Our occupation seems to be going so well.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US troops 'kill 13 Iraqi protesters'
US troops opened fire on a group of Iraqi demonstrators near Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 13 people and wounding 75 others, according to reports from the area.

Qatar's al-Jazeera television station reported that troops had fired on the demonstrators in the town of Falluja, around 30 miles west of Baghdad, after someone in the crowd threw a stone at US soldiers. The protesters had been demonstrating against the continued US presence in Iraq, al-Jazeera said.

US central command in Qatar said troops had shot at armed Iraqis who had fired on the soldiers. Witnesses said that the demonstrators, who had been protesting at a local school, had not been armed. They said that the protest had been peaceful.

Let's bring the efficiency of American public works projects to Iraq.

Daddy Warbucks Is Alive and Well Fareed Zakaria has argued persuasively in Newsweek that our true interest lies in making all assistance to Iraq "multilateral," since this would "take some of the economic and military burden off the United States" and help remove the stigma of U.S. occupation in Iraqi eyes. The White House and the Pentagon, however, have rejected that eminently sensible advice, supposedly for geopolitical and strategic reasons—as well as to punish those who tried to thwart the drive to war. There’s another obvious downside to multilateralism: American corporations would have to share with their competitors in Europe and Japan.

Sharing the spoils might not trouble the ordinary taxpayer, who must contemplate spending additional tens of billions from Washington’s depleted treasury on Iraq’s reconstruction while domestic needs go unmet. Unfortunately, the ordinary taxpayer has little influence over the federal government’s dealings in Iraq, where enormous deals made in great haste will surely result in appalling waste.

Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded a contract worth $680 billion for the reconstruction of roads, bridges and other facilities to Bechtel, the San Francisco– based construction conglomerate whose Republican connections are comparable to those of Enron and the Carlyle Group.

Bechtel’s former president is George Shultz, who served as Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, tutored George W. Bush in foreign policy during the 2000 campaign and fervently advocated invading Iraq. The company’s current C.E.O., Riley Bechtel, was recently appointed to serve on the President’s Export Council.

The most startling coincidence is that the official responsible for overseeing the award of the A.I.D. contract to Bechtel is Andrew Natsios. A protégé of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, the A.I.D. chief knows the San Francisco company very well, indeed. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Mr. Natsios oversaw Boston’s Big Dig highway scheme, the largest and most scandalously inefficient building project in American history—whose chief contractor was none other than Bechtel.

A bit of humor at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | The Fix No one, it seems, was in much of a clowning mood. Take the exchange we heard about between comedian/smart-ass Al Franken and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz:

Franken: “Clinton’s military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?”

Wolfowitz: “Fuck you.”

Joshua Micah Marshall on the insanity of the neocon vision of the Middle East.

"Practice to Deceive" by Joshua Micah Marshall To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?

What is Hallibuirton to me?

Spoils To the Victor (washingtonpost.com) Which brings to mind the punch line of that old Lone Ranger and Tonto joke ("Well, Tonto, it looks like we're surrounded by Indians"): "What do you mean, 'we,' Kemosabe?" What am I to Halliburton? What is Halliburton to me? Misdirected national emotion is turning into a theme of the Bush II years. We're filled with righteous anger at Osama bin Laden, so we go and pummel Saddam Hussein. We're filled with gratitude toward the soldiers who fought this war and with self-satisfaction as the citizens who will pay for it, so we give a teary hug and a big wet kiss on the mouth to a company practically all of us have nothing to do with.

It's like getting one of those cards announcing that instead of a Christmas present, someone has made a contribution in your name to some charity you aren't interested in. "Dear American Taxpayer: We are pleased to inform you that in gratitude for all the billions you're going to be pouring into Iraq, the U.S. government has made a sweetheart deal on your behalf with a company you've never heard of." Eighty billion dollars -- the size of just the first expense report the Bush administration has submitted to Congress -- works out to about $1,000 that needs to be kicked in by each household in the United States. Of course we're putting it all on the credit card, to be paid for in the future, with interest. But it's still real money. If we made a contribution that big to our local public broadcasting outlet, we'd qualify for a CD recording by six, nine or even 12 tenors. From the Bush administration, we don't even get a tote bag. But at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that we share a $10 trillion economy with some smiling companies that are doing well out of the war.

Shame.

Raiders of the Lost Art - Why didn't we protect the National Museum and Library in Baghdad? By Meghan O'Rourke The Pentagon has defended its non-action by saying that it agreed to protect the sites during battle, as distinct from any looting that came afterward. Splitting hairs, anyone? The United States could easily have done more to stop the ransacking. The looting of the museum began on Friday; it extended, according to a BBC radio report, for three days, at which point there still were no guards posted outside the building. Numerous newspapers quote Iraqi citizens who saw American patrols impassively watch as looters carted away vases, jewelry, pots, and other goods. The Guardian reported on Monday that U.S. Army commanders had just rejected a new plea from desperate officials of the Iraq Museum for aid. And the fires at the National Library and the Ministry of Religious Affairs took place two whole days after the looting of the museum began. Americans ought to have protected the museums, just as we posted Army patrols outside the National Ministry of Oil.

The military's inaction doesn't seem to have been a question of choosing between protecting civilians and guarding gold jewelry. The Chicago Tribune reported that the U.S. military successfully assigned men to chip away a disrespectful mural of former President George Bush on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel, even though it failed to protect the museum and library from being plundered.

Why didn't anyone act? How hard would it have been for someone to call Tommy Franks and say, "This is getting out of hand"? Put bluntly, it seems like the administration just didn't care enough to stop it—an indifference that's part and parcel with its general attitude toward anything other than its military objectives. Rumsfeld appeared genuinely annoyed even to have to answer questions about the ransacking of the museum and library: "We didn't allow it to happen. It happened," he said. This ham-fisted diplomacy immediately gave rise to anti-American conspiracy-mongering: Nine British archaeologists suggested that, in turning a blind eye to the looting, the Bush administration was succumbing to pressure from private collectors to allow treasures to be traded on the open market. Others have suggested the administration wanted the world to feel the symbolic weight of the destruction of Saddam's regime.

Capital Games There is no confusion about how the Bush administration and its necon pals see the Iraq war: this is just the beginning. Most Iraqis at this point do seem to have cause to be thankful the neoconservatives won the policy battle within the Bush administration. But few critics of the war expected the war portion of the invade-and-occupy-and-then-project-power-further-into-the-M iddle-East plan to be the difficult stage. It was round one of what promises to be a long bout--and Bush and his comrades are not taking off the gloves. Not even to rest and reflect. Not even to consider the anxieties, tensions and conflict caused by the war. Not even to gloat in a relaxed moment. It's on to Damascus or wherever the crusade leads. At the end of this war, hubris has not been beaten into humility. It reigns and grows fat on the sweet nourishment of victory.

Yahoo! News - Anti-American protests intensify in Iraq

Yahoo! News - Anti-American protests intensify in Iraq Exasperated US military officials tried to hamper the media from covering new demonstrations in Baghdad on Tuesday while some 20,000 people in the Shiite Muslim bastion of Nasiriyah railed against a US-staged meeting on Iraq's future.

The protests came as the Americans delivered a first progress report in their effort to restore Iraq to normalcy and head off a chorus of criticism over continued lawlessness and a lack of basic services.

Some 200-300 Iraqis gathered Tuesday outside the Palestine Hotel, where the US marines have set up an operations base, for a third straight day of protests against the US occupation.

For the first time, visibly angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest, moving reporters and cameras about 30 meters (yards) from the barbed-wired entrance to the hotel.

"We want you to pull back to the back of the hotel because they (the Iraqis) are only performing because the media are here," said a marine colonel who wore the name Zarcone but would not give his first name or title.

The crowd later moved to the nearby square where the statue of Saddam was toppled Wednesday to signal the end of the regime. As three of the marines' armored amphibious vehicles passed by, they chanted: "No, no, USA."

Meanwhile, demonstrators marched to the center of the predominantly Shiite southern city of Nasiriyah, chanting "Yes to freedom ... Yes to Islam ... No to America, No to Saddam."

They were protesting a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups convened at a nearby military base in an initial attempt by the United States to plot out a political future for the post-Saddam Iraq.

Graham Invitation Irks Muslims at Pentagon (washingtonpost.com) Muslim employees of the Defense Department are protesting plans for the Rev. Franklin Graham, who has called Islam an evil religion, to lead Good Friday prayers at the Pentagon.

In letters to the Pentagon chaplain's office, Muslim office workers said they were dismayed by the choice of Graham and urged officials to find "a more inclusive and honorable Christian clergyman" to lead the April 18 service.

Graham's statements about Islam "have been very controversial and divisive," said Zadil Ansari, lay leader of the Muslim community at the Pentagon.

And so it goes.

Wonderful.

Yahoo! News - At least 10 killed in Mosul shooting, US troops blamed At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in shooting in Mosul, a hospital doctor said, as other witnesses alleged US troops had opened fire.
At least 10 people were killed and scores wounded in shooting in Mosul, a hospital doctor said, as other witnesses alleged US troops had opened fire.

Photo
AFP Photo


Special Coverage
Latest news:
· Looters Ransack Iraq's National Library
AP - 29 minutes ago
· Iraqis Seek News About Missing Relatives
AP - 44 minutes ago
· U.S. Urges Iraqis to Work Together as Talks Begin
Reuters - 51 minutes ago
Special Coverage



"There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead" following the shooting near the local government offices in a central square, Dr Ayad al-Ramadhani said Tuesday at the emergency department of the city hospital.

Three witnesses questioned by AFP and casualties who spoke to hospital staff said US troops had fired on the crowd which was becoming increasingly hostile towards the city's new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi, as he was making a pro-US speech.
"There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead" following the shooting near the local government offices in a central square, Dr Ayad al-Ramadhani said Tuesday at the emergency department of the city hospital.

Three witnesses questioned by AFP and casualties who spoke to hospital staff said US troops had fired on the crowd which was becoming increasingly hostile towards the city's new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi, as he was making a pro-US speech.

These people can't even wait for the first body to cool.

White House Escalates Diplomatic Pressure on Syria (washingtonpost.com) White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, at his morning briefing, said repeatedly that "Syria needs to cooperate." He read from a CIA report to Congress last year that Syria had stockpiles of the nerve agent sarin, that it was "trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve elements," and that it was "highly probable" that Syria was pursuing biological weapons. Fleischer described the document as "authoritative" and said the charge is "well corroborated."

Fleischer declined to dispel the impression that administration was targeting Syria for possible diplomatic or even military measures. "I can only say to you that it should not be unexpected that the United States for a considerable period of time has said through diplomatic channels that nations that are rogue nations need to clean up their act," he said. "They should not harbor terrorists. They should not produce weapons of mass destruction."

More proof that the President is a lying package of feces.

If you don't believe me, read this article from The American Prospect. "But George W. Bush is in a class by himself when it comes to prevarication. It is no exaggeration to say that lying has become Bush's signature as president."

Salon.com News | Firefight erupts in central Baghdad New graffiti, scrawled in English, appeared on a Baghdad wall: "Bush supports looters."

Washington Post review of Cherry Red's Penetrator.

The Naked and the Dread (washingtonpost.com) But "Penetrator," playing at the Source Theatre, is more than a flippant celebration of filth. It's a dense, provocative black comedy about war, fear, memory and friendship. The play was written by Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson in response to the 1991 Gulf War, and its references to Iraq make the script sound relevant to current events. "Penetrator" is not really about any specific war in any particular year, however. It's about all wars and the destructive effects war can have on those it touches, soldiers and noncombatants alike.

Shocker -- something the Bushies have done that is good for big business.

Mail Fraud - Here comes yet another shortsighted plan to bail out the Postal Service. By Daniel Gross In the short term, the deal to hold down rates will shift more costs onto the government. In the long term, it could set the stage for an expensive bailout of the health plan. The real beneficiaries of the legislation are those who rely on mail service most: big corporations. If USPS really had to raise revenues—if it wasn't able to arrange this $2.9 billion accounting trick—it would have to raise them on the bulk mailers who comprise the majority of its business. That's why lobbyists for the bulk mailers worked Congress hard on behalf of this bill and are delighted with the outcome. Taxpayers are giving a lovely gift to the Lands' Ends, Condé Nasts, and Capital Ones: They'll thank us by sending us more catalogs, magazines, and credit card solicitations that we don't really want.

Oh, that Rummy. He's such a jokester.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Free to do bad things In an extraordinary performance reminiscent of the Iraqi information minister who assured the world that all was well even as battles raged visibly around him, Mr Rumsfeld quipped:

"The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?' "

In what appeared to be a concerted effort to damp down media coverage of the chaos, the British government simultaneously laid into the BBC and its defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, accusing them of "trying to make the news" rather than reporting it.

Here's more scary stuff about the Bush Administration.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | The battle for American science Welcome to the new battlegrounds of American science. No conspiracy, nor even one political agenda, links the incidents above. But US scientists say they are indicative of a new climate that has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science. The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls.

As prescient observers of the events north of Atlanta last year realised, these aren't the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of ID - using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists - grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn't necessarily created in seven days) in order to better attack it.

"It's not that I don't think Darwinian evolution can't explain anything," says Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the movement's foremost academic advocate, when asked how he accounts for the very visible evolution of, say, viruses. "It's just that I don't think it can explain everything. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example, is one of the things it can explain."

Similarly, the White House's strategy on global warming is not to scoff at the scientific establishment's warnings on climate change. Rather, it trumpets the importance of their research activities and calls for even more research - years more, in fact - before any action is taken. In the same fashion, one of the most popular arguments currently circulating on anti-condom websites claims not that they encourage promiscuity but that they can't protect against HIV. The reason, it argues, is because the virus is 0.1 microns in diameter, while there are tiny pores in latex measuring 10 microns. (There is no evidence for this.)

These are the people who are running this country.

Jesus in Baghdad - Why we should keep Franklin Graham out of Iraq. By Steven Waldman Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham and a far more influential figure in the evangelical Christian community than Jerry Falwell or even Pat Robertson. Graham is viewed as the torch-carrier for his father, who is still among the most beloved figures in American Christianity. Moreover, the Graham family is close to Bush. Billy Graham led Bush to Christianity in the 1980s; Franklin Graham delivered the invocation at his presidential inauguration.

In addition to being publicly allied with the Bush administration, Graham also happens to be stridently anti-Islam. His list of anti-Islam comments is long; his most succinct was that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion."

Graham is also, he says, "poised and ready" to send representatives of the charity he runs to Iraq as soon as possible. His primary purpose is humanitarian Aid€”providing food and shelter, ”but he also admits, "I believe as we work, God will always give us opportunities to tell others about his Son. We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian, I do this in the name of Jesus Christ."

Graham is not alone in wanting to work in Iraq. A number of other Christian group ”including the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination "are packing their bags and heading to Iraq (if they're not already there), equipped with food, shelter, and Bibles. (These well-wishers are not to be confused with an Army chaplain who forced his troops to get baptized if they wanted a bath.)
...
In fact, religious liberty does not trump all concerns. Among the concerns it does not trump is the safety of our soldiers and the desire not to have the entire Muslim world wanting to wage war against America. And make no mistake: Franklin Graham's mission to Iraq will help convince the Arab world that America is out to convert Muslims to Christianity. What Graham is doing probably isn't illegal; it's merely immoral.

I should have known.

Link via Tom Tomorrow.

The photographs tell the story...
The up close action video of the statue being destroyed is broadcast around the world as proof of a massive uprising. Still photos grabbed off of Reuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square... it's empty save for the U.S. Marines, the International Press, and a small handful of Iraqis. There are no more than 200 people in the square at best. The Marines have the square sealed off and guarded by tanks. A U.S. mechanized vehicle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from it's base. The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras.

Michael Kinsley on the unanswered questions of the war.

Unsettled - Victory in the war is not victory in the argument about the war. By Michael Kinsley The serious case involved questions that are still unresolved. Factual questions: Is there a connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11? Is that connection really bigger than that of all the countries we're not invading? Does Iraq really have or almost have weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States? Predictive questions: What will toppling Saddam ultimately cost in dollars and in lives (American, Iraqi, others)? Will the result be a stable Iraq and a blossoming of democracy in the Middle East or something less attractive? How many young Muslims and others will be turned against the United States, and what will they do about it?

Political questions: Should we be doing this despite the opposition of most of our traditional allies? Without the approval of the United Nations? Moral questions: Is it justified to make "pre-emptive" war on nations that may threaten us in the future? When do internal human rights, or the lack of them, justify a war? Is there a policy about pre-emption and human rights that we are prepared to apply consistently? Does consistency matter? Even etiquette questions: Before Bush begins trying to create a civil society in Iraq, wouldn't it be nice if he apologized to Bill Clinton and Al Gore for all the nasty, dismissive things he said about "nation-building" in the 2000 campaign?

Some of these questions will be answered shortly, and some will be debated forever. This doesn't mean history will never render a judgment. History's judgment doesn't require unanimity or total certainty. But that judgment is not in yet. Supporters of this war who are in the mood for an ideological pogrom should chill out for a while, and opponents need not fold into permanent cringe position.

The Bush Administration: Empty Rhetoric, Broken Promises

Example 1: Afghanistan

Salon.com News | The last place we liberated But even Hamid Karzai, the normally deferential president of the Transitional Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, recently revealed his fears about the depth of the U.S. commitment. "Don't forget us if Iraq happens," he pleaded at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Feb. 26.

His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who represents the government in southern Kandahar, was much blunter to an AP reporter on Monday. "It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem," he said "What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing ...There have been no significant changes for people." Ahmed Karzai says he doesn't "know what to say to people anymore."

If the U.S. government's new charge is finding nations oppressed by horrific regimes that pose a security risk to the U.S., bombing that country, and creating a new democracy, then Afghanistan -- our first experiment -- stands as an example. Regrettably, as of now, it is an example of how not to do it.

Argument Whether the US will agree to the Baghdad conference proposed by Jack Straw on the model of the one in Bonn on Afghanistan remains to be seen. But chillingly, a Washington official close to the ORHA planning process was quoted in The New York Times yesterday saying: "To the victor, the spoils, and in this case the spoils are choosing who governs." This is about as far removed from the idea of letting – in some cases unknown – Iraqi leadership figures emerging from a genuinely broad-based interim administration to contest eventual elections – if and when they finally happen – as it's possible to be.

For all the harmony in Belfast, in other words, real differences are emerging between the British and the US about the post-war settlement. You could see a little symbol of it at US Central Command yesterday, when British officials – as excited as everyone else by the television pictures of a hauling cable round the massive statue of Saddam in Shahid Square – held their heads in their hands in despair as overenthusiastic US Marines planted the Stars and Stripes over the statue's head.

In some ways these differences mirror those over whether to involve the UN before the war, reflecting in turn divisions within Washington, which according to Western diplomats are much bitterer and more ferocious now than they were then. But this time the usual story that it will be all right on the night, that the US President will come down on the side of the angels, won 't work. Events are moving too fast for that. And the stakes are too high. For many in the Middle East – including inside Iraq itself – are now looking directly to Britain as their one hope of moderating what they fear could so easily turn in to a US proconsulate followed by the establishment of a puppet regime. "The foresee an occupation, and they say, if that's not what you're about, you'd better prove it," says one diplomat.

Damn!

Now how am I going to travel to Europe?

News British Airways and Air France chiefs today signalled the end of the supersonic era in aviation by announcing that they were retiring their Concorde planes this autumn.

BA blamed falling passenger levels and rising maintenance costs for the decision to scrap flights.

Both BA and Air France said their Concorde operations would stop at the end of October 2003

Let's not get too complacent.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Iraqis have paid the blood price for a fraudulent war What cannot now be disguised, as US marines swagger around the Iraqi capital swathing toppled statues of Saddam Hussein with the stars and stripes and declaring "we own Baghdad", is the crudely colonial nature of this enterprise. Any day now, the pro-Israeli retired US general Jay Garner is due to take over the running of Iraq, with plans to replace the Iraqi dinar with the dollar, parcel out contracts to US companies and set the free market parameters for the future "interim Iraqi administration".

Shashi Tharoor, UN under secretary-general warned Britain and the US against treating Iraq as "some sort of treasure chest to be divvied up", but the Pentagon, which is calling the shots, isn't listening. Its favoured Iraqi protege, Ahmed Chalabi - scion of the old Iraqi ruling class who last set foot in Baghdad 45 years ago - was flown into Nasiriya by the Americans at the weekend and, almost unbelievably for someone convicted of fraud and embezzlement, is being lined up as an adviser to the finance ministry.

Okay, so this is a good thing.

The Bush Administration continues to show that it is full of religious nuts.

washingtonpost.com: Paige's Remarks on Religion in Schools Decried

Civil liberties and education groups called yesterday for Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige to apologize or resign after he told a Baptist publication that he believes it is important for schools to teach Christian values.

"All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith," Paige said in an interview published Monday by the Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Paige's remarks showed "an astonishing mix of disrespect for both America's religious diversity and the public schools." In a letter faxed to the Department of Education yesterday, Lynn urged Paige to repudiate the remarks or step down.

Dan Lengan, Paige's press secretary, said that the quotations in the article were accurate and that Paige has no intention of resigning.

"Secretary Paige's deep faith has helped him to overcome adversity, to find clarity and has sustained him throughout his life," Lengan said. "He has dedicated his entire career to promoting diversity and making sure children from all races, ethnic groups and faiths share access to the best possible education."

Even Nixon looks good when compared to George Bush.

Hartford Advocate: I Miss America Next to the high crimes and low misdemeanors perpetrated by this Bush administration, Nixon's sins seem, well, if not quaint, then understandable within the context of the times. Even though he will forever bear the blame for the expansion of the Vietnam War with his bombings of Cambodia and Laos-and the terrible "blowback" they bred-it should be noted that Nixon inherited that war from two Democratic predecessors, that the largest troop escalations were done on Lyndon Johnson's watch.

Ironically, beyond these much more serious sins, the crimes that led to Nixon's impeachment hearings and resignation in August 1974 seem so, well, tame: he bugged the campaign headquarters of a Democratic opponent (George McGovern) whom all polls indicated he'd beat in a landslide in Nov. 1972 (he did). And, then, when the press discovered that this break-in led back to the White House, he covered it up. That's it. Sounds like standard, and unchallenged, presidential protocol these days.

Indeed, the crimes of George W. Bush ON A DAILY BASIS surpass the collective crimes of Richard Nixon's entire presidential career.

So, why aren't people more outraged by the current White House's abuse of power, unprecedented in American history?

What could be more criminal than to start a war by invading another country that poses no immediate threat? What could be more criminal than starting this war by using fictitious documents, photographs and threats of retaliation against countries, and longtime allies, that will not go along with this charade? What could be more criminal than to perpetrate, and escalate, this terrible bloodshed even as we speak? What could be more telling about this Little Caesar in the White House that, even as he needlessly puts our brave, dutiful soldiers in harm's way, he is cutting the benefits to veterans of previous wars? What could be more criminal than to loot the U.S. Treasury to conduct a blood-for-oil feud, then pass the cost on to generations unborn?

Shocker -- No new evidence of chemical weapons.

Yahoo! News - "Smoking gun" WMD site in Iraq turns out to contain pesticide A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had claimed might finally be "smoking gun" evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as originally thought.

Is this still America?

Army officers attempt to intimidate mother of member of "politically minded hip hop/soul band Spearhead." If this si true, this is very scary.

RollingStone.com: News: Army Questions Spearhead Mom on March 16th, across the country in Boston, the mother of the
group's human beatbox Radioactive received a visit from two plainclothes Army officers.

"She'd spoken in an interview about her daughter who has been deployed in the Gulf, and her son who is in this band Spearhead," says Spearhead frontman Michael Franti. "They showed her a picture of her son wearing a t-shirt that said 'Unfuck the world' on the front, and 'Dethrone the Bushes' on the back. They told her that was an un-American statement. She said, 'That's free speech,' and they said, 'Well, things are changing these days.'"

The men who visited the frightened woman told her that her daughter's CDs had been confiscated, and that her son had recently taken two flights to Japan. "Why would he do that?" they asked her, according to Franti.

The men then showed her a list of names of people who worked in Franti's management office in San Francisco and a photograph of her son performing with Spearhead at the peace rally one day prior. "It kind of put a scare into all of us," says Franti. "The fact that people would be paying this close attention to what we're doing as musicians is a bit freaky. We're human rights workers -- we don't believe that people should be killed. We're not about wanting to overthrow the government, but we want to speak out. It's made us deepen our belief in what we do and work that much harder."

(thanks to Atrios for the link.)

Jimmy Breslin:

Newsday.com - A Giant of a Marine, to the End Every day since the war began the politicians and generals have not mentioned the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Somebody must have thought of that Friday because they displayed a captured medicine chest that had a few bottles of something and some powder. They analyzed it and reported back that it was something like talcum powder.

And here is a cougar, a 5-foot-2, 21-year-old Marine whose beauty is on a nation's conscience. He is in a casket. The President of the United States has to tell the truth as to why he is there.

Here's a good primer on Bush admin lies about Iraq.

Asking important questions.

Ha'aretz - Article Iraq is not Afghanistan, which can offer only dust, opium and snow. Whoever rules Iraq, or pulls the strings of its new rulers, will also run its oil production and marketing, its trade relations with Turkey, Iran and the Gulf states, and be able to determine to a large extent what the Arab League will look like, if it looks like anything at all after this war. He will be able to hand out benefits to Arab states and East Asian states who will want to resume sending their workers to Iraq.

The "new" Iraq will have too much money and influence to enable its rulers to stick to the subline idea of "Iraqi oil for the Iraqis."

The battle of Baghdad is not over yet, but already one can smell the fresh ink on the applications for reconstructive work. The only question left is how much room will remain for the "democratization" of Iraq or for peace in the Middle East, in the scramble after the loot.

Lying -- it starts at the top, and trickles down.

Argument You expect lies, but usually they're found out once a war is over. But in this war the lying is so inept that it gets rumbled the next day. So the news starts "Oh, apparently that uprising we yelled about all through yesterday didn't happen" or "Ah, yes, that chemical weapons factory turned out to be an all-night petrol garage".

The military briefings must be given by one of those pathological liars you get in pubs. One day the press conference from Washington will begin: "Guess what, I won an Olympic swimming medal once. I had to swim underwater so no one could see me because I was in the secret service."

The presenters who front this bilge should say: "We're here to bring you 24-hour rolling cack that's been made up. The minute it's made up, you'll hear about it. And there's some breaking cack being made up right now, apparently Saddam has filled some clouds with anthrax and he's forcing giants in the Republican Guard to blow them towards Bournemouth. We'll bring you more as soon as it's made up."

Richard Reeves:

Yahoo! News - THE NEW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS As for "outcome," the military outcome of this war has never been in doubt -- and, hopefully, the worst of it is over. We are going to win the fight for territory and postwar control, at least in the beginning. Whatever mistakes were made in Washington and in the field -- particularly the White House's dismissive denials that wars against evil might involve any sacrifice of lives or money -- will soon be forgotten by the masses watching victory parades. The longer-term political outcome could be disastrous for us, but by then we will be on to other things. That is the way politics has worked for at least the five centuries from Machiavelli to Madonna.

The trick now for the figure at the center of all this, the bold President Bush, is to focus attention on the military outcome and then to hold off the political accounting until after his re-election in 17 months. That will not be as easy as persuading Americans that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was the bad guy behind the killings of Sept. 11, 2001. With the probability that the U.S. economy may not be in the best of shape during 2004, the president may have to try to keep war fever up and political opposition down for the next year and a half. The voices of the few will have to be stifled by the crowd -- and that may mean more war.

This administration lies with regularity and abandon.

Newsday.com: Evidence Against Syria Is Questioned The CIA has no credible evidence that the government of Syria has had a role in the shipment of night-vision goggles and other military equipment to Iraq, according to an administration official familiar with U.S. intelligence in the region.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last Friday suggested that Syria was responsible for the shipment to Iraq of defense-related goods, including the goggles, and warned that the United States considered "such trafficking as hostile acts and would hold the Syrian government accountable." Syria quickly denied the accusation.

And the administration official yesterday said that while military goods, including goggles, have been smuggled through Syria into Iraq for many years, "It's not necessarily with the knowledge, consent or approval of the Syrian government."

"It's not a new phenomenon," he said, "and it's not clear it has the Syrian government's imprimatur."

At the same time, he said, military goods also have been shipped into Iraq, in violation of UN sanctions, from border countries much more aligned with the U.S. government, including Turkey and Jordan.

A spokesman in Rumsfeld's office said yesterday, "I'm going to leave his comments stand where they are."

No shit.

For Bush, Time to Mend Economy Is Running Out (washingtonpost.com) The Labor Department's report yesterday that the U.S. economy shed 108,000 jobs in March underscored an emerging threat to President Bush's reelection prospects: He is running out of time to restore jobs and economic growth.

The job losses in March, more than double the number analysts had expected, mean nearly 2.1 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office. Though the unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent in March, the private sector has lost more than 2.6 million jobs during Bush's term -- a drop that has been offset only by increased government hiring.

A small violation of the Establishment clause.

The Miami Herald | 04/04/2003 | Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks.

''They do appear physically and spiritually cleansed,'' Llano said.

First, though, the soldiers have to go to one of Llano's hour-and-a-half sermons in his dirt-floor tent. Then the baptism takes an hour of quoting from the Bible.

Gregg Easterbrook gives us something to think about.

The New Republic Online: Tactical Advantage Though valid military targets, most Iraqi combatants are forced conscripts who want no fight. They're poorly trained and poorly equipped, with almost no chance of survival should they be foolish enough to discharge any weapon: The U.S. military locates and obliterates sources of fire with almost robotic competence. Most Iraqi combatants are in uniform not through voluntary choice, as is the case with all U.S. and British combatants, but because they were impressed. Iraqi men cannot refuse conscription, and face summary execution if they try to return to their families. It's awful when even one Iraqi civilian dies, but civilian deaths are occurring in small numbers by the standards of warfare. Iraqi combatants are dying en masse. This conflict must end soon so that the United States can stop doing what is, by the logic of war, entirely legal, proper, fair, and necessary--killing Iraqi soldiers.

This is a sad time to be an American.

What Has Become of American Values and Idealism? All Swept Away in This Thoroughly Un-American War Until now. George Bush has cast off the restraint which held back America's 42 previous presidents - including his father. Now he is seeking, as an unashamed objective, to get into the empire business, aiming to rule a post-Saddam Iraq directly through an American governor-general, the retired soldier Jay Garner. As the Guardian reported yesterday, Washington's plan for Baghdad consists of 23 ministries - each one to be headed by an American. This is a form of foreign rule so direct we have not seen its like since the last days of the British empire. It represents a break with everything America has long believed in.

This is not to pretend that there is a single American ideal, still less a single US foreign policy, maintained unbroken since 1776. There are, instead, competing traditions, each able to trace its lineage to the founding of the republic. But what's striking is that George Bush's war on Iraq is at odds with every single one of them. Perhaps best known is Thomas Jefferson's call for an America which would not only refuse to rule over other nations, it would avoid meddling in their affairs altogether. He wanted no "entangling alliances". If America wished to export its brand of liberty, it should do it not through force but by the simple power of its own example. John Quincy Adams (before Bush, the only son of a president to become president), put it best when he declared that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy". Could there be a better description of Washington's pre-emptive pursuit of Saddam Hussein?

Discussion with Hawks: Rational, but No Rationale

So I had lunch yesterday with three smart people who are, to varying degrees, in favor of the war. Each of them is, I hasten to admit, better informed than I am as well. They paid at least some attention in school, and they absorb all the news coverage, whereas I don't watch TV and can only read a fraction of the war news in the paper without feeling sick.

So, intelligent, knowledgable, and articulate though they were, and outnumbering me three to one, they still could not come up with a reason why we are in Iraq now. Here are the salient points each made over a half hour's talk:

Handgun Man: Saddam only complies when military pressure is on, and sometimes you have to follow through on your threats. Just because much of the support from the U.S. population is ignorant and racist doesn't mean that we shouldn't take the opportunity to kick the ass of a tyrant who openly dislikes us.

Imperial Man: The U.S. is like no other nation. It has a manifest destiny to attack evil wherever it occurs and save innocents wherever they are threatened. Iraq is just the first of many. Other countries and the U.N. can either fall in line or get out of the way. Besides, we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is willing to use them, based on incidents from years past. No need to prove it to the world.

Moderation Man: Most likely, fewer people will be killed and displaced by the war than would have suffered similar fates under a continued Saddam regime. The war seems like a good thing to do, except that (1) financial gains to Republican cronies make it suspect, (2) the administration keeps flagrantly lying, and (3) he doesn't want his D.C. office to be a bomb site.

My responses are perhaps predictable: I find Handgun Man overly cynical, Imperial Man scary as hell, and Moderation Man reasonable. But none of them could give me an official government rationale that actually, you know, justifies the preemptive strike.

That's my report from the lunch spots of our nation's capital.

-- Sesame Street Liberal Man

Another misunderstanding of Iraq by the arrogant amateurs in Washington.

Argument There also seems to have been a misunderstanding about the nature of President Saddam's government. Though his ruling Baath party came to power through a military coup in 1968, it was never a classic military regime where the army holds power. President Saddam, despite his military uniforms, had no formal military training. He has always depended on his security services, the Baath party and a complex network of clan and tribal alliances to keep him in power.

These were the sinews of his rule, and by deliberately not capturing cities at the beginning of the invasion, the US and Britain ensured that he remained in control of the vast majority of the Iraqi population. The failure to take a city like Basra early in the campaign also meant, as one Kurdish commander put it, there were "no visible coalition gains to show the Iraqi people".

This does not mean that President Saddam is going to win. His regime was always deeply unpopular among Iraqis. His political strengths are also his military weaknesses. The Fedayeen Saddam may be able to stop deserters by shooting them in the head, but it has failed to make the Iraqi regular army fight. American and British casualties have been very low. Effective guerrillas like the Chechens or Kurdish peshmerga would have chopped the long Allied supply columns to pieces. Sniping by Baath militia is more of an irritation.

We are caught between two narrow-minded, bigoted, religious views of the world.

Argument Bush and Blair have already shown that they care little about world opinion, but what about when those feelings of resentment towards the US and Britain in Muslim countries translate into votes for virulently anti-Western fundamentalist parties? Despite their disingenuous talk of freedom and democracy, Bush and Blair must know that bringing true democracies to the Middle East, and the Muslim world in general, will have the opposite effect to the one they hope for and will go against their own interests. It is unlikely that any democratic Muslim country today will ever elect a pro-Western government.

Iraq War Coverage : Mr. Cranky Rates the Movies : Iraq War Coverage
On Fox News, it's not "Attack on Iraq," it's not "Gulf War II," no, it's "Operation Iraqi Freedom, ANY QUESTIONS, BITCHES?" I'm surprised Dick Cheney doesn't call to tell them to tone it down a bit. Fox News also takes the prize for being "most indignant" that the Iraqis have decided they have nothing to lose by not fighting fair. All I know is that it must drive the audio technicians nuts to keep having to pod down all that goose-stepping in the background. If you work at Fox News, this isn't Gulf War II -- it's Christmas.

Reuters News Article Forget Stalin or Hitler.

The worst ruler in world history is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon said on Monday.

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

Clarke's comment was in line with a mounting stream of comments from Washington that have demonized the Iraqi leader as U.S. and British troops now look as if they may take longer than expected in removing him from power.

Saddam has been condemned for his exceptional brutality against his own people but historians generally agree that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader Josef Stalin were responsible for killing more people than any other dictators in world history.

So much for Rumsfeld & Co's new way of warfare.

Here's what Rick Atkinson reported from the holy city of Najaf in today's Washington Post: "In a conference over the hood of a Humvee during the airstrikes, a Special Forces commander today told a senior Army officer, "Sir, we don't want a war of attrition, but we are in one."

"We are," the officer agreed. "It's a siege."