Words and images from the Belgian Front.
posted on Feb 21, 2005 - View this thread

What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along? [...]By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval. But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong? It's hard to swallow, isn't it?[...]
posted on Feb 2, 2005 - View this thread

Medals of Freedom awarded and I'd like to make some smart comment about current Iraqi conditions and the award and the presenter, but why bother - make your own.
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

LAWs instructions for starting criminal procedures against Bush Today in Vancouver, Lawyers Against the War filed torture charges against George W. Bush under the Canadian Criminal Code. The charges were laid by Gail Davidson, co-chair of Lawyers against the War--LAW, under provisions enacted pursuant to the U.N. Torture Convention, ratified by both Canada and the United States. The charges concern the well known abuses of prisoners held by US Armed Forces in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The charges were accepted by the Justice of the Peace and referred for a hearing to decide whether Bush should be required to appear for trial. The Attorney General of Canada's consent is required within eight days for proceedings to continue, and the question of Bush's diplomatic immunity will have to be resolved by the court.
posted on Dec 1, 2004 - View this thread

The Road To Abu Ghraib A generation from now, historians may look back to April 28, 2004, as the day the United States lost the war in Iraq... It was a direct—and predictable—consequence of a policy, hatched at the highest levels of the administration, by senior White House officials and lawyers, in the weeks and months after 9/11. Yet the administration has largely managed to escape responsibility for those decisions; a month from election day, almost no one in the press or the political class is talking about what is, without question, the worst scandal to emerge from President Bush's nearly four years in office... Given the particular conditions faced by the president and his deputies after 9/11—a war against terrorists, in which the need to extract intelligence via interrogations was intensely pressing, but the limits placed by international law on interrogation techniques were very constricting—did those leaders have better alternatives than the one they chose? The answer is that they did. And we will be living with the consequences of the choices they made for years to come.
posted on Oct 27, 2004 - View this thread

Mr. Bush and His 10 Ever-Changing Different Positions on Iraq: "A flip and a flop and now just a flop." Delightful Moore (to those who like what he does), and a few links to backup his reasoning for those who don't.
posted on Sep 28, 2004 - View this thread

Sleeping with the president is not a good idea. Bush had no answers to big questions, such as 'what happens on the morning after.' The Daily Telegraph reports that documents show Prime Minister Tony Blair signed up to the U.S. policy of regime change in March 2002, a year before the conflict started... after he was warned that postwar stability would be difficult and the U.S. had few answers. Oh, no problem. This week, Bush said he is 'pleased with the progress' in Iraq.'
posted on Sep 19, 2004 - View this thread

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything." So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Now, who still believes the P(L)OTUS?
posted on Nov 10, 2003 - View this thread

Stumbling Into War by James P. Rubin, From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Why did most of the world abandon Washington when it went after Saddam Hussein? The war in Iraq could never have been an easy sell, but nor should it have been such a difficult one. The Bush administration badly botched the prewar maneuvering, presenting a textbook study in how not to wage a diplomatic campaign.
posted on Sep 21, 2003 - View this thread

GOP Warns TV Stations Not to Air Ad Alleging Bush Mislead the Nation Over Iraq They claim that the ad itself is dishonest, and cite the obligation of broadcast outlets to be free of misleading information. “Such obligations must be taken seriously. This letter puts you on notice that the information contained in the above-cited advertisement is false and misleading; therefore, you are obligated to refrain from airing this advertisement.” Despite the implicit threats, only one station has refused to run the ad, a Fox station.
posted on Jul 23, 2003 - View this thread

Paul Krugman writes that the Bush administration will fight a "khaki election" next year, taking advantage of the general good feeling after the Iraq war. The original khaki election was the British election of 1900, contested during the Boer War. Our armed forces don't really wear khaki so much anymore and I think we need a new term. I suggest calling 2004 the "Camo Election." Any better suggestions?
posted on Jun 3, 2003 - View this thread

Remember the outrage of the US Govt. as the Iraqi's paraded POWs before television cameras - a pretty clear-cut breach of the Geneva Convention?
It appears the US Govt. isn't so concerned about what behaviour breaches the convention, anymore.

"The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has been denied access to what the organisation believes could be as many as 3,000 prisoners held in searing heat [near Baghdad airport.] All other requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or been turned down."

posted on May 25, 2003 - View this thread

"War Crimes" is a powerful Flash video about the war. "Doctor Bushlove" is darkly comic. Both are by Eric Blumrich, and are well-crafted but quite graphic. And in the interests of fairness, Blumrich has given equal time to his critics. [Via BuzzFlash.]
posted on Apr 6, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Mar 31, 2003 - View this thread

"Journalists" vs. The White House - MSNBC's Tom Curry reports on the Bush administration's frustration with the war coverage. Rumsfeld: “Fortunately... the American people have a very good center of gravity and can absorb and balance what they see and hear.”
posted on Mar 28, 2003 - View this thread

Richard Perle resigns the Defense Policy Board chairmanship. Richard Perle, after being accused of profiteering and conflict of interest, has resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Was this the real reason he resigned, or is the administration distancing itself from Perle due to his claims the Iraqis would be "dancing in the streets" after a US invasion, his links to an advocate for invading Saudi Arabia, or perhaps his call in the British press to get rid of the UN?
Don't start missing him yet, however. Perle will still remain on the Defense Policy board at Donald Rumsfeld's request.
posted on Mar 28, 2003 - View this thread

Stan Goff puts it best in his anti-war article entitled "The Idiot Prince will have his war", outlining many of the logistical issues involved with waging war in Iraq, pointing a finger at a problem facing the United States that runs far deeper than the need for oil or the opposition of the United Nations. A fascinating and very chilling read.
posted on Mar 17, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Feb 11, 2003 - View this thread

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame attempts to apply the Bush administration policy to his own neighborhood.
posted on Feb 5, 2003 - View this thread

In the new LRB, a pretty good attempt to answer the pressing question - why do the Bush people want to attack Iraq so much?
posted on Sep 25, 2002 - View this thread

Can't we just get George Bush and Saddam Hussein take E together? Two weeks ago a friend of mine and I were hypothesizing that we could avoid a war with Iraq if these two leaders would just hangout together, take MDMA, and talk to each other. From related experiences I can say that it would certainly help them work through their disagreements. What about you? Has ecstasy use helped or harmed your mental health? (And does anyone read Salon anymore?)
posted on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

Here's a transcript of the president's speech to the UN General Assembly this morning, for those who missed it. The White House has also provided a 21 page document [pdf link] detailing Iraq's history of defiance and disorder over the past decade.
posted on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

U.S. Stops Iraq-Al Qaeda Talk From the Washington Post. Beyond the superficial significance of administration back-tracking, in regards to intelligence there seems to be two key aspects to this story: 1) The article talks about how the CIA was unable to "validate two prominent allegations made by high-ranking administration officials," implying that Bush/Cheney/etc. have been making baseless assumptions about Iraq in their pro-war arguments, and 2) it brings into question whether we know anything at all about Iraq, anyway. What if the same can be said of Hussein's nuclear plans?
posted on Sep 10, 2002 - View this thread

Administration Says It Can Attack Iraq without Congressional Approval Not a new story, per se, but this Post article lays out pretty well the arguments behind the administration's case, one being simply Bush's role as commander-in-chief. It's strange how closely this issue reflects earlier attempts by the administration to avoid Congressional and/or public scrutiny (Cheney's Enron meetings, for example). Why this aversion, and why fight so hard? And I have a sneaking fear that Bush will seek Congressional approval only after invading, and he will bully votes by claiming that reps have a patriotic duty to support a president in a time of war.
posted on Aug 26, 2002 - View this thread

Why , why, why? Bush vs. Saddam. Prequel to Desert Storm II.
posted on Jun 16, 2002 - View this thread

While W is off building the case for a war against Saddam, senior military officials have serious doubts about the wisdom of a US invasion of Iraq. But they're keeping quiet because "they fear they would come out on the wrong side of Bush's eventual decision." Can you blame 'em?
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread