posted 03-25-2003 11:47 PM            

and like I said why war with the armpit of the middle east iraq, saudi would be the prime rib dinner...dufus...

u don't get it and probably never will junior...

posted 03-26-2003 12:17 AM            

Pretty childish Seeker.

Bull$#!+,The Carlyle Group and Halliburton will reap BIG PROFITS off of this war. Off of KILLING innocent people.

So will numerous, other globalist corporations connected to the Pentagon.

This war is unjust. We were not attacked.

STOP THE GLOBALISTS....

STOP THE KILLING....

BRING THE TROOPS HOME...

NO NEW WORLD ORDER

posted 03-26-2003 12:37 AM            

word for your mother...

An Honorable War
By Chris Weinkopf
March 26, 2003

SAVE FOR the plumes of smoke and the episodic sound of explosions, Baghdad scarcely resembles a city that’s been pounded by thousands of sorties for the better part of a week. The lights are on. The water is running. Businesses carry on more or less as usual. The state-controlled media continue to crank out their noxious propaganda.

The utilities and electronic media operate not because allied forces can’t find them, but because allied forces know precisely where they are, and the allies are taking every reasonable measure, every tolerable risk, to minimize civilian casualties. They’ve tried to leave utilities untouched out of humanitarian concerns, and they’ve spared Saddam Hussein’s broadcasting facility because it’s (deliberately) located in a densely populated area.

That Baghdad stands at all, let alone functions in any capacity, is a testament to American restraint.

After all, Operation Iraqi Freedom could have been over before it started, saving America tens of billions of dollars and an untold number of soldiers’ lives. All US officials had to do was drop a nuclear bomb in the heart of Baghdad. The explosion would have singularly wiped out Saddam Hussein and his gang, as well as the whole of the “elite” Republican Guard—and, of course, some 5 million innocent civilians.

But that option was morally unthinkable, as was carpet-bombing the city, or aggressively pursuing military targets surrounded by Hussein’s human shields. As much as the French, Germans and other internationalist cowards have taken to denouncing America as a “bully” and its president a “cowboy,” the war in Iraq has so far been nothing but an admirable and heroic effort at compassion.

Never in history has any nation ever waged war so conscientious of humanitarian concerns.

The effort began even before the start of hostilities, with allied forces appealing to Iraqi troops to surrender early. It continued with the war’s opening salvo, when US forces tried to take out Hussein’s inner circle with a direct attack on a bunker, in a failed attempt to spare the rest of Iraq the pain and bloodshed of another war. Then allied officials postponed the “shock and awe” bomb campaign for a couple days while they tried to negotiate a surrender with senior Iraqi military officials. Even after the campaign began, allied forces carefully chose their targets, the timing of each bombing, and the weapons used in such a way as to reduce the civilian death toll.

Meanwhile, coalition forces have given shelter and humane treatment—even medical attention aboard American naval ships—to the Iraqi prisoners of war they have picked up along the way. (Unlike their enemies, who have tortured, paraded, and possibly executed the American soldiers they have captured.)

But America’s restraint comes at a significant strategic loss. Iraqi broadcasting sends the message to the country’s citizens and soldiers that Hussein is still in charge, and so they should continue fighting. Legitimate military targets go untouched, and thus pose a threat to allied forces. Supply lines risk being dangerously stretched because troops have advanced to Baghdad at breakneck speed, all in the hopes of obtaining a quick victory and avoiding protracted urban warfare.

America is risking the lives of its soldiers to protect the lives of Iraqi civilians. Some “bully.”

Were they interested in facts, the trajectory of this war would silence and embarrass left-wing anti-war “peace” protesters who have ridiculed the president as a warmonger, and who thoughtlessly toss around words like “illegal” and “immoral” to describe the long overdue liberation of an oppressed nation.

The protesting crowd would do well to consider the words Lt. Col. Tim Collins, commander of the Royal Irish battle group, delivered to his troops hours before they went into battle: “We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own.”

Lt. Col. Collins might have added that allied forces are moving quickly to capture Iraqi oil fields—so that Hussein won’t destroy them—with plans to return them to the Iraqi people when the fighting is over.

Were they interested in facts, that one alone would silence right-wing, anti-war paleocons who cluck-cluck about “empire” and America’s “hegemonic” ambitions.

Opponents of the war both left and right ought to contemplate how different this war would be if strategic circumstances were reversed—if it were the Islamofascists who had access to the most sophisticated military equipment the world has ever known, and if it were America and her allies that were using old, shoddy equipment. Does anyone think Hussein and Osama bin Laden would show the restraint of President Bush?

There is no moral equivalence in this campaign.

posted 03-26-2003 01:05 AM            

ROFLMAO...

YEAH... Kinda like Afganistan...which we are simply abandoning.

Iraq will be "free" for the globalists to plunder.

posted 03-26-2003 01:15 AM            

by Michael C. Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/032503_perfect_storm_2.html

March 24, 2003, 2100 EDT (FTW) – Atlanta, Military, economic, oil, and political storms continue to gather and converge in what may become a Perfect Storm for the Bush Administration and the United States economy.

On the fifth day of a U.S. military campaign rejected by the U.N. Security Council, at least 12 U.S. soldiers have been captured by Iraqi forces near al Nasiriyah even as various foreign news sources are reporting that as many as four to ten of the vaunted M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks have been destroyed in combat. A helicopter aircrew has been captured further north. ABC has reported that coalition casualties are approaching 200. Promises that Iraqi civilians expecting liberation would greet coalition troops with open arms have been unfulfilled as Iraqi resistance stiffens on a daily basis. In a tragic event, an African-American Sergeant of the 101st Air Assault Division staged a grenade attack on tents occupied by his comrades-in-arms, killing one and wounding fourteen. The fallout from this tragedy will have lasting repercussions on the psyches of both U.S. military and civilian populations. Images of an American Black man face down and handcuffed - no matter how serious the offense - will not fade quickly and will further erode an extremely fragile and increasingly volatile domestic landscape. The suspect is Muslim.

Saddam Hussein and his forces are now gaining strength, political cachet, and popular support with each new engagement while coalition forces lose it with every casualty and delay. One of the first questions asked at a somber, live press conference at Central Command headquarters in Qatar on Sunday was, "Has America gotten itself into another Vietnam?" This question came after only three days of ground combat. Around the Arab and Muslim world, Saddam Hussein’s picture is becoming an icon of anti-colonial resistance. Over a thousand years of European and American history, the Arab world has never given in easily to occupying forces; they always prefer one of their own – no matter how distasteful – to an outsider. The Crusades were the earliest lesson for Europe and the Suez crisis of 1956 the most recent.

Consistent with predictions made in FTW, the Turkish government, poised to send several brigades into northern Iraq, is threatening to turn Northern Iraq into absolute chaos. The Kurds who live in the region ethnically blur the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran and their support is critical to U.S. military plans. Having sought an independent homeland for decades, they have been consistently used by the U.S. and western powers for covert operations and destabilization programs and they have always been betrayed later. At the moment FTW gives a 50-50 likelihood that the U.S. will ultimately – and after much protestation for effect – allow the Turkish incursion. That will instantly create a highly unstable and balkanized region. The U.S. has historically both created and preferred "balkanization" to secure commercial control of natural resources and civilian populations with devastating results for anyone living in the region. This could ultimately – if the U.S. invasion is successful - result in Iraq being divided into three or more separately governed regions.

The instability created by such a development would likely spread throughout the Middle East quickly. None of the region’s borders has existed for more than eighty years and all of them were drawn by departing colonial powers. Perceptions in Saudi Arabia of this kind of trend might automatically require U.S. forces to engage in a two-front war if the already unstable Saudi regime begins to fracture and weaken.

To date, this writer has seen no reportage of how the Saudi populace is reacting to a war plan that is stumbling. For approximately six months, FTW has been reporting that Saudi Arabia would likely become unstable with the invasion and that American war planners might be planning for a nearly simultaneous operation to control Saudi oil fields, which contain 25% of all the oil on the planet. But as the efficacy of U.S. military might comes into question, the brass ring of oil becomes ever more elusive and a Saudi occupation becomes a military goal out of reach.

In the meantime, there are increasing signs that the U.S. political and economic elites are laying the groundwork to make the Bush administration, specifically Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Perle and Wolfowitz, sacrificial scapegoats for a failed policy in time to consolidate post 9-11 gains, regroup and move forward. These indications include: written press attacks on the Bush administration by select journalists long known for their loyalty and obedience to financial interests and the CIA; a growing revolt from within the intelligence communities of the U.S. and the U.K. including damaging leaks undermining the credibility of the administration; serious economic consequences closing in on the financial markets; growing signs of pending oil shortages; and indications that the use of forged documents by the Bush and Blair regimes may become the Watergate burglary of the 21st century.

THE WRITTEN PRESS TURN ON BUSH, BIG TIME

While most of the American people rely on television coverage for their worldview, those within the government, politics and the financial markets look to a select group of entrenched print journalists to sniff the winds of political change. Those winds started blowing against George W. Bush and his administration before the war began. In what appears to be intensifying anti-Bush rhetoric, an unprecedented media effort is beginning to cut the legs from under the administration even as it gambles everything on an increasingly elusive military victory.

March 12 – Beginning with a relatively unknown press organization, it was reported at www.informationtimes.com that 35 members of the U.S. Congress, overwhelmingly Democrat, had flatly rejected the U.S. war effort and were calling for a repeal of the February resolution authorizing the president to use force against Iraq.

March 12 – On the same day, journalistic heavyweight Howard Fineman of NEWSWEEK reported that the "blame game" had already begun for a war that had not. He wrote "But few think it’s going to be easy. And my guess is that team discipline inside the Bush administration is about to be fractured by the collateral damage that already is being caused by a war we have yet to fight. We are embarrassingly alone diplomatically, and State Department underlings (privately) blame Rumsfeld & Co. Inside the Pentagon - but outside of Rumsfeld’s office – I’m told that E-Ring brass have adopted what one source calls a ‘Vietnam mentality,’ a sense of resignation about a policy...they seriously doubt will work...

"This time around is a different story. The closer we get to the event, the less Bush is in control of events..."

March 14 – The Los Angeles Times’ Greg Miller reported that a State Department document was contradicting the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi invasion would encourage the spread of democracy.

"A classified State Department report expresses doubt that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.

"The report exposes significant divisions within the Bush administration over the so-called domino theory, one of the arguments that underpins the case for invading Iraq."

The story specifically singled out Pentagon hawks Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz as objects of criticism by the U.S. intelligence community.

March 15 – The International Herald Tribune reported that top officials of the World Trade Organization had also started turning on Bush by reporting, "...officials said they feared that American moves within the organization and toward a war in Iraq would weaken respect for international rules and lead to serious practical consequences for the world economy and business.

"In the past months the United States has compiled one of the worst records for violating trade rules...

"They said they were worried that all international institutions would suffer a loss of credibility if the one superpower appeared to be choosing which rules to obey and which rules to ignore."

The WTO, globalization, is the heart of the economic power bloc that brought Bush into power.

March 16 – The big guns at The Washington Post begin to open fire. In a lengthy story on the controversial Carlyle Group, a major private investment bank with which both the President and his father have deep financial connections, Greg Schneider made some absolutely stunning statements:

"David M. Rubenstein is exasperated, and he blurts something that a quick look around the room proves is outrageous: "We’re not," he nearly shouts, "that well connected!

"Behind him is a picture of Rubenstein on a plane with then-Gov. George W. Bush. Across the room, a photo of Rubenstein with the President’s father and mother. Next to that, Rubenstein and Mikhail Gorbachev. Elsewhere: Rubenstein and Jimmy Carter. On a bookshelf: Rubenstein and the pope...

"Rubenstein, after all, is founder of the Carlyle Group...

"But the connections have cost Carlyle, in ways that are hard to measure. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the business world – omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister...

"Last year then-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that Carlyle’s and Bush’s ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. While her comments were widely dismissed as irresponsible, the publicity highlighted Carlyle’s increasingly notorious reputation. Internet sites with headlines such as "The Axis of Corporate Evil" purport to link Carlyle to everything from Enron to Al Qaeda.

"’We’ve actually replaced the Trilateral Commission’ as the darling of conspiracy theorists, says Rubenstein – who, truth be told, happens to be a member of the Trilateral Commission.

"It didn’t help that as the World trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former President Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day...

"The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return...

"Times are changing, though. It’s no longer valid to assume that Carlyle’s golden roll of all-stars automatically opens doors in certain parts of the world, says Youssef M. Ibrahim of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. ‘George Bush junior is kind of screwing his father up, slowly but surely, in terms of securing relationships in the region,’ Ibrahim says of the Mideast. The current administration’s support for Israel, its hostility toward Iraq and its rocky dealings with the Saudi royal family have soured business and political relationships alike, he says."

[To view previous FTW stories on the Carlyle group please visit http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/index.html#bush.]

March 16 – On the same day as the Carlyle story, one of The Washington Post’s biggest pundits for several decades, Walter Pincus, fired a serious shot into the administration’s belly. To veterans of the 1996-98 popular nationwide campaign to expose CIA connections to cocaine trafficking, Pincus’ name will be remembered as one of the chief defenders of the CIA. In fact, Pincus has been one of the Post’s primary CIA conduits for more than thirty years. In 1967, he wrote a short feature for the Post titled, "How I Traveled the World on a CIA Stipend."

In a story titled "U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms", Pincus described how U.S. "Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from the White House, Pentagon and other government policymakers for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.

"The assertions, coming on the eve of a possible decision by President Bush to go to war against Iraq, have raised concerns among some members of the intelligence community about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence in a desire to convince the American public..."

Pincus went on to detail how key U.S. Senators like Carl Levin and John Warner were questioning data that had apparently been misrepresented and/or hidden from the U.N.

An ominous note at the end of the story, reminding anyone who read it of Watergate and the demise of the Nixon presidency, added "Staff Writer Bob Woodward contributed to this report."

March 18 – Pincus returned again, in the company of Post Staff Writer Dana Milbank, to place more bricks in the wall that might seal the administration’s fate. The story titled, "Bush Clings to Dubious Allegations About Iraq" opened with the lead, "As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that have been challenged – and in some cases disproved – by the United Nations, European governments and even U.S. intelligence reports."

The story went on to document misrepresentations by George Bush, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell that made it clear that if George W. Bush was going down his whole administration was going with him. It was now a part of the official Washington record that all three had been guilty of misrepresentations to the press and the American people.

March 20 – Columnist Craig Roberts, writing in the traditionally pro-Republican, conservative Washington Times delivered perhaps the most shocking signal that the power establishment, which should have stopped the war before it started, was moving to set the administration up for a fall.

In a column titled "A Reckless Path", Roberts’ lead paragraph read:

"Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre of neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him at odds with the United Nations and America’s allies."

It got worse from there.

"...On the eve of Mr. Bush’s ultimatum, it came to light that a key piece of evidence used by the Bush administration to link Iraq to a nuclear weapons program is a forgery. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has asked the FBI to investigate the forged documents that the Bush administration has used to make its case that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

Amazingly, Roberts then went on to make a comparison with Adolf Hitler’s faked attacks by SS soldiers dressed as Polish troops in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, which started the Second World War.

Roberts closed his column with a dire warning. "Mr. Bush and his advisers have forgotten that the power of an American president is temporary and relative."

March 22 – One of The New York Times’ chief experts on intelligence, with close contacts at the CIA, is James Risen. Whenever reading a Risen story it’s a safe bet to assume that it was fed to him directly by CIA headquarters. In a story headlined, "CIA Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports" Risen wrote:

"The recent disclosure that reports claiming Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger were based partly on forged documents has renewed complaints among analysts at the C.I.A. about the way intelligence related to Iraq has been handled, several intelligence officials said.

"Analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.

"For months, a few C.I.A. analysts have privately expressed concerns to colleagues and Congressional officials that they have faced pressure in writing intelligence reports to emphasize links between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda.

"As the White House contended that links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda justified military action against Iraq, these analysts complained that reports on Iraq have attracted unusually intense scrutiny from senior policy makers within the Bush administration.

"’A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-Al Qaeda case has been handled,’ said one intelligence official familiar with the debate."

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES TURN ON BUSH/BLAIR

It has been happening for two months now. Leaks, protests, even overt criticisms from those like former senior CIA analyst Stephen Pelletier, who has revealed that it was Iran rather than Iraq which had killed thousands of Kurds in massive poison gas attacks in the 1980s. More recently we have seen British intelligence personnel leak information to the press showing that Britain’s infamous intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been plagiarized from outdated information in graduate student papers and that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in illegal wiretapping of U.N. officials in attempts to secure enough votes for a resolution in support of the invasion. One or perhaps two of these events could be explained as the actions of individuals. But the frequency and number of these attacks is suggesting that the intelligence services, which view themselves as permanent and enduring institutions as compared to passing administrations, are slowly pulling structural supports from underneath the Bush and Blair administrations’ platform.

On February 8, Counterpunch published a statement by a group calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which gave Secretary of State Colin Powell a C- grade for providing "context and perspective" on Iraqi weapons and intent. The statement specifically and correctly chided the Bush administration for making the violation of a U.N. resolution a pretext for war pointing out that Israel’s refusal to comply from a U.N. resolution calling for its withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 has never been addressed.

[NOTE: Israel is currently in violation of 64 U.N. resolutions as opposed to Iraq’s 17]

The VIPS statement also vigorously disputed any notion that Iraq posed any immediate threat to the U.S. and quoted CIA reports supporting that position. It also disputed Bush/Powell contentions that Iraq had any previous involvement with terrorist activities. Revealing what may actually be an intention of the Bush administration, VIPS stated, "Indeed, it is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future."

And, striking a chord that is sure to resonate in millions of U.S. military veterans, VIPS observed, "Reminder: The last time we sent troops to the Gulf, over 600,000 of them, one out of three came back ill – many with unexplained disorders of the nervous system. Your Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs recently closed the VA healthcare system to nearly 200,000 eligible veterans by administrative fiat."

Stories from early March in Britain’s The Observer actually produced a copy of a Top Secret NSA memorandum calling on allied intelligence agencies to increase their wiretapping and monitoring of U.N. diplomats who might swing a Security Council vote in favor of the U.S. While reportage on this major breach of international trust and protocol has gone away, the rage felt by many diplomats has not. It was later disclosed that an employee of British intelligence who was outraged by its contents had leaked the memo. However, reading between the lines, this writer suspects that the leak took place with a wink and a nod from higher ups.

By March 14, the activities of VIPS were getting favorable coverage by the Associated Press, a sign that powers controlling both the media and the intelligence services were pushing the agenda. Although varying editions of the story appeared in print, on the AP web site and in different parts of the country, the basic story retained a key lead sentence. "A small group comprised mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq."

Such a statement from intelligence veterans has serious repercussions in a discipline that is noted for never leaking information. That is, unless there is an agenda that intelligence agencies themselves are pursuing. In those cases the CIA plays the media, as one CIA executive once described, "like a Mighty Wurlitzer."

As resignations of outraged civil servants are stacking up on both sides of the Atlantic like freshly cut firewood, the Bush administration was also seriously hurt by the resignation of the top Bush National Security Council official in charge of terrorism, Rand Beers. A March 19 UPI story, while repeating the Bush administration position that Beers’ resignation was not because of administration deceit and vanishing credibility, left no doubt that Beers, widely respected in Washington, was just plain fed up and possibly sensing a sinking ship.

OIL'S NOT WELL

The utterly ridiculous and unjustified drop in oil prices and upsurge in the Dow last week is belied by real data on oil supplies as the Iraqi invasion stumbles. As the war intensifies some real garbage and some occasional gems of truth are coming from the major media.

First, it is a given that while the war is in progress, Iraqi oil exports are virtually non-existent. The port region around Basra – which accounts for well more than half of Iraqi exports -- is virtually shut down. One pipeline running from northern Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan is reported to be intact but there are no reports as to whether oil is actually flowing. It’s not likely. What this means is that it is a safe bet that two million plus barrels per day (Mbpd) have been taken out of world supplies.

In the face of this, BusinessWeek, in the February 24 issue, has engaged in the outrageously dishonest reporting that the Caspian basin may hold 200 billion barrels (Gb) of reserves and that there are some three trillion barrels of proven conventional oil remaining on the planet. Extensive research conducted by FTW has shown that Caspian reserves have been verified by drilling results over the last three years to be only around 40 Gb and are a major disappointment. FTW data was derived through extensive research in oil and gas journals, official government reports and by direct interviews with oil executives who have been in the region.

Planetary reserves of conventional oil are only about one trillion barrels or enough to keep the world supplied for approximately 30 years in an ever tightening and ever more expensive marketplace that threatens economies all over the globe. Motives for the BusinessWeek deception would include providing propaganda cover for the fact that the invasion of Iraq is totally about oil and also give false confidence to investors as financial and equity markets teeter on the brink of collapse.

The Wall Street Journal, however, on March 18, recently engaged in some serious truth telling. In a page-one story titled "Why the U.S. IS Still Hooked On Oil Imports", the Journal reported:

"President Bush says hydrogen power will lead to energy independence... Mr. Bush is almost certain to be proved wrong, at least in the next couple of decades."

After acknowledging that oil price spikes have always led to recessions, the Journal relied on an extensive body of research of the statements of OPEC founder, Saudi Sheikh Zaki Yamani to hit at one of the core motivators for the Iraqi invasion – oil production costs. Not every country or region spends the same amount of money to produce a barrel of oil. And nowhere is oil cheaper to produce than in the Persian Gulf. The Journal quoted Yamani as stating at a 1980s OPEC meeting, "Let’s see how the North Sea can produce oil when prices are at $5 a barrel."

The Journal continued: "At low prices, the Persian Gulf countries have an unbeatable edge. In the mid 1980s it cost them a couple of dollars a barrel to produce oil. It cost about $15 a barrel off the coast of Britain and Norway or in the U.S." That was in the 1980s. Credible estimates of North Sea production costs in dying fields now place the cost per barrel at over $20.

Russia has current estimated production costs of between $19 and $27 a barrel which reveal the key to everything that’s going on now. The world is running out of oil. In order to save a teetering U.S. economy the Bush administration is betting on the rapidly diminishing hope that it can get Iraqi oil back on the markets and available to the U.S. at a price of between $15 and $20 per barrel. If the prices drop to the levels Bush needs, OPEC loses its profits and Russian oil becomes uncompetitive in the market place.

Bush is not going to get his way.

In a major development, it was reported on Saturday that growing unrest in Nigeria, an OPEC member and the world’s sixth largest exporter, had shut down the Chevron Texaco pumping facilities. A story in today’s Economist confirmed earlier reports that both Chevron and French giant TotalFinaElf had not only shut down production but ordered evacuations of all their personnel. These moves take an immediate 330,000 barrels a day out of world supplies and they also hearken back to recent lessons learned in Venezuela after a massive strike shut down Venezuelan production. Refineries and wells don’t operate at the flip of a switch. They require a constant flow of chemicals and products to keep their systems primed. When recovering from a shut down, it often takes a considerable period to reach previous production levels.

While OPEC has announced that it will increase production to offset shortages, its ability to do so is limited to perhaps a 3-5 Mbpd increase. That’s a drop in the bucket in current tight markets and in a world that consumes a billion barrels every twelve days. Iraqi oil fields will require billions of dollars of investment and years to increase Iraqi production to five or eight Mbpd. And that clock will only start ticking once the country is secure and safe, an outcome that is not at all guaranteed at the moment.

In the meantime, according to The Financial Times today, the Mexican government has announced its intent to start selling U.S. dollars on world currency markets. This move could further weaken an already shaky U.S. dollar, especially if other nations, angered at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, follow suit. Since oil is currently purchased in dollars, inevitable future oil price spikes could become doubly painful for the U.S. economy as the dollar loses value.

BUSH'S WATGERATE BURGLARY

"At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any U.S. claim regarding Iraq." – The Boston Globe, March 16, 2003

The first official report that documents prepared on stationery of the governments of Niger and Iraq detailing a planned sale of uranium to Iraq were forged came on March 7. Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council that the documents, "were not authentic." The first paper to break the news was London’s Financial Times. The documents, not very clever or convincing, failed to convince the U.N. but were, however, included in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s now legendary flawed intelligence dossier, which had been presented to Parliament on Sept. 24, 2002.

The Washington Post picked up on the story on March 8 where it reported that, "The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away – including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said."

The Post reported administration officials as giving the somewhat lame excuse, "We fell for it." No one even tried to suggest a motive for someone other than the Bush or Blair regimes to commit the crime.

Not everyone fell for it. As reported in what are now at least a half dozen stories, the CIA was suspicious of the documents and purposely left them out of their own report on Iraqi weapons. That did not, however, prevent George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney from touting them as authentic. The State Department even authoritatively referred to the documents in a December 19, 2002 Fact Sheet titled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council".

By March 13, The Post was back with a story indicating that the FBI was looking into the source of the documents and "the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq."

Huh? Is there some country out there we haven’t heard of that really hates Iraq other than the U.S., Britain or Israel?

The Post story closed by saying, "The CIA, which also had obtained the documents, had questions about ‘whether they were accurate,’ said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq’s program to procure weapons of mass destruction."

This begs the question as to whether CIA Director George Tenet told Bush or Cheney or Powell that the documents were forged. That’s his job above all else: to give the President reliable and trustworthy intelligence.

On March 14, Ken Guggenheim of The Associated Press reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee had called the FBI and asked for an investigation of the documents. Rockefeller’s full name is John D. Rockefeller, IV and he is a direct descendant of the same family that essentially brought the Bush family into power. What is amazing here is not only that someone has requested an investigation of just one of the hundreds of Bush administration inconsistencies and proven lies since 9-11, but that it was a Rockefeller who requested it. That reality has thundered throughout Washington’s power corridors like an earthquake.

FTW placed calls to both FBI headquarters and Rockefeller’s Washington offices asking for comment or further information. An FBI spokesperson told FTW that the Bureau had nothing to say. After hearing what the topic was, a Rockefeller spokesperson promised to call back but did not.

Colin Powell immediately started denying that the State Department had anything to do with creating the forgeries. No one had accused him! And the story picked up "legs" in print media around the world.

By the 15th, CNN had picked up the story on its web site and had added damning observations about the childish, crude and "obvious" nature of the forgeries that "should never have gotten past the CIA." But the CIA had already established a record saying that it never trusted the documents. Asked about the documents on Meet the Press the previous Sunday, Powell simply stated, "It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine."

Not so fine.

Where did the documents come from? Already inconsistent finger pointing, eerily reminiscent of the loose threads pulled on by Woodward and Bernstein in 1972 and 1973 are starting to surface. Powell says he doesn’t know where the documents came from. Britain is remaining silent and the government of Niger has issued a blunt statement indicating that the documents were forged in London and Washington.

My guess is that they were forged inside the National Security Council rather than at the CIA. The CIA would have done a better job. Can you say, "Iran-Contra"?

The most scathing blow to date – and there are sure to be more – came from Congressman Henry Waxman (D, Ca.) who, in a six-page March 17 letter to George Bush, created a locked-down record of Bush’s, Cheney’s, Rumsfeld’s and Powell’s use of the documents, even pointing out that the President had made reference to the documents in his State-of-the-Union address in January by saying, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Waxman noted next that, "a day later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at a news briefing that Iraq "recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Waxman closed his letter with three chilling questions that may now distance George Tenet from George W. Bush and his cabinet, who will all go down together if it becomes necessary. Waxman asked the President to directly address:

1. Whether CIA officials communicated their doubts about the credibility of the forged evidence to other Administration officials, including officials at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the White House;
2. Whether the CIA had any input into the "Fact Sheet" distributed by the State Department on December 19, 2002; and
3. Whether the CIA reviewed your statement in the State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium from Africa and, if so, what the CIA said about the statement.

I can hear the distant echoes of Senator Howard Baker in the Senate Watergate hearings asking, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"

THE PERFECT STORM

It’s all coming together on the radar screen and the chances are that these storms are going to merge. In this all out economic war of survival, as Peak Oil forces its way into the public consciousness, Russia will likely continue to provide Saddam with arms and technical assistance. France may well share intelligence. China, with the slightest nod, can contribute tactical advice and many mines for the Mediterranean. All of them can indirectly, and through plausibly deniable methods, foster and supply revolts in oil producing regions around the globe. And they can all laugh and deny as the U.S. tries to point a finger at them. This has all been done before.

In the meantime Vladimir Putin can cushion his allies with cheap oil as the U.S. starts to die of thirst.

Before Americans become outraged that such a scenario might be unfolding, I would remind them that every one of these tactics has been employed by the United States in spades against each of these countries for more than fifty years. It was the U.S. that chose this course to begin with. The tragedy, of course, is that the American people will suffer greatly as the storms converge. The truth is that the American people have never been any more of a concern to the powers that be than the people in the rest of the world have, except that giving them a higher standard of living made them compliant and dumb. It appears as if even that is no longer necessary. The destruction of American credibility and the transfer of its wealth are necessary steps in the creation of the New World Order.

posted 03-26-2003 02:25 AM            

TRUTH !

Newsday (New York, NY) March 21, 2003

If Backed Into Baghdad, Will Iraq Use Chemicals?

In-Depth Coverage

By Earl Lane. WASHINGTON BUREAU

Washington - American troops moving into Iraq face a range of possible threats, experts said yesterday, but the most dangerous may be as old as warfare itself: having to engage enemy forces on their own turf, particularly in the sprawling city of Baghdad.

"The one they worry about most is urban combat," said John Reppert, a retired Army brigadier general at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "That would deprive us of many of the advantages of our superior technology."

Specialists also fear Baghdad might be the place where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's special security forces, pushed to the wall, might use chemical weapons.

When American forces are on the outskirts of Baghdad and he knows his days are numbered, Hussein and his remaining loyalists may use every weapon at their disposal, said Ibrahim al-Marashi, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

The CIA has estimated that Iraq has 100 to 500 metric tons of chemical agents such as mustard gas and VX, a nerve gas. That is a small amount for battlefield purposes, some analysts said, particularly against U.S. forces equipped with warning devices and protective suits. But dispersal of such agents in or near Baghdad could cause civilian casualties, they said.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research group specializing in military affairs, said it would be a mistake to assume that Iraq will wait until a siege of Baghdad to use its chemical weapons. "It is a big dog that has not barked," Pike said, "but it is perfectly capable of barking at any minute." Iraq has the ability to deliver chemical weapons in artillery shells, Pike said, which it did during the war with Iran in the 1980s. He said chemical and biological weapons are controlled by Hussein's Special Security Organization, a group many expect to follow orders to the end.

Others were skeptical about Iraq's ability to carry out a coordinated attack using chemical weapons. "I don't think they have the means to deliver them that they had in 1991," said James Phillips, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. He said American forces, with air superiority, could quickly destroy massed artillery formations suspected of readying a chemical weapons attack.

Iraq began a biological weapons program in the mid-1980s and by 1990 it had stockpiled missile warheads and aerial bombs filled with anthrax, botullinum toxin or aflatoxin. It also investigated use of other toxins. While United Nations teams supervised destruction of Iraqi biological weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, experts say the status of an alleged covert biological program in Iraq is unclear. Administration officials have warned that Iraq has mobile laboratories, housed in nondescript vehicles, capable of producing germ weapons.

American forces have been immunized against anthrax, and some experts question whether Iraqis would be willing to use persistent biological agents, such as anthrax, on their own soil.

There is no evidence that Iraq has a nuclear weapon. Despite Bush administration claims that Hussein could be close to having the bomb, the recently suspended UN inspections found no convincing proof that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program or was engaging in any prohibited nuclear activities.

GRAPHIC: Pool Photo / Russell Boyce - British Royal Air Force personnel wait in a bunker with their full nuclear, chemical, biological kit on a base in Kuwait yesterday. Specialists fear that Iraqi special security forces in Baghdad might unleash chemical weapons.

posted 03-26-2003 02:33 AM            

We shall certainly see WHO is Lying...won't we?

But I certainly already know.

posted 03-26-2003 12:47 PM            

in other words...blah...blah...blah...

there's an old cherokee saying "a wise man says alot with very little words"

posted 03-26-2003 01:23 PM               

quote:

---

Gulf war syndrome research reveals present danger

...

The troops have practised the drills, and are carrying the best high-tech chemical detectors an army can buy. The US marines even have a brand new piece of kit: pigeons, which act like canaries in a 19th-century coal mine. The birds are so sensitive to nerve agents such as sarin and VX that they fall ill at a whiff of danger.

What the soldiers have not been told is that about one in 10 of them are almost as sensitive to nerve agents as the pigeons. There is now mounting evidence that exposure to minuscule amounts of these chemicals can cause permanent brain damage in susceptible people, and that is exactly what happened 12 years ago when thousands of troops returning from Kuwait started to complain of debilitating symptoms.

Repeated surveys find 30 per cent more sick people among Gulf veterans than in comparable groups who did not serve. But the official position in Britain, Canada and the US is that Gulf war syndrome is not a specific medical condition.

All accept something is wrong with the 1991 veterans, but official research has focused on post-traumatic stress. The US has paid disability compensation to more than 110,000 of the 696,000 troops who fought in that war.

Neural damage

Then in October 2002, the US Department of Defense admitted there is "increasing evidence" that neural damage is affecting the ex-soldiers. It doubled research funding, including work on protective treatments. Veterans called it a "stunning reversal".

---

posted 03-28-2003 09:48 AM            

Political oversights may have stalled offensive, but Rumsfeld is still urging a faster, riskier attack

Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

In early February, just a few weeks before the Iraq war began, a funny thing happened in the corridors of the Pentagon - it went strangely quiet. After a flurry of deployment orders in the new year, sending tens of thousands of soldiers and marines out to the Gulf, the flow of paperwork out of the defence secretary's office slowed to a trickle.

"There's not much happening here right now," a slightly bemused senior military officer said at the time.

It now appears that Donald Rumsfeld, standing at his trademark lectern from which he micromanaged the war plans, blocked a request from his field commander, General Tommy Franks, to start moving two heavy divisions to the Gulf. There were already enough forces in the theatre, he argued, according to officials in the Pentagon.

That single decision did more than any other to shape the dilemmas coalition forces are facing now in Iraq, one week into the war. Mr Rumsfeld had promised a war of the kind no one had ever seen before, full of hi-tech surprises and breathtaking special forces raids that would go straight to the core of the regime.

The images from the battlefield, at least for now, have told another, more familiar story - American GIs and marine "grunts" trudging through the mud while an unseen, committed guerrilla force lurks in tropical undergrowth, or in the alleyways of densely packed towns.

This is not Vietnam, and the images are, in that respect, misleading. There is some talk now of the war lasting months rather than weeks, but not even the most downcast pessimist in Washington or London believes this battle will go on for years or that Saddam Hussein will win.

However, there is rising concern among serving and retired military officers with memories of that conflict, that the US may have entered another war with blithely over-optimistic assumptions, and without the forces to do the job.

The heavy armour that Mr Rumsfeld held up in February, the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas and the 1st Armoured Division in Germany, will only begin moving next month. It could take up to five weeks more for them to ship their tanks and other equipment.

The 20,000 soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division held their farewell ceremonies in Texas yesterday, and their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles are already in the Red sea, having been diverted from Turkey. But they will probably not be ready to fight at the frontlines until mid-April. American paratroopers finally opened the northern front yesterday, securing an airfield to which tanks, artillery and armoured cars belonging to the 1st Infantry Division were being flown in last night. It was unclear whether the force being gathered there would ultimately be strong enough to secure the northern oilfields, or even march on Baghdad.

For the time being, it will be up to three US divisions and Britain's 1 Armoured Division, to carry the war on their shoulders. But the American vanguard of that force, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Division, has spent a week slogging through sandstorms, mud and near-constant guerrilla attack along the Euphrates valley.

Meanwhile, the US marines' northward push from Nassiriya has advanced about 15 miles until stopped by the Iraqis at Daghara. These forces face continued Iraqi counterattacks on Nassiriya and the bridges across the Euphrates, which are making supplying the advance difficult.

It is unclear whether either the marines or the 3rd Infantry has the resources and energy left to finish the job and take the Iraqi capital. The 101st Airborne Division, which moved the bulk of its helicopters into forward bases in the western desert overnight on Wednesday, is still relatively fresh but it cannot take on the Republican Guard with its Apache assault helicopters alone. An attempt to do just that on Sunday was repelled by intense anti-aircraft fire.

Mr Rumsfeld now faces a dilemma - to raise the stakes or to cut his losses. The former means taking an even bigger gamble: press harder on Baghdad in the hope that the regime will be "decapitated" and the resistance wither. The latter means slowing down, waiting for the 4th Infantry to arrive with its tanks, and methodically weeding out the Fedayeen militia and Ba'ath party enforcers from the southern towns.

Both options offer benefits, but are weighed down with costs and risks. For the time being, it looks as though Mr Rumsfeld, the man who is still dictating the pace of this conflict from his Pentagon lectern, will follow his "forward-leaning" instincts and take the faster, riskier route.

Blitzkrieg

The stakes involved are all the higher since his instincts so far have not paid off. The blitzkrieg approach to the war was built on two assumptions, which have since proved to be misplaced: that the Shia south would rise up immediately and hand such cities as Basra to the coalition; and that President Saddam would give up most of the countryside and adopt a defensive crouch in Baghdad.

It was a fundamental mistake, argues Bob Killebrew, a retired army colonel who helped plan for the last Gulf war.

"It's always bad to build plans based on the cooperation of the enemy," he said.

In fact, the Shias, having been let down by American promises of liberation once before, in 1991, have decided to sit this war out and watch from the sidelines.

"I think one of the problems here was that so many people in the administration had a very strong political agenda, which was inspired by the Iraqi opposition, and by western mirror-imaging, assuming they want what we want," said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Iraqi military at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Meanwhile, President Saddam has learned the military lessons of the past 12 years, since the last Gulf war, in ways the Pentagon hawks did not anticipate. In particular, he learned from Mohammed Aideed, the Somali warlord who evaded capture in 1993 and lured America's best soldiers into a bloody trap in the backstreets of Mogadishu. It can be no coincidence that Republican Guard special forces have been turning up in "technicals", pickup trucks with machine guns or anti-tank weapons mounted on the back - exactly the sort Aideed used a decade ago.

Clouding the decision on deployments was a long-running internal Pentagon battle over the army. Since taking up their jobs in 2001 Mr Rumsfeld and his group of civilian reformers have been trying to revolutionise the armed forces, making the navy less dependent on its aircraft carriers and the army on its big tank-heavy divisions.

The decision to use just one such division, the 3rd Infantry, in the starting line-up for the Iraq war, was therefore highly controversial. Infantry officers are convinced that Mr Rumsfeld's decision to hold back the 1st Cavalry and 1st Armoured divisions and to use airborne troops and marines in their place, was first and foremost a political one, designed to prove a point.

Washington was not alone in its over-confidence. British ministers in private briefings before the war were presented with a picture of the effect of military action against Iraq which, it is now admitted, was far too optimistic.

The briefings were based on reports from the defence intelligence staff and MI6. Right up to the eve of the war, intelligence officials were confidently predicting that there were no Republican Guards or Iraqi special security forces anywhere in the south.

They appear to have been misled, whether deliberately or not, by the senior Iraqi figures with whom they say they were in touch.

Britain also assured Iraq's worried neighbours that the military campaign would be quick - an outcome they needed in the face of their public opinion.

The hope, say British military officials, was that a brief "shock and awe" bombing campaign would be enough to topple a fragile regime. Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, would quickly surrender. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander in chief of British forces, suggested that the most serious problems before US tanks arrived at the gates of Baghdad would be how to cope with large numbers of prisoners of war and the humanitarian needs of a displaced population.

Some of Britain's military commanders, notably Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, were much more cautious and sceptical. However, though they were consulted on the military plans, they were drawn up by the US.

The first night of bombing - not the promised "shock and awe" but a precision strike prompted by intelligence provided by the CIA - was not planned. What it did, British officials say, was to disrupt the original plan.

In the first few days of the war, British ministers remained over-optimistic. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, proclaimed the port of Umm Qasr captured on Saturday, four days before it actually was.

British military officers, like their American counterparts, admit they were surprised by Iraqi resistance.

President Saddam was not the inflexible general he was made out to be. Specifically, he or his military advisers appreciated the vulnerability of long supply lines as US troops charged towards Baghdad.

For the British and their main objective, Basra, President Saddam sent in "Chemical Ali" - his loyal lieutenant, General Ali Hassan al-Majid - to stiffen resolve, or rather to coerce local Iraqi troops into counterattacks or to stay in the city.

This left British troops with an acute dilemma compounded by the growing humanitarian crisis and lack of food and water: to bomb military and Ba'ath party targets in the city from outside, thereby risking civilian casualties, or enter in force at the risk of casualties among their troops.

British military officials admit they have had to make "adjustments" to their tactical battle plans in the south after encountering stiff resistance in several towns.

Originally the British plan had been to sweep through the southern provinces and to surround and contain Basra and other large towns in the area but not to occupy them. Their task was to rush in humanitarian aid and provide a shield in the south to protect advancing US troops.

British officers have frequently spoken about how they wanted to avoid gritty, urban street fighting which might turn the local population against the whole military campaign.

But rather than surrender en masse, Iraqi forces have put up often fierce resistance, largely driven by paramilitary militias, British officials say. That has required a more aggressive British approach.

"The fact is that we now understand what is going on in Basra to a greater degree than clearly we could have predicted," Air Marshal Burridge said yesterday. "Until you actually see what is happening it is very difficult to make judgments."

Patient

He said that the British army's experience in Northern Ireland would help in military operations in southern Iraq. The air marshal's comments suggest much more dangerous urban warfare lies ahead for the Royal Marines and paratroopers now deployed around Basra.

"We have enormous experience in Belfast and we know how fluid these situations can become," said Air Marshal Burridge.

British military commanders say they are prepared to be patient in taking the city, waiting for months if necessary in an operation which, it had been assumed, would take a matter of days.

The 24,000 British combat troops engaged in Iraq are likely to remain in the south where they are still needed. One plan was for the armoured brigade to move north and provide a rear base for the US.

One of the problems is that British forces use different ammunition and even different types of fuel to the US, so they need their own separate supply lines.

The offensive on Baghdad is likely to be an almost solely American affair. The crucial question is whether they have the strength to fight on through three Republican Guard divisions and into the urban warfare of Baghdad without waiting three weeks for significant reinforcements.

"In military terminology, attackers reach their 'culminating point' when their supplies and energy are depleted to the point when they can no longer overcome the resistance," Col Killebrew said. "The question now is when do General Franks' forces reach their 'culminating point'."

The worst outcome, he argued, would be for the troops in the field to "go on and on until they run out of steam and then face defeat".

In a sign that the Pentagon is beginning to acknowledge the problem it faces, there were reports yesterday that the 2nd Armoured Cavalry, based in Louisiana, had been called into action. But a regiment on its own is unlikely to provide the level of force protection for US supply lines that the field commanders are calling for.

However, bringing units back from the front to fight the Fedayeen in the south while waiting for the 4th Infantry Division to catch up also carries costs. The US would lose the initiative to the Iraqis. Weeks of aerial bombardment would kill more civilians, raising international outrage to new peaks, while back home there would inevitably be talk of a quagmire. Those are high costs for a defence secretary who has made "forward-leaning" his catchphrase.

There were reports yesterday that frontline US infantry near Najaf, the scene of intense exchanges with Iraqi guerrillas this week, were being braced for a poten tially decisive battle with the Medina Division of the Republican Guard somewhere between the holy Shia shrine at Kerbala and the ancient city of Babylon.

Meanwhile, the helicopter-borne brigades of the 101st Airborne in the western desert, are preparing to hit Baghdad's defenders from above and behind, while special forces and coalition bombers strike at the centres of power.

It is a strategy that is built on an adapted version of the Pentagon's earlier assumptions. It assumes that the guerrilla fighters are hated by the population and will wither away once orders stop coming from Baghdad.

"When Baghdad folds or falls and people realise there is no central power behind the thugs, the situation will turn," a senior Pentagon official predicted. He said Mr Rumsfeld's critics were still thinking of the battlefield as linear, whereas the new tactical thinking involved "networks", combining armour, mobile forces striking from all directions and close air support.

In short, the message coming from the Pentagon is full speed ahead. The new tactics will work and the regime will collapse - just wait and see. It has only been a week.

Ironically, it will be up to the army - that bastion of conservatism in Mr Rumsfeld's eyes - to prove his theories right. The marines may play a supporting role once they have made their way through the waterlogged Tigris valley, but the 3rd Infantry and the 101st Airborne will be at the centre of the fighting in Baghdad.

posted 03-28-2003 08:25 PM            

The Iraqi people and the 50 dead civilians hit by "Bunker Busters" sure don't want us there.

Probably pissing off the rest of the world as well.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_765250.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

posted 03-29-2003 11:56 AM            

The U.S. is threatening a sustained aerial bombing of Iraq that would be the heaviest military assault since the Gulf War. These threats come in the midst of economic sanctions against Iraq that deny people food and medicine and are already responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqi people. The bombing during the Gulf War slaughtered 200,000 people in six short weeks.

In the seven years since the Gulf War, the U.S. has plotted and schemed to further secure its imperial claws around the throats of the Iraqi people. This time the government says that it's necessary to bomb Iraq in order to protect the world from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction." It's another lie--like the babies in the incubators, like the bombing of the Amirya shelter, like the road to Basra.

You wanna talk weapons of mass destruction? The U.S. is the world's number one producer, distributor and user of weapons of mass destruction--period. We remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped twice the amount of bombs used on Europe during all of World War II. In the Gulf war, the U.S. dropped 88,000 tons of bombs on Iraq--equal to seven Hiroshima-type atomic bombs! With this kind of track record, what right does the U.S. have to demand inspection of any country's weapons?! Let's set things straight: Iraq is not the aggressor; the U.S. is! The Iraqi people are the victims. What they know about weapons of mass destruction, they learned from being under them, not using them. The current U.S. war moves are not about ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. They're about ensuring that all weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of Amerikkka and its allies so that they can continue to dominate the Middle East. The fact that the use of nuclear weapons has even become a part of this debate speaks volumes about the true agenda of the U.S.

The U.S. government plans to wage a "clean" fight by dropping "smart bombs" from a safe distance: just in and out with no American casualties. Well we say that the U.S. has blood on its hands and there are no such things as "smart" weapons. The lives of the Iraqi people are no less valuable than the lives of you or I. The Iraqi people are not our enemy; they are our sisters and brothers. We see their faces, we hear their screams, we smell their burning flesh...and we say NO MORE!

Where ever you are and what ever you do, our collective outrage must be heard. We must expose their lies and stop the bombing. VVAW AI stands shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people in defiance of U.S. genocide. We urge all justice-minded people to join us.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist
PO Box 21604, Seattle, WA 98111-3604
Phone/FAX: (206) 374-2215
E-mail: vvawai@oz.net, web: www.oz.net/~vvawai

posted 03-29-2003 01:26 PM            

Interesting web address, do these people live in OZ? As far as I'm concerned if they don't support the troops now that they are there, they might as well go to OZ because as American Veterans they should be behind the troops 100% You and all who don't support our country, live in a smoke filled fairyland blinded by the pot you smoke, the bullshit you read from people like Alex Jones, and your hatred for this country and this administration.

I have not seen one bit of truth in any of the posts you have done Mech. All of it is bullshit put out by people who spread propaganda to sell books, tapes, t-shirts, and are laughing all the way to the bank because of people like you who buy into this.

As far as Swamp Gas goes my respect for this person's opinion has plummeted as he has come off sounding like some dope smoking hippie wannabe who thinks the worlds ills are cured by music and pot. I haven't seen any reliable posts from this person either.

I'm sure this is going to start a cut and paste frenzy again from the unreliable sources of propaganda to try and prove a point but it's all for naught. Fact is, the United States and UK are engaged in a war to remove a regime from power and restore peace to a country that has been under a dictatorship for quite a while. The people of Iraq would like to enjoy a little freedom also.

Why do I believe this? Because there are some resident doctors at the hospital where I work from Iraq. I have had some nice discussions with them and they totally agree with the liberation movement. The regime under which they grew up used terror to rule. I have heard the truth from people who have lived there. Do you propagandists know anyone who has? Listen to the truths coming out of the peoples mouths who have lived there and still do live there. If the terrorist act of blowing up a car and killing American troops isn't enough to convince you that saddam has supported terrorist groups then I guess I'm going to say a prayer for you and hope you can find peace in your own soul.

People in the states need to rally behind the troops and give them all your support.

http://groups.msn.com/hugstokuwaitadoptasoldier

posted 03-29-2003 04:29 PM            

Oh yeah? That's a big accusation PV. Care to BACK UP THAT STATEMENT?

posted 03-29-2003 04:56 PM            

Tough conditions
Marines are contending with tough conditions
Here on the frontline this conflict is taking its toll on morale.

I can see the signs in the US marines I am with outside Nasiriyah.

Quite a few of the troops have said to me that this isn't what they were expecting.

They have had a tiring week of guerrilla-style fighting and it continues.

They are frustrated that their political masters gave the American public the impression that it would be easier than it's turned out to be.

But, also that they should have given them more expectation about Iraqi resistance like this.

They don't want to admit they can't deal with it, but I think there is definitely a sense that it is not the kind of fighting that they were really trained for.

One Marine told me: "I've had enough of being fired at from all directions, I just want to go home".

I thought it quite a surprising thing to say.

Appalling conditions

I think the other problem is the conditions here. There were major sandstorms earlier in the week, which created an appalling amount of dust.

Marine
I've had enough of being fired at from all directions, I just want to go home
US Marine
What has followed are Marines waking up every day in a very muddy campsite.

The dust has settled but they are surrounded by mudflats and rubbish dumps.

Some Marines are literally camped on top of garbage, and the amount of flies around at times is quite depressing.

The Marines would say that they are trained for tough conditions, so they can take this kind of thing.

All Marines eat MRE's, which are ready-to-eat meals. They come in sealed brown plastic bags, about the size of a well-padded filofax.

Three of these a day should be enough for the average Marine.

They come in all types of different varieties, beef stew, chicken with noodles, chicken with salsa, and slightly strange sounding things called formed turkey.

I've had that and I'm not totally convinced it is turkey. There are a lot of vegetarian meals, but over a long time they're boring, and they're not fresh.

Injured colleagues

On top of their poor living conditions you have to consider the effect of seeing colleagues injured, particularly after a surprise rocket attack here the other day which left 30 Marines wounded.

I was there when a lot of the injured were being brought in. Most of them had shrapnel wounds.

Some are now believed to have wounds from their own side because of friendly fire that broke out in the confusion afterwards.

But seeing their injured colleagues has undermined the mood here, and makes these soldiers feel exposed.

All around Nasiriyah is flat land, you can see Iraqi civilians walking around US positions.

Now it's come to the point that when Marines see any Iraqi civilians, they think of them as being possibly hostile. It puts them on edge.

I've been around Nasiriyah for a week, and the roads I was travelling on at the beginning of that time were thought to have little risk.

Now they're seen as very dangerous, hostile territory.

Marines travel around scanning the roadsides at all times, guns to the ready.

There are reports of renewed Iraqi resistance south of here.

Areas they've travelled through, that too is demoralising, especially to the younger soldiers.

Reinforcements

One thing that's certainly had an effect is the news that the Pentagon is deploying another 120,000 troops.

It made Marines here realise that it could be quite a long conflict.

Their style and esprit-de-corps is very strong, and they say that they can take this and fight on.

I was talking to a senior officer about the long term effect on the Marines.

He told me: "Sure they're stretched, they're tired, but they haven't been stretched to the limit yet.

"Don't think this is the end of the US Marines, just because they're receiving a slightly different type of resistance to the one they expected."