more on Baghdad
al-Sahhaf hired by Guardian!

Crows shall feed on (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) Gordon Brown's pancreas!

Three things struck me immediately about Gordon Brown's budget yesterday: lies, lies and more lies. He has the audacity to say that he will increase borrowing by �12bn over the next three years, when we all know that he and his illegitimate cohorts will be shamed out of office by a huge Tory triumph in May's local elections. There is no way the Conservatives can lose this. Labour cannot survive. They know this and they are desperate.

* Do not believe any rumours you have heard about Jude Law and Sadie Frost being reconciled, because in truth they were never apart. They remain together now as they always have been, and refuse to be defeated by lies promulgated by journalists intent on destroying them. Therefore, in order to demonstrate their continued solidarity to the world, they have told me that they will reaffirm their marriage vows next week on live television. You heard it here first.

* As I write this I am sitting in the courtyard of my summer house in Basra, contemplating the annihilation of the invaders sent by the criminal bastards Bush and Blair. Earlier in the week I watched as joyous Iraqis celebrated our triumph by pulling down - with the help of defecting American soldiers - Baghdad's only statue of actor Robert Donat as Mr Chips. I understand it was quite a good film, but we have no need of your imperialist icons now. Saddam has freed us from your oppressive rule, so we are saying goodbye to your Mr Chips. Ha! I have made myself laugh! I will not gloat further over this thrilling but predictable defeat which vindicates me so completely. Suffice to say that Max Clifford owes me a box of Cohibas. Thanks, everybody, and Death To America.

Personally I think the Great Statue Toppling has the al-Sahhaf signature touch as well.

neocons and fascist thought
From Common Dreams, The Neoconservative agenda:

This is not good news. There are three things to be said about the neoconservatives and what they want.

The first is that they act out of fear. They are motivated by fear of terrorist bands, armed by Islamic states, wielding weapons of mass destruction, even though this is politically, technologically and militarily highly implausible.

There is an element of hysteria in this fear, as there was a quarter-century ago when Washington convinced itself that a victory by peasant insurgents in Vietnam would lead to world domination by "Asian communism" and to the isolation and destruction of the United States.

Second, they are naive. Krauthammer says it is "racist" to think that "Arabs" can't govern themselves democratically. The problem in the Middle East is not "Arabs." The problem is a powerful historical culture that functions on categories of value absolutes and religious certainties hostile to the pragmatic relativisms of Western democracy. Military conquest and good intentions will not change that.

Finally, the neoconservatives are fanatics. They believe it is worth killing people for unproved ideas. Traditional morality says that war is justified in legitimate defense. Totalitarian morality justifies war to make people or societies better.

In fact, if the war party actually believes that it is just to make war to improve societies or peoples then they have directly and blatantly (if unconsciously) adopted the nonsensical tripe spewed by Hitler in the 1930s.

Obersalzberg speech 22 August 1939 by Adolf Hitler:

few weeks. Had he reported to me that he needs two years or even only one year, I should not have given the command to march and should have allied myself temporarily with England instead of Russia for we cannot conduct a long war. To be sure a new situation has arisen. I experienced those poor worms Daladier and Chamberlain in Munich. They will be too cowardly to attack. They won't go beyond a blockade. Against that we have our autarchy and the Russian raw materials.

Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans. My pact with the Poles was merely conceived of as a gaining of time. As for the rest, gentlemen, the fate of Russia will be exactly the same as 1 am now going through with in the case of Poland. After Stalin's death-he is a very sick man-we will break the Soviet Union. Then there will begin the dawn of the German rule of the earth.

The little States cannot scare me. After Kemal's [i.e. Ataturk] death Turkey is governed by cretins and half idiots. Carol of Roumania is through and through the corrupt slave of his sexual instincts. The King of Belgium and the Nordic kings are soft jumping jacks who are dependent upon the good digestions of their over-eating and tired peoples.

We shall have to take into the bargain the defection of Japan. I save Japan a full year's time. The Emperor is a counterpart to the last Czar - weak, cowardly, undecided. May he become a victim of the revolution. My going together with Japan never was popular. We shall continue to create disturbances in the Far East and in Arabia. Let us think as "gentlemen" and let us see in these peoples at best lacquered half maniacs who are anxious to experience the whip.

The opportunity is as favourable as never before. 1 have but one worry, namely that Chamberlain or some other such pig of a fellow (Saukerl) will come at the last moment with proposals or with ratting (Umfall). He will fly down the stairs, even if I shall personally have to trample on his belly in the eyes of the photographers.

No, it is too late for this. The attack upon and the destruction of Poland begins Saturday early. 1 shall let a few companies in Polish uniform attack in Upper Silesia or in the Protectorate. Whether the world believes it is quite indifferent (scheissegal). The world believes only in success.

For you, gentlemen, fame and honour are beginning as they have not since centuries. Be hard, be without mercy, act more quickly and brutally than the others. The citizens of Western Europe must tremble with horror. That is the most human way of conducting a war. For it scares the others off.

The new method of conducting war corresponds to the new drawing of the frontiers. A war extending from Reval, Lublin, Kaschau to the mouth of the Danube. The rest will be given to the Russians. Ribbentrop has orders to make every offer and to accept every demand. In the West I reserve to myself the right to determine the strategically best line. Here one will be able to work with Protectorate regions, such as Holland, Belgium and French Lorraine.

And now, on to the enemy, in Warsaw we will celebrate our reunion.

A war for democracy cannot be fought by totalitarian methods.

featherbedded Dick Cheney
US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave a speech yesterday about how he was really right all the time.

Yet the conclusion of the war will mark one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted. It's proceeded according to a carefully drawn plan with fixed objectives and flexibility in meeting them. In the early days of the war, the plan was criticized by some retired military officers embedded in TV studios. (Laughter.)

Did none of his audience ask themselves where Cheney was embedded throughout this fighting? Or indeed where he featherbedded himself during the Vietnam War? A war he advocated strenuously but which he left other people to fight?

one picture can tell a thousand lies
Here's an overhead image of the Great Statue Toppling. There's independent confirmation of the smallness of the crowd by a BBC reporter who was there when it happened.

The image caption speaks for itself. As I remember the crowds when the Berlin wall fell were a bit larger than 150 and did not consist of CIA pensioners.

Mountains
Xanana Gusm�o

Mountains
that stir up the minds
of voices that go unheard

mountains
of shedding sweats
that smear the rains green

mountains
that silence in their heights
unheard battles

mountains
of suns burnt blue
by spilt tears

mountains?
Mountains of East Timor

mountains
pregnant with blood
giving birth to pain

mountains
mournfully dressed with bones
bemoaning the struggle

Mountains of the clouds
Mountains of the winds
Mountains of the cold
The call of the homeland?
Mountains - the sanctuary
of the warrior
who has not fallen!

At war
Xanana Gusm�o

I am at war
the sky is not mine
I am at war
the sea is not mine,
I am at war
and life is won only
in death?
In the hope of regaining
my sea

The poet is the president of the Democratic Republic of East Timor and commanded the guerilla resistance to the Indonesian occupation between 1975 and 1999.

more al-Sahhaf fans!
The Washington Post reports:

Some of Sahhaf's greatest hits:

"There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad."

"We butchered the force present at the airport."

"Iraqi fighters in Umm Qasr are giving the hordes of American and British mercenaries the taste of definite death."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "a criminal dog." Rumsfeld and President Bush "only deserve to be hit with shoes."

"After we finish defeating all of those animals we will disclose that with facts and figures."

Leibach, a veteran of the Jimmy Carter White House and the offices of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and former senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), told us: "There was great concern on Monday when we heard that his office was bombed. In all my years in this business, I have never seen anyone handle himself with such 'skill' as he demonstrated during his press briefing yesterday -- with his Ministry of Information building literally on fire, causing him to move his news conference to the sidewalk, and with the flames visible behind him, saying with a straight face that they had 'the infidels' on the run, that the Iraqis are winning this war. They just don't teach you that in college. This is a PR guy who may give new meaning to 'knowing how to take a bullet' for a client. Literally."

I have been unable to confirm rumours that the coalition wants to retain the minister's services so that he can advocate for their WMD search project.

a really cheap shot, but irresistible
Prime Minister of Australia John Howard speaking in Brisbane:

"we have no territorial ambitions of any kind in Iraq"

Haven't the prime ministerial minders read at least something about the history of prewar Europe?

how to do regime change IV
I think I might miss the regime's information minister - al-Sahhaf was surreal but passionate about his job - perhaps the occupation authorities could find a role for him announcing the nine-times capture of Umm Qasr or something.

Meanwhile, Kirkuk has fallen to the Kurds and Turkey has announced it is sending 'military observers' there. Ayatollah al-Khoei has been murdered in Najaf. The Red Cross is describing a situation in Baghdad's hospitals that passes catastrophe. Water and power have not been restored in Baghdad or Basra.

The coalition is now the effective government of Iraq. They are responsible for public safety, health and basic services. Restoring the TV service so they could make speeches that al-Sahhaf could have written possibly does not exhaust their responsibilities.

A just war must be proportionate to the evil it seeks to remove. Proportionality will be severely tested if Iraqis continue to die for want of basic health services and adequate numbers of troops to police the country or if an ethnic war breaks out in the Kurdish territory.

Read it and weep
Sony is reported to have shown a fine grasp of how to make a buck by patenting the term 'Shock and Awe'.

MediaGuardian.co.uk has learned that Sony is set to launch a computer game called "Shock and Awe", having registered the defining phrase of the coalition's military campaign as a trademark in the US.

That's shocking and awful.

The real reasons for the US Invasion of Iraq - and Beyond
The United States? current strategic agenda is of staggering proportions. It is not secret: rather, it is being discussed openly in the American press and academia; various documents reflecting it, official and semi-official, are in circulation; and the US is implementing that agenda at breakneck speed. By the time this article is published, the US will have begun its bombing and invasion of Iraq, the second third world country to be attacked in less than two years.

On the face of it, current American plans, as outlined below, are so sweeping and ambitious as to be adventurist and untenable. However, we will attempt below to show that there is a logic behind these measures, flowing from the condition of the US economy and its place in the world economy.

Given the massive imbalance of forces, the immediate military success of the current US mission is not in doubt. But its medium and long term prospects hinge not only on the US?s unrivalled military strength, but on three other factors: the US?s own underlying economic condition, which is weakening; the position of other imperialist powers, which is tenuously balanced and may turn into active opposition; and the stance of the world?s people ? growing conscious opposition in the advanced world and, crucially, popular explosions and resistance battles in the targeted third world.

Link courtesy of pfaffenBlog

gone to the flogs
Salon has a devastating article, The last place we liberated on the Bush administration's alleged nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is essentially the mayor of Kabul. Security has collapsed outside the capital and there are signs of a Taliban resurgence. Osama bin Laden is still free.

The Iraq invasion cost many lives, coalition and Iraqi. If all it achieves is to make Chalabi mayor of Baghdad the price was too high.

Le�ons d'une histoire coloniale oubli�e
From Le monde diplomatique:

Par CHARLES TRIPP
School of Oriental and African Studies, universit� de Londres, auteur de A History of Iraq, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

A Bagdad, un r�gime autoritaire, appuy� sur les forces arm�es, tient �troitement le pays et repr�sente une menace strat�gique pour la principale puissance occidentale op�rant dans la r�gion. Une exp�dition militaire est lanc�e et, � l'issue d'une campagne plus difficile et plus co�teuse que pr�vu, Bagdad sera pris et un nouvel ordre politique institu� sous le contr�le militaire et politique de l'Occident. Mais, au moment m�me o� il semble que l'avenir de l'Irak soit en train de s'�crire � l'�tranger, une r�volte �clate parmi les officiers de l'arm�e, dans les rues de Bagdad et dans toutes les r�gions chiites du Centre et du Sud. Et voil� que toute l'entreprise risque d'�chouer.

Le soul�vement finira par �tre �cras�, mais � un co�t tel que l'arm�e d'occupation ainsi que ses responsables vont r�viser radicalement leurs id�es. A la place de la vision grandiose des d�buts de l'occupation, un projet plus modeste et moins co�teux commence � prendre forme�: reconna�tre la hi�rarchie sociopolitique existant en Irak et remettre l'Etat, sous surveillance occidentale, entre les mains des �lites de l'ancien r�gime.

Ce r�cit n'est pas une anticipation des douze prochains mois. C'est la stricte narration d'�v�nements qui se sont d�roul�s, il y a plus de quatre-vingts ans, lorsque la Grande-Bretagne, ayant conquis les trois provinces ottomanes de Bassorah, Bagdad et Mossoul, en a fait un nouvel Etat�: l'Irak. Qu'il y ait l� des �chos du pr�sent et d'un futur possible est moins la cons�quence de quelque essence irr�ductible de l'histoire irakienne que de la logique du pouvoir imp�rial. Si la guerre a lieu, les Etats-Unis pourraient bien avoir � choisir entre les m�mes options que celles auxquelles les Britanniques furent confront�s entre 1914 et 1921. Il convient de r�fl�chir � ces options pour d�gager �ventuellement une logique commune entre deux tentatives de ��reconstruction de l'Etat�� par deux puissances imp�riales. Cela pourrait aider � comprendre ce que sera un nouvel Irak sous occupation am�ricaine.

In short, we've been here before. If the Bush project for Iraq as beacon of democracy is to succeed they need to avoid the mistakes made by the British empire. British policy created an authoritarian state built on a narrow Sunni �lite dominating the Shi'te majority and the Kurdish minority. Imposing Chalabi, (formally Shi'ite but actually so Westernised that his Shi'ite credential are in doubt) would just repeat the British error. If Bush actually wants this imperial project to succeed he needs the UN and he needs advice from people who know something about Iraq. Seeing everything through an Israeli filter will not work.

Un Charter on non-self-governing territories

Article 73
Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well- being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:

a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;

b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;

c. to further international peace and security;

d. to promote constructive measures of development, to encourage research, and to cooperate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social, economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and

e. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply.

Now, in the best of all possible worlds, the coalition would just accept that Article 73 applies to their military occupation of Iraq and would make a trusteeship agreement with the UN that could set out a number of things like how the Iraqi Interim Authority will be formed.

Having a free hand in international relations is a myth. Bush's claim that 'the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others' is nonsense. The Turkish parliament subjected him to its decisions when it refused transit rights for coalition forces. For that matter the UN security council subjected to him to its decisions when it refused UN sanction to the invasion of Iraq. The war may have proceeded but the rhetoric of peace was strengthened.

The world is interdependent. Once, when the US economy sneezed the global economy got a cold. Now, weirdly, China is making the rest of us cough. The Bush administration might want to live in a world where they do not depend on the decisions of others. Small children want to live in such a world as well. We expect them to grow up.

But if you take what you say, it was doomed from the start...

From the ABC's Four Corners program:

No. No, no. That's a bit unfair. I'd be amazed if they use the words ignorant ideologues. If someone like Paul Wolfowitz was running the post war state in Iraq and he had American public opinion behind him and he had a core of people who knew about Iraq in his team and they had a generation-long commitment to building democracy, then maybe the possibility that that democracy could slowly be have been built up, these were the the huge issues that one would be wrestling with. But Wolfowitz hasn't got the money; he hasn't got a generation; he hasn't probably got after this war, American public support; so what are we going to have? We're going to have at best something... where you know, a thousand people are brought into a room. They all cheer the next military leader and leave. If that brings stability and that military leader is less brutal, less prone to using weapons of mass destruction, less prone to invading other people's countries than Saddam Hussein, then the war wasn't necessarily a loss. But thousand's of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans will have probably died by then, and that's not going to give Iraq a better life, and Iraqi kids aren't going to get a better future for that, which is what they were promised when this invasion started.

Cheering, looting breaks out in Baghdad
Posted to ABC Online at 18:41 AustralianEST
Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis have mobbed a convoy of US Marines, cheering, dancing and waving as American troops swept towards central Baghdad through slums and leafy suburbs from the east.

Reports from the streets of Baghdad say crowds threw flowers at the Marines as they drove past the Martyrs' Monument, just three kilometres east of the central Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris river.

"These are quite extraordinary scenes," Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said after a morning's drive through the rundown sprawl of Saddam City and then through more prosperous suburbs with villas and trim lawns.

The crowds, mainly young and middle-aged men, many wearing the soccer shirts of leading western clubs like Manchester United, shouted "hello, hello" as Marines advanced through local traffic.

"No more (President) Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to troops as they passed.

"We love you, we love you."

One young man ran alongside a Marine armoured personnel carrier trying to hand over a heavy belt of ammunition.

An older man made a wild kicking gesture with his foot, saying "Goodbye Saddam."

But a US military spokesman says it is too early to talk of the battle for Baghdad and the war in general being over.

"I think it's premature to talk about the end of this operation yet," Captain Frank Thorp said at Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar.

"There may be many more fierce fighting days in front of us as coalition forces continue to move within Baghdad and within the country," he said.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair says Iraq's command and control structure appears to have broken down in the capital, but resistance to advancing US troops could still be quite "stubborn and fierce".

Looting
Across town, looters have attacked major sites in the city including UN headquarters and around the Olympic Committee building.

Police and other officials were absent from major streets, according to reports.

Television crews watched cheering crowds sack the UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel to the east of the centre, and then drive off in UN cars.

Another correspondent saw looters raid sports shops around the bombed Iraqi Olympic Committee building, the effective headquarters of President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday.

The building is said to be engulfed by flame.

The correspondent says authority appears to have broken down in the capital as US troops moved in.

"This has been in the air for days. People have just been waiting for a sign that the Americans are in the city," reporter Khaled Oweis said.

"People heard the Americans were in Saddam City."

He says he could see no police in the main central thoroughfares.

He says the only shooting in the city centre was from Iraqi paramilitaries firing sporadically at US forces across the river.

The firing came from around the Palestine Hotel, home to many foreign journalists, but the US military did not return fire.

Two foreign journalists were killed in the hotel yesterday when a US tank fired a shell at the building.

That was the easy part. Now the coalition has to reimpose civil order and start nation-building bigtime.

ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant
The Australian government has just issued a travel advisory flagging possible threats to the Anzac Day celebration at Gallipoli. These are the same people who have been assuring us that the Iraq invasion would not cause increased terrorism.

At the same time the Iraqi state has collapsed and the Saddam regime has essentially become one of many armed factions competing for power. The alarming nostrums out of Washington and Hillsborough say nothing about how the interim authority is to be appointed. One could hope that Bush will not succumb to the neocon claque promoting Chalabi as an Iraqi Kerensky but his record to date does not make for hope. The power on the ground is held by the Kurds, the Saddam remnants, the Shi'ites, the traditional leaders. The whole country is armed. They have little experience of cooperation or civic order.

No-one ever doubted the coalition's capacity to destroy. They need to start assuming the Geneva Convention responsibilities of an occupying power like health and public safety. What they now have to do is create something other than a desert called peace.

Televising the reality of war
The ABC's 7:30 Report ran a string of interviews on Monday night about the nature of war coverage by the US media. Like everyone else I was overwhelmed by the rush of images. From the ABC report:

JILL COLGAN: Anti-war protesters don't agree but Fox is not alone in choosing to be on side with the military.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: In the study that we did, there was not one image of a person actually being struck by a weapons fire.

There were some pictures of people in hospitals and there was some very few pictures of dead bodies but usually only partial photographs.

This is not graphic.

JILL COLGAN: Why is it we do see fewer pictures on American networks about Iraqi civilians injured or dead?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: There's a strong patriotic feeling in the US and showing the war as a graphic, horrifying event would be, might rub the audience the wrong way.

JILL COLGAN: Finally, it may be viewers themselves who shape what they see and hear.

Research has found there is a limit to what people will watch.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: The studies we've seen so far the people are numbed by it, saddened by it, they're pulling back and not watching as much as they did.

We're seeing the fog of war in embedded reporting.

It's more real than reality television.

Tim Dunlop has already spoken about John Howard's frequent one-on-one press interviews and the total lack of appearances by George Bush. New blogger Zach Meares has a nice analysis of the way media select image over content in war coverage.

To me the worst effect of sanitising war reportage in this way is that the story will end with the final occupation of Baghdad and Tikrit. In reality that will only be the beginning. The coalition will need to do better in reconstructing Iraq than has been done in Afghanistan. Forgetting to budget for Afghan reconstruction does not speak volumes for the Bush administration's capacity to think beyond the current news cycle.

Forgetting Afghanistan suggests that neither the neocon war party in the US nor the media which covers them have thought much to what happens once the cameras stop rolling. No doubt the next war will keep both administration and media too busy to do any thinking.

Hillsborough castle communiqu�
The future of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. After years of dictatorship, Iraq will soon be liberated. For the first time in decades, Iraqis will soon choose their own representative government.

Coalition military operations are progressing and will succeed. We will eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, deliver humanitarian aid, and secure the freedom of the Iraqi people. We will create an environment where Iraqis can determine their own fate democratically and peacefully.

We are grateful to our men and women in uniform, as well as to the brave troops of Australia and Poland, and to forces contributed by other members of the Coalition. They have demonstrated enormous bravery and professionalism in the face of great danger. We mourn for the members of the Armed Forces who have sacrificed their lives, and extend our deepest sympathies to their families.

We also grieve for the loss of civilian life in Iraq. Coalition forces take great care to avoid civilian casualties. The Iraqi regime has done the opposite. It has deliberately put Iraqi civilians in harm's way, and used women and children as human shields. It has sent execution squads to kill Iraqis who choose freedom over fighting for a brutal regime. We condemn Iraqi regime forces' attacks in civilian clothing, false surrender, and mistreatment of prisoners of war. These acts are an affront to all standards of human decency and international law.

We are taking every step possible to safeguard Muslim holy sites and other protected places in Iraq that are important to the religious and cultural heritage of Islam and of Iraq. We have no confidence that the Iraqi regime has done the same, and are deeply concerned by reports that it is deliberately endangering such sites and using them for military purposes.

The Coalition is delivering food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people. This flow will increase as more of Iraq's territory is liberated and United Nations specialized agencies and non-governmental organizations are better able to operate. We welcome the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of Resolution 1472, which will allow shipments of humanitarian items to Iraq to resume under the Oil for Food programme.

As we said at our March 16 meeting in the Azores, we will uphold our responsibility to help the people of Iraq build a nation that is whole, free and at peace with itself and its neighbours. We support the aspirations of all of Iraq's people for a united, representative government that upholds human rights and the rule of law as cornerstones of democracy. We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit.

As the Coalition proceeds with the reconstruction of Iraq, it will work with its allies, bilateral donors, and with the United Nations and other international institutions. The United Nations has a vital role to play in the reconstruction of Iraq. We welcome the efforts of UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in providing immediate assistance to the people of Iraq. As we stated in the Azores, we plan to seek the adoption of new United Nations Security Council Resolutions that would affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq. We welcome the appointment by the United Nations Secretary General of a Special Adviser for Iraq to work with the people of Iraq and coalition representatives.

The day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly. As early as possible, we support the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority, a transitional administration, run by Iraqis, until a permanent government is established by the people of Iraq. The Interim Authority will be broad-based and fully representative, with members from all Iraq's ethnic groups, regions, and diaspora. The Interim Authority will be established first and foremost by the Iraqi people, with the help of the members of the Coalition, and working with the Secretary General of the United Nations. As Coalition forces advance, civilian Iraqi leaders will emerge who can be part of such an Interim Authority. The Interim Authority will progressively assume more of the functions of government. It will provide a means for Iraqis to participate in the economic and political reconstruction of their country from the outset.

Coalition forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to help the Iraqi people to build their own political institutions and reconstruct their country, but no longer. We look forward to welcoming a liberated Iraq to the international community of nations. We call upon our partners in the international community to join with us in ensuring a democratic and secure future for the Iraqi people.

About Iraqwar.ru and casualities
Thanks to Steve Gilliard at Daily Kos. This article raises some interesting questions.

war declared on SARS
In an unexpected move which has confounded international opinion President Bush today declared war on the SARS virus. 'Today we celebrate our Independence Day! This is like watching a bad movie,' the president declared, 'and we will not go quietly into the night!'

When reporters reminded the president that the United States celebrates its independence on 4 July the chief executive replied: 'The World Health Organisation has made itself irrelevant by failing to act.' Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld added: 'Some viruses are known knowns and some are unknown knowns but we know enough not want to know any medical unknown unknowns.' Ari Fleischer then took over to explain that the Pentagon would be conducting the campaign. The ever-suave Ari answered: 'I don't accept your premise' to an impertinent reporter asking why the Pentagon had taken over public health.

The Australian and British governments, already in deep doo-doo for refusing to join invasions of Syria, Iran, Egypt, and California, hurried to announce that they were satisfied with WHO's efforts to deal with the epidemic. A number of hospitals in southern China and Southeast Asia immediately sent frantic appeals to their governments for air defence systems.

Opinion: Liberation through Occupation?
Amir Butler, executive director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC) asks if America is "anymore sincere in its objective of "freeing" the Middle East than the British were in "freeing" Iraq from the Turks during World War I".

The entire article is a must-read. Butler's test of US sincerity is simple. What if these new democracies elect Islamic governments committed to confrontation with Israel? Time, I guess will tell. When the British empire invaded Iraq after the Treaty of S�vres they were happy to gas the Iraqi defenders. Amazingly enough, some of the neocon babblers are putting forward the 1925 royalist constitution and the Hashemite dynasty as a solution to all Iraq's problems.

These people think they are dealing with Grand Fenwick.

The Little Sheriff Cocks His Gun - Australia's Howard runs amok
But today, the "little Johnnie Howard" taunt is looking even more credible, as Howard completed yet another Asian foreign policy gaffe on the weekend. From comments about being the "little sheriff" for the US in Asia, to telling an interviewer at Coolum that he was being consulted "among with other VIPs - important - people", the image of being a little man trying desperately to box his own way out is being developed much faster than by way of Keating's snakepit taunts.

Howard, of course, is in power by default - paradoxically courtesy of a man called Osama bin Laden, and a boat load of Afghan refugees. For a year before the last election the return of the conservative coalition was always going to be unlikely, and three months before the election opinion polls predicted a landslide to the opposition Labor party. Osama bin Laden succeeded in scaring the whits out of people in the Western world who felt their advanced status and security isolated them from growing troubles in the world as a whole. The Afghan refugee crisis allowed the conservatives to make immigration an electoral policy plank, and on very flimsy evidence later proved completely false by a Royal Commission, spun the tale that refugees were so un-civil they would throw their own children into the sea to force their own passage into the promised land.

Since the election, the Bali bombing further uncovered Osama's hand. Suddenly, not only wealth, but also geographical isolation was no protective bulwark from a world increasingly shedding barriers of trade, geography, and culture, putting into relief the one barrier that was indeed not changing - the gulf between rich and poor, and those who had benefitted from capitalism and the global order, and those who were yet to.

Australians in their own small concession to internationalism - tourism to Bali, were finally caught up in the flak, and an Australia that had for years grown accustomed and comfortable with their relative isolation are still struggling to come to terms with it.

Howard himself was made uncomfortable by accusations that the government had failed to consider warnings, including those from Bali itself, that Australians may be at risk. And like the US, Howard has looked after number one first - his own domestic political survival. Warnings against travel to Asian countries, visible targeting of ethnic scapegoats - all were aimed to convince an Australian electorate that all possible was being done for their security.

Howard forgot something though. Unlike his more savvy predecessors, he forgot that in a world increasingly influenced by regionalism rather than nation states, like it or not, Australia is in the Asia Pacific camp. He still thinks that Australia is an outpost of Western values in an Asian region. Interestingly, his nemesis in Asia, Malaysia's Dato Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, thinks the same, spinning Australia to Malaysians, other Asian nations, and the world as a whole as small and insignificant racist and a Western lackey for the US and UK. Mahathir has already issued his own travel warnings to Malaysians against traveling to Australia - stating that Muslims in Australia were unsafe. And unlike in Australia, a significant group of Malaysians believe anything their leader says.

How to do regime change III

I assume, gentle reader, that you have a sense of humour. I trust the Treaty of S�vres will make you laugh rather than weep. I found Articles 141, 145 and 147 particularly amusing. I doubt those who have experienced over 70 years of flagrant violation of those articles ranging from Turkish oppression to actual genocide will laugh nearly as much.

What the treaty says about Kurdistan makes witty reading as well:

SECTION III
KURDISTAN
ARTICLE 62
A Commission sitting at Constantinople and composed of three members appointed by the British, French and Italian Governments respectively shall draft within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates, south of the southern boundary of Armenia as it may be hereafter determined, and north of the frontier of Turkey with Syria and Mesopotamia, as defined in Article 27, II (2) and (3). If unanimity cannot be secured on any question, it will be referred by the members of the Commission to their respective Governments. The scheme shall contain full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities within these areas, and with this object a Commission composed of British, French, Italian, Persian and Kurdish representatives shall visit the spot to examine and decide what rectifications, if any, should be made in the Turkish frontier where, under the provisions of the present Treaty, that frontier coincides with that of Persia.

ARTICLE 63
The Turkish Government hereby agrees to accept and execute the decisions of both the Commissions mentioned in Article 62 within three months from their communication to the said Government.

ARTICLE 64
If within one year from the coming into force of the present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to the Council of the League of Nations in such a manner as to show that a majority of the population of these areas desires independence from Turkey, and if the Council then considers that these peoples are capable of such independence and recommends that it should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all rights and title over these areas.

The detailed provisions for such renunciation will form the subject of a separate agreement between the Principal Allied Powers and Turkey.

If and when such renunciation takes place, no objection will be raised by the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet.

This treaty, by the way, is the one the Turkish foreign minister has been reading carefully as grounds for Turkey's proposed intervention in northern Iraq.

How to do regime change II
North Korea has said plans by the United Nations Security Council this week to discuss the crisis over its nuclear programme are a prelude to war - and has threatened to beef up its military forces.

In a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman called the Security Council meeting on Wednesday a provocative act which impeded dialogue and would only aggravate the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Pyongyang was referred to the UN Security Council after it announced it had expelled UN nuclear inspectors and pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

North Korea said it would not recognise the authority of the Security Council, and has threatened to boost its defences, saying a strong military deterrence is the only way of preventing war with the US and protecting the country's security.

It has also said it had learnt a lesson from the US-led war on Iraq - that allowing disarmament through inspection did not avert, but instead sparked, war.

How to do regime change
The shooting is the latest in a series of attacks that have racked southern Afghanistan in recent weeks, including the killing of an International Red Cross worker and an ambush on a US military convoy that killed two American servicemen.

There are fears that Taliban remnants are reorganising their forces in an effort to destabilise Mr Karzai's fledgling government. There have been several so-called "night letters" warning Afghans against working with foreigners and threatening those who do with death.

The latest edict by hunted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar two weeks ago threatened more attacks, declared a jihad against international forces and told Afghans they would be considered enemies if they continued to work with the government. (AP)

The Situation
D H Rumsfeld

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

12 Oct 2001 Pentagon briefing

The Unknown
D H Rumsfeld

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

12 Feb 2002 Pentagon briefing

reply to a friend
Alan, Reality check time. The reports I've seen indicate that the Iraqi forces to the south of Baghdad have been pounded shitless. The battlefield is so well known the US because of their means of surveillance that any major troop/armour concentrations can be hit. The US has absolute air superiority and can hunt out the Republican Guard's armour and artillery support and destroy it at will. It seems that Iraqi attempts to pull back and focus armour and artillery lead to its destruction. Therefore it is dispersed and impotent.

I was surprised to get this, because at first reading it is the unvarnished Pentagon line on the war and assumes my thinking has been that Iraq could beat off the US attack without an extended siege of Baghdad.

This leaves Iraqi troops with only mortar, RPG and other annoying but ineffective forms of support. The only problem the US troops face is their inability to round up all of the roving bands of Iraqi troops. They will inflict casualties on the attackers but the outcome is certain.

Precisely those weapons will become much more effective if the coalition is forced into urban warfare within Baghdad.
�
I agree that the administration in Washington could be trying to push their troops too far forward, but this might work. The casualties they've taken are light, but blown out of all proportion by media coverage. How and when they choose to invest Baghdad will depend on their daring. They may wait for the reinforcements to get there�or see what happens if they punch a hole into the southern suburbs. The classic response - defenders bring forces around to engulf attackers is nullified by the air support factor.

At risk of becoming an armchair general myself it seems to me that the Iraqi side can't stop the investment of Baghdad. However, air power has its limits. Neither personnel nor equipment can keep up the present tempo of operations against Baghdad indefinitely and the problem of the line of communications still exists, although improved by establishment of an air lift. The question is can the regime hold together long enough to try and take advantage of the inevitable slowdown in coalition aviation? I doubt it, but the Iraqi side has surprised us before.

Further, there are still problems in the rear. Nasiriya is still not secure. The delivery of aid through Umm Qasr is a shambles. Basra remains untaken after a fortnight of the kind of treatment about to be thrown at Baghdad .
�
Their real problems will begin when the positional war is over and they have to hold the place. The Arab world is still in shock but the mountain is starting to move. This could make Vietnam recede in importance as the latest debacle takes shape.

For the moment what happened to the RG divisions is an open question. The coalition does not hold the prisoners or bodies to justify the claim that they've destroyed them. Just possibly, they've retreated into Baghdad or gone partisan as in the south.

The neocons have all crawled out of the woodwork and are once again regaling us with tales of the imminent Shi'a rising in Baghdad. The Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, head of Najaf's Muslim hierarchy, has told the Shi'ites of Iraq only to stay neutral, not to join the coalition. It seems to me in terms of the war plan and neocon expectations we are not too far from where we were on Day 2 and 3 when we started to hear the repeated falls of cities and repeated surrenders of massive Iraqi formations.

This war is wrong and stays wrong whether the coalition is militarily successful or not. While all abhor the loss of life on either side that does not mean that force of arms makes right what was from its inception wrong.

The Voices Live
Andrew Motion, writing about 9 September

The voices live which are the voices lost:
we hear them and we answer, or we try
but words are nervous when we need them most
and shutter, stop, or dully slide away


so everything they mean to summon up
is always just too far, just out of reach,
unless our memories give time the slip
and learn the lesson that heart-wisdoms teach


of how in grief we find a way to keep
the dead beside us as our time goes on -
invisible and silent but the deep
foundation of ourselves, our cornerstone.

Regime Change
Andrew Motion

Advancing down the road from Niniveh
Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here.

You see the names of places roundabout?
They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.

Take Eden, further south: At dawn today
I ordered up my troops to tear away

Its walls and gates so everyone can see
That gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree.

You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then,
And lick your lips, and pick the same again.

Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran
Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun.

Not any more they don't; I've filled them up
With countless different kinds of human crap.

Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers
Which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours -

I've found a different way to scent the air:
Already it's a by-word for despair.

Which leaves Baghdad - the star-tipped minarets,
The marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat.

These places, and the ancient things you know,
You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'

acrobats on radio
The ABC radio broadcast of an Australian Defence Force briefing just included the immortal words:

They're showing a video now but it's not very helpful so you wouldn't learn much even if you could see it.'

gone to the flogs
The Guardian has established a science section called Life. It looks good and might help address the gap between humanities knowledge and science knowledge among wimpy social democrats like the present writer.

The Guardian reports:

The dolphins are taught to avoid touching the mines; that job is left to the (human) clearance divers, among whom any mention of the marine mammals causes raised eyebrows. "They can be pretty effective," a diver said last week. "But they are like little kids. You put them in a strange environment and they don't like it. In a couple of weeks, when they have got used to the water, I'm sure they will be great. But at the moment they are causing more work."

Personally I find the idea of war dolphins as bad or worse than the use of war dogs.

Leviathan rides again

I guess they don't read Hobbes at the White House or the Pentagon.

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

and:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

gone to the blogs
I've been reading Shi'apundit for an alternative view of the significance of the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

gone to the blogs
Rob over at Blogorrhoea quotes the supercilious Ari Fleischer:

I've just been watching Ari Fleischer explaining why it's an outrage to compare the Iraqi display of US POWS with what the US are doing to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The latter were caught during the War On Terror, he argued indignantly, whereas the Iraq war is an altogether different conflict.

So we have it from the prez's spokesdork - nice and official-like. The Iraq invasion is not part of the war on terror. It is something else.

A really nice piece of blogging. This war was always an exercise in cognitive dissonance but this example takes the cakewalk cake.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | When are facts facts? Not in a war
Note that the MTF story came initially from the highest levels of the US government - Bush and Myers. The try runs for around 24 hours and then gets quietly disavowed at a much lower level - the unfortunate general at CENTCOM. That's a really, really effective way to keep all sorts of propaganda claims in play without ever being held to account. After all, they trotted out the MTF in February and independent journalists disavowed it then.

A cynical government that kept spinning up these untrue claims long enough might, for example, persuade its electorate that 19 of the 11 September hijackers were Iraqis not Saudis.



TERROR CAMP



Claim

Thursday 27 March, 12.59am

US President George Bush says US troops had destroyed a terrorist camp in northern Iraq but fails to elaborate during a briefing about the progress of the Iraqi invasion. "Day by day, Saddam Hussein is losing his grip on Iraq," Bush said.



Claim reinforced

Sunday 30 March, 5.07pm

More reports that allied forces secure much of north of Iraq and overrun a notorious terrorist camp alleged to be a haven for al-Qaida militants. Washington accuses the Ansar al-Islam group, believed to be behind the camp, of working to make chemical weapons with help from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.



Claim amplified

Monday 31 March

Papers report that US forces seize the chemical weapons training camp in Ansar al-Islam, in northern Iraq. Sun splashes with the story and says war justified now that Saddam Hussein's weapons of horror had been discovered. Veteran UK intelligence expert Chris Dobson says the deadly poison ricin found recently in London most likely came from the camp and was evidence of Saddam's links with terrorists intent on striking Britain.



Admission claim never verified

Tuesday 1 April, 1.39pm

A US commander in the Gulf, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, tells a news conference that troops had yet to find any banned weapons of mass destruction in captured Iraqi territory. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld says Iraq's banned weapons are stockpiled in Baghdad and Tikrit.

Weblogging the world
"
Reporter: Mick O'Donnell

The deluge of information, sound and pictures from the war has many people reeling, some turning away in horror. But for others around the world, there is never enough. Not content with switching between cable and free-to-air TV, radio broadcasts and newspaper websites, the webloggers are constantly updating themselves and each other on the very latest. Some claim the bloggers, as they are known, will one day supersede the mainstream media. Others see them as quirky parasites.

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) 4:30pm.

Half an hour ago the oil-filled trenches were put on fire.

MICK O'DONNELL: Somewhere in Baghdad, a young architect - he calls himself Salam Pax, as in peace - types his thoughts into the ether as the missiles rain down.

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) The only thing that I could think of was why does this have to happen to Baghdad.

MICK O'DONNELL: Somewhere in northern Kuwait, a tired US soldier shares his thoughts via a laptop.

US SOLDIER: (On Internet diary) For dinner we had baked chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables.

MICK O'DONNELL: Some of it banal, some more profound.

US SOLDIER: (On Internet diary) But they welcomed them as liberators, liberators with food.

MICK O'DONNELL: In northern Iraq, an American journalist working for CNN takes time out from his real job to record his personal impressions - in type, picture and voice -

KEVIN SYKES, JOURNALIST, CNN: (On Internet diary) This is Kevin Sykes in northern Iraq.

What I'm looking at right now is a long line of trucks packed with all kinds of belongings, personal belongings - Kurdish people moving north.

MICK O'DONNELL: ..until his boss tells him to stop blogging and get back to real work.

Far from the newsrooms and the studios of the mainstream media, far from the professional journalists, and scattered in lounge rooms and academics' offices around the world are the war bloggers.

They're individuals seated at their computers day and night, unpaid and devoted to keeping themselves and their fellows better informed.

Some even claim that they're superseding the big media, that they're faster and more comprehensive.

JAMES MORROW, COLUMNIST; The blogs are really kind of the front line.

They're like a new wire service of volunteer reporters and rewriters and commentators, who are all out there getting news out to other people and each other.

MICK O'DONNELL: The term 'blog' is a shortening of 'weblog' - an Internet diary connecting to other people's diaries.

From the simple, often personal weblog came the warblog, as individuals rushed to express their opinions and feelings after September 11.

JOHN QUIGGIN, ECONOMIST; It was after September 11 that the so-called 'warbloggers', mainly Americans and mainly taking a very strongly pro-war sort of line, came into prominence.

GIANNA, WRITER: The writing - the quality of writing - is just such top class.

I mean, I wouldn't even really bother reading the newspapers anymore.

MICK O'DONNELL: James Morrow is one of Australia's most prolific warbloggers.

A freelance journalist with a toddler and a busy wife vying for the computer, he spends hours scanning, commenting, updating from his Sydney terrace house.

In his weblog, the 'Daily James', Morrow delivers a neo-conservative critique of the latest - from the ABC, the American media - all of his pet hates, like the coverage of the deaths of US soldiers.

JAMES MORROW: The assumption of the mainstream media has been, "Oh, my God, they're shooting at us with real bullets.

"How could they do that?

"We dropped leaflets on them telling them not to."

And so what the bloggersphere has been existing to do in this case has been to serve as a check on that.

MICK O'DONNELL: They're the umpires of the net, blowing the whistle on media complacency.

When he's not umpiring the footy in Perth, media student Gareth Parker is having his two cents worth.

GARETH PARKER, MEDIA STUDENT: A lot of these people are wired into - locked into - cable TV and to up-to-the-minute breaking news on the Internet, and certainly, I think, we can get instant feedback from a lot of these bloggers.

MICK O'DONNELL: But the blogs are still dependent on the mainstream media they critique.

JOHN QUIGGIN: The bloggers are basically responding to those things.

They don't really have the advantage of that kind of instant immediacy that TV has.

The most critical piece of wishful thinking is the assumption that the armed forces of the US and UK, which have been bombing Iraq for the last decade, will be welcomed as liberators when they finally defeat Saddam.

MICK O'DONNELL: Another prominent Australian warblogger is John Quiggin, a left-wing economist from Queensland Uni.

JOHN QUIGGIN: You get some very good quality analysis of things on the right sort of topic.

I think what's been published in the Australian weblogs is as good, or better, as what's been published in the opinion papers of the major newspapers.

MICK O'DONNELL: Many of the neo-conservative American blogs crow when they see examples of what they think is political correctness, like US media self-censoring the religion of the black American serviceman who was arrested for allegedly throwing grenades at his fellow soldiers.

The world-favourite blog at the moment has to be that of Salam Pax, based in Baghdad.

JAMES MORROW: This is supposed to be war for the Iraqi people, so who better to tell the story of the war than an Iraqi person?

SALAM PAX: (On Internet diary) As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion, I was close to tears.

GIANNA: He is very descriptive about the situation he's in and it really - it just feels like you have a direct insight into what's actually happening on the ground.

MICK O'DONNELL: Strangely missing from the bloggersphere are many women.

One of the few is Sydney blogger Jana, a sometime-journalist who feels compelled to share her thoughts and feelings on poetry and the war.

But the most enterprising warblogger has to be Chris Allbritton, a New York freelancer, who has used his site - 'Back to Iraq' - to raise US$10,000.

He's using the money to return to northern Iraq, where he'll file independent reports to his blog.

CHRIS ALLBRITTON: (On Internet diary) And now the fear sets in.

Tomorrow will be a busy day - I'll likely not blog until Friday when I get to anchor and give an update, but I'll do what I can.

MICK O'DONNELL: Maybe Allbritton will start a trend - bloggers no longer dependent on the mainstream for their material.

Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts."

How silly do we think the Shi'a are? II
"But what happens around Najaf and Karbala in the coming days may turn out to be the key to how the British and Americans are perceived by the Shia. The American troops surrounding Najaf, the resting place of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, appear to be aware of that. Many sites in the city have been declared "no targets", to be fired at only in self-defence.

American soldiers drove around the outskirts of the city yesterday, beseeching its inhabitants through loudspeakers mounted on their armoured cars to turn over President Saddam's forces to them, so wary are they of trying to face Iraqi fighters in the streets of Najaf. But US commanders said yesterday there were too many fighters in Najaf to ignore.

Karbala, the resting place of the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, is perhaps even more dangerous for the Americans and the British. So holy is the city to Shia Muslims that many carry soil from Karbala to prayers with them, even in faraway cities in Iran, cut off from Karbala since the Iran-Iraq war."

The war is now at Day 13. The explosion of joy is not happening among the Shi'a. Their leaders know about the plans for a democratic transformation of the Middle East and that the working definition of democracy does not include a Shi'a president of iraq any time in the enar future.

In one sense the Bush war plan is an attempt to escape politics by resorting to force instead of building a consensus at the UN. The escape has been unsuccessful. It has not led to a rising in southern Iraq and (for different reasons that I'll discuss later today) it has not led to a second front in northern Iraq. The Rumsfeld rumbling at the expense of Iran and Syria is unlikely either to enthuse the Shi'a or calm other Middle eastern capitals.

New find in 'smoking gun' search | csmonitor.com
"But the officials declined to say exactly what they had found or whether there was any evidence to link the militants camped out here to the Iraqi dictator.

"We have found various documents, equipment, and evidence that would indicate a presence of chemical or biological weapons. It has been flown back to the United States," a Special Forces company commander said Tuesday at a joint press press conference in Halabja, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. "At this point, [exploration] of the site is ongoing."

In a war that has often seemed to be marked by more bad surprises than good, Tuesday was a moment for back-slapping. Kurdish and US forces lauded each other's cooperation in decimating a Taliban-like camp whose members were responsible for a recent suicide attack on a nearby checkpoint that killed an Australian journalist."

Yep, it's more on the MTF. Note that what's actually been found bears no relationship to the hype announced by the Pentagon and that you cannot really prove a link between Saddam and al-Qaida by showing an MTF (if that is what it is) operating outside Saddam's reach. If it took 8 000 peshmerga plus US special forces to capture a village within the Kurdish safe haven I am at a loss to understand how Saddam could have influenced anything the Ansar al-Islam was doing there.

Rumsfeld's rules acquire plausible deniability
Now, you might want to find out a little about US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. You might want to read the famous Rumsfeld's Rules. Sadly if you download from the Pentagon all you get is:

Rumsfeld's Rules are no longer available on line from the Department of Defense.

You need to download from PDFzone if you're really hanging on a copy.

Saddam's rule
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Forget Stalin or Hitler.

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


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

Mao, Stalin, and Hitler must all be spinning in their graves.

Link courtesy of Hesiod.

Chemical weapons factory: now you see it, now you don't

Claims
Monday, March 24, 1.33am
Reports surface that US forces find first cache of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons, seizing a suspected chemical factory in An Najaf. This would be a significant PR coup for Messrs Bush and Blair who justified their launch of war on the grounds that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Fox News and the Jerusalem Post, which had a reporter travelling with US troops, both quote unidentified Pentagon officials who said the facility was seized by US forces. About 30 Iraqi troops and their commanding general surrendered as American forces took the installation, apparently used to produce chemical weapons, according to the Jerusalem Post. It was not immediately clear what chemicals were being produced at the facility.

Officials caution it is too premature to conclude that forbidden weapons had been discovered but US central command says it is examining several sites of interest.

Claims
Monday, March 24, 2.42am
General Richard Myers, chairman of joint chiefs of staff, claims US commamdos found documents along with millions of rounds of ammunition on Saturday, saying the discovery "might save thousands of lives if we can find out exactly what they have".

We're not sure
Monday, March 24, 2.44pm
General Tommy Franks, head of the coalition forces, claims he "wasn't entirely sure" that it was a chemical factory after all. Fox News forced to back away from the story. Iraq denies it has chemical or biological weapons.

Note that this chemical factory is not to be confused with the MTF recently said to be discovered (for the second time around) in the Ansar al-Islam pocket in northern Iraq.

OFFENSE AND DEFENSE: The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon
"SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Required reading. Link courtesy of Josh Marshal.

The Road To Surfdom
"The Australian Prime Minister is not my favourite person but I have been consistent in praising his willingness to regularly face interviewers and account for himself.

Once again he goes one-on-one with a journalist in a way that George W. Bush never would or, I suspect, could. IN this interview, he gets a grilling and acquits himself reasonably well, even if he is unconvincing. "

My personal favourite was O'brien's interview with Pual Wolfowitz.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Paul Wolfowitz, is America closer to war with Iraq today than it was before the release of the Blix report?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, US DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENCE: I think what you just saw -- I think your viewers just saw the President's speech live and I think what you've seen is a very strong display of national unity, a very strong commitment by the President to the security and freedom of every nation and every people and I think this speech has made a high standard.

It's not just a success but sets a guide post going forward for what we have to accomplish, the challenge that we face, and I think it was a demonstration of genuine presidential leadership and also real compassion.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Is America closer to war with Iraq today than it was before the release of the Blix report?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Howard put it, I think Prime Minister Howard put it very clearly in the press conference that I read just a little while ago, that what we're really at is a point of crucial decision for the United Nations and the international community.

Saddam Hussein has really made the case against himself and the President laid it out very clearly for the whole world just now.

We, I think, are getting very close to a point of decision.

The difference in inerviewing styles is dramatic. The unwillingness of senior US political figures to subject themselves to testing interviews is at least one reason why the cakewalk farrago is now US policy..

The Second Superpower
'There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation.� Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the "will of the people" in a global social movement.� The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights.�� This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one.� These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world and not just the members of one or another nation.� Consider the members of Amnesty International who write letters on behalf of prisoners of conscience, and the millions of Americans who are participating in email actions against the war in Iraq.� Or the physicians who contribute their time to Doctors Without Borders/ Medecins Sans Frontieres.'

Link courtesy of John Robb's Radio Weblog

missing: one massive terrorist facility
The MTF in northern Iraq was all over various press conferences a few hours ago, but now it's disappeared again. I am beginning to suspect it's gone to the same place as the captive general the British have now admitted does not exist. We still don't know if this MTF is the same nonexistent MTF Powell reported to the Security Council or a different (but existent) MTF in the same place.

The real kicker is reported in the Guardian:

Britain and the United States suffered a fresh blow last night when their main justification for war was undermined by reports that special forces have failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As Tony Blair launched a charm offensive to persuade the Arab world to understand his decision to go to war, senior officials in Washington said that intelligence information about weapons of mass destruction at 10 sites had proved to be unfounded.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that tests had proved negative at all "urgent" sites in the western desert. "All the searches have turned up negative," a staff officer told the newspaper. "The munitions that have been found have all been conventional."

At some point the leaders of the coalition really need to find some weapons of mass destruction. An explanation of the constant recaptures of the same towns, the surrender of entire divisions that prove not to be, and the constant coming and going of various generals from the POW list is starting to raise eyebrows.

update
The London Sun confirms that this MTF is the same one as the nonexistent MTF Powell identified in February! The article is fun to read, if only to count the number of times 'could have' and 'would have' are used. Note also that the Sun and the Guardian both mention the 1.5 kg bomb although the Sun tries to blow that up into something terrifying. (Apology for pun inserted here).

more on the ASIO bill
The ASIO bill was rejected by the Senate last December and caused the prime minister to claim (in effect) that it is undemocratic and dangerous for the legislature to legislate.

The bill is back before parliament. Last December the bill's absence was a grave threat to national security. Now it's so unimportant that the attorney-general forgot to do anything with it between 4 February and 20 March. It would just be too unkind to join the consensus of the guests on yesterday's Insiders that the bill is as much about gathering triggers for a double dissolution as anything else.

What a great war to fight a war!

CoW update
The 27 March list of the members of the Coalition of the Willing from the White House reads:

Afghanistan
Albania
Angola
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomon Islands
South Korea
Spain
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

The prime minister of Australia has just released statements of support by various national CoW leaders.

The prime minister's list runs:

Afghanistan
Albania
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Colombia
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Latvia
Lithuania
Macedonia
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Mongolia
Netherlands
Nicaragua
Panama
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Rwanda
Singapore
Slovakia
Solomons is gone
South Korea
Spain
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine is gone
United Kingdom
United States
Uzbekistan

What happened to Angola? They've been added and deleted from this list more times than Umm Qasar has been taken by the coalition.

What happened to Ethiopia?

What happened to Kuwait? I don't doubt their participation but couldn't they at least say something?

And finally, what happened to Tonga?

Coming soon to a blog near you...

CoWs with Guns!

15 Stories They've Already Bungled
"Here, then, is a list of stories that have been widely misreported or poorly reported so far:

1. Saddam may well have been killed in the first night's surprise attack (March 20).

2. Even if he wasn't killed, Iraqi command and control was no doubt "decapitated" (March 22).

3. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 22).

4. Most Iraqis soldiers will not fight for Saddam and instead are surrendering in droves (March 22).

5. Iraqi citizens are greeting Americans as liberators (March 22).

6. An entire division of 8,000 Iraqi soldiers surrendered en masse near Basra (March 23).

7. Several Scud missiles, banned weapons, have been launched against U.S. forces in Kuwait (March 23).

8. Saddam's Fedayeen militia are few in number and do not pose a serious threat (March 23).

9. Basra has been taken (March 23).

10. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 23).

11. A captured chemical plant likely produced chemical weapons (March 23).

12. Nassiriya has been taken (March 23).

13. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 24).

14. The Iraqi government faces a "major rebellion" of anti-Saddam citizens in Basra (March 24).

15. A convoy of 1,000 Iraqi vehicles and Republican Guards are speeding south from Baghdad to engage U.S. troops (March 25). "

recycling chemical horror stories
The coalition has destroyed a massive terrorist facility! Calloo! Callay!

Reuters gives details:

AS SAYLIYA CAMP: The United States said today that US-led forces had destroyed "a massive terrorist facility" in northern Iraq which could have been used by al Qaeda to make chemical weapons.

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, told CNN the site in northeast Iraq could have been a training ground and may have produced the lethal poison ricin that was found in a London flat in January.

"We attacked and now have gone in on the ground into a site in northeast Iraq where Ansar al-Islam and al Qaeda had been working on poisons," Myers said.

"It's from this site where people were trained and where poisons were developed that migrated into Europe. We think that's probably where the ricin found in London probably came."

Um, sadly we've been down this road before. At Secretary of State Powell's last appearance before the UN on 6 February he told a shocked (but not yet awed) world about a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory' making ricin.

Mr Powell cited the presence of the extremist Ansar al-Islam near the Iranian border in Iraq as further evidence of the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Whitehall sources suggest that though he might have sent an agent to penetrate the group, there was all the difference between that and being in a position to control or direct the Ansar al-Islam group.

"Baghdad's writ genuinely does not run there," said a senior Whitehall source who described the camp as a "little node of Islamic extremism". Earlier this week Mullah Krekar, leader of Ansar al-Islam, said that far from promoting links with the Iraqi regime, he wanted to see the end of it. "I am against Saddam Hussein. I want [Iraq] to change into an Islamic regime", he told the Guardian.

But, wait!

If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.'

Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking.

I guess we should congratulate Ansar al-Islam. Between 9 February and 30 March they managed to progress from crude cyanide to ricin and from a 'dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings' to a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory'.

I suppose without more detail there is a remote chance that the Ansar pocket contained two massive terrorist facilities, but I doubt it. Oh well, anyone know how many times Nasirirya has fallen to the coalition today?

legality of war III
Extract: It is sometimes said that an attack would be justified because of Iraq?s refusal to allow weapons inspections in line with Security Council Resolution 687, which established a ceasefire at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. However the resolution did not make the ceasefire conditional on Iraq?s future cooperation with inspections; instead it said that the Security Council "decides to remain seized of the matter and to take such further steps as may be required for the implementation of the present resolution and to secure peace and security in the area". This seems to imply that another Security Council resolution would be needed to authorize further military action, and that has been the position taken by most international statesmen. For instance, French President Jacques Chirac said on July 30 that an attack "could only be justified if it were decided on by the Security Council," and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said there would be no support in Germany for a strike "without approval of the United Nations".



Perhaps the Australian and British legal opinions on 678 as source of authority for this war had not read the resolution.

Is the Bush doctrine the right doctrine?
"The impact of this unravelling of the Bush doctrine will be a disaster for the US.� Here is how I think�it�is likely play out:





The first iteration of the Bush doctrine will bog down.� The war will be more difficult to fight than anticipated.� Terrorist counter-attacks after the war is done will send US troops home in body bags.� The costs of the effort it in Iraq will balloon to rapidly eclipse what we spent in Vietnam.� The opposition to every US effort in the region will grow both internally and externally.

Bush will run out of time and loose the re-election.� As his father before him, Bush will loose the 2004 elections due to economic considerations.� This will spell the end of the Bush doctrine.

The new administration will find that it is now caught in a ME quagmire with few friends and several aggressive foes.� The new administration will slowly attempt to unwind the situation by pulling out US troops and support for the new Iraq.� There will also be an attempt to return to the multi-lateral track of terrorist containment with little success.� Iran and N. Korea, effectively inoculated against US attack will continue to develop nuclear weapons with impunity.� One day, in the next decade, one of those bombs will end up exploding on US soil.







�"

They do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it

The Independent

30 March 2003

Every day public statements on the war are made with great bravado by British and US leaders. A day later most of them turn out to be inaccurate or untrue. Political leaders are understandably evasive about the detailed military strategy, but these evasions and inaccuracies have nothing to do with the movements of the troops.

Without qualification Tony Blair declared at the joint press conference with President Bush last week that two British soldiers had been "executed". Shortly afterwards distressed relatives were informed that the soldiers had died in combat. A junior minister was despatched to make the appropriate public apologies. On the same day that Mr Blair spoke of the "executions", the Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon claimed that the discovery of protection suits in Iraq was "categorical proof" that Saddam possessed chemical weapons. He withdrew the claim within 24 hours.

Today we report that Mr Blair greatly exaggerated the scale of humanitarian aid being shipped to Basra. Half the load of a naval ship consists of food and other supplies from Britain. The rest of the ship is stuffed full of arms and ammunition. As the head of emergencies at Christian Aid writes opposite, Iraq needs the equivalent of 32 such ships to deal with the humanitarian crisis. Most preposterous of all, Mr Blair and the US leaders said with certainty in advance that the "liberators" would be cheered in the streets. Now we are told that our war leaders always knew the cheers would be delayed and that they are not at all surprised that Iraqis are resisting their liberators.

So the obfuscation over the causes of war continues now the war has started. Before the war began the reasons for the conflict shifted constantly. One day the objective was to remove the weapons of mass destruction, the next it was regime change and the day after that it was a "war of liberation". An old PhD thesis was paraded as evidence that Saddam was a threat to the world and had to be dealt with by war. The "UN route" was followed, but only so long as the UN agreed with the US and Britain. When the UN "failed to agree" Britain and the US blamed the UN. Each time President Bush or Tony Blair were questioned about a previously declared objective or statement, which had since changed, they appeared irritated or bewildered. The leaders believed what they were saying on that particular day. Now the same sequence is recurring over the conflict itself. Statements made with apparent certainty are later contradicted by the facts or "clarified" by a new ministerial statement. The pattern is already extending itself to what will happen after the war, with linguistic games being played to cover up divisions and uncertainty about the political "reconstruction" of Iraq.

The persistent inaccuracies, proclaimed so confidently, expose the great flaw of this war. President Bush and Tony Blair were never clear about why it was being conducted and what would happen once it had ended. If they were not clear in their own minds it is hardly surprising that their public statements fail to make much coherent sense.

From before 11 September Iraq was "on the agenda" of the divided Bush administration for reasons that would require the assistance of a psychiatrist, as well as political and military analysts. They decided on war long ago and then went about searching for the precise reasons. Even less thought has been given as to how the war will end and what will happen in the immediate aftermath. In Britain, Clare Short was quite open about this in a Commons debate held last month. She said then that the UN did not want to contemplate the aftermath of a war that many of its members strongly opposed. Of the many statements from the Bush administration about the war none conveys a clear sense of what will happen afterwards. It has been a constant theme in US newspapers, most of whom support the war, while despairing over the lack of planning. That is what is so worrying about the shifting arguments and statements from the political leaders. They do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it. They are fighting an unnecessary war and are still trying to find the reasons to justify it, even though the conflict has started and lives are being lost.

PS What more can anyone say?

CENTCOM denies operational pause

Reuters

Earlier, U.S. officers in the field said commanders had ordered a pause of four to six days in their push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and stiff Iraqi resistance.

They said the "operational pause," ordered on Friday, meant advances would be put on hold while the military tried to sort out logistics problems caused by long supply lines from Kuwait.

"There is no pause on the battlefield. Just because you see a particular formation pause on the battlefield it does not mean there is a pause," Renuart said.

He joked that he had asked U.S. Central Command chief General Tommy Franks for a few days off and been turned down.

Renaurt said 10 days did not amount to a long conflict, noting it took some 60 to 70 days before Hamid Karzai was installed as the new president of Afghanistan after the U.S.-led military campaign to topple the Taliban administration.

Officers in the field said the U.S.-led invasion force would continue to attack Iraqi forces to the north with heavy air strikes during the pause, battering them before any attack on Baghdad.

On Friday, Britain's army chief, Mike Jackson, dismissed suggestions that the campaign had become bogged down after a few days of quick advances from Kuwait since the invasion started on March 20. But he spoke of a need to pause.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government has played down the apparently lightning advance by the U.S.-led forces, saying that most of the gains have been across tracts of desert while skirting major towns along the route.

coalition of human rights
See Human Rights among the Coalition of the Willing. After yesterday's Solomon Islands fiasco and the disavowals by the Czech Republic and Hungary. I plan on going through this list myself to exclude nations whose governments deny they are members. I guess when Bush dictates the CoW Charter it will include rules like: 'You are a member if the White House says so unless and until your government says otherwise.'

According to this morning's Melbourne Age the kingdom of Tonga has now joined the CoW. I understand the Iraqi high command are quaking in their boots. Meanwhile non-CoW nations whose UN diplomats once accidentally bumped a US deputy assistant under secretary of state in the Security Council foyer are rushing to ensure that they are not listed.

update
The White House list can be found here. Note that the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Solomons are still there on 27 March despite disavowals dated 25 March.