"Let us pray that our country will stop this war." From a recent speech by U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio: "We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on Sept. 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in
Afghanistan."
Amen.
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Mar 5, 2002 -
76 comments
"Stupid" statements that's the unofficial response from Baghdad it seems, regarding Bush's State of the Union Address. Who's overstepping here?
posted by wantwit
on Jan 30, 2002 -
16 comments
Interesting claim - the military's investigators say that the Red Cross buildings which were bombed on October 25th were not marked and that the military had not been given their coordinates as claimed. Has anyone found more information about this?
posted by adamsc
on Dec 22, 2001 -
1 comment
Dead Men Walking Thomas Lipscome urges us to think about 4th generation warfare, the nature of the battle, and the potential dangers well beyond the idea of nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq. From the article:
"Terrorists become extraordinarily resourceful playing weak hands against the strong and rich. So do revolutionaries. And it is time to realize bin Laden is both" This article is short yet wide-ranging, neatly bringing together the Balkans, Clinton, the Media, and 4G warfare.
via follow me here
posted by cell divide
on Nov 28, 2001 -
3 comments
What's up with this Iraq stuff? No more formal way of putting it, sorry. Can anyone say what the hell is going on
here, exactly, when bin Laden hasn't even be found and the Taliban is still putting up a fight? Is Bush, in saying Saddam will
"find out" how the U.S. will respond to its refusal to allow inspections (again), just throwing a small bone to the hard right? Is the national press on too much of an adrenaline rush, or bored with Afganistan already? Or are the Dr. Strangelove wannabes talked about here really taking over?
posted by raysmj
on Nov 27, 2001 -
81 comments
In U.S. Success, Anti-War Faction's Worst Fears Realized writes our own James Lileks.
Noam Chomsky, our own little Quisling, popped up in India to denounce the United States and describe the attacks on Afghanistan as "a bigger terrorist act than what happened on Sept. 11." It takes tremendous energy to maintain these hideous delusions. Chomsky must be exhausted. He must also be surprised every time he lands back in America and is not arrested; the nation he describes would surely clap him in chains and leave him in a basement to devolve to rat food and bones.
posted by ericost
on Nov 16, 2001 -
43 comments
The stuff from which Myth is made. A recent discovery of a meteor impact crater in the middle-east, dating around 2300BC, is shedding new light on the decline of many cultures and the rise of many legends.
posted by mkn
on Nov 15, 2001 -
19 comments
Hawk hiccup? How wide is wider in a `wider war'?
With the world dazed and everything in flux, seize the moment. I'd make a deal with Ankara right now to move across Turkey's border and annex the northern third of Iraq. Safire has been Monday-morning quarterbacking in his column since September 11. (He suggested the FBI wasn't doing enough to "deprogram" material witnesses with "conservative Muslim clerics".) He's made no bones about his desire to squash all terrorists, coalition be damned. He's sided with "wider war" wing of the administration, but this is by far the zaniest scheme--projected onto his ex-boss in a convo from hell. I know there are a lot of people--intelligent people--reading MeFi that support the war. Mostly our discussions have run pro/anti. The flower-children (anachronistic anarchists?) like me should sit out this one. Do any of you imperialists pig-dogs support this?
posted by rschram
on Nov 5, 2001 -
28 comments
Salman Rushdie weighs in. (NYT) An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqi satirist: "The disease that is in us, is from us." A British Muslim writes, "Islam has become its own enemy." A Lebanese friend, returning from Beirut, tells me that in the aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, public criticism of Islamism has become much more outspoken. Many commentators have spoken of the need for a Reformation in the Muslim world.
posted by semmi
on Nov 2, 2001 -
20 comments
From a piece in the NYTimes today,
Home Front Is Minefield for President:
"The lesson we're learning," one administration official said today, "is that you can bomb the wrong place in Afghanistan and not take much heat for it. But don't mess up at the post office."Leave it to the White House to come away with exactly the wrong interpretation. But the facts are there, too -- most Americans are more concerned about the (relatively slight) risk of getting Anthrax than the rather significant risk that, if we screw up in Afghanistan, we might lose the current coalition against terrorism, Bin Laden, and any hope for "homeland security" for a long time to come....
posted by mattpfeff
on Oct 25, 2001 -
12 comments
Terror and Liberalism I have found this piece in The American Prospect to be one of the most balenced pieces I have yet come across. It considers all aspects of the terrorist groups--Israel, American policy, poverty, Iraq, fundamentalisim, history of the area, westernization, etc and finds the rights and wrongs in each, offering finally a way to cope with things in the future while at the same time dealing with present needs.
In other words, it avoids the overly simplistic formulas offered by so many stalwarts of the far Right or far Left.
posted by Postroad
on Oct 5, 2001 -
12 comments
Powell vs. The Pentagon. According to CNN, Colin Powell is "pushing for a limited military component," and wants to place more emphasis on financial, legal, political and diplomatic tools. But (as you might expect), the Pentagon wouldn't mind taking down Saddam Hussein while we're in the neighborhood. In other CNN news, the US appears sensitive to the need to support its decisions, and will be
making the case for bin Laden's guilt to the Pakistanis. I find both of these items somewhat encouraging. How about you?
posted by pardonyou?
on Sep 21, 2001 -
21 comments
This smells of opportunism? Is the Iraqi government using our recent war fervor to lift their economic bans? We now have a new enemy, so the old ones are now our friends? Saddam's comment on humanitariasm simply makes me cringe.
posted by Benway
on Sep 20, 2001 -
5 comments
Is this Saddam's work? CBS News: "United States has received an intelligence report that Mohammed Atta, the hijacker who is named as the pilot of the first plane to strike the World Trade Centers, met early this year somewhere in Europe with the head of the Iraqi intelligence service." CNN is reporting it too.
posted by owillis
on Sep 18, 2001 -
30 comments
Iraq's Kurds OK with sanctions? (and from the Washington Post
here)
The Kurds in the no-fly zone recieve a fraction of the oil money under the sanctions and seem to be doing pretty well; there's food and medicine enough to go around, to say nothing of free elections and an abundance of political parties. Is there something I'm missing? It doesn't feel like it's being spun; nobody's making a big deal about it. But it does go against the conventional wisdom on sanctions...
posted by dreamless
on Sep 16, 2001 -
16 comments
A Terrorist Profile Emerges That Confounds the Experts. The prototype for Muslim suicide bombers has been young, single, caught up in religious fervor and, often, desperate. They are usually promised financial security for their parents and told that they will be greeted by 70 black-eyed virgins in heaven. Though suicide is prohibited by Islamic law, some leaders have said there is an exception for soldiers in what they see as a holy war.
posted by semmi
on Sep 16, 2001 -
12 comments
Iraq rejoices. No real surprise, but let me guess: starting tomorrow, we'll see itemized lists in newspapers of every single country's reaction and where they stood. Pundits will go on television and describe just which countries you should hate the most. Is it just me or is the media really getting out of control on this?
posted by ed
on Sep 12, 2001 -
28 comments
More NMD to make you nervous. If you're in an area about to be vapourised then you are safe. If you live anywhere else you are not. I live about half a blast radius away from
one of the radar stations in the UK (it doesn't look like that picture anymore - some of the golfballs are now pyramids). From direct assault I maybe won't be hit but the bombs falling out of the sky on their way from Iraq to New York are pretty much going to land on my head. Cool.
posted by vbfg
on Sep 3, 2001 -
8 comments
US drone lost over Iraq - It seems it's only a matter of time before they shoot down a piloted plane (even if by accident). What are we still trying to accomplish over there and what would the reaction be if they succeed?
posted by revbrian
on Aug 27, 2001 -
15 comments
Media Deception and Iraq An interesting quick story-- one journalist smells a rat in an AP report about Iraq using money to buy weapons, investigates the genesis of the story, and finds more deception. Meanwhile statistics on children dying from sanctions go unpublished.
posted by chaz
on Jul 11, 2001 -
8 comments
Cheney caught in lie. "According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company."
That would be the same Iraq Cheney/Bush blew to smithereens for his oil buddies.
posted by owillis
on Jun 23, 2001 -
9 comments
Iraq improves its oil reserves This piece belongs with the other post I recently posted on oil and world political and military strategies. I guess that since filling my gas tank this evening I have narrowed my focus a bit, for which, apologies.
posted by Postroad
on Mar 21, 2001 -
0 comments
Cut back on patrols over Iraq. One day we are told by Gen Powell that we will increase pressure on Iraq. Now we are told that patrols in no flight zones to be cut back. Do we have a policy or is it made up weekly?
posted by Postroad
on Mar 13, 2001 -
4 comments
U.S. sending Patriot missles to Israel Iraq moves troops close to Syrian border and announces it is a military exercise. The U.S. moves Patriot missle outfit to Israel with some troops and announces it is a military exercise. My trainer told me that sometimes you can overdo the exercising.
posted by Postroad
on Jan 26, 2001 -
4 comments
Iraq to Donate $94 Million to Poor Americans Interesting propaganda.
But more interestingly - disregarding the donor, would the US ever accept such a donation? (How could we admit a need for charity at home when we send billions in aid abroad?)
And what's next? We're not of a mindset to accept foreign meddling. What about UN relief efforts? International peacekeeping forces?
posted by Tubes
on Jan 15, 2001 -
14 comments
Sanctions Born Of Indifference The United Nations' sanctions against Iraq - which would have been lifted long ago, if not for America - have been killing 4,500 children a month for nearly 10 years now. A million people in all so far, half of them kids.
The Iraqis die because America insists the sanctions continue - despite their illegality under the principles of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the United Nations Convention Against Genocide Convention and particularly the Geneva Convention: (Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions - 1977 Part IV, Section 1, Chapter III, Article 54)
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
posted by lagado
on Oct 25, 2000 -
31 comments
