not appear even to understand” -- these investigators themselves did not, in fact, “believe the children” unless the children told them what they expected to hear.

Here’s a list of American ritual-abuse cases. Many people were sent to prison for decades for acts of abuse they didn’t commit (and that, in many cases, no one ever committed). Many of these people are free now, but not all of them.

As a nation, we believed this crap. So maybe it’s no surprise that we now believe Iraqis flew planes into the World Trade Center at Saddam’s behest.

*************

I should add a few words of criticism to my praise of Dorothy Rabinowitz. I think she’s a hero because the country began to rethink its acceptance of this nonsense when she published debunking articles in Harper’s and The Wall Street Journal. But Rabinowitz attributed the abuse witch hunts to “political correctness,” and apparently still does.

It’s true that a lot of the therapists who believed there was an epidemic of grotesque ritualized abuse were left-leaning -- their thinking on this was an unfortunate left offshoot that was not unlike the anti-porn, anti-heterosexuality extremism of Andrea Dworkin. But the “Believe the children” crusade was not left-wing -- it was a “family values” crusade, as they used to say in the '80s, with a tinge of that decade’s rage to imprison “human scum.”

The first article I ever read about this subject was by Debbie Nathan in The Village Voice -- an article Rabinowitz herself cites. A liberal magazine, Harper’s, published Rabinowitz’s breakthrough story on the subject. And liberals still care about this: In The Nation, Katha Pollitt wrote an outraged column last year about Gerald Amirault, who was convicted on abuse charges in Massachusetts and is still in prison.

Many '60s liberals were becoming Big Chill/thirtysomething-style yuppies in those days; maybe Rabinowitz met a few too many of these. But to anyone on the left who thought, these convictions were an outrage.

It also seems to me that the tide should have turned for the people who were wrongly convicted in these cases when the Village Voice article appeared, rather than years later, when Rabinowitz began to write about the subject. At the time it appeared that no one took the subject seriously until a conservative wrote about it. As the saying goes, what liberal media?

Jesus helps people get their priorities straight....

Every half-mile or so, a few Iraqis appeared like ghosts in the wasteland. Some put their thumbs and forefingers together and brought them to their mouths, the third-world sign language for please-give-me-food. Some rubbed their stomachs. Others tilted their heads back and cupped their hands, as though drinking one of the plastic bottles of Oasis mineral water that are stacked like howitzer shells in the backs of Humvees; they were thirsty, too. The smartest ones waved Iraqi dinars bearing images of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps the marines would extend charity in exchange for a war souvenir.

--Peter Maass, "Food, Too, Can Be a Weapon of the War in Iraq," New York Times Week in Review, 4/6/03

Last week, a missionary writing from Iraq on the International Bible Society's Web site described the scene this way: "I can hear jets flying over the town, and I hear explosions from the distance. There are still a few of us in town. We go out to visit and distribute tracts and the Jesus video. We are busy duplicating the video. We ran out of tracts and we need to print 10,000 more." The Bible society has published a Scripture booklet especially for Iraqi refugees. Christians in the United States are urged to spend 40 cents per booklet to print and ship them to Iraq.

--Deborah Caldwell, "Should Christian Missionaries Heed the Call in Iraq?," New York Times Week in Review, 4/6/03

********

From the same articles:

Civilians are suffering, and a debate has begun about who should control relief efforts. The Pentagon has said it wants to keep control over all humanitarian aid. But relief agencies, like Catholic Relief Services and Oxfam-America, have said they don't want to be part of a military effort, because they must be independent to do their jobs.

--Maass

Both Mr. Fleischer and a spokeswoman for the United States Agency for International Development, which coordinates humanitarian aid, said that the government could not control the work of private charitable organizations because it did not finance them.

--Caldwell

Yeah? So which is it? Why is the government saying one thing about the non-evangelicals and another thing about the evangelicals? Why doesn't the Week in Review (which published both articles) know which is correct?

Atrios is understandably appalled that this L.A. Times poll shows that the vast majority of Americans think Saddam Hussein has close ties with al-Qaeda, amnd most think he was involved in 9/11. But there's more grim news:

...substantial portions of the public are willing to consider military action against other potential threats in the area...

Americans are divided almost in half when asked whether the United States should take military action against Syria, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has accused of providing Iraq with military supplies. Syria has denied the accusation. But 42% said the United States should take action if Syria, in fact, provides aid to Iraq, while 46% said no.

...Exactly half said the United States should take military action against Iran if it continues to move toward nuclear-weapon development; 36% disagreed....

Yesterday Tony Blair said the U.S. has no plans to attack Iran or Syria. In an interview published today, Colin Powell said the same thing.

I hope they know. I hope they're still in the loop. I suspect they aren't. This, from The New York Times, doesn't exactly reassure me....

Shortly after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a stark warning to Iran and Syria last week, declaring that any "hostile acts" they committed on behalf of Iraq might prompt severe consequences, one of President Bush's closest aides stepped into the Oval Office to warn him that his unpredictable defense secretary had just raised the specter of a broader confrontation.

Mr. Bush smiled a moment at the latest example of Mr. Rumsfeld's brazenness, recalled the aide. Then he said one word — "Good" — and went back to work....

I guess there's a fairly good chance that some of the people mentioned in this story will be better off six months from now than they were a month ago or a year ago. Others, surely, will be dead or dying -- some undoubtedly are dead now. None, however, are apparently dancing around GIs and strewing them with rosewater...

NEAR BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Worn out by days of bombing, thousands of Iraqi civilians fled Baghdad on Saturday, trudging to relative safety behind U.S. military lines or else heading north away from the relentless American advance.

Men, women and children walked for hours through the fierce heat of an early summer's day, carrying at most the odd plastic bag, blankets or tin kettle between them.

"We are very tired, " said one bearded man, with a young girl in his arms. "I need rest," he sighed, explaining that he was escaping round-the-clock bombing of the Iraqi capital....

One woman dressed in black held up a blue plastic cup, the only thing she was carrying. "Water, water," she pleaded from passers-by as the temperature hit 35 Celsius (95F), then frowned when she saw there was none on offer.

U.S. Marines peered down from the gun turrets of their armored vehicles as the grim-faced families traipsed past. One serviceman offered a bottle of water to an Iraqi, but was immediately rebuked for his generosity.

"We're here for a war, not a humanitarian mission, OK?" a gunnery sergeant yelled at him.

Several women carried yellow plastic packages of U.S. humanitarian rations, but Marines said the bulk of the food aid was 10 km (six miles) further south, where the military had set up a distribution station far from the front lines.

"We don't have any means to help them. All the humanitarian supplies are behind us," said first sergeant Matthew Brookshire, standing by his Humvee all-terrain vehicle.

"If we started giving it out then we'd be swarmed by civilians. We don't know who's friendly and who's not," he said....

Yeah, the Dixie Chicks still have the #1 country album, so maybe they're not suffering too much. But this little detail, tucked into an article on Pearl Jam, is a bit disturbing:

Things have apparently gotten so bad that Chick Martie Maguire said the musicians now fears for their safety.

"We've gotten a lot of hate mail, a lot of threatening mail," Maguire told reporters in Australia. "Emily [Robison] had the front gate of her ranch smashed in. We have to have security when we get back to the States. It puts my well-being in jeopardy."

The Chicks kick off their mostly sold-out U.S. tour May 1 in Greenville, South Carolina, where a protest is already planned.

That's why I'm still concerned -- they've been out of the country and they're coming back in a month, a fat target. If the Iraqis gas U.S. troops between now and then (using weapons that wouldn't have been used if there were inspectors in the country and troops outside, rather than the other way around), what happens to the Dixie Chicks?

This is the kind of thing I fear could happen again in this country:

People's Artists booked a major concert for August 27, 1949 at Lakeland Picnic Grounds, a former golf course north of Peekskill, New York. [Pete] Seeger and other People's Artists were tapped to warm up the crowd for its featured act, Paul Robeson. Some questioned the wisdom of holding such an event in Peekskill, a notoriously reactionary community that harbored an active Ku Klux Klan chapter. Soon after the concert was announced, the local paper launched a vitriolic attack on Robeson and his political views. The Joint Veterans Council of Westchester County immediately began planning a parade just prior to the concert; most residents knew it was a setup.

Several hours before the show was to begin, novelist Howard Fast arrived at the resort to help set up the public address system. From out of nowhere, about 300 vigilantes brutally pelted Fast, his assistants and other early arrivers with rocks. Fighting its way to the stage, the mob broke chairs and burned songsheets. Police met other concertgoers up the road. telling them the program was cancelled.

Eager to stand its ground, People's Artists boldly rescheduled the concert for the following week. Expecting more potential for violence, People's Artists hired guards from several left-wing unions to protect the grounds. Between 20,000 and 25,000 persons came to Peekskill for the rescheduled concert: most came to show solidarity in the face of local hostility. It was probably the largest audience Seeger and Robeson had faced since the October 1948 Yankee Doodle Rally for Henry Wallace in New York's Madison Square Garden. The concert was held without incident; at its conclusion Westchester County deputies began directing departing traffic to a little-used access road away from the main entrance. It was a trap. Hundreds of angry residents viciously showered the cars with rocks; the police did nothing to stop them. More than 150 concertgoers were injured during the riot, many from flying glass.

Francis Dellorco, a Philadelphia artist who formerly produced filmstrips for People's Songs, captured the angry mob on a primitive wire recorder. "You can hear the crowd say. 'Hey, you white niggers, get back to Russia' and 'Jews, Jews, Jews'," Mario Casetta recalled....

****
And on the subject of Pearl Jam: Eddie Vedder famously scrawled "PRO-CHOICE" on his arm during the group's MTV Unplugged concert. Vedder contributed a song to the soundtrack of the anti-death-penalty film Dead Man Walking. Vedder campaigned for Ralph Nader. And the new Pearl Jam album has an anti-Bush song, "Bushleaguer." Were the fans who walked out of the show surprised that Vedder was impassioned in the way he expressed his opposition to Bush?

InstaPundit thinks something might be up in Iran. He links the visual clue.

Y'know, I've been worried about this ever since I saw the following on page 276 of David Frum's Bush White House memoir, The Right Man:

The war on terror, by its very nature, yielded few spectacular victories. For the most part it looked like a combination of police work and counterinsurgency in remote corners of the earth: Mindanao, Yemen, Kurdistan. Yet Bush kept at it. As he promised in his September 20 speech to Congress, he did not relent -- and neither did he succumb to the temptation to lunge into rash adventures in pursuit of a triumph for the cameras. His strategy in Iraq and Iran was judicious, deliberate, unhasty -- and certain. (emphasis mine)

"In Iran"? What does that refer to? What did Frum know (he published his book in January) that we don't?

Readers of multiple blogs have undoubtedly read this story about William Bennett pal James Woolsey's speech, but for anyone who hasn't....

Ex-CIA director: U.S. faces 'World War IV'

...the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.

Woolsey told the audience of about 300, most of whom are students at the University of California at Los Angeles, that all three enemies have waged war against the United States for several years but the United States has just "finally noticed."

"As we move toward a new Middle East," Woolsey said, "over the years and, I think, over the decades to come ... we will make a lot of people very nervous."

It will be America's backing of democratic movements throughout the Middle East that will bring about this sense of unease, he said.

"Our response should be, 'good!'" Woolsey said....

Of course, Tony Blair says there's no plan for a war against Syria. Billmon is filling in at the Daily Kos and Blair's recent actions reminds him of a certain movie....

More fun in the new world....

Turkey Denies Shelling Northern Iraq

Iraqi Kurdish officials on Friday accused Turkey of repeated shelling over the border into Iraq, a charge Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul denied.

The charges came as the United States works to defuse tension and deep mistrust between Turkey and the Kurdish groups that run northern Iraq.

...Rostaki called the shelling "a provocation aimed at creating instability" but he said he did not think the Turkish forces planned to move into northern Iraq....

--Reuters

They still haven't found any WMDs...

American officials have admitted that the thousands of boxes of white powder they seized north of Baghdad are explosives.

The US military and various media outlets had suggested that they may have made the first discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq.

The claim that the Latifiyah complex was "a suspicious site" was made by a US colonel....

--Ananova, via AP

A check of Google News shows that WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina, has this story, but I can't find it anywhere else. Curious, no?

(Ananova link from Atrios.)

We should have seen this coming...

The White House said on Friday it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if U.S. forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein....

While finding Saddam -- either dead or alive -- would be "helpful," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush 's "definition of victory" was removing the current government from power and eliminating the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction....

If Saddam eludes U.S. forces, he could join the ranks of America's most wanted, a list now topped by al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden...

--Reuters

In the world that Bush and most of his top advisers come from -- the business world -- the CEOs rarely go to jail, even if their companies are hopelessly corrupt. Why should Bush's current world be any different?

Roger Ailes (the good one) pointed this out, but I want to add a few words.

In his column in The Washington Times today, Andrew Sullivan wrote this:

 Daschle's new low

Not only does he send out a pathetically self-pitying fundraising e-mail the week war broke out. He turned up to celebrate and toast the back-stabbing, privacy-wrecking, truth-stretching poison of David Brock — now in paperback. In war time.

Do you grasp the point of the last three words? I don't.

If fund-raising in wartime offends Sullivan's sensibilities, perhaps he'd like to explain why the National Republican Congressional Committee has two fund-raising events going on today, while our troops are struggling to take Baghdad.

And if his problem is with David Brock, I need a further clarification. In Brock's book, he takes himself and allies to task for attacking the character of Anita Hill and Bill Clinton -- a witness in a Supreme Court hearing and a peacetime president.

Is there a war or national security connection I'm missing here?

I wish Sullivan would come out and say what he so clearly believes -- that it is treasonous not to be a Republican and a Bush supporter.

Pay no attention to this. Paying attention to this = treason:

Afghanistan bombing intensifies after firefight

Thursday, April 3, 2003 Posted: 9:20 AM EST (1420 GMT)

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (CNN) -- An intense air campaign was under way Thursday near southern Afghanistan's Tor Ghar Mountains after forces believed to belong to the Taliban opened fire on a U.S. Special Forces unit and an Afghan militia force, according to a U.S coalition statement.

The battle started Wednesday afternoon when about 40 anti-coalition troops began shooting at U.S. and Afghan soldiers.

Special Forces radioed for air support, which arrived and dropped 35,000 pounds of munition during the night.

There were no reports of U.S. or coalition casualties as of early Thursday, but an Afghan soldier had to be medically evacuated to Kandahar after being shot in the abdomen. Doctors performed surgery, and the soldier remains in stable condition, the coalition statement said.

--CNN

(Thanks to Kath F.)

From Publishers Lunch, regarding the Random House building:

All Clear At Bantam Dell

Though the 24th floor offices of Bantam Dell remained shuttered yesterday and many Random House employees were still working from home, at about 5:30 yesterday the company informed its people that after "waiting for results that we could share with everybody," the company was told "that the results of all preliminary lab reports (including tests for anthrax) are negative." The 24th floor has reopened today, and all employees are expected back at work.

Sorry for the false alarm yesterday.

If you like war, I think you're going to love the next six Bush years. More confirmation in this story Drudge is linking:

What's next? U.S. set sights on Iran, North Korea

The Bush administration has pledged to end the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea after concluding its campaign against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

Administration officials said the White House sees the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea as the next imminent threats.

"In the aftermath of Iraq, dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance as dealing with the North Korean nuclear weapons program," Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton said. "This is going to be a substantial challenge."

Bolton told a conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee that the Iranian nuclear weapons program would receive "extremely high priority" under the Bush administration, Middle East Newsline reported....

--World Tribune.com

I think Gallup buries the lead in its analysis of its latest poll: the key point, to me, is not that support for this war is much lower among blacks, liberals, and independents than support for Gulf War I, but that support in virtually every group is down from '91 -- still high, but lower across the board. Scroll down to the first table and check out the minus signs.

Be careful what you wish for:

NUMANIYAH, IRAQ - Nervous and angry, more than a dozen Iraqi officials met Thursday with the top U.S. Marine officer in this Tigris River town to ask for cooperation in re-establishing order a day after U.S. forces captured it.

The complaints came fast and furious: Looters have been targeting government buildings. The electricity has been cut. The hospital's backup generator has failed.

"No police, no government, the essential services are gone now," one of the leaders complained.

All 13 men gathered in the government office agreed: Since Numaniyah fell Wednesday afternoon, the city of about 80,000 has been in chaos....

--AP

Hold the champagne for a while.

Nasiriya still not secure:

Many of the patients in the main hospital in Nasiriya have fled the building following an attack on the complex by a group of armed men.

Marines, who had been guarding the hospital, left last night. And another man has been shot dead after people tried to steal his vehicle....

There are varying reports as to who is behind the violence and the widespread looting....

Basra battle 'is on two fronts':

UK soldiers are fighting soldiers from Iraq's armed forces as well as against the irregular militia troops....

Umm Qasr aid effort 'a shambles':

"...The hospital has been without water for three days. Inside people were very angry with me because I was a westerner. They felt angry, frustrated and let down by the coalition.

Many had come to Umm Qasr from Basra because they had been told in American radio broadcasts that they would be looked after. They now say the coalition lied to them...."

(All from the BBC.)

Good Lord ... did we really almost go after Saddam before bin Laden and the Taliban?

US President George Bush was persuaded by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair not to attack Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September terrorist attacks, it has been claimed.

According to a former British ambassador to Washington, the US president had come under intense pressure from some in his own military to attack Saddam Hussein in the days after the 2001 terrorist outrages in the US.

But, said Sir Christopher Meyer, when Mr Blair met the US president at his Camp David retreat a few days later he succesfully argued for al-Qaeda and the Taleban regime in Afghanistan to be confronted first.

"Tony Blair's view was: 'Whatever you're going to do about Iraq, you should concentrate on the job at hand and the job at hand was get al-Qaeda, give the Taleban an ultimatum'," Sir Christopher said.

The former ambassador was speaking on a documentary that will be screened on the PBS network in America on Thursday.

Called Blair's War, it looks at the prime minister's attempts to try and maintain an alliance against Saddam Hussein.

He said that after listening to Mr Blair's argument, Mr Bush decided to "leave Iraq for another day"....

--BBC

I said on January 27, "you have to wonder whether bloodthirsty courtiers are whispering in Bush's ear precisely what they think will motivate him to do what they want him to do" -- i.e., attack Iraq. Was I really right about this?

Weapons? What weapons?

From Tuesday, here's Forbes (via Reuters) weighing on in Slick Georgie's ever-shifting rationale for war:

U.S. war priorities shift away from disarming Iraq

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spelled out the eight U.S. objectives in Iraq on day two of the war, he said the first was to topple Saddam Hussein and the second to locate and destroy Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

On day 10 of the war, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke restated those eight objectives "as Secretary Rumsfeld described just a week ago."

Ending the Iraqi president's rule remained top of the list, but finding Saddam's suspected chemical and biological weapons had slipped to fourth place and destroying them to fifth.

Objective No. 2 was "to capture or drive out terrorists sheltered in Iraq" and No. 3 was to "collect intelligence on terrorist networks," Clarke said.

References to terror, terrorists and terrorism -- words that resonate with Americans since the Sept. 11 attacks -- now arise more often in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance from Iraqi fighters using guerrilla-style tactics.

President Bush now more frequently describes Iraq's leaders as evil, brutal and tyrannical and his supporters as thugs. "Freeing the Iraqi people" has replaced disarming Iraq as the main focus of his speeches.

Some analysts see the re-ordering of priorities and shriller language as a response to the realities on the ground in Iraq. Saddam has not used non-conventional weapons and U.S. and British troops have so far not found any to justify a war which much of the international community opposes.

"It's the customary pattern," said Michael Codner, an analyst at Britain's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies. "There hasn't been much incremental return on the WMD side for the democracies to gloat over," he said....

Shameless.

(Thanks to Susan M. for the link.)

A retired Marine Corps colonel, Gary Anderson, writes in a The Washington Post op-ed piece that he suspects Iraq won't use chemical or biological weapons:

Anwar Sadat of Egypt reclaimed a measure of Arab pride in 1973 in a war that, while lost tactically and operationally, was fought with enough skill to regain an Arab sense of honor and pride lost in 1967. The next precept is to make the conventional phase last as long as possible and be as bloody as possible for the American-British coalition. The final sub-phase will be to attempt to turn Baghdad into an Arab Alamo and make "Remember Baghdad" a battle cry, not just for future generations but also for the rest of this war. At this point Hussein would go into hiding or exile, portraying himself as having led a glorious struggle against imperialism and vowing to continue. If he uses chemical weapons, I am wrong. There will be no sanctuary.

Anderson thinks Saddam has a long-range plan to try to wrest glory from this war that goes beyond the end of the war. By all means read the whole article -- Anderson's surmise seems plausible.

They say a pit bull won't let go of something it's got in its jaws, even if you hit it in the head with a two-by-four. It seems to me that Republicans are a lot like pit bulls:

The centerpiece of the Bush administration's national energy policy -- drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- was resuscitated on Wednesday when a House panel voted to allow energy exploration in the Alaskan wilderness.

The House Resources Committee voted to give oil companies access to the refuge, whose potential 16 billion barrels of oil the Bush administration wants to use to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign crude imports....

--Reuters

We're on the verge of making Iraq the 51st state and they still think we need to do this?

Josh Marshall thinks the chemical weapons may be coming soon.

Earlier this morning [CNN's Walt Rodgers] reported seeing many dead Iraqis that his armored column was leaving in its wake as it pushed ahead. According to Rodgers, they were all wearing gas masks -- if not actually donned than at least at their side. Presumably that means the Iraqis are prepared and ready to use chemicals at any moment.

The question that arises is basically a political one for the Iraqis. Once they use chemicals, if they do, they will not only lose a lot of ground in the propaganda war in the Arab world and even more in Europe, they will also confirm a lot of the rationale for American action. So, for them, it must be a difficult calculation. If they have hopes of dragging this out in a guerrilla war or some urban fighting then you'd expect they wouldn't do it -- it would be counterproductive, since they believe they have some hope of eventually wearing America down and turning world opinion further against us. On the other hand, if they think they're on the verge of complete collapse -- which looks like a distinct possibility -- then they may be in 'go down in blaze of glory' mode.

If this happens, there'll be a lot of pro-war schadenfreude. Those of us who opposed the war will be expected to hang our heads in shame. But part of the reason we opposed the war is that we felt there'd be no use of chem or bio weapons as long as Saddam was boxed in.

Saddam's Iraq always seemed like a hostage situation to me. The SWAT team surrounds the bank where the robber is threatening to kill all the customers. When does the hostage team go in? When it seems that the risk of hanging back is greater than the risk of going in. No one says that the cops are "pro bank robbery" or "pro hostage taking" because they try to talk their way through the standoff.

Yes, hostage teams frequently take action. But what if it seemed clear that a stateside hostage taker had biotoxins or chemicals that might be unleashed into the surrounding area? Wouldn't a typical police force want to do a lot more talking?

If Iraq uses WMDs, 99 out of 100 people will say it proved the war was justified. I think I'll still be a holdout.

The antiwar side sneered when Halliburton (which is still paying Dick Cheney) landed a nice Iraq reconstruction contract. Then it was reported that Halliburton was out of the running for a massive reconstruction contract, and the pro-Bush folks claimed the moral high ground.

Ahem:

Halliburton Seeks Iraq Subcontractor Work

Vice President Dick Cheney's former company is interested in Iraq reconstruction work, but declined to bid for a primary contract under a State Department procedure open to only a few experienced firms.

Halliburton Co. said its KBR subsidiary "remains a potential subcontractor for this important work." Since secondary contractors do not have to submit bids, the Houston-based company bypassed a system that became controversial after revelations that the main contenders made substantial political donations — mostly to Republicans....

--AP

(Thanks to Skimble for pointing me to this.)

So where are the chem and bio weapons? I still think it's quite possible that they'll turn up, but I'm less and less sure that they're there at all.

If they never do turn up, expect WMDs to be the Osama bin Laden of 2003 (and 2004) -- a taboo subject, never to be spoken of again by the president or his subordinates, and never to be brought up by the Beltway press.

If the war's a cakewalk from here on in, then obviously some of us misjudged the importance of temporary setbacks. But remember, the antiwar side always expected a relatively easy U.S. victory in a short war. Before the war started, we weren't predicting a quagmire. We thought Bush would win the war -- and lose the peace.

I think most of us still believe that.

A possibly meaningless story that appeared yesterday in the subscription newsletter Publishers Lunch:

Anthrax Threat at Random Offices

Late yesterday an anthrax threat was received by Random House officials at their new building, leading to an evacuation of the building. The threat was aimed at the 24th floor premises of Bantam Dell. NYC Police and Fire Departments were called to scene, and heating and ventilation systems were shut down (each floor has its own system).

According to internal letter read by spokesman Stuart Applebaum, a "field test" was performed "on the substance in question, and the result was negative. More definitive results are expected Thursday morning." Bantam Dell employees were told to stay home, and other Random employees, "in the best interests os safety and precaution," were given the option of returning to work or going home (without impact on benefit days, etc.). Applebaum says, "Many people elected to leave; some are here are toiling away."

There is no detailed information exact the nature and source of the threat available yet (you’ll recall the company’s former building was the target of a prank bomb threat subsequent to 9/11). Though Applebaum notes "It struck some of us as kind of pernicious April Fool's Day prank" the company is proceeding with all caution, and expects to update employees later in the day.

We join all readers in wishing for a swift and safe resolution for all concerned.

It probably is a prank -- though I'd say there's a slight chance that someone's ticked off at a company (Bertelsmann) owned by citizens of "axis of weasels" member Germany....

POW Reportedly Fought Captors With Gun

LANDSTUHL, Germany - Spirited but hungry, rescued prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch arrived in Germany for treatment of two broken legs and bullet wounds reportedly suffered in a fierce gun battle she waged against her Iraqi captors.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the 19-year-old Army supply clerk shot several Iraqi soldiers during the March 23 ambush that resulted in her capture. She kept firing even after she had several gunshot wounds, finally running out of ammunition, the newspaper said, citing unidentified U.S. officials....

--AP

You can't blame him if he does this, I guess, but I think Bush is going to make Jessica Lynch his daughter. I mean, not literally -- but I think you'll see her accompanying Bush between now and, oh, say, November 2004 more than you see the actual fruit of his loins.

From a BBC report on a torture chamber found in Iraq:

The room's likely purpose was explained later, after we had asked around the Commando for a bit, by a Royal Marine officer who had spent some time in the Balkans on UN service.

He said: "Two tyres and an electric cable is something we came across a lot in Bosnia.

"The interrogator would stand on them while prodding the captive with the live cable so his own feet were insulated from the high voltage by the rubber."

Primitive maybe, but a pretty effective and recognised form of torture in a lot of Third World countries.

But what do you know? We don't start wars to prevent this in a lot of Third World countries. We start wars to prevent this in countries that have oil. And when we start wars to prevent this in countries that don't have oil, Republicans complain.

Saddam is the enemy. Repeat: Saddam is the enemy. Pay no attention to this:

Up to 600 US-backed Afghan troops continued to battle suspected Taliban fighters in southern Kandahar province bordering Pakistan, a local commander and deputy governor said.

"The fighting started around 5:00 pm (1230 GMT) yesterday when a truck of our police was passing (Qisi village) and came under attack," Kandahar divisional commander Khan Mohammad told AFP.

One policeman was killed and the police returned fire before reinforcements arrived.

"We sent 300-400 soldiers from Kandahar and 100-200 soldiers from Spin Boldak," he said

"The war was going on until late afternoon, then we encircled the group of Taliban completely but they took advantage of the dark and managed to escape," he said.

"Today (Wednesday) we followed and surrounded them at 4:00 pm and they are now under seige," the commander said....

--Agence France-Presse

Is Germany taking a small step toward getting in touch with its inner Mars, along with a few other European nations?

While no one in Europe is predicting the death of NATO or the European Union, the damage is evident in the renewed willingness of Germany and France to consider a military policy separate from either institution....

...[Chancellor Gerhard] Schröder ... has developed a concept of "core Europe" or "more Europe" in which France and Germany, but not Britain, will lead Western Europe toward a common defense and foreign policy.

The first test of this concept is the meeting scheduled for April 29, when Germany and France, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, are to discuss closer military cooperation. Backers of the war including Britain, Italy and Spain were not invited, a snub that can only deepen the rift within the European Union, which has thus far failed to make headway on its grand vision of a common foreign and defense policy, including a joint rapid reaction military force of 60,000 soldiers.

...What is needed now, said [Daniel] Gros of the Center for European Policy Studies, is "a European politician with some vision who comes up and says to everyone in Europe, `Put together one percent of your G.D.P. for a common strike force.' That would mean $80 billion to $100 billion. We could do something with that."

--New York Times

We'll probably have six more years of petty Bush triumphalism and contempt toward Europe. Think that might be enough time to persuade Germany and other Bush-wary European nations to start rearming in earnest? And if so, should we really not worry about where this could lead?

Earlier today I said the media had seized the war from Bush, who wants it to be all about him. Apparently, though, USA Today wants to help George W. Narcissus wrest it back -- see this fawning portrait of His Serene Highness.

TBOGG has already had at the article. But let me just add this: If I were a GI actually fighting this war, in a desert where the temperatures were about to enter into the 90s, possibly about to face a WMD attack in a sweat-generating protective suit, I would find it just a wee bit difficult to feel sympathy for a man about whom it is said,

He's being hard on himself; he gave up sweets just before the war began.

Elsewhere, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans says,

"...He understands that he is the one person in the country, in this case really the one person in the world, who has a responsibility to protect and defend freedom."

Excuse me? The troops? I thought the whole rationale for the war was that they were protecting and defending our freedoms?

Oh, and here's the last paragraph of the article:

The president's friends and family fret about him, but advisers say the pressure doesn't seem to be getting to him. "He's not one of those people who blows with the wind," Rumsfeld says. "He has a very good inner gyroscope, a stabilizer that keeps him centered."

Yup, it's all about him.

******

Another passage from the USA Today article needs to be noted:

[Bush] is convinced that the Iraqi leader is literally insane and would gladly give terrorists weapons to use to launch another attack on the United States.

The thought of another assault on the United States horrifies Bush. Aides say he believes history and heaven will judge him by his ability to prevent one.

I've said repeatedly that I think Bush really believes this. No chem or bio or nuclear weapons were used in Gulf War I, none have been used in this war so far, none have been found so far (and the only evidence of al-Qaeda-related activity or possible WMD work has been in the Kurdish-controlled north), none have been given by Iraq to Palestinian suicide bombers -- yet Bush says, essentially, that Saddam = Osama. Bush's willful ignorance and refusal to distinguish Saddam's M.O. from bin Laden's are among the reasons we're fighting this war.

Just thought you should know this....

Lethal blast hits Philippines

A bomb in the southern Philippines city of Davao has left at least 15 people dead and many others injured, police said.

...The head of investigation at the Philippine National Police, Brigadier-General Eduardo Matillano, told Reuters news agency he believed the blast was the work of a terrorist.

...The attack came less than a month after another bomb left 23 people dead and more than 150 others injured at Davao international airport.

Arrest warrants for that blast have been issued for leaders of a Muslim separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)....

--BBC

I’ve said a couple of times that it didn’t seem that Americans were fully focused on this war. That seems really silly now -- obviously most of us are glued to our TV sets these days. There was a bit more engagement in ’91, I think, when yellow ribbons were everywhere, and, of course, after 9/11, when so many flags began to be flown, but America is clearly caught up now.

Please notice, however, that it’s the coverage of the war that’s engaging America. The country wasn’t awash in pro-war symbols before the war started, as it was before Gulf War I. I still think that’s because Bush never made this America’s war -- the media have done this now, by giving us drama, but Bush never did it.

The message we got from Bush was that it was his war. It was all about him.

Whatever words Bush may have uttered before the war started, the story was always Bush vs. ... someone: Bush vs. congressional Democrats. Bush vs. the United Nations. Bush vs. Germany. Bush vs. France. Bush vs. Turkey. Bush vs. the protesters. For a while, even Bush vs. Colin Powell. Rumsfeld and Fleischer and Cheney and Perle sent out the same message, and Powell eventually did as well: We want this war. We’re going to get it. If you try to stop us, we will keep coming and keep coming until we prevail.

Bush obviously met a lot of resistance -- but he never made a serious effort to lower the diplomatic temperature (he and his subordinates deliberately raised it many times), and time and again he refused to compromise. And he kept reminding us that he refused to compromise, that his “patience” was “wearing thin.” That meant that the story was always going to be about Bush’s squabbles, not Bush’s case for the war.

I’m an opponent of this war. I can’t imagine that Bush would have ever swayed me, because I think this a war about empire that in the long run will do more harm than good to innocent people. But Bush could have made much of the country feel that this war was the result of something more than a fit of presidential pique. He didn’t.

Here’s a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll on the media’s coverage of the war. The story is supposedly a drop in public approval of the media, but notice that the approval rating is still 79%. That’s higher than Bush’s.

It’s easy to find fault with the media coverage of the war -- plenty of us do, on the left and the right -- but TV and radio and the print press have taken the war back from Bush. We’re getting a melodramatic story with inadequate context, but now it’s a story about combat and the combatants -- not about the snappish brat in the Oval Office.

I typed "Iran" in a post earlier today when I meant "Iraq." Thanks to everyone who caught it. It's fixed now. It was really just a typo -- not, as one person suggested, a "subconsciously prescient slip." At least I hope so.

"War is like driving drunk." M. Finley explains why. I agree.

Oh, and maybe we should all send this letter, or one like it, to our local papers.

If you read other blogs, you've read this already and your jaw has already made contact with the floor, but if not....

Forget Stalin or Hitler.

The worst ruler in world history is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon says.

"The Iraqi people will be free of decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told a Pentagon news conference on Monday....

--Reuters

Bush the Elder, of course, said Saddam was "worse than Hitler."

And, of course, if asked to vote for the all-time worst dictator, a lot of conservatives would write in Bill Clinton.

Everything you hold dear as an American is endangered by ... this poster.

OK, I'm exaggerating. But not by much:

Warner Bros. wants to avoid making a political statement in its ads for the movie "What a Girl Wants."

Print advertisements for the teen comedy originally featured a photograph of star Amanda Bynes wearing a tank top with an American flag on it and flashing the peace sign with her fingers as she stands between two British royal guards.

But with the war in Iraq sparking anti-war protests in the United States and abroad, Warner Bros. quickly changed the ad. The studio said Monday it feared the peace sign would be viewed as a political message.

New versions of the image feature Bynes with her right hand at her side, although many of the original posters already had been placed on billboards and buses before the change was made....

--AP

This ad is in a lot of bus kiosks here in Manhattan. I guess that explains why so many of us in New York are America-hating peacenik scum -- the ad is brainwashing us!

ARAB STREET? WHAT ARAB STREET?

Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islamic groups at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said he has noticed a trend as he navigated Web sites and chat rooms in recent days.

"Now we have many calls to jihad, and those calls aren't only coming from what we usually call radicals or extremists," he said. More moderate clerics are using such language, as are Islamic thinkers who usually confine themselves to political analysis, not calls to arms, he said.

In Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still pursuing Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts, the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is circulating posters of his fresh decree calling for a holy war against the United States. The signatures of 600 Muslim clerics are attached.

Mullah Omar's old regime has shored up its alliances with remnants of al-Qaida and fighters loyal to rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Already, an increase is noticeable in attacks on U.S. forces, international peacekeepers and nongovernment organizations.

--AP

War supporters tell us that we're fighting this war because Iraq mistreats its people. But a lot of countries are mistreating their people and we're not fighting them -- in fact, they're among our allies in the "coalition of the willing." Read excerpts of the State Department reports on some of our allies at the Daily Kos.

The world is now getting acquainted with the Fedayeen Saddam, the thugs who are keeping Iraqi citizens in check, most vividly right now in the cities of the south. Western estimates of their strength vary--on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put their size at "probably somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000"--but Iraqi opposition sources say they number at around 50,000….

--Kanan Makiya’s War Diary in The New Republic, 3/29/03

Another irresponsible misjudgment by Donald "The Ego Has Landed" Rumsfeld?

DENVER (AP) - The nuns say they were exercising their right to free speech when they cut through a fence around a Minuteman III missile silo, used their own blood to paint a cross on the military structure and began swinging at it with hammers.

Prosecutors say those actions interfered with the national defense - a crime, that if a jury finds the women guilty, could put them behind bars for 20 years.

Dominican sisters Ardeth Platte, 66, Carol Gilbert, 55, and Jackie Hudson, 68, head to court on Monday …

--Sacramento Bee

The folks at Right-Wing Thoughts are furious at the nuns:

What the HELL were these idiots thinking?

Well, OK, I understand the dismay of the folks at RWT -- but doesn’t it concern them just a teeny, tiny bit that all it apparently takes for three nuns, average age 63, to gain access to our thermonuclear weapons is some wire cutters?

The RWTers shriek in horror:

Ladies?

TRY NOT TO HIT THE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON WITH HAMMERS, OK?…

…Can you imagine if they accidentally did the one wacky, one-in-a-billion thing that set off the warhead? How would they feel, post-mortem, of course, about the deaths they caused?

Listen -- if our nuclear weapons are so fragile that their integrity can be compromised by three AARP-eligible nuns with hardware-store hammers, then that doomsday clock needs to be moved a hell of a lot closer to midnight than we realize.

In the final analysis, the war is not just a battle to unseat a dictator. It is a giant experiment to determine what forces might be most useful in the future.

--New York Times


A retired general who served under President Bush's father in the first Persian Gulf war ... predicted that these difficult first two weeks would harm the nation's standing as a military force.

"What's troublesome is the loss of deterrent value," the retired general said. "A month ago everybody in the world looked at the U.S. military as being 10 feet tall. We're not 10 feet tall."

--New York Times

Just try to imagine what the reaction would have been from the GOP, from talk radio, from Fox News, if the defense secretary of President Clinton -- or President Gore, or even a Democratic president who was a combat veteran, Kerry or McCaffrey or Clark -- had used a war like this as an opportunity to do test-marketing of a new military theory, with the result that American troops felt short-staffed and besieged and unnecessarily endangered, all while warnings of a loss of U.S. prestige hung in the air. Just try to imagine. Do you think Republicans would wait until the war was over to call for the resignation -- or impeachment -- of the defense secretary, and probably the president as well? Do you think the fine, upstanding patriots who push books like this onto the best-seller list would hold their tongues?