warticker

2003-11-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

NEW THRILL!: Warticker goes two-way. In future, all posts to the warticker - and to our new-not-quite-created sister blog SomethingOfTheNight - will be automatically delivered to the something of the night email list. So, if yuo subscribe to that, you won't have to worry about checking back here to see if we've got round to posting; it'll come to your mailbox. Plus - and this is the magic part - you can respond to posts there, and respond to the responses, and respond to the... ah, but you get the drift...

2003-10-31T04:31:00.000-08:00

WE'RE GLAD IT'S NOT TURNING INTO ANOTHER VIETNAM: Since the more hawkish blogs had spent the run-up to the Iraq war making it clear that Iraq wasn't going to be another Vietnam, we've been wondering how they've managed to square their determination that such a thing wouldn't happen with the slightly unfortunate never-ending rumble of continued guerilla attacks on US and Western targets over the last few months. Of course, they're not being quite as honest as to say "well, who knew the bleeding-heart liberals would be right on this one?", but frantically sawing-up opinions to reformat exactly what has happened and display it as being not Vietnam-like in the least:

It's not like Vietnam because in Vietnam, there was anything up to 500 deaths a day

It's not like Vietnam because, hey, Vietnam wasn't like Vietnam

Erm... it's not like Vietnam because we have got much more accurate weapons.

And so on. The trouble is, while it's really easy to pull differences between Vietnam and Iraq out of the air - Iraq isn't in Asia; the Iraq war hasn't been the backdrop for the pilot of a TV series about Soldiers of Fortune called The A Team - it's just so much squirming. Because everybody knows what we meant by "It'll turn into another Vietnam" - the war would become a drawn-out tale of sniping, and death, and while the clash of the armies might well run the American's way, it'd prove almost impossible to stem the flow of small groups of pro-Saddam loyalists carrying out any number of handkerchief-scale attacks on Western targets.

2003-10-03T00:43:00.000-07:00

JACK YOUR BODY: did anyone else hear jack Straw this morning? So, now it seems, the war wasn't because Saddam had weapons (because he didn't) but because he lied to the UN... when he said he had no weapons. I see.

It's brilliant the best thing they could find was a scientist had a vial of botulism "hidden in his house" - so have we, I'll bet - that jar of brandy butter at the back of the fridge could probably take down a medium-sized wedding party if released into the wild.

Last night's spin was that, although there were no actual weapons, they have found that there were plans to build some - this is a great excuse for a war; saddam flicking through a couple of brochures going "one day, I'd like one of those", like a kid at Christmas going through their mum's Grattan catalogue looking at the Scalextrix.

2003-08-18T03:57:00.000-07:00

TOO FAIR, TOO BALANCED?: Curious... Sky News has had its US launch quietly axed, because (reading between the lines) politcal neutrality in reporting would be regarded as anti-American. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, American troops mistake 'camera' for 'grenade launcher' - or at least, that's the cover story for the killing of a reporter in Iraq this time. We wonder if it's just more of a warning shot across the media's bows?

2003-07-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

THE FUTURE'S NOT AS BRIGHT AS IT USED TO BE: The whole extraordinary 'Terrorism Futures' debacle - which, we suspect, just looks like a body politic which has gone beyond the point of no return; what were they thinking? - has prompted Ted Mills to produce this splendid riposte.

2003-07-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

EVEN THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION CAN'T WORK UP ANY CREDENCE FOR NEW THREATS: "Wassat? The DHS is saying there's going to be more hijacking? Righto, whatever. Let's not let that get in the way of cutting back on the Air Marshalls to save cash; it's not like it's a real threat..."

2003-07-29T01:58:00.000-07:00

EVEN IF IT WASN'T A BREACH OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION, YOU'D HAVE TROUBLE LIVING WITH YOURSELF: "Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered. [From The Washington Post].

2003-07-29T01:53:00.000-07:00

WATCH THE SKIES, WATCH THE LIES: On a day when we're told that wearing ties can make you blind, the screeching doom-warning that AlQaeda are planning more hijack-suicide-crashes just adds to the general air of panic. But hang about a minute... we apparently know about these plans because AlQaeda suspects held by the US have told the intelligence people. Am I missing something? Did the US suddenly capture a whole heap of extra Al-Q people, the sort who are in the loop enough to know the plans, but happy to spill the beans the minute they get caught? Or have these claims come from those captured ages ago, who have, Colombo-style, remembered "just one more thing..."? Coming the day after the US government started to try and justify the costly Iraqi adventure on the grounds that it, you know, probably had something to do with sep'ven, we're wondering when they'll actually just start flashing blipverts during the Leno show: QUESTION BUSH AND YOU WILL DIE.

2003-07-29T01:25:00.000-07:00

LETTERS HOME: The Iraqis wonder why the cash-rich USA can't seem to get their infrastructure repaired. Maybe its because they are having trouble keeping their troops clean, never mind fixing the electricity supply.

2003-07-24T01:40:00.000-07:00

POLITE COUGH: We wouldn't presume to suggest that the Washington Post's Sharon Waxman hasn't thought her article on Saddam's sons through, but...:

"Saddam Hussein had good reason for his paranoia. People were trying to kill him all the time. If he had food tasters and a special chef who traveled with him, it was because there were others trying to poison him. His bloodthirsty behavior usually had a purpose behind it, to terrorize his people into submission, and to intimidate his enemies. No such logic could explain the behavior of Uday Saddam Hussein."

Can anyone think any reason why the powerful and hated son of a powerful and hated father - a father who'd happily kill members of his own family, if he saw them as a threat; a son who had already been the subject of an assassination attempt might himself be paranoid and attempt to terrorize those around him? Anyone?

2003-07-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

LYNCH AGAIN: She's now back home with her family, and probably wondering where the movie deal with Sarah Michelle Gellar to play her has gotten to. But there's still a lot of cross-firing blogs over what exactly happened with her rescue. What's especially fascinating is the extent to which wilbursblog is in love with its own myth-debunking.

To us, what the story boils down to is:
the official line of the US story was that Lynch and her buddies were ambushed, and had to be rescued from an Iraqi-held hospital.

The counter strike was that, actually, she was in an automobile accident, the 'rescue' was staged; the Americans had actually refused to accept an attempt to hand her back the day before; they were only firing blanks when they stormed the hospital and then the whole thing was served up for prime time news bulletins as a daring rescue.

The bloggy-back to this was that it was ridiculous to suggest the americans knew the hospital was safe; it was odious to say that she'd been in a crash rather than an ambush, its nonesense to suggest that they'd tried to hand her back the day before and of course they were firing real guns.

Now, of course, we know that it was a road traffic accident, that the Pentagon was hugely selective with the footage it released and allowed a false impression to be promoted through the media, and that the aborted ambulance handover had happened the day before. Further, we know that the supposed 'good Iraqi' who was meant to have told the troops about Lynch's whereabouts has been spirited off to the US and given a plum job.

And the righty-blogs? Are they saying "yeah, so most of the story that we spent so much energy 'fisking' as we like to call it turns out to have been right; sorry about that?" - nope, they still yammer on about how they're sure the troops couldn't have fired blanks.

Patriotism is great, except when your stars and stripes hat starts to get in the way of your views.

2003-07-23T04:03:00.000-07:00

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS: Of course, Saddam's sons were scum and it's hard to think of anyone shedding any tears for them. But Jack Straw on Today this morning prefaced his comments with the observation that he mourns all death, which is true of anyone with a shred of humanity - ask John Donne. You'll note the famously Christian Tony Blair didn't seem to have any sense that there was something other than great about burning your enemies to death:
"This is a great day for the new Iraq. These two particular people were at the head of a regime, there wasn't just a security threat because of its weapons programme, but was responsible, as we can see from the mass graves, for the torture and killing of thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis. And the celebrations that are taking place are an indication of just how evil they were. And I think what is so important is that people understand that if we are able to make the progress that we want to make in Iraq, that is going to open up not just new opportunities for Iraqi people, it is going to increase the stability of that country, of the region, and therefore the security of the whole of the world. So I think it is a very, very important move forward and I think it is great news."
Can you spot where the ends were used to justify the means there? "the celebrations indicate how evil they were." No, Tony, they indicate how unpopular they were. Apparently Uday and Quasay would think nothing of killing people they believed to be in the wrong, without any thought for due process or trials beforehand, you know. And then they'd revel in those deaths. That sort of thing can make you deeply unloved, Tony.

Just as a side question: how did the Americans manage to positively identify the two so quickly? And why on earth did two people so important to the Saddam regime hole up in the same place?

2003-07-23T03:51:00.000-07:00

WHAT IRAQIS THINK: Of course, as with all opinion polls, you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but Channel 4 News actually asked Iraqis what they think about what's happened to them. Just about three quarters believe Iraq is more dangerous; half have been affected by water shortages. Nearly half think the war was about oil. Of course, the Americans could find out for themselves by introducing democracy to the country, couldn't they...?

2003-07-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

WE'RE SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE: Because, of course, there's no way that the Bush administration would put one of their own spooks at risk to punish her husband for blowing the Niger Uranium Forgery, is there? I mean, what sort of rubbish would you have to be to do something like that?

2003-07-17T05:23:00.000-07:00

TRUTH?: A lot was made over the supposed switching off of BBC News on HMS Ark Royal during the war; for some reason the troops preferred Sky News' ra-ra-ra-go-team-US-UK to balanced reporting. We hope the good sailors took the reports with pinches of salt, as it now seems Sky have had to suspend one of their 'journalists' over allegations he made up his reports. We expect condemnation in The Times any moment... oh, hang on...

2003-07-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

WE MUST HAVE OUR SAY: Government now moaning they've not had a "right of reply" on the sexing-up claims - despite there being Alistair Campbell everywhere you bloody go for the last week banging on about his side of the story. Really, we must stop silencing people like this.

2003-07-04T01:41:00.000-07:00

OR MAYBE GOOGLISM CAN HELP: We've run Saddam Hussein's name through googlism - hey, stuff found on the Internet counts as Quality Intelligence in Whitehall, remember - and, setting aside the responses that don't give a location, we've found these facts out:

saddam hussein is breeding deadly viruses deep underground in secret laboratories
saddam hussein is visiting a school
saddam hussein is receiving a whole lot of attention
saddam hussein is going to stay in his underground bunkers and look darkly at each and every officer who sits at his table
saddam hussein is not among the hundreds of world leaders gathered for the millennium summit this week in new york

So, he's in a school's secret laboratory somewhere under the ground. And not - emphatically - in New York. It might seem simple, but we've just discovered more about his whereabouts in two minutes than the 'coalition' has in a couple of months.

2003-07-04T01:34:00.000-07:00

MAKE THE CHEQUE PAYABLE TO WARTICKER: Since they're offering twenty five million bucks for the whereabouts of saddam hussein (and that doesn't look in anyway desperate, does it? And it'll work, too - cynics thought the massive bounty for Osama Bin Laden would turn out to be a meaningless, empty gesture cooked up by an administration that had fucked up, let its target escape into a mysterious netherworld and had no idea if he was alive, dead, or had been raised to be a superior being by the Powers That Be) we decided we'd throw our hat into the ring for the big cash prize. We've studied the US search for the weapons of mass destruction, and have discovered Saddam as a result:

Saddam Hussein has been slipped over the border into Syria.
Or maybe
Saddam Hussein was dismantled shortly before the war
Or perhaps
Saddam Hussein is still in Iraq, but it's a big country, the size of France, so it'll take a while to find him
Or perhaps
Saddam Hussein was in one of those "Weapons Factories", which aerial photography proved to actually be fronts for Presidential Palaces.

Yeah, we haven't actually got a clue or any evidence. But since that's meant to satisfy us in the US' and UK's claims about the existence of the weapons, surely it'll do for the hunt for Saddam as well?

Do we have to pay tax on the prize?

2003-07-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

YES, HE DOES APPEAR TO HAVE CHALLENGED IRAQIS TO KILL AMERICANS: It seemed extraordinary, but that seems to be the gist of this Bush speech:

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."

And, remember: if you keep their dogtags, you can swap them for prizes as you leave the fairground.

2003-07-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

WHITEHALL REVISIONISM: There's an interesting foray into the meat of the Downing Street Dodgy Dossier here, where a spot of poking the original word document reveals the hands that mixed the Horlicks, as it were.

2003-06-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

FORTY FIVE MINUTES: There's a hell of a lot of row still blowing about over the UK government's statement that Saddam could have weapons flying within the length of a single side of a typical cassette. CNN now suggest that, you know, he could have had a nuke built in just three years. This is based on the discovery of some gas centrifuges that were buried twelve years ago. Now, we're not archaeology experts - although we've seen a couple of those Tony Robinson shows this week - but would any object needed for something as delicate as nuclear physics work after a decade in the ground?

2003-06-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

TWENTY QUESTIONS: The Globe And Mail Iraq Now FAQ.

2003-06-22T04:20:00.000-07:00

WHERE DID THE WEAPONS GO? PART 64: Bush now suggests that the Weapons of Mass Destruction have been looted. It's unclear if this was meant to have happened before or after - as Rumsfeld apparently believes - the weapons were destroyed; it's also unclear why these weapon thieves would have been so diligent as to clean up every last trace of the laboratories they were looting, every single scrap of background contamination, every piece of equipment. We hope, though, they stand as a lesson to burglars the world over - if you're going to do a crime, clean up after you to a forensic degree.

Oh... you don't think Bush could be lying, do you?

But if he isn't: wasn't the whole point of the Iraqi invasion to stop weapons falling into the hands of terrorists? So, if we trust Bush here, then what he's admitting is that his policy has been a dangerous and spectacular fuck-up.

2003-06-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

TOPGUNS ARE TOPGUNS, EVEN IF THEY'RE CRAP AIMS: How can you trust the US to respect the lives of the enemy when they don't even bother to court martial when their pilots fuck-up?

2003-06-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

RAVING PRIVATE LYNCH: Viacom over-egg pudding in bid to get rights to Jessica Lynch story - promising 'maybe even a concert with Ashanti in your home town.' Or even Ja Rule. Though we're not sure why they're bothering to woo Lynch - surely the rights would rest with Cencom, who made the story up in the first place?

2003-06-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

BUT THE WAR, OF COURSE, IS OVER: The ongoing fighting is, then, the end of an arms amnesty; or - in a wonderful example of doublethink - actually a task of peace; or - if the Americans being killed - guerilla action or street violence. Whatever, we always used to think the war was over when one side or the other gave up, rather than when one side said "It's all over now." Unfortunately for Bush, who seems to take the latter viewpoint, it seems the Saddamites go with the former.

2003-06-10T02:25:00.000-07:00

LOOT AND LEARN: David Aaronovitch isn't a neocon, it's true, but he does keep behaving like one. Today's Guardian column is spent rubbishing the suggestions that the US had anything to do with the looting of Iraqi treasures during the war. Undeniably, the claims that 170,000 items had been lifted turned out to be as wide of the mark as, let's say, that forty-five minutes it would take the Iraqis to start shooting off weapons at us. But Aaronvitch is on much shakier ground when he fumes "The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed."
But David, maybe the reason why people believe Americans have been involved in looting Baghdad is because the Americans say so. And it's not just the cameraman with Fox News who got caught - "The case was one of several to be detailed later Wednesday by Customs officials, who have seized other Iraqi artworks, weapons and other materials people have tried to smuggle into this country."
Yeah, the number of items pinched from the museum was over-stated - although US customs seems quite certain about its figure of 50,000 missing items from the country as a whole and is able to describe quite a lot of them. But to try and use the over-statement as the basis for pretending that the whole thing was cooked up to make the invaders look bad is to loot a false interpretation from the facts.

2003-06-10T02:05:00.000-07:00

THE WAXMAN LETTER: Formerly pro-war Congressman Henry Waxman has written a fully anotated missive to Bush raising the questions about the dodgy 'evidence' offered up before the war.

2003-06-09T06:35:00.000-07:00

DUBYA IN DOHA: For no reason other than we could, we thought we'd give George Bush's Doha speech to the troops a closer look:
Thanks for coming out to say hello. (Applause.) Thanks for your introduction, Tommy. I appreciate this warm welcome. I have a question for you: Can you hear me now? (Applause.)
The applause, we're guessing, was as scripted as the speech itself. We know that US troops aren't actually morons, which is why watching them behave like the audience on Jerry Springer, honking and baying to provide GWB with a TV-op, is so awful. We're told these are a smart, trained, disciplined body of men, and yet they're encouraged to behave like seals (the big fish-like mammals, not the navy guys) to help re-elect the President.
I've been on the road for a while, and I hope you didn't mind us stopping by. (Applause.)
You're the commander, you dimwit. How could they stop you?
We've seen a lot of fine sights, but there's no finer sight than to see the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America. (Applause.)
Aw, shucks, you'll be making them good folk go all blushy…
I am happy to see you, an so are the long-suffering people of Iraq. America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished. (Applause.)
The long-suffering people of Iraq didn't seem to be that happy to see the Americans, to be honest - although the departure of Saddam did lead many to crack a smile. Iraqis are upset about the US' activities in Fallujah and we'd imagine that the civilians still being shot by Americans don't really get the same warm glow at the sight of Uncle Sam as we're lead to expect. Indeed, many observers suggest that even amongst the Iraqis who welcomed the US invas… liberation, patience is running out.
The 'mission accomplished' claim is also a bit wobbly - George may have the 'Job Done' sticker up in the Pentagon window already, but large swathes of Iraq are far from secure - twenty-nine US troops have been killed in Iraq since the war was "ended" by GWB on May 1st; we were, however, surprised to discover that the whole liberating an oppressed people was part of the mission - we'd assumed that the fact that 1441 had made no final demands on Iraq to clean up its human rights act had meant the happy, grinning liberated faces was merely a lucky by-product.
Each one of you is a credit to the uniform you wear, and I bring a message from home: your families are proud of you, and so is America. (Applause.)
Presumably this includes the family members and US Congressmen who attempted to sue Bush back in March to stop the war?
I want to thank Tommy for his leadership. (Applause.) I don't know if you know this, but First Lady Laura Bush and Tommy Franks went to high school together. (Applause.) Midland Lee High School. She didn't think he'd amount to much. (Laughter.) He has done a fantastic job. (Applause.)
And they say that America is a meritocracy. Of course, it could just be a coincidence that the wife of the President and the head of his big military adventure go way back, isn't it? We don't quite understand how, though, the obviously ambitious Laura wound up with the weasly reformed soak rather than the slightly more attractive Franks. We bet she ponders this question herself, lying awake at night, listening to her husband stumble round after a couple more pretzels than he can handle.
I'm also honored to be traveling with a fantastic Secretary of State. (Applause.)
You might notice a few spelling errors in the speech. This is all as it appeared on the whitehouse website.
I want to thank the allied forces. I want to thank the Brits, the Australians -- (applause) -- I want to thank our friends from Poland -- (applause) -- for your service to your countries and to the cause of freedom, and for your courage.
No applause, you note, for the "Brits" from - ahem - the Yanks. But then, for the British, not having an American drop a bomb on you by mistake is thanks enough. We're guessing the awklward circumlocution 'friends from Poland' was to spare someone the job of explaining to George that Poles are an east European people, as well as the thing that keep tents up.
I want to thank the members of the armed forces of Qatar and I want to thank the Amir of Qatar, with whom I just met, for his hospitality and for his friendship to the United States of America. (Applause.)
The Amir of Qatar is a hospitable man. Back in March this year, he refused to let a little bit of torture make him spoil the visit of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri to the Emirate by doing anything as rude as arresting him. Of course, the Emir doesn't rule over a country where there is any right to freedom of assembly and where public demonstrations are banned. Interestingly, Qatar is a one-party state and therefore hasn't got the democracy that it was apparently so important to deliver to the people of Iraq. Back in May 1995, an American citizen was given 90 lashes for the 'crime' of homosexuality. Great friends you got there, George.
But most of all, I'm here to thank you. (Applause.) We are in a war on global terror, and because of you, we're winning the war on global terror. (Applause.) When we sent you into combat, you performed brilliantly. In Afghanistan, forces directed from here from Qatar, and headquartered in Tampa, you delivered decisive blows against the Taliban and against al Qaeda. And now the people of Afghanistan are free. (Applause.)
If Al-Qaeda had been decisively blown against in Afghanistan, how were they posing such a threat to us in Iraq, as Powell told the UN? Would the decisively-blown Taliban be the same one distributing leaflets amongst the Afghan army in a major recruiting drive? Or blowing up peace keepers in Kabul last week?. Sweetly, Bush thinks that the multitudinous nature of terrorism is something that can be beaten by knocking out a couple of governments, which is on a par with dealing with swarming bees by closing down the local honey shop.
We have made it clear that we'll hunt the terrorists down. There's no place they can hide from the justice of the United States of America and our friends. And right now we've got -- we're on the hunt in the Horn of Africa. And of course, in the battle of Iraq, you set an example of skill and daring that will stand for all time. (Applause.) The very first strike in the liberation of Iraq started from right here, and many others followed. Missions of mercy are directed from here.
The Horn of Africa? Where the hell did that come from? It sounds like maybe it was just something that came to him. Maybe Bush meant he's got the horn for Africa.
Still, encouraging to know that there's no place terrorists can hide from the US. Except, of course, for wherever it is Saddam, Omah, Bin Laden et al have scampered off to. But it's early days in the hunt for them. Remember, gang, it took five years to 'find' Eric Rudolph, the suspected Olympic bomber. Of course, that search wasn't helped by the way patriotic Americans kept helping him, or the FBI's conclusion that he must have been dead - for how else could he have avoided their brilliant searches?-, and Rudolph's sneaky way of not giving himself up. Yeah, if I was a terrorist with just the whole of the fucking world to hide, I'd be shitting myself.
Congratulations to George on the whole new definition of 'Mission of Mercy', there, by the way - back in 2002, if someone had told me that A Mission Of Mercy could be simultaneously described as an Attack of Shock and Awe; well, I'd have laughed in your face.
Our actions sent a long, clear message that our nation is strong and our nation is compassionate. And we also sent another clear message: Dictators can no longer shield themselves behind innocent people. (Applause.) Those who threaten the security of others now need to worry about their own. (Applause.)
Except, of course, in the course of the attacks on Iraq, hundreds of civilians died, while large numbers of people were forced to fight to protect the Saddam regime. Saddam himself may not have been totally shielded, but he did make quite a good fist of using his people as a weapon. The message Bush has sent is exactly what he claims, but he neglected to mention why dictators can't hide behind their people - because the Americans are quite happy to go through the people, crushing them underfoot, to get to the seat of power. Really, George is showing the same sort of leap of logic that we saw on September 11th 2001. Then, the belief that hijackers wouldn't crash planes because they'd have a survival instinct was suddenly rendered void. In Iraq, Bush proved that the belief that liberating armies would take care to avoid killing those they wished to liberate in the process of that liberation was also outdated.
As you know, in the Battle of Iraq, we had some fine, fine soldiers at our side. Great Britain, Poland and Australia sent some of their finest to work with ours. America will always remember their service and their important role in our victory, and we're grateful.
"Grateful, but remember: it was our victory."
Neighbors in this neighborhood -- nations in this neighborhood (is he quoting Tony Hatch here?) also gave critical assistance to this coalition, for which we're grateful. Of course, Qatar, the host of CENTCOM, a great friend to the United States. And Kuwait always said yes when we asked. They also kept their oil flowing when it looked like there wasn't going to be enough. (Applause.)
Eh? When did it look like there wasn't going to be enough oil? During the privations of the month of war? Did we come close to oil rationing? Then how did oil prices start to fall during the war, if we were supposedly looking at this lack of black?
Whatever, that oil was Kuwait's big contribution to making the Middle East a better place. For Irqais, anyway. It could also have done something about the twenty three areas of concern expressed by the UN over its treatment of people at home, but it would be wrong to mention such failings in an oil-pumping friend, wouldn't it?
Our friends in Bahrain and the UAE and the rest of the Gulf contributed valuable assistance to our cause, for which we're thankful.
Bahrain: Again, apparently a democracy there isn't as pressing a need as it was in Iraq. But let's give them a big hand - 2001 was the first year in ages nobody threatened to rape a women prisoner. Hurrah! Still nobody has been brought to justice for the numerous abuses of prisonner's rights in the 1990s. UAE: No democratically elected governments in any of the seven states; limitations on freedom of speech, free trials; all books and papers have to be licensed as must any group from a children's club upwards
It was from this place that our commanders executed one of the most innovative war plans in the history of armed conflict. And the man who designed those plans was Tommy Franks. (Applause.) I want to thank Tommy and his staff. I also want to thank Command Sergeant Major Dwight Brown. (Applause.) I was going to say, "and his staff," but you're his staff. (Applause.)
Really? I thought it was Rumsfeld's idea? Or maybe not.
Under Tommy's leadership, CENTCOM forces have shown the true might of America, the strength of our country. You've also shown the humanity and decency of your country, as well. You see, this country, our country does not seek the expansion of territory. We're not interested in more territory. Our goal is to enlarge the realm of liberty. (Applause.)
This is actually nifty footwork on the part of George - nobody, I think has ever suggested that America wanted to fold Iraq in as the fifty-first state, so it's both true and fair to state that America isn't interested in the territory. It is, of course, by the by that the US is directly ruling the bits of the country it has under control with its non-elected, non-Iraqi leadership team in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention and the wishes of the UN - that's one of those wacky coincidences that could happen to anyone. And let's not run through the difficulty of enlarging the realm of liberty when you're praising dictatorships like Kuwait and Qatar. Let's just wonder instead why George didn't mention oil in this section.
We believe that liberty is God's gift to every individual on the face of the earth. (Applause.) We believe people have the right to think and speak and worship in freedom. That's what we believe in America. And that's what you showed the world. (Applause.)
Offer does apply in UAE, Kuwait, Qatar…
No, our military fights for the security, American people. And we fight for freedom. And we sacrifice for freedom and we have lost some of our finest. And this nation will never forget and will always honor their memories for the sacrifices they made. And it's not only serving our nation, but serving a cause greater than themselves. May God rest their souls. (Applause.)
We don't know what "our military fights for the security, American people" means - we wonder if he meant "of the American people"; but then how does putting American troops in danger to liberate the Iraqi people square with that? And isn't it incredibly presumptuous to decide that the American troops in the war died in the name of Bush's God?
Not only does the war on terror go on, but we've got a lot of work to do in Iraq. And we're going to stay the course until the job gets done. We will stand with them as they build a stable democracy and a peaceful future.
…or at least until we move on to Iran.
Our forces are taking aggressive steps to increase order throughout the country. We are moving those Baathist officials that are trying to hang on to power. There are still pockets of criminality. Remember, the former leader of Iraq emptied the jail cells of common criminals right before the action took place. And they haven't changed their habits and their ways. They like to rob and like to loot. We'll find them. (Applause.)
Yeah, you'll find them. They'll be the ones stood in stores filling their pockets. Or maybe that'll be Winona Ryder. Whatever. GWB doesn't state exactly where they're moving the Baathist leaders on to - maybe he missed a word or two. But at least its now clear - trouble in Afghanistan isn't because the Taliban weren't actually defeated; that's terrorism. In Iraq, it's down to 'common criminals.' We love the concept of Saddam freeing petty thieves from jail before the war. We could understand if he'd done it at the end, to thwart the Americans, but isn't releasing a bunch of desperadoes inside the country you're fighting to keep control of a rather odd thing to do?
Criminal courts are now reopening. Day by day, the United States and our coalition partners are making the streets safer for the Iraqi citizens. We also understand that a more just political system will develop when people have food in their stomachs, and their lights work, and they can turn on a faucet and they can find some clean water -- things that Saddam did not do for them.
The food thing was kind of tricky anyway, what with all those sanctions in place. Maybe if the Iraqi people hadn't been starving they might have been able to bring their own democracy in place, for themselves?
See, he spent more time building luxurious palaces than he did in building an infrastructure to take care of the Iraqi citizens. And the United States and our friends and allies will first take care of the Iraqi citizens. (Applause.) And they'll have some money to help themselves. After all, oil is now flowing. But this time the revenues are not going to be used and skimmed off by greedy gangsters. It's going to be used in a special account on behalf of the people who own the oil -- the citizens of Iraq. (Applause.)
If the Iraqi people own the oil, why is it Americans who are drawing up and signing the contracts to decide where that oil is going to be sold to? Why are large chunks of that oil money being handed over to American companies for 'reconstruction' work that the Iraqis haven't been consulted over? Yeah, big wow - the Iraqi people now notionally own the oil cash. Unfortunately, the US have done the international equivalent of those guys who come and tarmac your driveway and then demand you pay them a ridiculous sum for it.
Just a quick question, though: If those palaces were really bomb factories, like we were meant to believe, how were they luxurious?
One thing else we've done is we made sure that Iraq is not going to serve as an arsenal for terrorist -- for terrorist groups. We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. This is a man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. He knew the inspectors were looking for them. You know better than me he's got a big country in which to hide them. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth.
"This is a man who" presumably refers to Saddam, although George was talking about vans before that, so we can't be sure. And he didn't spend decades hiding weapons of mass murder, did he? Because dropping biological weapons on towns and hurling US-made arsenal at Iran and Kuwait isn't really a way of hiding them, is it?

Bush's mention of the mobile facilities is curious, since I'd have thought the rubbishing of the claims made for these vans - so free of biological weapon traces that it, erm, proved they must have been used for cooking up nerve agents - would have meant it was time to move on to the next likely looking suspect claim. But maybe he's just really pleased to have found some lorries.
But one thing is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the Iraqi regime is no more. (Applause.)
Well, that's true enough as it goes - what's more disturbing, though, is that if we believe Bush, the regime left behind significant stocks of weapon nasties. And the US don't know where it they are. So, if they do exist, we've gone from the weapons being held by a highly-centrist state to being lost in a huge country which, by Bush's account, is being in part ravaged and ransacked by criminals. Yeah, I'm going to sleep a whole lot better tonight, George.
As people who liberated Iraq, I know you're proud of what you have done. (Applause.) You see, the world is now learning what many of you have seen. They're learning about the mass graves, thousands of people just summarily executed. They're learning about the torture chambers. Because of you, a great evil has been ended. Because of you, the dignity of a great nation is being restored.
At least one of those mass graves filled with people killed as they attempted to flee the army - put in double jeopardy by the US invasion, in short. And you know what, George? The world knew about those things. The world had protested against those things. Right back when Donald Rumsfeld was flogging weapons to Saddam, the world already knew.
Because of you, America and our friends and allies, those of us who love freedom are now more secure. You have justified the confidence that your country has placed in you. You've served your country well. Your Commander-in-Chief is grateful. And as importantly, more importantly, millions of American citizens are grateful for what you have done. You believe in America and America believes in you. (Applause.)
Saddam is still at large. His weapons either didn't exist, or have disappeared. The terrorist threat had nothing to do with Iraq. But the militants have got a little more miltant. People aren't any more secure. You're lying, George. You're telling us tales to make us feel better; you're lying to your people for the best possible reasons - to make it seem to them that the death of their loved ones, the spending of all that money, wasn't in vain. But you know that the war on Iraq hasn't made the US any more secure than it was back in August 2001, don't you?
It is our tremendous honor to be here today with you. Keep doing what you're doing. You're making a huge difference in the peace and security and freedom in this world. May God bless you. May God bless your families. And may God continue to bless America. Thank you. (Applause.)
And, God? While you're doing all that blessing; if you could persuade America to take a little less interest in the world, that would be great.

2003-06-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

CORRECTION FLUIDS: Naturally, the admission by the Guardian that it had misconstured a comment by Paul Wolfowitz and, as a result, run a story on its website to the effect that he'd admitted the war had been about oil is being seen by those who were keen for war as yet more evidence that the Guardian is all the things they always thought: distorting, slapdash, selective.
Erm... except of course, they found out they were wrong, corrected themselves - repeatedly, and in a way that had far more prominence than the original mistake - and deleted the item from the site.
So, the paper made a mistake. These things, unsurprisingly, do happen - we've even heard rumours that the mighty US army might make slip-ups from time to time, too. The difference being, of course, that the Guardian has done its best to correct itself, has apologised, and given the straighter picture of events, rather than blustered and sniffed well, shouldn't have been there anyway." It's a regrettable error, but compared with, let's say, confusing a headache pill factory with a weapons plant, or getting confused between the Chinese Embassy and a threat, or simply shooting people on your own side, it's not really a biggie, is it?
And it's certainly not like Paul Wolfowitz not saying 'the war is about oil' makes it true that one of the root causes of the dispuite was the reserves of crude under the Iraqi sand, is it?

Talking of the way things are reported, we were disappointed to discover the Radio News reports we'd heard about Clare Short's latest attack on Blair was slightly wrong - we'd been lead to believe she'd said that Blair and Bush had agreed to go to war with Saddam back in September. It turns out, in her piece in this week's New Statesman [payment required] that she's merely supposing this, and doesn't know it for a fact. Still, there's enough there to shame Blair anyway:
When Blair made his final push to keep me in the government, he promised a full UN mandate for reconstruction and was also adamant that the French president, Jacques Chirac, had already made clear that he would veto any second resolution. He said he could have got more time for Blix through a Chilean compromise formula - allowing some more time for Saddam to comply - if the French had not taken this position. I accepted this account, but was later sent by a member of the public an English translation of the transcript of Chirac's interview with French TV on 10 March. This made clear that France would indeed vote against any resolution that truncated the Blix process or allowed the US/UK to declare war without specific UN authority. But Chirac also said that if, after a few months, the inspectors came to the Security Council and said they were unable to guarantee Iraq's disarmament, "in that case it will be for the Security Council and it alone to decide the right thing to do. But in that case, of course, regrettably, the war would become inevitable. It isn't today."

My decision to stay in the government brought an abrupt end to the charm offensive. I was clear that we needed to prepare for the reconstruction by getting the military to prioritise their Geneva Convention obligations to keep order, provide for immediate humanitarian needs and keep civil administration running. This would enable the International Red Cross, the UN and NGOs to operate in Iraq. And then we needed urgent action in the Security Council to ask the secretary general to appoint a special representative to put in place an interim Iraqi administration and help the Iraqis to agree on drawing up a constitution and organising elections. This would be accompanied by the lifting of sanctions as soon as the war was over and the engagement of the World Bank and the IMF to support economic reform and ensure that change in the oil sector was carried out transparently and properly.

2003-06-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

THE NEW CENSORSHIP: An must-read piece from this week's New Statesman called The New Censorship, exploring how - almost unnoticed - the US has been closing down options for authors and writers over the last decade or so.

2003-05-31T04:54:00.000-07:00

THE TRUCKS OF WAR: My, the US are setting a lot of store in those two waggons, aren't they? (And, as such, Tony Blair must be hoping that we'll be happy to take the discovery of a couple of Eddie Stobart rigs as proving he wasn't lying to us, Parliament and the world). Bush was using them a reverse justification just last night, and Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel takes them as the subject for her latest sermon.
Wonderfully, by the way, she describes herself as having been out "on a pro-war limb", which in an American context is like saying "I took a risk by deciding to speak out in favour of motherhood, apple pie, and God." She also speculates that Bush's opponents "won't be satisfied until Geraldo is standing astride 5,000 drums of liquid anthrax in front of a nuclear silo. Wouldn't that be lovely?" Well, yes, it would be - providing we could also hear a loud ticking noise.
More importantly, she has this to say: "The two mobile labs recently investigated were thoroughly scrubbed down. Although a variety of inspectors have not been able to say with certitude what the labs were used for, the consensus is that they make sense for no other purpose than creation of biological weapons. In any case, they were properly equipped for that purpose. Why carefully scrub a lab unless you're trying to hide something?"
I'm sure I'm not the first person to find their eyes liquifying at just how insane this sounds. Saddam, we're expected to believe, has a huge weapons program - forty-five minutes away from being used, of course. And yet faced with the certainty of his regime being crushed and destroyed, rather than use these weapons, he decides to destroy them. And destroy them he does, wiping out all evidence of their existence from the planet. Except for the mobile labs - already made famous by Colin Powell on his 'Tonight Live From The UN' comedy Powerpoint show. These, he takes away all the biological agents themselves, all the chemical ingredients and makes them disappear entirely. But then, rather than torching the trucks, or putting them in a giant version of Life Laundry's crusher, he elects to merely get a couple of Mrs. Mops in to scrub the lorry clean.
The thing is, I don't mind so much the lying - it's pretty much the job of a western government to lie to its people - but its the fact the lies are so shoddy, so poorly thought out, so Crossroads that really sticks in the craw.
And the mind boggling insults to logic don't help - I missed which paper it was in, but I read something that said "they say we've not found WMDs, but we haven't found Saddam; that doesn't mean that he didn't exist." An interesting grasp on evidence, there.

2003-05-30T03:54:00.000-07:00

AND WHAT BECAME OF IT, AT LAST?: Jon Henley of the Guardian travels to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone to find out whether the interventions there made a difference. The general verdict seems to be: British troops do a good job, but while the situation is less tense, most people haven't seen a day-to-day improvement in their lives.
As one of the troops explains in Sierra Leone, the troops can rebuild and reopen a school, but then it's the same old teachers who come back. It's a handy snapshot of the trouble of using weapons to solve problems - it's like operating with a set of hedgecutters.
Henley also shows up another of Blair's twisty falsehoods when he was bouncing us towards war with Iraq, in his attempts to use Kosovo and Sierra Leone as precedents. In those two places, there was a need for an obvious and glorious removal of imminent peril of widespread, capricious slaughter. Nobody is denying that Saddam had the amoral capacity to do the same, but it wasn't comparable. And if it was, there would probably have been scenes of joy in Baghdad on liberation day that wouldn't have needed careful stage management and selective camera angles.

2003-05-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

FOLLOWING IN THE STEPS OF 'THINGS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I...' AND TV GO HOME: dear_raed makes the leap from the web to The Guardian.

2003-05-30T03:37:00.000-07:00

LYNCH - IT'S STILL NOT GOING AWAY: There are now calls for a proper investigation into the claims and counter claims about the 'rescue' of Private Lynch. Some on the ra-ra-right, like Kevin McCullough, seem to have ignored the wording of the calls, which have been wrapped up in the more palatable 'are they being unfair to our team?' instead of 'did the Pentagon lie to us?' and decided that just asking the question is, well, wrong.
It's interesting that McCullough - who takes time out to lash that if it wasn't for them meddling feminists, Jessica would have been safely at home anyway - is quite happy to rail at the stories which raised the original question: "How about asking the BBC and the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune to check sources and get quotes from those it is publishing supposed facts about. Heck how about even making a phone call to the Pentagon". Apparently, for some reason, the doctor who treated Jessica doesn't count as a source, whereas the mysterious lawyer who carried out his daring nights of spying on the hospital is a fine source. And while checking with the Pentagon might have been a journalistic courtesy, it's not as if there hadn't been a lot of coverage of the Pentagon's line on the story anyway.
What we find even more curious is that everyone whose evidence would count towards the Pentagon seems to have a vested interest in sticking to that line. The lawyer in the original tale, Al-Rehaief "now has an office with a Washington lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, whose principal is the former powerful Republican House member Robert Livingston", and had been quickly flown with his family from Iraq. Nothing wrong with showing a little gratitude, of course, but you do wonder: what exactly is all this thanks for?

2003-05-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

CLEAR STANCE: We've had the link for Arundhati Roy's lecture on Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy sat in our inbox for a while now [apologies to Eleanor Oguma who brought it to our attention]. In the course of taking a scalpel to the state of US democracy, Roy echoes the reason why we get worried by the dominance of Clear Channel in the US radio market (and the UK, too, the way things are going) - it's not just about what makes the Top 40...

2003-05-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD: Having managed to get people to swallow the WMD dossier and the need for war on Iraq, it seems the US are now trying to get them to accept the claim that Bush was all heroic on September 11th. A further attempt to try and explain why Bush was running round the country hiding when his people were under attack, and mired in fear, we're expected to believe he was being all Harrison Ford on Air Force One. Yeah. Right.
The movie has been made in Canada to get tax breaks. Nice.

2003-05-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

REMEMBER THAT?: After ages, there's a new No Rock colour supplement available - with stuff on new generation mobile phones, how letter writing is the new censorship, the taking blogs out of google panic and the re-positioning of the Tories as the party of the poor. If you're interested, do visit. If you're not, be glad we shoo that sort of thing off to a side project.

2003-05-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

NEWSFLASHING: We've just this minute got this through (thanks, all new BBC breaking news service): Al-Jazeera television broadcasts what it says is an audio tape of al-Qaeda's second-in-command calling on Muslims to carry out more suicide attacks.
Eh? They've got a second in command? Who he? Is this the equivalent of John Prescott announcing government policy?
And issuing the instructions after the US has switched the Alert status from 'worry' to 'panic.' We always knwew Al-Qaeda were opportunists, but they've gotten so bandwagony lately.

2003-05-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

SAVING PRIVATE LYING SOME MORE: Interesting to see the flap caused by the demolition of the Myth of Jessica Lynch's Rescue. A typical angle of response can be seen on Wilbur's Blog. There's an awful lot of stuff about whether the Marines were firing blanks or not and some sweet stuff about how the bits they use to fire blanks are coloured different for practice. Now, I don't know if they were firing blanks or not, but all this huffing and puffing is ridiculous - "why would they have taken the risk of going in armed only with blanks - what would have happened if they'd been fired on?"
Well, see - since part of the point is that the sceptics believe that the marines only went in because they knew it was safe, then, erm, that would be your answer. And maybe the bits on the guns weren't coloured like the ones they'd have used in training - perhaps they wouldn't have wanted to draw attention to them using blanks, and maybe they re-coloured it? A lot is made of how it takes several minutes to change the bit you add in to let a gun fire blanks, but for an army who spent millions on the media handling of the war, getting a bloke to fiddle about for a little while with some pliers isn't a major stumbling block.
And this is meant to be the clincher:"Furthermore, fired blank shell casings look very different to live ones. Blank shell casings have a crimped end to them that is still clearly visible after the round is fired and discarded. So if the BBC wants to prove its story, it can visit the scene of the rescue and produce some discarded blank shell casings. Unless, it wants us to believe that the American troops picked them all up. In the dark. Behind enemy lines. In a war zone. "
Hmmm. If I wanted to be flip, I'd rustle out that John Reid quote about how not being able to discover weapons of mass destruction doesn't prove that the Great Train Robbers were innocent or whatever it was. But I shan't, of course. I shan't.
See, the whole thing about this is: It doesn't matter. Maybe the BBC report has a flaw in that it relies on a doctor's judgement on whether or not the troops were firing blanks or live rounds doesn't really alter the meat of the story, and that - that the 'saving' of the soldier was, in fact, a trot into a hospital with no troops to pick up a person who had already been tried to get discharged anyway - doesn't alter however much you might know about the colours of guns. It's like suggesting that Bush's handling of the economy is a crock of shit because you can point out flaws in his grammar.

2003-05-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

BREMNER, BIRD AND FORTUNE: They're takina bit of time getting the transcripts of the sequel to Iraq and a Hard Place up on line, but we're keeping an eye on the site to let you know. It was, as ever, an accomplished show - although we thought the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Fraud/ Project For A New American Century sketch lasted a bit longer than it needed to make its point, that's juts quibbling. It's a pity that Channel 4 does stuff like this, while the moronic verbal bitch slap that is Your Face or Mine wins the awards.

2003-05-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

NATION BUILDING CAN BE TRICKY: Iraqi groups accuse US of reneging on promises made to them before the war - they'd been offered a free-ish hand in post-Saddam Iraq, now it seems the US are a spot more reluctant to keep to the bargain. Hey, you don't suppose the US could have been lying just so they could keep some of the Iraqi opposition in the coalition of the willing, do you?

2003-05-19T02:04:00.000-07:00

HEADLINES THEY DIDN'T THINK LONG ENOUGH ABOUT: Bush gives Phillipine head royal treatment

2003-05-19T02:01:00.000-07:00

MUST TRY HARDER: Slightly disappointed we didn't make it anywhere near the NewsMax deck of Weasels - maybe next time...

2003-05-16T01:09:00.000-07:00

MEMORIAL: Today's Guardian has a special edition of G2, offering brief histories of one hundred of the dead in the Iraqi war - servicemen shot by machine gun bungles alongside twelve year old schoolgirls hit by missiles. While the pro-war side continue to argue about what, exactly, they were fighting for, the anti-war side is able to point clearly at exactly what we were fighting against.

2003-05-15T23:28:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY'S LINE: Gotta love John Reid; following on from his meaningless IRA analogy, he's now moved on and on Today yesterday morning started to try the contention that saying that not finding WMD undermined the case for war was like saying that never finding the cash from "the great bank robbery" (sic) means that Ronnie Biggs wasn't guilty. Er... right, John.

2003-05-13T01:15:00.000-07:00

A NEW LINE OF THE DAY: John Reid was just on Today, trotting out the new line for the non-discovery of WMDs - apparently, since we've never found a large arms cache in thirty five years of seeking out IRA weapons, we shouldn't be surprised that nothing has turned up in Iraq yet.
They really are just treating us with contempt now, aren't they?
Firstly, much of the IRA's weaponry would have been held over the border in the South, and so hasn't been being searched for for anything like thirty-five years. Secondly, it's turning out more and more that the UK authorities did know where many of the IRA arms were, , as they were paying people to use them. More importantly, Northern Ireland wasn't a state which had supposedly been liberated and was full of locals willing to help Uncle Sam do everything they could to erase the memory of the previous leadership; a few guns are easier to hide than a plant making weapons of mass destruction; the search for the IRA arms cache wasn't aided by american satelitte spy technology and a few weeks before the searching started no high ranking member of the British government had gone in front of the UN to show evidence of the IRA's weaponry.

2003-05-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

SHORT AND CURLIES: So, Clare Short's conscience finally arrived (nb: not Claire Short with an 'i') - I've known Parcelforce deliveries turn up more promptly. What's curious is not that she believed Blair's assurances in the first place - c'mon, it's not llike he was in charge of the decisions, to take his word would be like accepting a Sainsbury's checkout operator's assurances on the company stock's future performance - but that, if the cabinet was as terrible as she makes out, how the hell she managed to sit there comfortably for all these years.

2003-05-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

MISUNDERSTANDING OF LOGIC: The noted - perhaps, actually we've never heard of him before - columnist Chad Selweski says that it's logical that if Saddam had no weapons, he would have shown that he had none, and saved himself. Righto, that makes sense. It's not like the Americans were going to invade whatever, is it? And that you really, no matter how hard you try, can't prove a negative? And, of course, Saddam was an evil, difficult fucker who wouldn't have admitted to having a moustache and a beret if the US had demanded it.
Chad Selweski does acknowledge what our response would be - if saddam had weapons, why didn't he use them to save his regime - but the best answer he can come up with is that he buried them in the desert, or maybe gave them to Al Qaeda.
Right, that makes sense, then. "I have my back against the wall; my troops cannot fight the might of the American army. I know, I'll bury these weapons which would give me an unfair advantage and the only chance of keeping hold of power in the middle of the desert." Okay. Or maybe: "I'll hand these weapons to the terrorist group whose aims and ideals don't actually match mine at all, rather than use them to save my regime. My power may be destroyed and my country lost, but at least people I can't stand may get some glory later on."
Chad frets "The tyrant was full of tricks. Dead or alive, maybe he can wound us without firing a weapon simply by making us look foolish.
If the WMD are never found, U.S. credibility will be hurt and our effort to track leads against terrorism, and to seek help from allies in nabbing al Qaida operatives, could suffer."
Saddam doesn't need to make the US look foolish. And we're not snickering at the lack of WMD discoveries, Chad. We know that the "weapons" will turn up - we suspect they're probably out in the middle of the desert burying them right now.

2003-05-08T05:07:00.000-07:00

AN AMAZING MATEHMATICAL RECOVERY: Last week, the US were snorting that, for all the claims of looting, only thirty-eight items were listed as missing from Baghdad's museum. Now, somehow, they've managed to recover thousands of them. Perhaps they've been cut up into little pieces?

2003-05-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

SAVING PRIVATES, LYING: Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Iraqi side of the Jessica Lynch story is that she'd have been freed twenty four hours earlier, only the ambulance they tried to send her home in was fired on by her colleagues and had to turn back. Gotta love US military intelligence. (Might want to leave that bit out of the TV Movie, guys).

2003-05-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

THAT MAKES IT ALRIGHT THEN: Having tried to float the idea that the looting of Baghdad wasn't that bad (Fox tried to play along, squawking that apparently only twenty-nine items were listed as stolen from the main museum - before being forced to admit that it was kind of tricky to write up a list as all the records had been trashed), now Ashcroft is trying a new tack. It was organised criminals wot done the robbing - well, them and the odd Fox news employee. We're not sure why this is supposed to make us go "Oh, that's alright then" - actually, it makes the American invasion seem even more rubbish if they had so little control in the country huge gangs of art thieves were able to roam about helping themselves to artefacts, doesn't it?

2003-05-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

HOW HUGE THE JUBILIANT CROWDS?: They pin a lot on the numbers of people who turned out to cheer the fall of Saddam (we wish we could be defeated in such a way that we disappear totally unharmed off the face of the earth). So why did they need to photoshop the crowds to make them appear bigger?

2003-05-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

WHO'S IN CHARGE IN IRAQ NOW?: The policing of Iraq is now in the hands of Dyncorp, who bought the USD22million contract with a donation to the Republicans of about USD150,000 - not a bad return on investment. Coincidently, the company decided to drop its appeal against a judgement that had called it 'callous, spiteful and vindictive' - and that's just towards its own employees. The organisation now bringing law and order to the streets of Baghdad had sacked Kathryn Bolkovac after she'd blown the whistle on how 'peacekeepers' in the Dynocorp pay in Bosnia had been enjoying going to nightclubs where fifteen year olds were being forced to dance naked and fuck the customers. Oh, and it also settled with Ben Johnston who'd alleged the firm's staff engaged in inhumane behaviour, bought women, forged passports and illegal weapons. We'd have thought a corporation who had been accused of such things would either be keen to demonstrate in a legal hearing how such things aren't true in any way. Or else would be laughed out of any attempts to position itself as a trainers to a police force of a country that can do brutal and inhumane all on its own.

2003-04-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

ON THE HOME FRONT: Bush has given a big vote of support to Senator Rick Santorum, the chap who not only condemned homosexuality but adultery as well. Bush's speakyperson Ari Flesicher says Bush thinks the guy is doing "a good job as a senator" and that the President "doesn't ask that question about people. He judges people about who they are. ... He judges people for how they act and how they relate."
Of course, someone who swipes at people who have same-sex or extra-marital love (we wonder how many senators haven't tried at least one or the other) could probably be argued as not relating that well to other people, but there you go.
Bush and Rumsfeld might be determined that Iraq won't have a government dominated by hardline religious bigots. Presumably to avoid charges of merely imposing the American 'democratic' system on the country, then.

2003-04-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

NOW, THAT'S GETTING INVOVLED WITH YOUR STORY: When we made a reference to the US networks looting Baghdad, we were only thinking of the taking of documents from ministry buildings. As usual, Fox News has gone one better than its rivals and one of its engineers is now facing charges of smuggling paintings, bonds and other items. Sweetly, he was planning on giving one of the painting to his employer - the report doesn't say if he meant it to hang in Fox News HQ or give it direct to Rupert Murdoch. Bless.
[Thanks for story to Kellie]
FYI: We've noticed that some visitors to WarTicker have been arriving here direct from Fox News Channel's online search engine - now, that's what we call a regime change.

2003-04-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

HANGING FROM THE GALLOWAYS: The whole odd story of the Telegraph's "scoop" on George Galloway is curious from start to end. As David Blair, the journalist who 'found' the documents which suggest that Galloway was making money under the Oil For Food programme, points out, the chances of someone planting the documents on the offchance that a British journalist would find them seems incredibly far-fetched. But the odds seem so long that they were found that it has to start alarm bells ringing. Charles Moore reckons it was "a good-old fashioned scoop", but we're not so sure that this counts as such - surely proper journalism would mean that a second, confirmatory source would have been called for; especially with something as unlikely as a little scoop dropping into the Telegraph's lap like that; especially when the documents have rather odd anomalies about them - the name of the intelligence service is in English, on what was meant to be an internal document, for example; especially when plausible alternative explanations (that Galloway was unknowingly having his name used by an Iraqi scam artist) exist, that should at least have been considered.
But then again: why would anyone have to work so hard to destroy Galloway's reputation? It's not likely that many telegraph readers will be now shaking their heads saying "I used to like the socialist fire in his belly, but now I might have to consider not supporting his calls for massive redistribution of wealth"; and on the thinking left, his shameless arse-licking of Saddam on that last Iraq visit would have been enough to mark him as damaged goods - if he had been dipping his beak, it might at least offer a spot of an excuse for such behaviour. So who would this impress? It's all a puzzle.
Also thrown up in the coverage was that amongst the looting done by the Iraqis, the American TV networks also did their own bit of taking away. The Guardian reports that carloads full of Iraq Government documents were driven away by the US channel's people in Baghdad. We're sure that they're going to give them back straight away. Unless, maybe, we should descend on Rockefeller Plaza and adopt a similar loose approach to ownership laws.

2003-04-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

AAAAAAAH, WE SCREWED UP: Sorry to those music heads of you with no interest in the war, as in a fit of chocolate-egg-driven madness we inadvertently posted three warticker posts to No Rock. We've now moved them to the right place.

2003-04-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

JULIE CRUISE MISSILE: Julie Burchill recycled much of her earlier war article again this week and, while I know what she wants is a reaction, I'm going to be weak and give her rattle back to her. For the first couple of paragraphs, anyway:
When anti-war/pro-Saddam types had finished trotting out all the dumb cliches to no avail
It's almost tiresome to have to point out, once again, that being against the bombing to buggery of Iraqi citizens doesn't make you pro-Saddam, Julie, any more than your objection to the Kosovo campaign made you pro-Milosovic (we know you like your monsters a little more historical; you can enjoy your love of Stalin more when the blood is dried).
- "It's About Oil!" (yes, among other things, and unless you live in a cave or a windmill and walk everywhere rather than take a car, bus or plane, then shut up, you hypocrite);
It is a simple phrase, admittedly, but seemingly oversimplified for you. Just to clarify: the war wasn't about Saddam sitting on oil and refusing to allow it to be used to fuel cars and make hospitals work. The 'it's about oil' catchphrase was more pointing out that the US was keen to get control of Iraqi oil for its own use. I don't think not living in a windmill invalidates the right to object to a country using a human rights figleaf to cover the seizing of a nation's natural assets. Nobody who marched against the war was marching against oil; many may have had a problem with the use of war to transfer contracts to the US oil giants.
"We Armed Him!" (not much, the USSR mostly, but even if we did it a bit, then surely it was our responsibility to make up for that by taking him out);
The USSR mostly? Apart from being factually incorrect - remember Matrix Churchill, for example? -, the logic that "we gave the man the tools to become a danger, and so we now have to take them away" does have a certain appeal. Hopefully, no other country will ever buy arms from America or Britain again, since they clearly come with a clause that says as soon as they're going to use them they'll be bombed to destruction to stop them.
"It'll Make Muslims Angry!" (duh! they were angry before)
Eh? Is this a ham-fisted attempt to render "It might not be a good idea to further inflame a region that doesn't think much of America and create a whole load of future problems" into Burchill speak? And if it is, does 'there's already a lot of antipathy towards the West so we might as well stoke it up some more' count as a grown-up argument?
- they always came over all misty-eyed about the troops. "Our Boys! Bring them home! Now!" Yes, what were formerly units of the English Fascist Imperialist Killing Machine, all through the 30-plus years of keeping the Catholics and Protestants from massacring each other in Northern Ireland, who as an occupying army deserved all they got from those brave kiddy-killing Republicans (but anti-abortionists! the IRA, like Reagan, believed that the sanctity of life began at conception and ended at birth), are now suddenly precious flowers of humanity, not one of whom the most hardline of self-loathing Brit-haters can bear to see suffer so much as a flesh wound.
Right, i think you get the picture now - you have to just park the whole abortionist debate to one side; swallow hard to pretend it doesn't matter that Julie has decided that everyone against the bombing of Iraq was in favour of the IRA - of course there's absolutely no logic to this, but then there seldom is when Burchill is in flow, and just focus on the awesome inability to understand a simple point here.
When someone says "Now there is a war, we must support the troops" and a peace person says "okay, let's do that by taking them out of the danger", it's not done out of a concern for the troops themselves, but merely that it'd be a nice side bonus of not getting involved to have troops at home, safe and well. Julie goes on to pour a gallon of adoring drool over the honest Tommy, and how he (or she) would be quite happy to die for another country, in another country, and says that what they're trained for, and how they're the best in the world. Maybe that's the case - and we'll probably never know the truth of the claims that some of these best troops in the world shot a man in Basra and then raped his wife (as reported by the Russian spooks) - but lets not forget that their healthy pay cheque every month is written by us; it shouldn't be up to the army to decide where they go to kill. They're the people's army. Or they should be.

2003-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

IT WASN'T ABOUT THE OIL. HONEST: It's just coincidence that, in the same way that before the Afghanis were given a chance to organise their own affairs a deal was sealed for a big oil pipeline, before the Iraqis are consulted on their future, a deal is being done to build an Iraq-Israel pipeline. Coincidence.

2003-04-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS: We're presuming Jay Garner has been appointed colonial chief of Iraq as George Bush's first choice, the somewhat similar Jock Ewing, turned out to be both fictional and dead.
His first visit to Baghdad was interesting, what with him telling reporters that he could be in charge for up to two years - whatever happened to passing over to the Iraqi people as soon as possible? And if the US is keen to get democracy into Iraq quickly, maybe it should have listened to the Shias who are saying they won't work with the Pentagon's placeman.
Jay Garner - as president of SY Coleman made money from the manufacture of the Patriot missiles which were used to batter him into position as unelected leader. Not, perhaps, the most tactful choice.

2003-04-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

LIFE IN THE NEW ISRAEL: Everyone - which is to say the likes of Labour Friends of Israel - got very excited about Ariel Sharon saying that he was thinking about perhaps moving out of some of the controversial areas of occupation. And if he meant it, it would be a good first step. But its a big 'if', especially when the daily behaviour of Israel seems to point in the opposite direction.

2003-04-19T04:45:00.001-07:00

INGRATES: It's been fascinating over the last few days watching how the post-war events in Baghdad have been reacted to by the Bush team. Early on, the looting and destruction was dismissed by Rumsfeld as being acts of insignificance being blown up by the media. Then Geoff Hoon suggested that robbing your neighbours and tipping dying kids off was a way of marking the end of Saddam Hussein regime. Virtually everybody who supported the war was quick to challenge those of us who had our doubts "bet you wouldn't like to have to explain to those cheering Iraqis why you objected", happily ignoring that at least as many seemed to be pissed off at having been invaded by the Americans. These people were dismissed as being of little significance. Now that there have been protests against the US in Baghdad - protests attended by far more people than turned up for the statue toppling - Fox News decided to berate an Iraqi for his nation's ingratitude - "one hundred and twenty five Americans died" cried the anchor as if this should make a difference to a country who've been told that the (at least) one and half thousand dead civilians of its own were a price well worth paying; a knock down price, even.
This is even demonstrated in the coverage of the kid whose arms got blown off by coalition bombs - the angle is always "Aren't we great in the West, we're helping this kid - bet Saddam wouldn't have" rather than remembering that it was us who slaughtered his entire family and took his arms in the first place. Ali Ismaeel Abbas was not a member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle, nor did he have weapons of mass destruction concealed in his elbow.

2003-04-19T04:45:00.000-07:00

END-BY-END: Not only has News 24's coutndown returned, and Fox News picked up the threads of unsolved grisly crime to fill the yawning hours, but it looks like the BBC has ceased the Iraq war Alerts. If only Churchill had had such a way of telling when the Nazis had capitulated. Anyway, just for the sake of completeness, here are the last three alerts
12-04-03 17.02 BST A senior aide to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, General Amir al-Saadi, surrenders to US forces in Baghdad, it is reported.
13-04-03 11.03 Six American prisoners-of-war have been rescued alive by marines
north of Baghdad, reports say.
14-04-03 06.57 US forces have seized control of the centre of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, according to correspondents at the scene.

2003-04-18T05:24:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I guess some people might have put the quiet period at the Warticker down to us licking our wounds and being wrong - apparently the war's outcome kind of proves that the anti-war movement were wrong and the pro-war lobby was right. This seems to be on the basis that the ends must always justify the means. Actually, we've just been away on work-related stuff for a few days.
So, to catch up: the Guardian has reported that support for the war is now at the level of anti-war sentiment at the start of March, throwing up the unusual suggestion that nothing has made the British behind war like the sight of suddenly orphaned kids who've had their arms blown off. Curious.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair told parliament that he'd spoken to Bush and he could state categorically that there were no plans being drawn up for an extension of the war to Syria. Now, since it's been widely reported elsewhere that Rumsfeld had drawn up plans - nixed by the White House - to engage Damascus (and Rumsfeld and the CIA's public pronouncements on the Syrian's assistance for Iraqi badguys supports this) either George Bush has lied to his biggest ally, or the British Prime Minister stood at the despatch box and lied to parliament. I wonder which it is?
And let's not assume that George W has gotten soft in his victory. The main reason why the US doesn't want to attack Syria - yet - is simply because America can't take on Syria yet. They lobbed so many missiles at Iraq they're down to a critical level; they've only got the weapons they need for defence purposes.

2003-04-14T02:07:00.000-07:00

FAIR AND UNBIASED: Many rumblings of discontent over Fox New's reporting of the war at a time when the son of Colin Powell is deciding on the future of media regulation in the states and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch is bidding for DirecTV. Of course, the fair and unibiased station will be sure to cover this story in a really balanced, open way, won't they?

2003-04-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

WHAT WAS IT ALL FOR?: Now that The Saturday Show has moved back to BBC1, the reappearance of Saturday Kitchen Live on BBC2 suggests we've reached a point where we're at least pretending we're not at war anymore. And, of course, the people who wanted to go to war all along are gloating (the New York Post's choice of word; they seem to think that gloating is a positive thing to do), seeming to think that the anti-war majority had been suggesting that America's massive army wouldn't have been able to destroy Iraq-as-she-was - as a letter writer to the Guardian pointed out yesterday, "we didn't say you couldn't, we said you shouldn't" - although, of course, as yet, they haven't.
What's a bit sickening about the premature acclamation is the glib way that the Iraqi civilian deaths - conservative estimates are around 1,500 - are dismissed as being "on the low side", which in itself is pretty shabby; sure it's only half the number of innocent people slaughtered on September 11th 2001, but they're still people; that's without factoring in the people seriously injured; or the people so successfully shocked and awed they might find it difficult to get their lives back. And the 2,300 Iraqi troops believed to have been killed - sure, some - maybe many - of them were probably dying for something they believed in, but how many times were we told that the Iraqi regular army were being forced to fight because they had Republican Guards stood behind them threatening to kill them and their families if they didn't? Surely cannon fodder marched onto the US guns are just as innocent as the families killed for nothing more than living a bit too close to a government building, or happening to get in the way of a Not That Smart bomb.
So, was it worth it? There never were any really clearly defined war aims, which makes it easier for America to say "Yup, that was what we came here for", but let's see how the vague plan has worked.
First up, there was the Iraqi people, freeing from tyranny and so on. Now, of course, the removal of Saddam is a Good Thing, and nobody has ever denied that Baghdad without him would be potentially a much better place. But the power vacuum that has created a swirling vortex of looting and fear - however much Downing Street and the Pentagon might want to pretend journalists are blowing it up out of proportion. Rumsfeld reckons "it's the same shot of the same guy carrying a vase out of the same shop again and again" - he's probably too busy to keep up, bless him, so we'll help him out: CNN.com has got a collection of pictures and audio commentary on the looting across the country - not a vase in sight. deutsche-welle has got a chap wheeling away office equipment, followed by a kid with a chair. No vases. Even while London and Washington insist there is no looting, they also say that the looting would be a side effect of freedom, if it was happening, and it isn't anyway, and if it is, then there's only a little, and it's being blown up by the media. You might wonder that the press is keen to blow it up when you get The Times being robbed at gunpoint by guerillas. You have to be impressed with the Americans bid to win hearts and minds, when less than forty-eight hours after the "jubiliation", they've managed to turn Baghdad residents dewy-eyed for the good old days of Saddam, when at least you could leave your doors open: "It's my country, and I hate Saddam," he said. "But why are they allowing robbing, why are they allowing people to set fire to buildings? Saddam was right to put those kinds of people in prison. I don't like Saddam, I hate him; but when I see American soldiers I want to spit on them." [source: The Guardian].
But at least the people who survive the looting, cluster bombs and vigilantees taking advantage of the darkness at the end of the regime to settle scores will be free of Saddam and his evil henchmen, right? That golden promise of a new start for the country - the people who kept the Ba'ath Party apparatus ticking over for the last twenty years long gone? Except, of course, for the
members of Saddam's police who are going to be given a quick respray and let back out to - ahem - keep law and order on behalf of the Americans. Oh, and Sheikh Muzahim Mustafa Kanan Tamimi, who used to be one of Saddam's brigadier-generals and a major figure in the Ba'ath party. But UK armed forces minister Adam Ingram says we have to deal with "compromised and tainted Iraqis" - which must give Saddam hope that if he can just avoid being killed in the next couple of weeks, he too might be able to make the best of a fraught situation and at least get himself a job in charge of something or other.
But maybe we're being too harsh. Let's move our focus from the Iraqi people - now at least less likely to be killed by falling bombs. Except, of course,even as the statue was falling, the US was moving its MOAB fuck-off-huge bomb into place to see what it could do ("smoke out saddam"). Testing the MOAB - the biggest thing without a nuclear bit in the death-from-the-sky market - was probably one of the war aims uncle Don forgot to mention; you might remember that during the ever-popular Second World War the US test-drove the new Atomic Bomb on a Japan that they already knew was about to surrender (indeed, they had to rush to get 'em both in while they were still fighting.)
But we're forgetting - the dangers Saddam posed to his neighbours was the real reason we were at war, wasn't it? The countries bordering Iraq will now be breathing a whole lot more easily - except for Syria and Iran, of course. But at least Turkey - afraid of the emergence of a Kurdish free state threatening its own stability - have said they don't feel the need to invade Northern Iraq as a pre-emptive move. For Now. The right, clearly, is reserved, and the Americans have firmly established the principle that in the twenty-first century, you should go to war not because of what has happened, but because of what might.
Which leads us to those weapons of mass destruction which would threaten us all. They've found lots and lots of these. Except they keep turning out, frustratingly, to be pesticides (not to be sneered at - the Americans showed what defoliants can do back in 'Nam, remember), and even if they do find some chemical weapons, or even nukes, they will have to explain why they went to war to stop the possibility of Saddam using them, only for him not to use them even when he had nothing to lose by doing so. But there will be a reason, I'm sure.
Maybe it was that he could have given them to terrorists. To use. After all, the US troops have found nuclear material. The smokeyness of the gun was cleared a little when the UN inspectors said "Yes... we did actually know about this, and we'd sealed the building so we knew it was safe. Did you break the seal?" Prompting the US Army to mutter that it wasn't sure... there might have been a seal, or there might not. Maybe?. So, the brilliant outcome is that by not bothering to check if they were entering a known facility, the world is now unable to tell if the building had been entered before Bush chased out the arms inspectors and his army kicking the door in.
Making us all safer from terrorism and the danger of a dirty bomb by ensuring Iraq's nuclear material didn't fall into the wrong hands - that was another war aim, wasn't it?
So, all in all, then, a few billion pounds well spent - a population freed from the day to day drudgery of living under a repressive regime to discover the joys of living under the same people, but now with added social collapse, apart from the ones not living; a Middle East which is either waiting for invasion, or else planning one - should the need arise; and nuclear material which used to be safely locked away now possibly circulating on the black market. Doubtless all part of Donald Rumsfeld's cunning plan. Triples all round, guys.

2003-04-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

PERCY SUGDEN WILL SAVE US ALL: The US military briefing has just announced that the problems of hell breaking loose in the power vacuum the coalition have opened up in Iraq will be solved by the establishment of... a neighbourhood watch scheme. Classy. Maybe they could also stamp bicycles with postcodes as well?
What does amuse us is a few hundred people pull down a statue in Baghdad, and Donald Rumsfeld welcomes the pictures as being a wonderful sight demonstrating the true jubilation of the Iraqi people.
At least a few thousand people riot and Rumsfeld condemns the use the scenes on TV as it's - what was it? Chicken Little false impressions generated by focusing on the actions of a few and pretending that it's typical of the nation as a whole. Hmmm.

2003-04-11T04:15:00.000-07:00

STATUE-BY-STATUE: BBC email alerts watching the end...
09-04-03 14.57 BST US armoured personnel carrier pulls down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad, to the cheers of jubilant Iraqis
10-04-03 08.46 Kurdish fighters reported to be in centre of Kirkuk, local people rejoice.
14.57 A Baghdad hospital is ransacked and other hospitals in the Iraqi capital are closed because of the street violence and looting, a Red Cross spokeswoman says.
16.27 Four US Marines are seriously injured in an apparent suicide bombing attack in Baghdad - reports

2003-04-11T04:12:00.000-07:00

LIVE...: "Let's go live now to Sandhurst, where the Prime Minister is speaking" says News 24, cutting - unfortunately - to a crowd shot of a young man yawning a huge yawn.
Incidently, why is the Prime Minister doing the Passing Out ceremony? Normally its the Queen - who, constitutionally, is the head of the Army. It's almost a quiet coup, really.

2003-04-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

NO PROFIT IN PEACE: You have to admire the sick slickness that led Sony to sign up the intellectual rights on the phrase 'shock and awe' the day after the war started. We wonder if we can expect further playstation games called 'Shell the journalist' and 'Look, it's sad about the kid whose family were all killed and him losing his arms and all, but hey, we've got to make a profit.' We don't think spitting at Sony executives would be out of order, to be honest. They'll probably find a way to make money out of that, too.

2003-04-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

WHAT IF THEY TOPPLED A REGIME AND NOBODY CAME?: Indymedia has got an interesting longshot of the statue toppling from yesterday which makes it look a little less like "crowds of jubilant Iraqis", more like "a few Iraqis" and then suggests that the "ordinary" Iraqis that were there might well have been soldiers anyway. Soldiers? In civilian clothes? Wasn't that one of the devious tricks the US were complaining about Iraq pulling?

2003-04-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

THE TABS: Curious that Page Three of The Sun chose to mark "liberation" by covering up the - ahem - babe's nipples (maybe this out of respect for the muslim religion?). What's even funnier is the way that all the tabloids seem to have equated the pulling down of a statue with the winning of the war (most notably The Daily Star whose headline is, erm, We Won The War, happily ignoring the bits of Baghdad not yet under coalition control). It's like they're treating it like it was a paintball game - "your mission is to capture the blue team's statue and pull it to the ground..."

2003-04-10T02:51:00.000-07:00

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME: Anti-Saddam Iraqis in Detroit attack Al-Jazeera team, accusing them of "supporting the regime until the last minute." So, there's a hint of the media freedom and the pluralistic debate we can expect in New Iraq, then.

2003-04-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

JOURANLISTIC TICS: Yahoo News reported confidently that the Iraqi ambassador to London had become the first official to "concede defeat", neatly ignoring his complete inability to do any such thing; meanwhile, a BBC reporter explained the shortage of people on the streets of Baghdad yesterday evening by saying they'd be scared of "looting and lawlessness" - thereby suggesting the fear is of fellow Iraqis, and not the people who until the previous night were bombing the fuck out of them who turned up with massive tanks and loads of guns. Of course.

2003-04-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

HE GETS AWAY AGAIN...: Is it just us, or is it kind of amazing that whenever the US get hold of great intelligence about the whereabouts of Saddam, and go and destroy the building, they then discover he may have left a few minutes before...
I'm thinking of ringing up and telling the Americans Saddam is hiding in that ugly building Reed use on Lime Street here in Liverpool - it would make sense, he might be seeking new work this morning. They'll come and level that for us, too, I'd bet.

2003-04-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

LET'S HOPE IT'S ALMOST OVER: Or at least the bombing - the starving, the homelessness, the night terrors, the missing limbs, the lost loved ones; these things will continue, of course. But at least the bombing might be over. And let's hope that this is will be an end of it. Although the way the Americans have cut through in the last couple of days scares the hell out of us here at Warticker, for as surely as the swagger in the light of the Afghan "victory" made the Iraq war inevitable, we can only see the dragging down of that Saddam statue as the the first step towards - where? Syria, Iran, North Korea?
"Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close friend who talks with Bush every day. His history degree from Yale makes him mindful of the importance of the moment. He knows he's making "history-changing decisions," Evans says. But Bush doesn't keep a diary or other personal record of the events that will form his legacy. Aides take notes, but there's no stenographer in most meetings, nor are they videotaped or recorded." [Source: USA Today 2nd April 2003] So, he's learned from history. Most closely, it seems, from the history of Dick Nixon. Leave no trace.

2003-04-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

SHOW YOUR VOICE THROUGH GOOGLE: As we understand it, warbitch is encouraging people to show their true alleigances by searching on Google for Pro-war or Anti-war; presumably with the winner in the figures when the next Google Zeitgeist number crunch comes out being declared the people's will. Or if it's not, then it should be.

2003-04-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

THAT COULD BE DEEMED QUITE HANDY: Al-Jazeera beaten about a bit; Arab journalists trapped in the Hotel unable to get out... and now aeronautics.ru - which provided an alternative perspective - has had to stop its distilling of various military sources. And just as the sceptical media dries up, we're told the people of Baghdad have come out jubilating on the streets. Hmmm.

2003-04-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

HERE'S A QUESTION: Was the slaughter of the journalists an accident, and thus more evidence that the Americans can't actually "carefully target" their bombing - and as such have been misleading the world since before the war; or, if the targetting is really accurate, does this mean that journalists who haven't signed up to see the story the US' eyes are now viewed as legitimate targets?

2003-04-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

STREET BY STREET: Further BBC email alerts, for those of you who are keeping track:
06-04-03 08.47 BST A US plane drops a bomb on a group of US special forces, killing some of them and an unknown number of civilians, says the BBC's John Simpson who is travelling with the convoy.
09.03 British tanks are reported to have entered the centre of Iraq's second city, Basra.
10.42 A convoy of Russian embassy diplomats is reported to have come under fire as they were evacuating from Baghdad and many are thought to have been injured.
14.17 US forces have begun to airlift Iraqi opposition fighters into southern Iraq, reports say
07-04-03 04.37 A column of US tanks and armoured vehicles are attacking targets in central Baghdad, American military officials say.
05.37 American forces have control of the centre of Baghdad and the heart of the Iraqi Government structure, says a US Army colonel.
08-04-03 02.17 US military bomb residential district in Baghdad where they believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may be.

2003-04-08T02:45:00.000-07:00

A RETURN TO THE GREATEST HITS: Destroying the offices of a non-embedded TV company in one conflict might be an accident...
twice starts to look like policy.

2003-04-08T01:34:00.000-07:00

ON LIVING IN A LAND OF FREE SPEECH: When people say they're anti war, pro-war responses usually include, sooner or later, "ah, but you should bear in mind if you said you were against Iraqi government policy, you'd be taken away in the night and tortured or killed." Unlike America, of course, where you merely have people open fire on you.

2003-04-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

WHAT IRAQ HAS TO LOOK FORWARD TO: Newsday carries this report from Afghanistan on the - ahem - success of American nation building there. Soldiers and police haven't been paid and are giving up; reconstruction work amounts to little more than a few spots of effort here and there; Taliban regrouping; random killings...

2003-04-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

CUT THEM OUT AND COLLECT THE SET: For some sort of record, we’re playing catch-up with the War Email Alert service:
30-3-03 21.22 BST Three US troops killed when their helicopter crashes in southern Iraq - Pentagon says there is no indication it was the result of direct hostile fire.
31-3-03 22.17 US troops kill seven Iraqi women and children after their car refuses to stop at a checkpoint near Najaf
1-4-03 15.47 At least 11 members of one family killed in coalition air strike on Hilla, south of Baghdad.
2-4-03 00.37 Coalition forces have rescued an American prisoner of war in Iraq, the US military says.
3-4-03 02.02 A US Black Hawk helicopter has been shot down near Karbala killing seven of the 11 soldiers on board, the Pentagon announces.
03.07 The US military says some of its units are now less than 20 miles (32 kilometres) from Baghdad, reports the BBC's Gavin Hewitt, who is with the US 3rd Infantry advancing on the Iraqi capital.
09.32 US military officials say advanced units are taking up positions outside Baghdad international airport
17.22 Electricity is down in most of Baghdad for first time in war, as explosions are heard on the city outskirts
19.08 US forces attacking Baghdad's Saddam International Airport, witnesses say.
4-4-03 03.32American forces say they have gained complete control of Baghdad Airport.
11.53 Three coalition soldiers die after a car explodes near a coalition checkpoint northwest of Baghdad in what US Central Command believes to be a suicide attack.
16.03 Saddam Hussein has appeared on Iraqi television calling on the people of Baghdad to resist the enemy.
18.07 Iraqi TV shows footage of what it says is Saddam Hussein being mobbed by cheering crowds in Baghdad on Friday.
5-4-03 05.32 Up eight US tanks move into the southern outskirts of Baghdad on a reconnaissance mission, about 12km (seven miles) from the centre, the nearest land advance into the capital.
07.57 Substantial numbers of coalition troops are moving into Baghdad, the US military says.
13.32 Iraqi state television broadcasts a message from President Saddam Hussein urging the Iraqi people to "step up attacks on the invading forces".
17.52 Iraqi Republican Guard units around Baghdad have been crippled as an organized force,US Lieutenant General Michael Moseley says.
What's quite interesting here - and the reason why we sort of got out the habit - is that the start of the week saw the number of developments that the BBC thought worthy of sharing had almost stopped. At the same time, Sky One started to find space on the its ticker for non-war stuff and News 24 allowed the odd bit of Sports and Business programming to sneak back amongst the never ending war-o-rama.

2003-04-04T03:14:00.000-08:00

THIRTEEN MINUTES LATE - UNEXPLODED BOMBLETS ON THE LINE AT EALING: Seriously, the US Defense Department are now describing the Coalition Forces as being within commuting distance of Baghdad. Presumably their main concern is avoiding being beaten back to "a day trip's distance from" or "within an overnight Sleeper journey". Let's not point out that B52 bombers have been leaving England, flying over to Baghdad, shocking and awing, and getting back the same shift and - as such - the US have always been in commuting distance of Baghdad.

2003-04-04T00:58:00.000-08:00

IT'S NOT OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY IS TOLD IT IS: We've had the delightful re-positioning of the English langauge a lot in this war - for example, in the way an airport can be said to be "taken" despite the Coalition not controlling the access road and possibly not even holding the terminal building. (So, that's the building where they unpack the little trays of food and a baggage caroussel in American hands, is it?) But the US have just raised the stakes - the US plan to just say they've won at a point of their determining, without bothering over whether Saddam's surrendered or not. This is quite a handy way of defining a finish to a war - it's worked in Afghanistan where most of the world seems to have accepted that the US have won even though the people who they were fighting against have never surrendered, been captured or even found. In fact, it makes you wonder why Bush hasn't already declared victory in the struggle. If you're not looking for a surrender, why bother waiting?

2003-04-04T00:51:00.000-08:00

THE FUG OF WAR: After all that about how Private Lynch had been shot and stabbed, her father points out that, actually there weren't any wounds of that sort on her body at all. Hmmmm.

2003-04-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

FREEDOM IS JUST A SONG BY WHAM: One of the popular things the bomb 'em all brigade think is clever to say to peace protesters is "At least you're free to protest here; if you tried that in Iraq you'd be taken away in the middle of the night." Besides being meaningless and avoiding the issue, it might not even be true in Oregon much longer, as new legislation attempts to treat prostest groups as terrorists and throw them in jail. [Thanks to Kellie for the link]

2003-04-02T03:47:00.000-08:00

A NICE IDEA WHILE IT LASTED: Belguim has given in to bullying by World Leaders afraid they might be asked to explain themselves in a court of law tightened up its war crimes law ("tightened up its war crimes law") and changed the rules for bringing people to justice for crimes committed elsewhere - now all such actions will have to be approved by a special prosecutor before they'll be allowed to proceed. The change in the rules has been made retrospective, too, so that's Ariel Sharon off the hook.
One piece of warming balm: the BBC report mentions "former US President George W Bush" - a sign either that they've muddled up father and son, or else that he's been booted out of power. We hope its the latter.

2003-04-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

NOTHING TO DO WITH EDITORIAL CONTENT. OF COURSE: Israeli cable operators drop BBC World, purely on commercial grounds. Of course.

2003-04-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

AT LAST, AN ANTI-WAR POSITION FOR THE AMERICAN RIGHT: Yesterday, somewhere in the morass of news, there was an interview with a gynocologist in an Iraqi hospital who added some 'victims of war' that might have been missed out of the calculations. Apparently, the number of abortions being requested in Iraq has shot up; and the number of women spontaneously aborting - usually in response to events like the bombing of their neighbourhood - has doubled since the War started. Generally, we're pro-Abortion Rights here, but if some of those US anti-abortion campaigners did want to hold some sort of march to protect the unborn of Iraq, we might consider signing up for it.

2003-04-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

EBAY - THEY'RE THE ENEMY: You know how when the rules to protect us against terrorists were being slapped down firmly, us wet liberals were warning that we'd wake up one morning and find their vaguely worded clauses tripping everybody up? Want an example of that in action? How about Federal Prosecutors wanting to make PayPal pay fines. What bit of terrorism had Ebay's online settlement been supporting? Erm... nothing, actually, but hey - the legislation is worded to allow Missouri to send what amounts to a blackmailing demand for cash because PayPal had accepted money on behalf of online gambling places and, as such, had been "laundering" cash from "illegal" activities.

2003-04-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

THE NOT-QUITE FINISHED WAR: In the Evening Standard last week, Andrew Neil was bleating on about how people who suggest the war might not be going to plan are falling into the same trap that the doubters against Afghanistanian Victory were. His point might have been a bit more forceful (i) had not even the White House suggested that the Afghan conflict could be long, drawn out and messy and (ii) if any of the aims of that war had actually been achieved - The Taliban are still at large; large swathes of the country are still run by Warlords; Bin Laden may well have not even been there in the first place and certainly wasn't detained and brought to justice; the bits of the country 'freed' are only marginally less repressed than they were and now it's clear that the US army hasn't even managed to make its own positions secure, what with country being the way it is and all. When did anyone say they'd finished there?

2003-04-01T02:47:00.000-08:00

WE CAN CENSOR OURSELVES, THANK YOU: Warners photoshop peace sign out of movie poster because, you know, it would be inappropriate not to do so, don't you think?

2003-04-01T01:29:00.000-08:00

DROPPING OUT THE NEWS SKY: We were a bit pissed off that we were able to go to bed one night with the news leading on a hijacking of a Turkish plane, only for the story to have been dropped completely by the time we woke up – presumably because it turned out to not be Iraq War motivated after all – the 'hijacker' had been having problems with his family. Yet, surely, this was linked to that there War on Terror – if only because this was the second time in a month a plane had been taken over in Turkey by a man using candles, and the bloke had managed to get into the cockpit of the plane this time. Reports when the plane landed at Athens said he'd demanded to be flown on to Berlin – now, I'm no criminal mastermind, but I can see a way in which people in Europe might be at a very serious risk of having Jumbo Jet driven into their soft heads if something isn't done about tightening up security down at Turkish airports. Maybe the Bush administration should be linking its massive bribe for the government to tightening up of procedures down at the check-in desk?

2003-03-30T10:31:00.000-08:00

OH, JULIE...: Julie Burchillhas returned to the subject of the war, or at least the opposition to it. I know I shouldn't get frustrated with Burchill - journalistically, it's on a par with writing a letter to a soap character like they were a real person - but sometimes you just have to do something slightly more constructive than banging your head on the floor until it all goes away.
The start is some ill-considered bollocks about how mental illness - unless caused by chemical imbalance or as a result of being abused as a child - is just self-obsession (if something bad happens to you after you're 18, then you should pull yourself together, I guess); in the same way - aha - that campaigning against the war is.
I've always thought that the last place you'd see the vanity of depression in action would be on a protest march, especially one against war in a foreign country, [Really? When have you thought that, Julie?] but I do believe that many of the anti-war antics currently taking place are totally egotistical. Those who demonstrated against US aggression in Vietnam and Cuba did so because they believed that those people should have more freedom, not less. But does the most hardened peacenik really believe that Iraqis currently enjoy more liberty and delight than they would if Saddam were brought down?
Hold up a second... actually, the anti-Vietnam war marches were almost identical in their point of view - the people of a foreign country shouldn't have America bomb a decision into them. Of course, Stalin's Bitch Julie presumably wouldn't want anyone to suggest that the US attack on communism in Havana and Hanoi was motivated by the same principles that have led Bush to declare time to unleash hell on Baghdad, but in all three instances, the US would argue they're the ones offering freedom in the face of a one-party state and repression, surely?
If so, fair enough; if not, then they are marching about one thing - themselves. That's why so many luvvies are involved; this is simply showing off on a grand scale.
Erm... except showing off is surely tricky to do if you're in a crowd of one million or so? It's virtually impossible to show off in such a large crowd.
I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to America The Beautiful, not an awful lot - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count?
Oddly, Julie, they didn't two years ago. And wasn't the point of the war about removing the threat from Saddam and his Weapons of Mass Destruction? Saddam's been a brutal wanker for nearly two decades. The war has come dressed up as a response to a direct threat. That, sweetcakes, is why the main news source for Americans has got 'War on Terror' break bumpers.
Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a suff about their wet, white, western names? See how they write them so solemnly in a list on the bottom of the letters they send to the papers. And the ones that add their brats' names are the worst - a grotesque spin on Baby On Board, except they think that this gives them extra humanity points not just on the motorway, but in the whole wide weeping, striving, yearning world. We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside.
Eh? So signing your name on a peace letter or a petition is showing off, is it? Surely if they'd decided to object but not sign we'd be hit with a Burchill half-think piece about how the anti-war people aren't brave enough to stand up and be counted. If you can't understand the 'not in my name' point, let's try and explain it for you: It means 'My country may be proceeding in this war, but it isn't doing it with my support.' It's no more about showing off than banging on under a signed column in a newspaper, is it?
Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously "difficult"and vain - Streisand, Albarn, Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn? And Robin Cook! Why might anyone believe world peace can be secured by this motley bunch?
The internationalism of the soldiers? Twaddle. They're not there thinking about the world, they're thinking about their job. Their job is to kill the people who they're told is the enemy. They are not the fucking Red Brigade. They're merely workmen doing a job. And Robin Cook difficult and vain? This is a man who's toed a Blair line for so long he's got athlete's foot, a man who swallowed shit in the name of cabinet loyalty for half a decade, a man with a ginger beard. And what of the other anti-war protesters - that wet bloke from Coldplay, the Dixies Chicks (briefly), the Pope? Meanwhile, the awkward and vain Gallagher Brothers and Charlton Heston seem to be pro-bomb the fuck out of everyone to me...
Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and self-loathing that often characterises recreational depression - an unholy alliance of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you're scum, but also that you're terribly important, too. For instance, what about the loony who offered to be crucified on live TV if George Bush promised not to invade Iraq? "Send your troops home and take me," she wrote to the White House, adding later, "I don't want to appear as some nutter." Similarly, there are the human shields - now limping homewards after being shocked to discover, bless 'em, that Saddam wanted to stick them in front of military installations as opposed to the hospitals and petting zoos that they'd fondly imagined they were going to defend.
Yeah, there are some extreme people in the anti-war movement. You know what? There are people on the other side who offer to go and blow themselves up in the middle of Baghdad. No side has the monopoly on extremists.
What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them back their lives.
How embarrassing it will be for the peaceniks to have to explain to the celebrants how much better it would have been for them never to have been troubled by such joy!
Yes. They'll be dancing in Baghdad, that's for sure. We might need to find their legs for them first, mind.

2003-03-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

NOT A QUAGMIRE: Reassuringly, pro-war media 'experts' are lining up to make it clear that the Iraq war will not be another Vietnam. This week, Andrew Neil is just one British journalist who's called up his vast experience of launching supplements about fashion and turning national newspapers into titles loathed by the country they pretend to represent to snort at anyone who might suggest that Iraq is merely Vietnam with lighter cameras and a direct influence on the price at the pump. And we've been sent a document which backs him up - here are, in fact, the top ten reasons why Iraq won't be like Vietnam at all:

10. Unlike the 60's, US troops have maps with countries coloured-in differently, showing clearly where the bad guys stop and the unaligned countries start
9. Michael Moore not likely to be cause of lust-driven doubts in mind of troops to the same extent as Jane Fonda
8. Bush adamant: No room in DC for another memorial wall - besides, those things just attract no many nutters driving tractors to the city
7. RIAA sign pledge that no Canadian subsidiary will release draft-dodger's anti-war albums
6. Fox News can't even spell Walter Cronkite
5. Desert conditions reduce chances of accidently covering kids with agent orange
4. Disliked platoon leaders to stick to the back - you can't stop squaddies shooting them, but at least they'll have to do it to their faces, dammit
3. Reduced frontline role for maverick DJs
2. Black guys, white guys - all to listen to the same music this time round
1. Henry Kissinger on board strictly in an advisory capacity

2003-03-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

FRITWATCH: We're getting confused now about who's being scared in what direction - Roberto Alagna and Angea Gheorghiu pulled out of the Metropolitan Opera in New York to go to France, while the Belcea String Orchestra decided to not go to LA and stayed in London instead. Youssou N'Dour's pulled a thirty-eight date tour of the US, but that's a protest against the American policy, not because he's scared (we shan't mention how we're sure Bush will be sat, head in hands, knowing there's going to be a little less world music in the states as a result of his actions). But the extreme example of Not Frit has to go to The Wu-Tang clan who are heading off to Israel to show solidarity with the Israelis. They claim the country is full of hip-hoppers. We'll see...

2003-03-30T04:58:00.000-08:00

FRANKS AND HONEST?: Tommy Franks has just this moment strode off after attempting to spin the call-up of extra troops - apparently, they were going to be coming anyway; but they've just moved up the ground war because of an "opportunity" to allow it to happen earlier than the original plan. Righto, Tommy. Since the original plan involved the Iraqis welcoming the invasion and rising up to fight alongside the US/UK troops, and that hasn't happened, and the Iraqi army were meant to have has their communications knocked out and that hasn't happened, could you perhaps give us a hint as to what has happened to make a land war likely to be easier earlier than originally advertised? Otherwise we might assume you're lying.