Surrender so soon. "The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender."
posted by The Jesse Helms
on Mar 9, 2003 -
16 comments
The Washington Post reports, findings that some of the "evidence" proving Iraq's search for nuclear technologies are
faked.
"ElBaradei also rejected a key Bush administration claim -- made twice by the president in major speeches and repeated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday -- that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Also, ElBaradei reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors."
posted by omidius
on Mar 8, 2003 -
32 comments
From the faculty at Salahaddin University in Kurdistan: "We as academic staff for the region's biggest Universities attended by different nations including Kurds, Turkman, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Arabs condemn this terrible threat towards our achievements and legitimate rights and express our complete refusal to any Turkish military intervention into the region's territory and affairs."
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Mar 3, 2003 -
3 comments
Give It Up for MC Zhirinovsky Flamboyant Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, renowned for his controversial views on Iraq, has had his words turned into an anti-war rap song. The song, titled "Don't you dare go shooting at Baghdad", is being launched on the internet, according to the Russian television station TVS.
posted by turbanhead
on Feb 26, 2003 -
7 comments
Make Love Not War - Again? The anti-war movement has all the best slogans. And quite rightly too. Which doesn't mean they're not still rehashed, unimaginative and lame. "Don't attack Iraq"? "Make tea, not war"? Don't make me laugh. What's the best you've come across, if at all? And why are the hawks so lacking in the most basic sense of humor?
posted by Carlos Quevedo
on Feb 23, 2003 -
127 comments
Three giant cargo ships are being tracked by US and British intelligence on suspicion that they might be carrying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The ships have been sailing around the world's oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law.
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 22, 2003 -
59 comments
The War Behind Closed Doors PBS' newest
"Frontline" focuses on what has been happening behind the scenes within the Bush administration during the buildup to war against Iraq. Wolfowitz is seen as supporting a policy of US preemptive wars
starting in 1992 and
urging a US invasion of Iraq just four days after 9/11,
Richard Perle says that "it was understood that Iraq had to be dealt with" in the earliest days of the Bush presidential campaign, and Colin Powell is shown as the only reason the US sought UN approval at all.
posted by insomnia_lj
on Feb 21, 2003 -
17 comments
Listen to what some anti-war protesters had to say this weekend about possible war with Iraq. Quicktime required.
posted by Ron
on Feb 19, 2003 -
41 comments
Standing With Osama? "Some of the more bilious right-wing pundits... have taken to describing those who oppose the invasion as 'siding with Saddam.' But if such sleazy rhetoric is allowable, then maybe we should say that those like our President, who seem to have ignored Osama’s decrees, or like Powell, who are hawking a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection based on overblown evidence, are standing with Osama." Is this accusation fair? If so, is it productive? I doubt it, but I'm not certain. Rohan Gunaratna, the author of
"Inside Al Qaeda," warns that an invasion of Iraq would
undermine the international campaign against Al Qaeda and give terrorist groups a new lease on life. Oh well,
at least it's funny. [Via
Cursor.] [More inside.]
posted by homunculus
on Feb 19, 2003 -
21 comments
"But if the threat cannot be removed peacefully, please let us not fall for the delusion that it can be safely ignored."
Speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair at Labour's local government, women's and youth conferences, SECC, Glasgow.
posted by hama7
on Feb 17, 2003 -
69 comments
Campaign for Democracy and Human Rights in Iraq! Some hundred or so bloggers are sporting logos supporting democracy and human rights in Iraq, just twenty-four hours after a campaign was kicked-off by
Dean's World blog publisher Dean Esmay. The campaign is supported by the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an activist umbrella group of pro-Democracy Iraqi organizations inside and outside of Iraq. It's a groundswell that will hopefully counter the anti-democratic and anti-Iraqi spirit of recent ANSWER demonstrations, and notable here because it's at this point strictly a blogworld phenomenon, but one that might actually have an effect in the real world.
We'll see. Cyber-activism up until now has mainly been ineffective, and the feeling of many activists (cf. Barlow) is that it's more a distraction from real-world activism than an aid. Pro-democracy bloggers are a different breed from many traditional, trend-driven activists, and this might be the difference.
posted by BubbaDude
on Feb 16, 2003 -
137 comments
Live from New York "None of our little group were, as one of us put it, 'into the Mumia scene.' But really, most of the people around us today were like us: regular folks, average, thoughtful, middle- and working-class Americans fed up with a war-obsessed government that won't listen to the world or to its own citizens." With pictures of some cool signs that weren't shown on TV ("NY Loves Old Europe," "Draft the Bush Twins"). Any other eyewitness accounts of protests from anywhere in the world today?
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Feb 15, 2003 -
154 comments
US Plans Post Iraq Liberation Does this point to US Imperial ambitions, or is it what is needed if Saddam is ousted? How does this work with the Liberation of Iraq, and the Iraq Congress?
posted by npost
on Feb 15, 2003 -
18 comments
America, America: I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island. A poem from Saadi Youssef, published in this Saturday's Guardian (scroll down past Seamus Heaney):
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.
Take the Afghani Mujahideen beard
and give us Walt Whitman's beard filled with
butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussein
and give us Abraham Lincoln
or give us no one.
Saadi Youssef was born in 1934 near Basra, Iraq. He is considered to be among the greatest living Arab poets. Youssef has published 25 volumes of poetry, a book of short stories, a novel, four volumes of essays, a memoir, and numerous translations. In addition to being imprisoned for his poetry and politics, he has won numerous literary awards and recognitions. He now lives in London. [more inside]
posted by jokeefe
on Feb 14, 2003 -
8 comments
powell flip flop [via rc3]
on top of citing flimsy, plagiarized, out of date reports as evidence against iraq. powell cant make up his mind if osama is in cahoots with iraq. osamas statement appears to show support for the iraqi people -yet labels
"Saddam's Baath party as "infidels." " are powell and the administration grasping at straws?
posted by specialk420
on Feb 12, 2003 -
57 comments
Is the currency that oil is denominated in the real reason for the Iraq War? "The Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch in Nov. 2000 (when the euro was worth around 80 cents), and has actually made off like a bandit considering the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro. (Note: the dollar declined 17% against the euro in 2002.)"
posted by thedailygrowl
on Feb 11, 2003 -
35 comments
Not just selfcentered, but warmongers too. SUV owners are more likely the the general populous to support the war in Iraq (60%). When small SUVs are eliminated, the figure jumps to (80%). Probably not a causal relationship, but interesting none the less.
posted by delmoi
on Feb 4, 2003 -
36 comments
In what might be a preview of Secretary of State Powell's address to the United Nations tomorrow, Jeffrey Goldberg takes a look at how
the Intelligence Community is re-thinking it's analysis of the Iraq/al-Qaeda connection.
Excerpt:
James Woolsey, who served as President Clinton's first C.I.A. director, said that it is now illogical to doubt the notion that Saddam collaborates with Islamist terrorism, and that he would provide chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda. "At Salman Pak"-a training camp near Baghdad-"we know there were Islamist terrorists training to hijack airplanes in groups of four or five with short knives," Woolsey told me. "I mean, hello? If we had seen after December 7, 1941, a fake American battleship in a lake in northern Italy, and a group of Asian pilots training there, would we have said, 'Well, you can't prove that they were Japanese'?"
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood
on Feb 3, 2003 -
69 comments
Anti-war and the Internet John Perry Barlow of the EFF talks about online activism and anti-war feeling:
"Actually I'm discouraged with the role of the Internet in the antiwar movement. Because so far what I see happening is that cyberspace is a great place for everybody to declaim. There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it." Easy to read this as referring to blogs. People shout and scream in their journals, but where is the organised anti-war effort? Is the great hope and potential of the Internet to connect people and create movements floundering when it comes to one of the most serious issues facing us today?
posted by humuhumu
on Feb 3, 2003 -
30 comments
History of Iraq from the Denver Post. "President Bush speaks of the need to 'defend civilization'.. Then I point out the irony of defending civilization against the cradle of civilization".
posted by stbalbach
on Feb 2, 2003 -
31 comments
Hmm...this one looks genuine: I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH.... THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE.
I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION....
I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ....
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Jan 31, 2003 -
16 comments
A War Crime or an Act of War? But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story. ..
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas. (NYT)
posted by y2karl
on Jan 31, 2003 -
34 comments
Arundhati Roy on the war. This is the text of a speech Arundhati gave at Santa Fe last September. I have not seen it on MeFi before. Hence, I thought it would still be of interest. TWe have talked about her before here-
1,
2,
3. It is a long speech! So, read it when you have the time.
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy
on Jan 28, 2003 -
11 comments
Not really a game, but is scary/funny: This is a projection of the most likely outcome of a new war in the Gulf. I used sophisticated temporal algorithms and historical semiotic analysis to achieve an accuracy rating of 99.999%. It's the mother of all Flash games.
posted by samelborp
on Jan 27, 2003 -
31 comments
