Iraq in a Nutshell
by O'Reilly Books (not really)
A WARMONGER EXPLAINS WAR TO A PEACENIK
A light hearted look at the oft repeated justifications for war in Iraq and their counter arguments.
posted by nofundy
on Apr 7, 2003 -
85 comments
Policeman to the World? Andrew Buncombe in Nasiriyah reports on this "liberated" city "where looters run wild and death stalks the streets."
"While much of the Iraqi army and Fedayeen militia may have been destroyed or forced underground, the city has been given over to lawlessness and looting. Yesterday, the Saddam Hospital itself was pillaged by a gang of 20 armed looters, who made off with a haul of drugs. They even looted several of the hospital's ambulances.
What is clear is that Nasiriyah is neither safe nor secure. If this is an example of how the war will unfold in other cities throughout Iraq, it does not bode well.
posted by Dunvegan
on Apr 4, 2003 -
12 comments
Defending America. I really don't know what to say about this site. Except that I didn't even know a .mil domain extension existed until now. The link comes from a letter to the editor of my
hometown, small-town Indiana newspaper (also see "Operation Dear Abby"), where people are generally in support of the war. A boy from my hometown was killed. He was a really good kid; I knew his family, who are just the kind of people you think of when you think of small town John Couger-style, pink-housed, middle class America. I am against this war in principle, but how can you say this
really decent kid's life was wasted? All questions, no answers, probably a bad post. Apologies all around.
posted by _sirmissalot_
on Apr 3, 2003 -
23 comments
Dolphin minesweeper returns from being AWOL Tacoma, the dolphin whose disappearance generated so much discussion
last week (I take that back, 20-odd comments hardly counts as "much" on MeFi), was found safe and sound near Umm Qasr. Are military dolphins subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice? This at least calls for an Article 15.
posted by TheFarSeid
on Apr 3, 2003 -
9 comments
Arafat on our side? Other than this story (Guardian), I haven't seen much coverage of Yasser Arafat's behind the scenes efforts to protect Western journalists in Iraq. Possibly not the act of the evil man that he's often portrayed as?
posted by daveg
on Apr 3, 2003 -
37 comments
Sending the pregnant to fight Saddam: The dramatic
rescue of GI Jessica brings up the issue [preemptive post justification]. This article has a nice historical overview of women's role in the military, in the form of a time-travel dialogue between today's soldier and a Vietnam era grunt.
posted by hairyeyeball
on Apr 3, 2003 -
22 comments
Superseding the mainstream media, or "quirky parasites"? Less of interest here than the IraqFilter context itself - which amounts to the question "Is blogging to Gulf II what TV was to Vietnam and cable was to Gulf I?" - is an established medium caught in the act of visibly sizing up this comer, this new kid on the block, this parvenu we know as "blogging."
Is it a valid new medium of reportage, fit to take its place alongside print and broadcast? Or is it merely parasitic, interstitial, even marginal? Inquiring minds want to know. (Note O'Donnell's hedges and his final & bizarrely misplaced condescension: "Maybe Allbritton will start a trend - bloggers no longer dependent on the mainstream for their material." WTF?)
posted by adamgreenfield
on Apr 1, 2003 -
12 comments
One in three French backs Saddam Seems to me that it is one thing to be against the war in Iraq--Many Americans are--but quite another thing to root for Saddam to win over America. I had known relations between the U.S. and France had deteriorated. But this is mind boggling.
posted by Postroad
on Apr 1, 2003 -
72 comments
"General Rumsfeld" “This is tragic,” one senior planner said bitterly. “American lives are being lost.” The former intelligence official told me, “They all said, ‘We can do it with air power.’ They believed their own propaganda.”
posted by skallas
on Apr 1, 2003 -
11 comments
Celebrity TV journalist Geraldo Rivera kicked out of Iraq: Pentagon I had seen Geraldo drawing the map referred to. Geraldo was not "embedded" and therefore acting as a real reporter. Did he give away key info? My suspicion is No. I had earlier seen retired officers (they all retire and then go on TV) make similar marking to show where our forces were on the way toward Baghdad. I knew in advance where Geraldo would conclude his map in the sand because I had seen it on the "embedded" reports on various cable stations.
posted by Postroad
on Mar 31, 2003 -
29 comments
Operation: Cover George's butt? As the backpeddling and
fingerpointing over "cakewalk" predictions continues, Talking Points Memo notes a recent
article in the Charlotte Observer that quotes "senior administration officials" in saying that "dissenting views [about the war plan]' were not fully or energetically communicated to the president.'" Sounds like someones taking out an insurance policy, don't it?
posted by Gilbert
on Mar 31, 2003 -
15 comments
"Now America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week and rewriting the war plan. The first plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan." Seems patently obvious, no? But tell Iraqi state television that and suddenly you're speaking from "a position of complete ignorance," according to the White House.
Peter Arnett,
highly respected, Pulitzer Prize winner and the first journalist to
interview Osama Bin Laden on film, wouldn't back down the
last time a network caved into craven submission at hands of the American military, and
he's been sacked by NBC/MSNBC for again refusing to do so. There's no First Amendment case, obviously, and no real surprise that the military would be exerting pressure to maintain control over information, but does the firing of high-profile Arnett for the repeating the obvious increase
anybody's confidence that we're hearing anything resembling the truth?
posted by JollyWanker
on Mar 31, 2003 -
30 comments
Plans Under Way for Christianizing the Enemy. "Two leading evangelical Christian missionary organizations said Tuesday that they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of a large Muslim population."
(from Buzzflash)
God please save me from your followers!
posted by thedailygrowl
on Mar 30, 2003 -
47 comments
The Information War: "Every few minutes, another burst of satellite imagery and Internet information impacts among an interactive global audience. Ambushed by info, U.S. military commanders confident in their overwhelming firepower are increasingly expressing concern that the 'velocity of information' is spinning out of their control." [more inside]
posted by poopy
on Mar 30, 2003 -
20 comments
An American Myth Rides Into the SunsetOne cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan, or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and saying of himself, "Feel good" — as President Bush did before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed, the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear.
posted by y2karl
on Mar 29, 2003 -
9 comments
“Takoma,
the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, had been in Iraq for 48 hours when he went missing on his first operation to snoop out mines… Takoma has now been missing for 48 hours and the solitary figure of Petty Officer Whitaker could be seen yesterday patting the water, calling his name and offering his favourite fish, but there was no response.”
posted by raaka
on Mar 29, 2003 -
21 comments
US soldiers beat, inhumanely detain, expel independent journalists. One of the dirty secrets of this war is
Kuwaiti anti-semitism against journalists. Boaz Bizmuth and Dan Scemama are two such Israelis
who faced that discrimination. When the war started, they took off in a jeep with Luis Castro and Victor Silva,
two Portuguese journalists, following US troops. Somewhere around An Najaf, they were told that at least one of the Israeli journalists had problems with their papers and needed to be accredited by the Kuwaitis. They slept for the night, only to be woken at gunpoint by US military police. They were accused of being spies and detained for 12 hours without food. When one of the Portuguese journalists asked to use the phone,
both were beaten, and one was knocked to the ground and kicked, breaking several ribs. They were detained without contact for another 36 hours, before being flown back to Kuwait.
CNN Germany is covering this story ... so why isn't CNN?
posted by insomnia_lj
on Mar 29, 2003 -
27 comments
Halliburton out of the running for the $600 billion contract to rebuild Iraqs infrastructure. Andrew Natsios, director of the USAID, which is handing out most of the postwar contracts, is keen to counter any allegations of favoritism or political influence. "If I got a phone call from anybody putting any political pressure on me, I would report it immediately". Halliburton is the company formerly run by Dick Cheney, VP of the United States.
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 28, 2003 -
19 comments
Embedding? Rumsfeld et al Tried to Embed Bechtel and Themselves with Saddam as Iraq Gassed Iranians. "Our examination [issued by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and the Institute for Policy Studies with
recently released supporting documents] shines a new spotlight on the revolving door between Bechtel and the Reagan Administration that drove U.S.-Iraq interactions between 1983 and 1985. The men who courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against him, ostensibly because he holds weapons of mass destruction. To a man, they now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet during the Reagan Administration, and in the years leading up to the present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports....[This paper] notes that the break in US-Iraq relations occurred not after Iraq used chemical weapons on the Iranians, nor after Iraq gassed its own Kurdish people, nor even after Iraq invaded Kuwait, but rather, followed Saddam's rejection of the Aqaba pipeline deal. Finally, this paper shows that the main actors in the 1980s drama are now back on center stage, this time justifying military action against Iraq in terms of national security....The Bush/Cheney administration now eyes Bechtel as a primary contractor for the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure." (via
Progressive Review.)
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Mar 28, 2003 -
9 comments
According to UPI, the United States has been offered by coalition partner Morocco its
tide-turning force of 2,000 monkeys trained to detonate land mines. It wouldn't be so unbelievable if the U.S. wasn't already
training dolphins and sea lions to do the same. Considering the carnage already happening to humans in Iraq, this news doesn't inspire thoughts of
happy endings for our animal friends.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Mar 27, 2003 -
28 comments
Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim So say interrogated Iraqi POWs. But wait. Al Qaeda the group that killed 3 thousand Americans and now they are inside Iraq helping Saddam? Were they there when Blix lads inspecting? Do the French know about this? If so, do they think we should give Al Qaeda a chance to reform?
posted by Postroad
on Mar 27, 2003 -
29 comments
Friday Thursday Flash Fun Art. Suspended Gardens 2 allows you to plant virtual flowers in Iraq. You can customize your flower and include a message. As Metafilterarians like to state their opinions, do not miss this opportunity. [more inside]
posted by MzB
on Mar 27, 2003 -
3 comments
The Iraq-September 11th smoking gun? Finally, near proof that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks on America: a mural in the Iraqi military headquarters in Nasiriya depicts a plane crashing into a building complex similar to New York's twin towers! (Okay, seriously, are some folks so desperate to make the connection that this might become an actual story?)
posted by johnnydark
on Mar 27, 2003 -
50 comments
Robert Fisk in the Independent Today's front page of the UK broadsheet comprises solely of a text-only report of yesterday's bombing of a Baghdad marketplace, beginning: "It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car..."
This is how war reporting should be.
posted by garyh
on Mar 27, 2003 -
110 comments
Where did those chemical and biological weapons come from? ”According to the December declaration, treated with much derision from the Bush administration, U.S. and Western companies played a key role in building Hussein's war machine. The 1,200-page document contains a list of Western corporations and countries -- as well as individuals -- that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades.”
I’ve always been surprised that this type of report doesn’t get more attention. During the UN hearings I half expected the Administration to level with the world and simply say: ”We know they have the stuff because we sold it to them.”
posted by peebo
on Mar 26, 2003 -
32 comments
Halliburton Handed No-Bid Iraqi Oil Firefighting Contract You still believe this war is about nothing more then WMD's? I wonder how many other of Bush and Cheney's friends are benefiting from this war? The US government didn't even bother to give other companies a chance to bid for this contract. While on the topic of WMD's you might want to check out
this, about the lack of skepticism when it comes to the media making claims for weapons in Iraq. Remember Fox and their claim of a "HUGE" chemical weapons stash? How are we to get accurate news on this war if the journalist's we rely on are nothing more then puppets for this administration?
posted by tljenson
on Mar 25, 2003 -
40 comments
The Iraq debate - from Red Pepper. "...The writers of these articles are some of the many people who have struggled against Saddam Hussein, who have been driven into exile by his brutal regime, who keep their links with dissidents in Iraq, who do not believe that the US military can liberate them, and who are arguing for diplomatic and humanitarian support..."
posted by talos
on Mar 23, 2003 -
1 comment
