People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.
Iraq warns of more suicide missions. An Iraqi army officer kills four US soldiers in a suicide attack, a tactic Baghdad says it will start using regularly. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]
Maybe that’s supposed to have some kind of propaganda appeal with other Arab countries, but it’s not very smart.
bq. No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
George S. Patton
Iraqi Missile Shatters Kuwait City Mall [AP World News]
The Kuwaitis were lucky on the timing of this attack. The pictures of the damage on TV showed gaping holes blown up through the floor of a movie theater that had been full an hour earlier.
NYT. Second market attack in two days in Baghdad. I am more than a little skeptical about these “attacks.” Here’s why. The latest attack occured in a crowded Baghdad marketplace during the day. The vast majority of our attacks on Baghdad have and continue to be at night. Also, nearly 70% of US air attacks made during the same time period that these marketplace attacks were made were on the Republican Guard divisions well outside the city. As a result, the potential that US air strikes caused the damage is extremely low (particularly when contrasted to the high degree of accuracy attained when we were dumping almost all of our munitions on Baghdad). I don’t even think this was Iraqi anti-aircraft fire gone astray. It is rather a calculated measure to inflame Arab streets by Saddam. He is staging these explosions and it is working given the “Fox” news quality of Al Jazeera reporting. [John Robb’s Radio Weblog]
I wouldn’t put it past Saddam to do something like this. On the other hand, maybe these are just the only two of-course missiles we’ve heard about. If other missiles have gone astray but not killed anybody I doubt the Iraqis would bother saying anything.
FBI seeks Internet telephony surveillance.. SecurityFocus: FBI seeks Internet telephony surveillance. I think voice and data should be treated the same (which would make the FWD issue moot), but CALEA seems to be a little overkill. [Hack the Planet]
bq. The Justice Department and the FBI ask regulators for expanded technical capabilities to intercept Voice Over IP communications… and anything else that uses broadband.
Even if this happens, PGPfone still works fine and is quite secure.
Practice to Deceive. Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario–it’s their plan. [Washington Monthly]
A look at what the government is up to. They haven’t been hiding their goals all that well, so if you’ve been paying attention none of this will be news. It is a nice summary, though.
Iraqis ‘fire on Basra civilians’. British military sources say Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq’s second city are trying to prevent people from fleeing. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]
It’s not too clear, but this may have been the source of the reports of an uprising earlier this week.
Christopher Allbritton, former AP and New York Daily News reporter asked readers of his weblog to pay to send him to Iraq, and they did. He’s reporting from Turkey today, on his way into Iraq. Bravo. [Scripting News]
This is a really good idea! Apparently he’s headed for Kurdistan–I look forward to some detailed reports on the situation there.
Is There Something About Conservatism?. Of course these theories are not mutually exclusive. Maybe in combination we have the whole answer: the nationalist tendencies inherent in any people are mixing with the intrinsic flabbiness of conservative thought and the baseness of the media culture to generate uncritical loyalty to a nutty president who happens to be a Republican, a party which is increasingly dominated at the intellectual level by internationalist social democrats who know nothing and care nothing for liberty or traditional American values. [LewRockwell.com]
Some theories on how it is that people who support the conquest of Iraq can call themselves “conservative.”
Blunkett pushes asylum havens. Asylum seekers would be deported to UN controlled centres outside Europe under UK proposals to the EU. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]
“Asylum haven” is a rather twisted euphemism for “concentration camp.” If the US government had any decency, it would suggest to the UK that instead of setting up concentration camps, they give asylum seekers one-way tickets to America.
Henrietta Bowman at Sierra Times –
Faces of the War – I’m not sure why Ms. Bowman thinks this may be
her most controversial and unpopular piece, but it’s a good
one. [sierra]
bq.
Use “Red Dawn” for a scenario if you will. How would you, as patriotic
Americans, react if an overwhelming Chinese force invaded America,
much as we are doing Iraq, to “liberate” us? Would YOU give a good
rat’s derierre about the Geneva convention?
Look at these population figures for US cities most resembling Basra’s
1.3 million:
Press Release for Population Estimates
The closest in both numbers and climate to Basra are Phoenix and San
Diego. Now imagine both of those cities attacked by China and running
out of water, food and medicines. That is what has happened to
Basra. 60% of people in Basra are without safe water to drink. Three
days in the desert without water is a death sentence…60% of 1.3
million…
If the Chinese tried to do that to me, I would flay them alive. But
the Iraqis are supposed to WELCOME us???????
All I can say is I am praying both for our troops and for the Iraqi civilians. Do I hate someone in this damned war? YOU DAMNED BETCHA! I want to see them hung from the nearest Liberty Tree ever since the NeoCons under Donald Rumsfeld did this: On 9/11/01, barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq–even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.
[End the War on Freedom]
Evidently Ms. Bowman was correct, as her original post has disappeared from the Sierra Times forum–as have any other topics posted since 12 March. The following text now appears in place of the original post:
bq. This post closed by the Dept. of Homeland Defense, OIA, PATRIOT ACT I & II, FBI, Geneva Convention Protocols, Operation TIPS, John Asscroft, the Propaganda Machine and those who deliberately chose to close their eyes.