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| "A German architect who helped design an underground shelter for the Iraqi leader in Baghdad says it is capable of withstanding giant US "bunker-buster" bombs." BBC |
| "Already there is a behind-the-scenes effort by former senior Republican government officials and party leaders to convince President Bush that the advice he has received from Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz -- a powerful triumvirate frequently at odds with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- has been wrong and even dangerous to long-term U.S. national interests." Washington Post |
| British public support for the war in Iraq has fallen for the first time since the conflict began, according to a new Daily Telegraph poll.It said 54% of people questioned believed military action was "right", compared to 59% four days earlier. Sky News |
| "The US press has worked itself into such a frenzy over the conflict in the Gulf, says Michael Wolff, that it has forgotten why it is there in the first place - to report the war clearly and objectively." UK Guardian |
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| Anti-war demonstrators turned out in the thousands from South Korea to Chile on Saturday, spattering streets with paint, jeering outside U.S. embassies and in one case forming a 31-mile human chain. BBC |
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| "US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forced his military chiefs to
accept his idea that a relatively small, lightly armed force should go
to war with Iraq, it is being claimed.
The New Yorker magazine quotes unnamed Pentagon sources as saying that Mr Rumsfeld insisted at least six times before the conflict on the proposed number of troops being reduced. In an article to be published on Monday, the magazine says Mr Rumsfeld overruled advice from the war commander, General Tommy Franks, to delay the invasion of Iraq. The Pentagon has declined to comment on the article. The BBC's correspondent in Washington, Justin Webb, says Mr Rumsfeld is a famously abrasive character who has been accused in the past of bullying his generals. He says these fresh allegations are likely to cause a political storm and lead to further difficulties for the defence secretary and his team. Munitions 'shortage' The White House continues to say that troops in Iraq are making progress, but the article quotes a former intelligence official as saying the war was now a stalemate. The article says the army is running out of cruise missiles and precision guided bombs, and that there are maintenance problems with tanks. 'The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive,' the official told the magazine. A senior Pentagon planner said Mr Rumsfeld wanted to 'do war on the cheap' and thought precision bombing would bring victory. 'He thought he knew better [than military officials]. He was the decision-maker at every turn,' the unnamed planner said. Franks 'overruled' The article says General Franks wanted to delay the invasion until the American troops denied access to Turkey had been brought to Kuwait, but Mr Rumsfeld overruled him. It says the defence secretary also rejected recommendations to deploy four or more army divisions and to ship hundreds of tanks and other heavy vehicles in advance. Instead, Mr Rumsfeld preferred to rely on equipment which was already in Kuwait, but was insufficient, the magazine says. Our correspondent says Mr Rumsfeld and his team desperately need some decisive victories in battle if the American people are to continue to believe what the White House is telling them - that this war is going roughly according to plan." BBC |
| "Thousands of Muslims who say they are ready for martyrdom have flocked to Iraq since the U.S.-led war began, a sign that a prolonged stay of U.S. and British forces may turn the country into a magnet for militants seeking a new jihad." AP via Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| Ex-general who will lead reconstruction in Iraq heads firm behind Patriot missiles. UK Guardian |
| "By reporting propaganda as fact, the mainstream media had simply mirrored the Blair/Bush fantasy that the people who have been starved by UN sanctions and deformed by depleted uranium since 1991 will greet them as saviours." Faisal Bodi writes in the UK Guardian |
| "If Americans think it will be more difficult than expected to win the ground war in Iraq, it will be even tougher to dislodge an increasingly ingrained perception of America as a rapacious, anti-Muslim, oil-hungry imperial power." Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| "Now, apparently, is the time for all good radio and TV stations to
come to the aid of their country's war. That is the message pushed by broadcast
news consultants, who've been advising news and talk stations across the
nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war." Washington
Post
Earlier related item - "Covering war protesters may be bad for business. That's among the findings of new research from Frank N. Magid Associates, the influential news consulting firm. In a survey of 6,400 viewers on their attitudes regarding Iraq and the media, the news consulting firm found that the viewers had little interest in anti-war protests. Magid doesn't tell news directors to avoid protests. It just says viewers tend to hate seeing them. 'Obviously, you have to give both sides of the story,' says Senior Vice President Brian Greif. 'But how much time you devote to [protests] and where you place it in your newscast becomes an issue.' " Broadcasting & Cable |
| Asked whether suicide bombings will now become a policy of the Iraqi military, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said: "It will be routine military policy. We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land." USA Today |
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To illustrate, the sergeant offered a pair of examples from earlier in the week. "There was one Iraqi soldier, and 25 women and children," he said, "I didn't take the shot." But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. "I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way." NYT (reg/req) |
| "In death, the first U.S. serviceman to be killed in combat in Gulf War 2 will receive what he always wanted in life: American citizenship." Time |
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| Something we learned enroute to looking up something else: "...although blacks account for 26% of Army troops, they make up a much smaller percentage of those in front-line combat units, the most likely to be killed or injured in a conventional war." USA Today - Jan. '03 |
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| "Important note: Since the start of hostilities in Iraq, the number of daily requests for Earth and Moon Viewer images has doubled..." Earth & Moon Viewer |
| "One adviser said Bush is irritated at the media for setting 'phony expectations' about how quickly the U.S.-led forces would be able to subdue the Iraqi military and drive President Saddam Hussein from power." Washington Post |
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| Stiff resistance by Iraqis and anger at the onslaught have rekindled pride on the Arab street, writes Ed O'Loughlin, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent in Amman. |
| "The war that the rest of the world sees is different from the one Americans are viewing. The Pakistani newspaper Awami Awaz exults that 'Iraqi leadership has humiliated the Americans.' The Egyptian newspaper Al Wafd titles an editorial 'The U.S. Empire of Evil.' Muslim figures who sided with the U.S. after 9/11 and denounced Osama bin Laden are now urging 'jihad' against Americans." NYT's Op-Ed (reg/req) |
| "The Americans may hope they will be welcomed as liberators, and that the Iraqi regime is not popular. But it is the Americans who are not popular here. It's a culmination of 12 years of crushing sanctions, two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in which the United States has been seen as supporting the Israeli side, and because it's widely believed that the US has come to Iraq to steal its oil." BBC |
| "Richard N. Perle resigned today as chairman of an influential Pentagon advisory board in the wake of disclosures that his business dealings included a recent meeting with a Saudi arms dealer and a contract to advise a communications company that is seeking permission from the Defense Department to be sold to Chinese investors." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Iranian capital, Tehran, in protest at the United States-led war in Iraq." BBC |
| "The war is only a week old and already the media has gotten at least 15 stories wrong or misreported a sliver of fact into a major event. Television news programs, of course, have been the prime culprits." Editor & Publisher |
| "Journalists are expected to be impartial observers. We are supposed to stand back, watch it all unfold and then tell what happened. On Wednesday, reality changed the rules." Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
| Phrase of the Day: "Incestuous amplification," defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." |
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| "Covering war protesters may be bad for business. That's among the
findings of new research from Frank N. Magid Associates, the influential
news consulting firm.
In a survey of 6,400 viewers on their attitudes regarding Iraq and the media, the news consulting firm found that the viewers had little interest in anti-war protests. Magid doesn't tell news directors to avoid protests. It just says viewers tend to hate seeing them. 'Obviously, you have to give both sides of the story,' says Senior Vice President Brian Greif. 'But how much time you devote to [protests] and where you place it in your newscast becomes an issue.' " Broadcasting & Cable |
| "Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday." Washington Post |
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| "Intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon warned the Bush administration that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Iraqi irregular forces employing guerrilla tactics, but those views have not been adequately reflected in the administration's public predictions about how difficult a war might go, according to current and former intelligence officials." Washington Post |
| "Sickening TV film showing two executed British soldiers lying in a dusty Iraqi street triggered outrage and tears last night." The Sun (UK) |
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| "Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law." UK Guardian |
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| the people should be told and shown—even if they wish to turn their eyes away—exactly what is being waged in their name. No sugarcoating. No sanitizing. Just a faithful picture of the wild convulsion that is war." Village Voice |
| "A nightmare scenario would be a postwar, revenge-based bloodbath, with the police and judiciary melting away and the United States having to become cop, judge and jailer." AP |
| "Palestinians have long been the torchbearers of Arab suffering in their struggles with Israel. But now, Arabs in other countries, fired by the on-going Iraqi resistance, are starting to ask serious questions about their own repressive and unenlightened governments." Asian Times |
| "The White House and Pentagon insist they didn't try to sell us a quick and easy war. Then, on Tuesday, they did it again." Salon(reg/req) |
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| "The truth of the matter is that the way the Tomahawk has come to be used is to make the use of force politically palatable," says William Arkin, a former army intelligence analyst and veteran scholar of the US military. "It's a very expensive piece of equipment, and properly used it would allow you to go after targets that would be tougher to hit if there was robust air defence. But it has become the weapon you use when you want to save yourself politically - because you want to avoid the political implications of losing a pilot." UK Guardian |
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(1) Democracy and human rights ... 18.6% ... 452 votes (2) Israel's benefit ... 17.5% ... 425 votes (3) Eliminating weapons of mass destruction ... 28.8% ... 701 votes (4) Oil ... 35.1% ... 854 votes Total votes ... 100% ... 2432 votes Saudi Online |
| "American audiences are seeing and reading about a different war than the rest of the world. The news coverage in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, reflects and defines the widening perception gap about the motives for this war. Surveys show that an increasing number of Americans believe this is a just war, while most of the world's Arabs and Muslims see it as a war of aggression. Media coverage does not necessarily create these leanings, say analysts, but it works to cement them." Christian Science Monitor |
| "Tuesday's Arabic papers believe Iraq will not surrender easily to what they describe as US military rule." BBC |
| "It is a curious irony that after all his crimes, including unprovoked attacks against his neighbors, gassing the innocent Kurds, using chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers, rocketing defenseless civilians in large population centers such as Tehran, Isfahan, Tel Aviv and elsewhere, Saddam Hussein will finally face his final punishment for something he didn't do!" The Iranian |
| "Until yesterday, Pentagon briefings had been well mannered, even genteel affairs in which generals documented the day's successes and reiterated their confidence in the outcome. That has now changed." NYT(reg/req) |
| "The New York stock exchange has banned al-Jazeera from its trading
floor ... (the cable channel), which has covered the New York stock market
for several years, said it believed it was the only channel affected by
the action and attributed the decision to its stance on the war."
UK Guardian |
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| "Some experts in international law said the United States had also skirted the law by permitting American news organizations to show pictures of Iraqi soldiers surrendering, or being blindfolded and handcuffed by American forces. 'There's been a little violation on each side,' said Detlev F. Vagts, a specialist on the laws of war at Harvard University Law School." NYT(reg/req) |
| "British journalists are blanketing television, radio and newspapers back home with extensive, round-the-clock coverage of the war, while the Arab news media are focusing almost exclusively on the view from inside Iraq and on antiwar demonstrations around the world. And Chinese viewers are getting perhaps their least-censored access ever to war reports." Washington Post |
| "For the last four days, Arab News Online (www.arabnews.com) has been doubling its usual number of hits. For March 22, the last day for which data is available, the number of successful hits registered was 1,111,717. Over 80 percent of visitors to the website are from the United States and Canada. The second largest group then comes from Europe and then Australia." |
| "...when Bush made his final case for war in his ultimatum speech to the nation Tuesday night, what came through ... was the voice of a frightened man trying to infect the nation with his fear." Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| "Iraqi television has broadcast a video of five American soldiers it
says were captured around the southern city of Nasiriya.
It also showed pictures of at least four bodies, said to be dead American soldiers. Two of the bodies were shown to be lying on a road next to what appeared to be a water-carrying vehicle and a tow truck. Two of the captured, including a 30-year-old woman, appeared to have been wounded. One of the men was lying on the floor on a rug. The five, who are believed to be the first coalition prisoners taken by Iraq, were questioned on air and gave their names, military identification numbers and home towns." BBC |
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| "The roots of Al Qaeda are not in poverty or in anti-Americanism but in Sayyid Qutb's ideas about how Christianity went wrong and how martyrdom could change the world." NYT's Magazine (reg/req) |
| "Newspapers in the Arab world continue their attacks on the US and Britain, as hostilities in Iraq go into their fourth day." BBC pull quotes from the Sunday editions of the Arabic press |
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| "Tens of thousands of people worldwide have taken to the streets to stage the latest series of demonstrations against the conflict in Iraq." BBC |
| "As US-led forces increase their air attacks against Baghdad and move deeper into Iraq, the press reflects the sense of helplessness and anger throughout the Arab world." BBC |
| "Osama bin Laden, in his wildest dreams, could hardly have hoped for this. A mere 18 months after he boosted the US to a peak of worldwide sympathy unprecedented since Pearl Harbor, that international goodwill has been squandered to near zero. Bin Laden must be beside himself with glee. And the infidels are now walking right into the Iraq trap." UK Guardian |
| "British TV reporter Terry Lloyd and two of his news crew are missing after coming under fire while travelling to the Iraqi city of Basra..." UK Guardian |
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| "U.S. intelligence officials believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possibly accompanied by one or both of his powerful sons, was still inside a compound in southern Baghdad early yesterday when it was struck by a barrage of U.S. bombs and cruise missiles." Washington Post |
| "ABC News has learned that witnesses at the site of a Baghdad suburban residential complex on Wednesday night have told U.S. intelligence officials that Saddam was observed being taken from the bombed complex on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask over his face." |
| "Rumsfeld is to a Pentagon briefing as Jimmy Stewart was to a Frank Capra movie, a case of perfect casting." Washington Post |
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| "Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Australia, Japan and Malaysia on Friday for a second day of protests against the U.S.-led war in Iraq, as Muslim leaders around the world denounced the U.S. strikes as imperialist aggression." AP (via NYT-reg/req) |
| "Your tax dollars are at work on a new magazine for the Arab world. After we finish bombing Iraq, Colin Powell's State Department has a plan to help win the hearts and minds of the populace in 22 Arab nations. It plans to start publishing a lifestyle magazine for Arabs in the 18- to 35-year-old bracket that will showcase America - minus its politics and religion." New York Post |
| "Police clashed with anti-war demonstrators trying to storm the U.S.
Embassy in Yemen on Friday, leaving a policeman and protester dead amid
a barrage of bullets, rocks, water cannons and tear gas canisters.
Dozens more people were injured, and three protesters were hospitalized in serious condition. A crowd of about 30,000 protesters chanted "Death to America!" as outrage over the U.S.-led attacks on Iraq spilled into the streets for a second day Friday." AP |
| "Preliminary estimates of single-copy newspaper sales for Thursday and Friday, the first editions since the U.S. attack on Iraq, show that newsstand sales are up at a few papers, but not at the level some circulation directors had hoped for." Editor & Publisher |
| "In 1966, the Pentagon offered an estimate of what the Vietnam War
would cost. When America pulled its troops out in 1973, the tab was 90
percent higher - $111 billion.
The Civil War, similarly, cost the North 13 times the original estimate of President Lincoln's Treasury secretary. As the United States launches its first major war effort of the 21st century, history suggests one financial fact to bank on: The cost will be higher than forecast." Christian Science Monitor |
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| "Hundreds of thousands of people marched on American embassies in world capitals Thursday to protest the war against Iraq, including a violent clash in Cairo..." USA Today |
| "MADISON - The 'most trusted man in America,' retired CBS Evening News
anchor Walter Cronkite, put aside his journalistic impartiality Tuesday
night and issued a blistering dissent to President Bush's decision to wage
war with Iraq.
At a Drew University forum, Cronkite said he feared the war would not go smoothly, ripped the 'arrogance' of Bush and his administration and wondered whether the new U.S. doctrine of 'pre-emptive war' might lead to unintended, dire consequences. 'Every little country in the world that has a border conflict with another little country … they now have a great example from the United States,' Cronkite, 86, said in response to a question from Drew's president, former Gov. Thomas Kean." Daily Record (via Romenesko) |
| "...history suggests that this war will have unintended consequences. Just as the 1991 Gulf War led to the permanent US presence in Saudi Arabia that convinced the then-unknown Osama bin Laden to declare jihad against the United States, so will this war create monsters that don’t yet have a name." Boston Phoenix |
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| "...US military planners are well short of the five heavy armoured divisions that many pundits believe were essential to mount an invasion at all." BBC |
| "In Eastern Europe -- a particularly pro-American part of the world where most governments back the U.S. position on Iraq -- huge majorities nonetheless reject the war: 75 percent of Poles, 82 percent of Hungarians, 76 percent of Czechs." The American Prospect |
| "The march to war with Iraq has severely tarnished America's image abroad, even in countries whose governments have joined President Bush's 'coalition of the willing,' a new independent survey in eight nations has found...'This is the most negative [international] public opinion about America and an American president that I've ever seen,' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew project." LA Times |
| "Telephone bugs have been discovered at offices used by France, Germany and Britain in the building where European Union leaders are due to hold a summit this week, an EU spokesman said on Wednesday." Reuters(via NYT reg/reg) |
| "For apparently the first time in modern history, the U.S. government seems poised to go to war not only lacking the support of most of its key allies abroad but also without the enthusiastic backing of the majority of major newspapers at home, according to E&P's fifth and (presumably) final prewar survey of the top 50 newspapers' editorial positions." Editor & Publisher |
| "According to the latest Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll, 61 percent of the public believes that war with Iraq will actually "hurt" the safety of Americans in the US and abroad." Christian Science Monitor |
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| "Britain will be be brought to a temporary standstill by waves of protests, rallies, sit-ins, strikes, occupations, civil disobedience and people taking personal direct action within hours of the first bombers heading for Iraq, claim peace campaigners." UK Guardian |
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| The American Public (a majority of whom are overweight and unable to find Baghdad on a map if you paid 'em) Approves of Bush Ultimatum by More Than 2-to-1 Margin. Gallup Poll |
| "Bush’s war on Iraq is a gift to the Bin Ladens of this world and to the extremist theocrats." TomPaine.com |
| "The Bush administration is betting on war. The issue is no longer Saddam Hussein or even Iraqi oil. If the United States doesn't go to war now, it will in effect be admitting that its foreign policy over the past year was utterly pointless...The pacifists can argue until they're blue in the face that America's prestige would be better served by avoiding war. Even if they were right, it wouldn't change anything. Bush doesn't need the pacifist vote. War has become a riveting made-for-TV extravaganza. The average American is used to watching CNN footage of wars in obscure countries where the good guys crush the bad guys with high-tech weapons. Bush has promised to serve up the same kind of entertainment, only on a bigger scale." Moscow Times |
| "The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill
will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe
that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis
welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world
(not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're
wrong on all counts.
Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court — all in just two years." Paul Krugman writes in a NYT's Op-Ed. |
| "On some editorial pages -- such as those of the Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal -- the Bush administration's agenda is seen as a principled, necessary response to a rogue regime with weapons of mass destruction. Other newspapers, like the San Francisco Chronicle, have been consistent opponents of the war and skeptical about America's geopolitical motives. The majority of editorial page opinion, however, seems to have fallen into an anxious middle ground, an ideology-free zone where newspapers believe that Saddam Hussein's regime must be dealt with but fear the consequences of America's acting without broad international support." LA Times |
| "Analysts say the impact of war will ripple through the Middle East for at least the next decade, and ... could lay the foundation for radical opposition groups and the birth of more terrorists." Miami Herald (reg/req) |
| "This war — which is illegal according to international law and immoral
by any standards — is about oil and America’s strategic dominance of the
Middle East — no more, no less. There was never any real debate. The war
has been years in the planning, initially drawn up by neo-conservative
zealots in Washington, D.C. who now dominate US defense policy.
The strategy had been finalized long before US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had assumed their respective offices. These zealots must now surely be laughing in the knowledge that a small group of men and women has been able to harness the full military might of the world’s only superpower to the promotion of their private agenda in the face of almost total worldwide opposition." Arab News |
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| "...in the five days since (Elizabeth Smart) returned home, the family's spokesman has fielded more than 3,000 media calls and received nearly 100 film, book or made-for-TV-movie proposals." USA Today |
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| "Cynicism. Hypocrisy. Orwellian newspeak. As photo-ops of political theater go, the Azores micro-summit was somber. How apt a metaphor: three isolated men in a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic - the American behaving like a bully and the two Europeans trying to bridge the unbridgeable."Asia Times |
| Something we found enroute to looking up something else: "In war there is only one place of honor and that is in the armed services. It is in recognition of that fact that the recruiting stations have been thronged these last few days with young men whose sense of duty will not permit them to wait until they are called. They know where they belong when their country is in peril." Chicago Tribune (December 10, 1941) |
| "A simple truth has been withheld from the American people," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "In the eyes of most Arabs, America lacks the legitimacy and moral authority to impose itself on Iraq." LA Times |
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More Assorted Comics |
| DEBKAfile’s Military Sources: Full-scale US-British offensive against Iraq is scheduled to begin Monday, 24 hours after Azores summit. |
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| "Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has put a general notorious for his
involvement in the gassing of the Kurds in charge of stopping any southern
invasion.
A BBC correspondent in Baghdad, Andrew Gilligan, says the appointment of General Ali Hassan al-Majid to command Basra could be aimed at intimidating US and UK troops expected to invade that area should war be declared. General Majid - a cousin of Saddam Hussein - is known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in the attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988 in which at least 5,000 people were killed in a single day." BBC |
| "An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what
it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting
in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle.
Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has revealed himself in fish form. According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew." The Observer (UK) |
| "Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors." CNN |
| "Iraq has identified a Virginia-based biological supply house and a French scientific institute as the sources of all the foreign germ samples that it used to create the biological weapons that are still believed to be in Iraq's arsenal..." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "...the latest E&P survey of the top 50 newspapers' editorial positions continues to show a slight shift in the dovish direction." Editor & Publisher |
| Check out http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk. One of the better laughs we've had since this current crisis began. |
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| "Bush prays in the tradition of a dialogue with God, in which God hears
Bush and Bush hears God. This is the tradition preached by the Rev. Billy
Graham, who helped inspire Bush to become born again after Bush turned
to him for help with alcoholism.
The pope prays in a tradition where he asks God for the grace to make the right decision for himself, based on his own values and best effort. In this tradition, the pope has free will and the responsibility that comes with it. Free will must be absolute or it is not free. God is not a coach who allows the quarterback to make most of the decisions, but sometimes sends in a play from the sidelines. These notions may help explain Bush's tone at the press conference. The questions and answers were beside the point, because Bush knows he is doing the right thing. ''The choice is Saddam's,'' he said more than once. Whether that is true or not, the choice is no longer Bush's. The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His." Chicago Sun Times |
| "With a second UN resolution looking all but impossible, and a war in Iraq only days away, the world's press fear the consequences of the US and UK going it alone." UK Guardian |
| "They called it 'Omelet with Bacon,' and I'll take their word that is what it was." Jules Crittenden writes for Poynter Online. |
| "...if Bush is wrong about invading Iraq...he risks calling down horrors that fill any thinking person with dread." LA Weekly |
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| "George W. Bush, a world-class Eddie Haskell, has been caught red-handed
in so much sober mischief that it's remarkable he is still able to rise
from his bed each morning and face the day."
Jeff Koopersmith writes in the American Politics Journal |
| "Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance." Mother Jones |
| "On the objective evidence, Mr. President, we are forced to conclude that you are, put simply, a liar...," Russ Baker writes for TomPaine.com. |
| "A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest," Patrick J. Buchanan writes in the American Conservative. |
| "Bush's rhetoric suggests that he feels God has chosen him to lead the U.S. against "Evil." Is that why Bush is dragging us into an unprovoked war?" The Atlantic Monthly |
| "...you can say we human beings have moved further down the path of self-destruction. Or you could say the Earth is ridding itself of a virulent parasite." By Swami Beyondananda, WakeUpLaughing.com |
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| "Saddam Hussein has opened a training camp for Arab volunteers willing to carry out suicide bombings against U.S. forces in case they invade Iraq, Arab media and Iraqi dissidents said Tuesday." AP |
| "The threat of war in Iraq is driving increasing numbers of Americans to British and international news web sites in search of the broader picture. According to the internet audience management and analysis company, Nielsen NetRatings, traffic to the UK's biggest news sites, BBC News Online and Guardian Unlimited, has increased dramatically over the past year. Many of these new users are from the US." dotjournalism (UK) |
| "The first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity." The Times (UK) |
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| "Americans are growing impatient with the United Nations and say they would support military action against Iraq even if the Security Council refuses to support an invasion, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll." -- "But a majority of respondents, 52 percent, say inspectors should be given more time to search for evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons on the ground in Iraq." |
| "The Air Force tested for the first time the biggest conventional bomb
in the US arsenal Tuesday, a 21,000-pound munition that could play a dramatic
role in an attack on Iraq. Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the
test at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., was considered a success.
'It did what they expected it to do. Nothing malfunctioned,' she said. The bomb, officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or MOAB, and unofficially dubbed the Mother of All Bombs, is guided to its target by satellite signals. It was dropped out the rear of a C-130 transport plane, officials said. The bomb is so powerful that its detonation was expected to create a mushroom cloud visible for miles. The US military is putting the final pieces of combat power in place in anticipation of an order by Bush to attack Iraq and depose Saddam, Iraq's president. More than 200,000 US forces are within striking range. The Air Force bomb is much bigger than any other conventional bomb. The next-biggest is the 15,000-pound BLU-82, dubbed the Daisy Cutter, created during the Vietnam War to clear landing areas in the jungle." Christian Science Monitor |
| "The Bush press conference to me was like a mini-Alamo for American journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything akin to a real function," Matt Taibbi writes in the New York Press. |
| "U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf may be armed with (depleted uranium weapons) hundreds of times more potent than similar weapons used during the Gulf War and the U.N. military campaign in Bosnia....Depleted uranium has a few drawbacks. It is 40 percent as radioactive as pure uranium and has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In addition, the very volatility that makes it blaze like an atomic furnace upon impact converts a large percentage of the spent projectile into microscopic radioactive oxides that, when borne by the wind, may be inhaled by civilians miles from the battlefield." Wired News |
| "The American government is on the verge of awarding construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is deposed. Halliburton, one of the companies in the running for the highly profitable deals, was formerly headed by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney. Halliburton has already been awarded a lucrative contract to resurrect the Iraqi oilfields if there is a war." UK Guardian |
| "Bush administration spokesmen have made several cases for waging war against Iraq, and the U.S. press has tended to present all those cases to the public as if they were gospel. Does this mean that administration arguments are indisputable? Or does it mean that the right questions have not been asked often or loudly enough?" Editor & Publisher |
| "With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits." Paul Krugman writes in the NYT(reg/req) |
| "Rather than being infinite in all directions, as the most fashionable theory suggests, the universe could be radically smaller in one direction than the others. As a result it may be even be shaped like a doughnut. 'There's a hint in the data that if you traveled far and fast in the direction of the constellation Virgo, you'd return to Earth from the opposite direction,' said Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the University of Pennsylvania." NYT(reg/reg) |
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| "Bush officials have explained in detail their reasons for war, and the media have not sufficiently challenged those reasons. They are endorsing Bush's war by default," in the San Diego Union-Tribune |
| "When Mr. Bush takes a war of choice and turns it into a war of necessity, people naturally ask, 'Hey, what's going on here? We're being hustled. The real reason must be his father, or oil, or some right-wing ideology.' " From Tom Friedman's Op-Edin the NYT (reg/req) |
| "Saddam Hussein secretly planned to launch 75 missiles armed with chemical or biological warheads during the Persian Gulf War if Baghdad was hit with nuclear weapons, according to a new report by U.N. weapons inspectors." LA Times |
| "Terrified Iraqi soldiers have crossed the Kuwait border and tried to surrender to British forces - because they thought the war had already started. The motley band of a dozen troops waved the white flag as British paratroopers tested their weapons during a routine exercise." Sunday Mirror (UK) |
| 13 questions we wish they'd asked at President Bush's press conference thursday night. Editor & Publisher |
| "Standing at the brink of war with Iraq," says the Philadelphia Inquirer (reg/req), "President Bush is preparing to roll the dice on a gamble that could remake the Middle East in America's image – or trigger an explosion of violence and chaos that shakes the world, shocks the economy, and destroys his presidency." |
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| "Since its emergence as a world power at the beginning of the last century, the United States has often made cold-eyed compromises with the crosscurrents of democracy around the world. From Latin America to Asia, Africa and beyond, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have welcomed democracy when it serves American interests, and been far more ambivalent when it complicates American strategic goals or national security." NYT(reg/req) |
| Jimmy Carter, our 39th president and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, tells us why our current president is such a laughing long shot for the 2003 award. |
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| "US officials previously admitted using 'stress and duress' on prisoners including sleep deprivation, denial of medication for battle injuries, forcing them to stand or kneel for hours on end with hoods on, subjecting them to loud noises and sudden flashes of light and engaging in culturally humiliating practices such as having them kicked by female officers." The Independent |
| Andrew J. O'Conner, "a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested
in a public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five
hours on February 13th. His crime? He said "Bush is out of control" on
an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the President."
From "Arrest Me" by William Rivers Pitt in Truthout. |
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| "Despite some honorable exceptions, major media generally went limp on the march to war. The (Washington) Post went star-spangled." The Nation |
| "A study of pre-teens and teens in Quebec found a startling number had elevated blood pressures. The research suggested they may be well on their way to having hypertension in their 20s and heart disease in their 30s. And childhood obesity is clearly the culprit, said lead author Dr. Gilles Paradis, who worries Canadians aren't doing enough to protect the future heart health of their children." Calgary Sun |
| "Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war?" Tom Shales asks in the Washington Post. |
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| "In the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, (military) recruiters found no dearth of volunteers. But today, as U.S. forces mass near Iraq, fear and anxiety have muffled some of the patriotism." LA Times |
| "New evidence from a rapidly warming part of Antarctica suggests that
ice can flow into the sea much more readily than had been predicted, perhaps
leading to an accelerated rise in sea levels from global warming.
Many polar and ice experts said the new study, to be published today in the journal Science, suggested that seas might rise as much as several yards over the next several centuries. They called that prospect a slow-motion disaster, the cost of which — in lost shorelines, salt in water supplies, and damaged ecosystems — would be borne by many future generations." NYT (reg/req) |
| "The latest issue of the Saudi-owned weekly magazine Al-Majalla reports that 500 Egyptians whose parents had named them Saddam have sought to have their names legally changed in recent months." USA Today |
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| "Two hundred and fifty lashes down, 50 to go, was how Australian Robert Thomas last night described his ordeal in a Saudi Arabian jail." The Sydney Morning Herald |
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| "While Pentagon war planners may be gunning for an attack on Iraq by mid March, heavily armed soldiers have already quietly seized a strategic position: your Easter basket. National retailers like Kmart and Walgreens have stocked their shelves with baskets in which the traditional chocolate rabbit centerpiece has been displaced by plastic military action figures and their make-believe lethal paraphernalia." Village Voice |
| "Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it." |
| "When Ashcroft and his enemies both begin their days with displays of their godliness, do we feel safer after they rise from their devotions?" asks Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun Times. |
| "In the last few weeks, the opposition to the war has gotten far more diverse," says Maurice Isserman, co-author of a history of America during the Vietnam War era. "It took years in the Vietnam conflict to get to this point, even though people were dying in the field." USA Today |
| Baghdad professor Wamidh Nadhmi runs through a list his fears: "We worry about the loss of electricity, about water, about how smart smart bombs are, about Iraqi tanks ploughing into our neighbourhood and turning us into military targets, and about mass-hysteria." BBC |
| "The veteran F.B.I. agent who exposed the bureau's failure to heed evidence of terrorist plots before the Sept. 11 attacks is now warning her superiors that the bureau is not prepared to deal with new terrorist strikes that she and many colleagues fear would result from an American war with Iraq." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Two Afghan prisoners were killed while in US custody at their base at Bagram, a military coroner has concluded." BBC |
| "The arrest of al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed could speed up terrorist attacks in the United States that are in the planning stages, the FBI said." USA Today |
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| "The media's display of all significant points of view is especially important because of the tendency of our top officials to equate patriotism with uncritical support of official policy." TomPaine.com |
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| "Saddam Hussein's decision last week to move the Adnan Republican Guard division from its base near the northern city of Mosul toward central Iraq has provided the final clue. If attacked, the Iraqi leader does not plan to mount a determined defense of his borders. He plans to make his stand in Baghdad, playing the starring role in a drama that is designed to portray his regime as a victim holding out against an advancing American Army." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Israeli-imposed closures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are continuing to cause severe economic problems for Palestinians, according to a new report from the World Bank." BBC |
| "When the techno-slaughter actually begins, followed by the inevitable
reprisals and widening of this 'pre-emptive' strike into ongoing global
war ..., on whose hands will the bloodstains indelibly remain if not those
of the media?
Almost every newspaper in this country, every TV station, every network, every newsmagazine, is producing a stream of jingoistic material perhaps unparalleled in American journalistic history." San Antonio Express-News |
| Box office sales - for the 225 movie releases during 2002 - jumped 13.2% to a record $9.5 billion. Biggest year-to-year increase in 20 years. Reuters |
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| "The Pentagon is planning to assemble its own network of spies who will be posted around the world to collect intelligence on terrorist organizations and other military targets, moving squarely into a cloak-and-dagger realm that has traditionally been the domain of the CIA, according to Department of Defense officials familiar with the plans." LA Times |
| "Will this Iraq situation escalate? In my astrological opinion, yes it will, but not to a point of a third world war and according to North Korea’s horoscope, they will be hesitant about striking up the band and goose-stepping off to a major conflict, as they don’t appear to have the resources for a long drawn out battle, according to their chart. Nor would they win." British astrologer Milton Black |
| "The ancient cradle of civilization has fiercely resisted occupiers for millenniums. Will this time be different?" The answer, according to the Christian Science Monitor: Not likely. |
| "Some analysts have even questioned whether (Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) was actually arrested on Saturday. They speculate that he may have been held for some time and the news made public when it was in the interests of the United States and Pakistan." BBC |
| "The poor are still largely invisible to the complacent majority. Most Americans don't see the everydayness of poverty. It is segregated in "bad neighborhoods" and in impersonal government waiting rooms. We don't see all the people being told there are no applications for food stamps available at that location; all the people postponing medical treatment for their children because they don't have health insurance; all the people trying to find a job with their phone service shut off because they couldn't pay the bill; or all the deliverymen for drugstores and supermarkets paid only $3 an hour, which is illegal." The Nation |
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| "Someone looking to put a mood ring on the American psyche could do worse than to examine which magazines are selling on the newsstand" ... Atlantic Monthly is up 52.4 percent ... Mother Jones is up 48.8 percent ...The New Republic is up 42.3 percent ... Harper's Magazine is up 28.1 percent and The Nation is up 15.9 percent. NYT (reg/req) |
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| "People should get no more than 10% of their calories from sugar, experts say in a major new report ... on how to stem the global epidemic of obesity-linked diseases." Understandably, the U.S. National Soft Drink Association isn't pleased - "A thorough review of scientific literature on the subject of obesity shows there is no association between sugar consumption and obesity," said Richard Adamson, the association's vice president of scientific and technical affairs. USA Today |
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| "Turkey's currency and leading stock market index have both fallen heavily after parliament narrowly failed to approve US troop deployment in the country for a war on Iraq." BBC |
| Sunday, March 2, 2003: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is a little chubby so any torture should definitely involve cake. |
| Thomas Friedman on Bush's Iraq war plans: "...what you are about to see is the greatest shake of the dice any president has voluntarily engaged in since Harry Truman dropped the bomb on Japan." NYT Op-Ed (reg/req) |
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| "The tiny US town of Moab has asked President Bush to change the name of an acronym used to describe a massively powerful new bomb - called MOAB." BBC |
| "The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq. Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer." |
| Saturday, March 1, 2003: "Bush's Dismal Failure in Nation Building/Liberating" Media Whores Online |
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| "So what of war and talk of war? It is highly likely from a synchronistic perspective, that action in Iraq in early or mid-month, will correlate with the shift of Uranus sign, catalyzing a turning point, maybe of a shocking variety, in the world's attitude to war and its consequences, both in human and environmental terms. It also, of course, will change the face of the Middle East, in unpredictable fashion." By Leigh Oswald, a London-based astrologer and teacher. |
| "...a classified study by the Central Intelligence Agency ... estimates that an additional 300,000 people who are not Mexicans illegally cross the southern border every year." NYT (reg/req) |
| "A chickenhawk is a term often applied to public persons - generally male - who (1) tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who advocate, military solutions to political problems, and who have personally (2) declined to take advantage of a significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime." The New Hampshire Gazette has an interesting list. |
| "We can say with some certainty, al Qaeda loves the Internet." From Parameters, Spring 2003, pp. 112-23 via Arts & Letters Daily |
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| "The percentage of registered voters who say they would support President Bush in 2004 fell below 50 percent for the first time, according to a new CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll, which finds more Americans concerned about the economy." |