The US, UN & Iraq II

Under the majority role, voting to R.N-r could have been an injustice to the environment.

What cruelty satt ? Honestly, was cruelty the reason for this invasion ?

Blair was adamant that WMD will be found in Iraq. How can he be so sure? Well first of all Margaret Thatcher's government sold Saddam a dual use chemical plant which has been used to manufacture nerve agents. And Paul Channon who was at the DTI signed it all off under the ECGD scheme. When Saddam failed to pay in full, the British taxpayer had to cough up for the bill. So we have British soldiers being killed to rid Iraq of a chemical warfare facility that a previous British government sold Saddam and used British taxpayers money to subsidise it. That's why Blair is so confident Iraq has WMD. As you say Gautam we have the receipt written in our own blood.

Gautam..
Yes.

I have no responsibility for Thacher's government, by the way.

Political jihad ....... just another Bushism? You decide ......

How long can we go around the globe correcting our mistakes by bombing the hell out of them?

"[J]ihad" is not my concept.

Original sin.

Satt ..... errr .... could I try some of that orange juice?

;o))

Ok, I get it ..... never mind..... .

Kara, you write



I don't know. There is only one person who does, and that's the commander of the Abrams tank that unleashed the round.

[The official explanation makes no reference to a mistake btw. Centcom say it was in response (by implication a deliberate response) to incoming sniper and RPG fire from the hotel. Its just possible that camera equipment could have been mistaken for a RPG launcher, but that assumes the tank commander either did not recognise the Palestine Hotel, or was unaware that journalists were using it.]

Published on Friday, April 4, 2003 by the International Herald Tribune
A Letter to America
by Margaret Atwood


Dear America:

This is a difficult letter to write, because I'm no longer sure who you are.

Some of you may be having the same trouble. I thought I knew you: We'd become well acquainted over the past 55 years. You were the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic books I read in the late 1940s. You were the radio shows -- Jack Benny, Our Miss Brooks. You were the music I sang and danced to: the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, the Platters, Elvis. You were a ton of fun.

You wrote some of my favorite books. You created Huckleberry Finn, and Hawkeye, and Beth and Jo in Little Women, courageous in their different ways. Later, you were my beloved Thoreau, father of environmentalism, witness to individual conscience; and Walt Whitman, singer of the great Republic; and Emily Dickinson, keeper of the private soul. You were Hammett and Chandler, heroic walkers of mean streets; even later, you were the amazing trio, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, who traced the dark labyrinths of your hidden heart. You were Sinclair Lewis and Arthur Miller, who, with their own American idealism, went after the sham in you, because they thought you could do better.

You were Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront, you were Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo, you were Lillian Gish in Night of the Hunter. You stood up for freedom, honesty and justice; you protected the innocent. I believed most of that. I think you did, too. It seemed true at the time.

You put God on the money, though, even then. You had a way of thinking that the things of Caesar were the same as the things of God: that gave you self-confidence. You have always wanted to be a city upon a hill, a light to all nations, and for a while you were. Give me your tired, your poor, you sang, and for a while you meant it.

We've always been close, you and us. History, that old entangler, has twisted us together since the early 17th century. Some of us used to be you; some of us want to be you; some of you used to be us. You are not only our neighbors: In many cases -- mine, for instance -- you are also our blood relations, our colleagues, and our personal friends. But although we've had a ringside seat, we've never understood you completely, up here north of the 49th parallel.

We're like Romanized Gauls -- look like Romans, dress like Romans, but aren't Romans -- peering over the wall at the real Romans. What are they doing? Why? What are they doing now? Why is the haruspex eyeballing the sheep's liver? Why is the soothsayer wholesaling the Bewares?

Perhaps that's been my difficulty in writing you this letter: I'm not sure I know what's really going on. Anyway, you have a huge posse of experienced entrail-sifters who do nothing but analyze your every vein and lobe. What can I tell you about yourself that you don't already know?

This might be the reason for my hesitation: embarrassment, brought on by a becoming modesty. But it is more likely to be embarrassment of another sort. When my grandmother -- from a New England background -- was confronted with an unsavory topic, she would change the subject and gaze out the window. And that is my own inclination: Mind your own business.

But I'll take the plunge, because your business is no longer merely your business. To paraphrase Marley's Ghost, who figured it out too late, mankind is your business. And vice versa: When the Jolly Green Giant goes on the rampage, many lesser plants and animals get trampled underfoot. As for us, you're our biggest trading partner: We know perfectly well that if you go down the plug-hole, we're going with you. We have every reason to wish you well.

I won't go into the reasons why I think your recent Iraqi adventures have been -- taking the long view -- an ill-advised tactical error. By the time you read this, Baghdad may or may not look like the craters of the Moon, and many more sheep entrails will have been examined. Let's talk, then, not about what you're doing to other people, but about what you're doing to yourselves.

You're gutting the Constitution. Already your home can be entered without your knowledge or permission, you can be snatched away and incarcerated without cause, your mail can be spied on, your private records searched. Why isn't this a recipe for widespread business theft, political intimidation, and fraud? I know you've been told all this is for your own safety and protection, but think about it for a minute. Anyway, when did you get so scared? You didn't used to be easily frightened.

You're running up a record level of debt. Keep spending at this rate and pretty soon you won't be able to afford any big military adventures. Either that or you'll go the way of the USSR: lots of tanks, but no air conditioning. That will make folks very cross. They'll be even crosser when they can't take a shower because your short-sighted bulldozing of environmental protections has dirtied most of the water and dried up the rest. Then things will get hot and dirty indeed.

You're torching the American economy. How soon before the answer to that will be, not to produce anything yourselves, but to grab stuff other people produce, at gunboat-diplomacy prices? Is the world going to consist of a few megarich King Midases, with the rest being serfs, both inside and outside your country? Will the biggest business sector in the United States be the prison system? Let's hope not.

If you proceed much further down the slippery slope, people around the world will stop admiring the good things about you. They'll decide that your city upon the hill is a slum and your democracy is a sham, and therefore you have no business trying to impose your sullied vision on them. They'll think you've abandoned the rule of law. They'll think you've fouled your own nest.

The British used to have a myth about King Arthur. He wasn't dead, but sleeping in a cave, it was said; in the country's hour of greatest peril, he would return. You, too, have great spirits of the past you may call upon: men and women of courage, of conscience, of prescience. Summon them now, to stand with you, to inspire you, to defend the best in you. You need them.

Margaret Atwood studied American literature -- among other things -- at Radcliffe and Harvard in the 1960s. She is the author of 10 novels. Her 11th, Oryx and Crake, will be published in May.

- from an essay by Margaret Atwood in The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

© 2003 the International Herald Tribune

Hospitals are overflowing with civilian casualties, and are running out or water and medicine.

Let there be no mistake. The Soldiers or pilots targeting the media bases in Baghdad today were well aware of who was inside.

How big is the chance the offices of the same TV station get bombed by accident by the same air force in two consecutive wars?

How many people in the world do not know the base of the western Journalists in Bagdad? One lunatic tank commander.

the US knew the location of the Al-Jazeera headquarters because A-J gave the coordinates to US military forces in a bid to prevent it being bombed by accident.

And the Palestine Hotel was well-known as the base for western TV and newspapers since the start of the war.

"Snipers" and journalists.

Mexican Televisa station reported this morning that their cameraman was filming at floor 16 of Palestine Hotel, right above the room hit by the American fire, where the Reuters crew was filming too. The reporter says their camera was destroyed in the blast. They think the soldiers may have confused the journalists' camera lenses with those used in precision weapons.

It sounds ugly, specially after the second bombing mistake on Al-Jazeera's offices. Specially if we realize that cameras and mikes can be weapons in the war for the hearts and minds of the world.

frolic, this story was discussed on CNN an hour ago. Apparently, there was sniper fire in the vicinity and seemingly from the hotel. The tank commander had to make the decision to fire or risk what he thought might be US soldiers picked off by a sniper.

This was in Sunday's NYTimes Op-Ed pages. I have done excerpts and then a link, which may or many not be password protected. Most of what I have left out was the history of civilian overseers vs. the military.

the so called sniper was in the Lobby of the hotel, thats what the US soldiers say. BBC correspondents and other journalists who were in the building at the time said they heard no fire coming from the hotel.

So to kill a sniper at the lobby you shoot at the 14/15th floor? Makes no sense to me.

A stray rocket, apparently fired in the war in neighbouring Iraq, killed one person in south-western Iran, the third such case since war began

This could mean two things.
1)The weapons of the minicoalition aren't that precise as they say.
2) They deliberately target Iran and they deliberately targeted the Arab Newschannels.

frolic, I can understand your anger. I feel it, too. Not only at the mistakes but at the whole shooting match.