whoops!
As the bombings continue today, the US yet again) launches one of their super-smart missiles into the wrong country. This time, we an oil refinery depot in Abadan, southwestern Iran and close to Basra. Seeing stories like this make me wonder about the accuracy of those bombs raining down on Baghdad.

comparison
New York


Baghdad


I realize that what I have posted above is going to offend a few people.. But I am very offended by my government right now.

Bush has pitched 9/11 as a reason to goto war with Iraq. Now 9/11 is responsible for mass destruction in two cities. When will the madness stop? How many other images like this are we going to have to see?

media watch - late edition
BBC radio news reports that Turkey, like expected, are going to give the uS fly over rights to their country. However, Turkey also plans to send their troops into northern Iraq, and their reports have it that 1500 Turkish troops already already crossed the border into Iraq. Turkey says that they have two objectives with this action: to keep Iraqi refugees from going to Turkey, and to keep the Iraqi Kurds from trying to start an independent nation of Kurdistan. Turkey would also like to see the Kurds disarmed, and will disarm them using force if they have to. Turkey has sent in troops against the wishes of the US, saying that they have a right to defend their country. Since the US has launched a preemptive strike against Iraq, claiming the same reasons, we can't exactly complain with Turkey's logic without looking like hypocrites. If we are lucky, fighting might not break out between the Turks and Kurds.

Arab News in Saudi Arabia reports that 320 missiles rained down on Baghdad and surrounding areas today, but if the reports from CNN are true, the attack isn't over and the US plans to drop more than 1500 bombs in 24 hours. MSNBC reports that attack today was larger than the attacks from Gulf War I.

shock and awe has begun
In the past couple of days, I gave thought to posting something to the blog that would go along the lines of how the war, so far, has not been as bad as everyone thought it would be. We haven't seen a huge orgy of violence yet, there haven't been many deaths period, things were going quickly.. And the "shock and awe" campaign to drop 3000 bombs on Baghdad in a 48 hour perod (for those keeping scare it home, 48 hours = 2880 minutes, so this attack would average out to a little over a bomb a minute for 2 days straight) had not come to pass.

Well, the nightmare scenario for Baghdad is set to begin. The major news services are repoting that "shock and awe" has just started. For anybody who has protested against this war, this is the situation we all did not want to see.

A bomb a minute. This is going to be a slaughter, something that all American citizens have paid for. How does that make you feel?

It makes me sick to hear my coworkers bragging about it right now. One of them just said, "Oooh, they just dropped a MOAB!" Christ, that 21,500lbs packs the explosion of a small nuclear weapon, please god tell me that we didn't just drop this on a city with a population of 6 million people.

media watch
Montreal Canadiens fans take in a home game against the New York Islanders and proceed to boo the American national anthem before the drop of the puck. The article, from ESPN, goes on to mention that there have been huge anti-war protests in Montreal. We should feel lucky that they aren't trying to invade Vermont and New Hampshire; these are the fans who tried burning down Boston Bruins players summer homes in NH after a Bruins player beat the crap out of a Canadiens player.

media watch
I would comment on the bombings, the targets, etc., but what's the point? We know now that the war has started, and you can find out all of that information by turning into the mass media. We already know the government's story, I'm not going to echo that in this blog. What's relevant are the feelings of people that you are not going to hear about in the mass media right now, and being a watchdog to the media to point out if/when they lie. I'll admit that a lot of what I post in the following days may be a rehash of stories from other blogs, but I'm trying to give the most comprehensive look at the situation as possible.

The Green Party of the United States issued a press release today that accuses Bush of being a war criminal, laying out their case against the president.

Daily Kos comments on the military strategy that could be the reasoning behind Iraq possibily blowing up their own oil wells.

Global anti-war protests break out as the bombs started to fall on Baghdad. A lot of protests are turning very anti-American, but.. can you blame them? I'd prefer it if they were more anti-Bush, but I guess being anti-Bush is the face of anti-Americanism around the global these days. I will be taking part in one today. Visit the Independent Media Center in your area to see if there is a protest you can take part in. Also, the Indymedia Newswire has numerous articles about protests in the states and abroad. Anybody can post to the newswire there, so protesters are throwing up words and pictures about what's happening in their city in a fast and furious manner, (their newswire already has 50 pages of articles from today alone, and it's only a little bit past 1:30PM EST right now).

Good letter/rant from a citizen of Iraq. He goes against everything that our government preceives about the residents of Baghdad, or at least what they tell us on the news.

No wonder there are people questioning whether or not it was Saddam who spoke to the Iraqi people last night.



I'm now taking bets on what emo band will use this for their next album cover.

media watch
The City Club of Cleveland is giving Supreme Court Justice Scalia an award for supporting free speech. In the honor of our right to free speech, Justice Scalia has banned television and radio coverage of the event as a condition of his attendance. Here's a recent quote by him from another speech earlier this week: "The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires." Wow. Woooowwww.. And this man is a Supreme Court justice! No wonder our rights are fucked!

Radio giant Cleat Channel has been sponsoring pro-war rallies. This leds a former FCC commissioner to ask if Clear Channel is now manufacturing the news.

A British Labour Party MP talks about atrocities that Saddam Hussein is guilty of and accuses the UN Security Council of inaction, blaming France, Russia, and China. It's worth a read, even if the article is pitched as a justification for war. I'm sure that many of the gruesome crimes she has cited are things that Saddam is guilty of, but I still don't see a justification of the impending slaughter of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, a topic that the hawks do not like to talk about. The hawks seem to think that since you are not for Bush's war, then you must support Saddam, who is a ruthless and brutal dictator. Contrary to popular belief, us doves also do not like warmongers like Saddam, and many of us think that the man should be removed from power. But we do not think that war is the answer.

Bahrain, in an effort to avert war, has offered Saddam sanctuary. Not like it matters at this point, though.

Reading this AP article makes me wonder if war is going to start at 8:00PM EST tonight. It discusses the troops advancing towards the Iraqi border (reports have it that they have already crossed into the demilitarized zone between Kuwait and Iraq), and also says, "At sea, combat pilots and others on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt were ordered to snooze through the day so they could work through the night." This could only be done in preparation for a bombing raid tonight, the bombing raid that is supposed to drop 3000 bombs in the next two nights. Kuwait has already fired the first shots of the war. And the shrub has informed the leaders of Congress today of his intent to use military force.

News reports talking about the US bombing raid that will drop 3000 bombs into Baghdad have mention that the bombs to be dropped are more accurate than the ones from Gulf War I, which 40% of those were errant. We'll have to wait and see; personally, I'm not buying the miltary propaganda. More importantly, though, is how the military has said that this attack is meant to illicit "shock and awe", much like that of dropping a nuclear bomb on a city. You can't have it both ways. Either the bombs are accurate and a minimal amount of Iraqi citizens will be harmed/killed, or you have hell on earth (much like a nuclear attack) where a number of Iraqis are killed. Unfortunately, it looks like our military is about to choose the latter. God Bless my ass.

The latest issue of Newsweek has a feature story, "WHY AMERICA SCARES THE WORLD". I gave most of it a read last night, and it's pretty good. To summarize what I have read so far: the world is scared of Dubya. They do not trust him or the cabinet he has put together. They view him to be a very dangeous man who cares little about the world that surrounds America, and whose attempts at diplomacy are very transparent. They are scared of the fact that soon our defense budget, which stands at $322 billion this year, will grow to be larger than the defense budgets of all other countries COMBINED. The story attempts to shed light on interesting things like how Clinton was able to bomb Serbia and Bosnia without much of an outcry, but Bush, who stands in the unique position of being the 9/11 president, is not able to successfully rally the world around a war in Iraq.

Which means.. Damn, everyone besides hardline Republicans and Green Party members (like myself) liked Clinton. Especially White House interns.

French and German offices at the European Union have been wiretapped. Nobody knows who did this, but certainly some countries out there [cough]us[cough] had the motive.

Tony Blair went to Commons to plead his case for war and won the vote, but not without a revolt from members of his Labour Party. Meanwhile, Robin Cook resigns from his post in Blair's cabinet.

It looks like the Republicans have been defeated, for now, in their plan to drill for oil at the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.

Scholars question on the legality of a war with Iraq.

Yours truly got a letter (something I posted to the message forum) published in the Buzzflash mailbag, search for "Pick Saddam's New Vacation Spot". This is the first letter I wrote to Buzzflash so I'm not sure if it is difficult to get published to the mailbag or not.

This item isn't news related, but.. Take a look at this roller coaster from Cedar Point. First two words that came to my mind: "Holy shit!"

media watch
Is the shrub full of soundbites or what? That speech last night sounded, and was delivered, like every line could have made its own soundbite. And every line probably will become a soundbite. After the speech ended, ABC radio news started its analysis then went to a commercial 2 minutes later, and that's when the soundbites inbetween commericial breaks started. The propaganda machine is churning away.

And to cement my "propaganda machine" point, news outlets have not questioned Bush on the points he made in his speech, they only took what he said as fact. Unfortunately, it's not fact. Bush said that we would would deliver food to the Iraqi citizens, but I did not hear anyone point out that because the US is about to drop 3000 bombs within a two day period on Baghdad, the UN has pulled out ALL of their employees, including those who deliver food and medicine to 40% of the countries residents. Save for NPR, I haven't heard anybody mention that in the first two days of the Gulf War I air assault, only 348 bombs were dropped, and the aim of 40% of these bombs was inaccurate. That's a good point to ask about when the government says that innocent Iraqis will not have to worry. And, of course, nobody wants to add to the list of causalities from Gulf War I those who died from Gulf War Syndrome. (For the record, over 120,000 fell ill to this, with 10,000 of them dying. That's just OUR troops, I have not seen the figures on how this affected Iraqis.)

Since Bush last night all but declared that Baghdad was soon to become the world's largest parking lot by the end of this week, oil prices have dropped.

No, this wasn't photoshopped. It's real.

history repeats itself
As much as I want to point out the hypocrisy in the speech by Bush tonight, I don't see that as being constructive. We all know that our unelected despot of a president is a lying bastard, soon to become one of the foremost war criminals in the history of mankind. A tit-for-tat reply to his speech is not satisfying to me.

Instead, I will take direct quotes from historian Howard Zinn's brilliant masterpiece, "A People's History of the United States", pages 583-84, dealing pertaining to our first war with Iraq when the first Bush was in office. I decided to look over Zinn's historical account of the war in Iraq during my lunch break today, and I could hardly believe how similar the events of 12 years ago are to today. Even the names have hardly changed. Zinn goes over the real reasons we went to war with Iraq in 1991, and those reasons have not changed today. He discusses the lies the government used to justify a war with Iraq, and those lies have not changed today. He discusses our use of "smart bombs" that the government said would minimize the causalities among innocent Iraqi civilians, but they didn't. Unfortunately, we will find out soon that that probably hasn't changed, either.

Read it and decide for yourself:

"Historian Jon Wiener, analyzing the domestic context of the war decision shortly afterward, wrote that 'Bush abandoned sanctions and chose war because his time frame was a political one set by the approaching 1992 presidential elections.

"That and the long-time U.S. wish to have a decisive voice in the control of the Middle East oil resources were the crucial elements in the decision to go to war against Iraq. Shortly after the war, as representatives of the thirteen oil-producing nations were about to gather in Geneva, the business correspondent of the New York Times wrote: 'By virtue of its military victory the United States is likely to have more influence in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries than any industrial nation has ever exercised.

"But those motives were not presented to the American public. It was told that the United States wanted to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control. The major media dwelled on this as a reason for war, without noting that other countries had been invaded without the United States showing such concern (East Timor by Indonesia, Iran by Iraq, Lebanon by Israel, Mozambique by South Africa; to say nothing of the countries invaded by the United States itself - Grenada, Pamama).

"The justification for war that seemed most compelling was that Iraq was on its way to building a nuclear bomb, but evidence for this was very weak. Before the crisis over Kuwait, Western intelligence sources had estimated it would take Iraq three to ten years to build a nuclear weapon. Even if Iraq could build a bomb in a year or two, which was the most pessimistic estimate, it had no delivery system to send it anywhere. Besides, Israel already had nuclear weapons. And the United States had perhaps 30,000 of them. The Bush administration was trying hard to develop a paranoia in the nation about an Iraqi bomb which did not yet exist.

"Bush seemed determined to goto war. There had been several chances to negotiate an Iraqi withdrawl from Kuwait right after the invasion, including an iraqi proposal reported on August 29 by Newsday correspondent Knut Royce. But there was no response from the United States. When secetary of State James Baker went to Geneva to meet with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz, the instruction from Bush was 'no negotiations.'

"Despite months of exhortation from Washington about the dangers of Saddam Hussein, surveys showed that less than half the public favored military action.

"In January 1991, Bush, appearently feeling the need for support, asked Congress to give him the authority to make war. This was not a declaration of war, as called for by the Constittution; but since Korea and Vietnam, that provision of the Constitution seemed dead, and even the "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court who prided themselves on taking words of theConstitution literally and seriously would not intervene.

"The debate in Congress was lively. (At one point, a Senate speech was interrupted by protesters in the balcony shouting "No blood for oil!" The protesters were hustled out by guards.) It is likely that Bush was sure of having enough votes, or he would have launched the invasion without Congressional approval; aftere all, the precedent for ignoring Congress and the Constitution had been set in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, and Pamama."

[snip]

"This confidence in 'smart bombs' sparing civilians may have contributed to a shift in public opinion, from being equally divided on going to war, to perhaps 85 percent support for the invasion. perhaps more important in winning over public support was that once American military were engaged, it seemed to many people who had previously opposed military action that to criticize it now meant betraying the troops who were there. All over the nation, yellow ribbons were displayed as a symbol of support for the forces in Iraq.

"In fact, the public was being deceived about how 'smart' the bombs being dropped in Iraqi towns were. After talking with former intelligence and Air Force officers, a correspondent for the Boston Globe reported that perhaps 40 percent of the laser-guided bombs dropped in Operation Desert Storm missed their targets."

media watch
The UN has ordered that all UN workers leave Iraq immediately. To quote the article, "The suspension of the U.N. humanitarian program will cut off food and medicine to about 60 percent of Iraq's 20 million people." So the suffering of innocent Iraqis has started without the first bomb falling.

The shrub has scheduled an address to the nation for 8:00pm (EST) tonight. This news comes after the US, UK, and Spain annouced that they will not have the UN Security Council vote on a new resolution, because they know that resolution will fail. Bush is expected to annouce tonight that the only way a war with Iraq can be halted is if Saddam leaves the country. If Saddam does not leave, I predict the bombing campaign will start on Baghdad, dropping thousands of bombs onto a city populated with 6 million people, killing many of them but not killing Saddam. God Bless my ass.

The US tells UN weapons inspectors to get out of Iraq, and Blair has told his cabinet that war could come as early as Wednesday. There are five to ten other links that I could post, but it doesn't take an idiot to figure out that this week is probably the week that America will start dropping bombs on Iraq. What permanent changes our biggest foreign policy mistake will have on the world at large is yet to be seen.

On the eve of this war, I think that we need to be reminded about some history of just how the US supported Iraq 20 years ago during the Iraq-Iran war. This article also gets into the propaganda tactics that the US is using today to justify a war with Iraq. Required reading.

I have posted to the forum a list on UN Security Council resolutions that the US has vetoed since the 70's. It's much too long to post to the blog. This should give you a tiny hint into how hypocritical the US is when our government pitches a bitch about how France is daring to veto the (now nonexistent) resolution for war with Iraq.

Give it a look and feel free to reply to it: loadedmouth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35

war watch
Bush says that tomorrow is the "moment of truth" for Iraq. There could be a vote on a new resolution tomorrow at the UN, or, as loadedmouth.com reported at the beginning of this month, war could start tomorrow. Bush also as the gall to tell the UN that they must play a role in Post-Saddam Iraq, altghough if anybody tells Bush that he must have the clearance of the UN Security Council to launch a war in Iraq, he ignores it.