Four brigades from the Iraqi National Guard have been ordered to Mosul from their bases near Syria. The units consist of Kurds who used to be in the Kurdish peshmerga militia before being incorporated into the government’s security force.
Guess Civil War now inevitable.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 12 2004 15:56 utc | 3

Has anyone reported on where all the Fallujah civilian refugees supposedly went before the battle? Did they just disappear, go to a relative’s home in another city, congregate in a refugee camp, cross a border, what? Judgeing by the media account, they just disappeared!

Posted by: gylangirl | Nov 12 2004 17:44 utc | 5

Rumsfeld – El Salvador can be Iraq model
El Salvador tells US its troops will stay in Iraq
“Well, I’m confident when people realize that there’s a chance to vote on a president, they will participate,” President Bush said Wednesday…. Bush went on to draw a comparison with recent presidential elections in Afghanistan.
“As I reminded our citizens prior to the Afghanistan elections, there’s a deep desire in every soul to vote and to be free, and to participate in the presidential elections,” he said.
In fact, Iraqis will not choose their president directly. They will be voting to choose a National Assembly of 275 members, which will elect from its members a president and two deputies and write a constitution.
The executive panel, in turn, will select a prime minister, who also must be a member of the Assembly.
Confusion in White House on aim of Iraq election
Senior Sunni figure blasts Sistani for failure to speak out on Falluja
Three crew injured as Black Hawk shot down in Iraq – US military
US military deaths in Iraq as at November 11th 2004 – ‘at least 1,155’
2 more US troops killed in Iraq – November 12th
‘Iraqi Government’ fires police chiefs
GIs force men fleeing Falluja to return
The Arab press – ‘There is no rationale for the invasion’
Iraq press attacks Falluja assault
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraqi government warned news organizations Thursday to distinguish between insurgents and ordinary civilians in coverage of the fighting in Fallujah and to promote the leadership’s position or face unspecified action. …
‘Iraqi Government’ warns media about coverage
Allawi claims ‘popular support’ for attack on Falluja
Iraq’s Allawi Is a ‘Straw Man’ and a ‘Criminal,’ says Sy Hersh at NYU
New insurgency confronts US forces
Al-Muqawama, Mosul, November 10th 2004
Mosul patrol, November 10th 2004
Recoil, Mosul, November 10th 2004
Slain ‘Iraqi army’ officer, Mosul, November 10th 2004
Collecting supplies, Mosul, November 11th 2004
Mosul, November 11th 2004
Al-Muqawama, Mosul, November 11th 2004
Opening fire with RPG, Mosul, November 11th 2004
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) – Rebels invested the streets of Iraq’s northern capital, but the US military insisted the city of more than a million people was still in its control despite ordering air strikes the previous day.
An AFP correspondent saw masked insurgents brandishing rocket-propelled grenade launchers across the heart of Mosul.
The only police or national guard in evidence were dead……
Under-fire rebels mount show of strength in Iraq’s northern capital
Fallujah ‘not end of story’ – former head of Iraqi council
Arab fighters may be regrouping for other Fallujahs
US Marine Major found guilty of maltreatment and dereliction of duty in Iraqi prisoner death case
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and other senior U.S. officials put pressure on Halliburton to award a contract to a Kuwaiti company suspected of overcharging to bring fuel into Iraq, according to State Department documents released on Wednesday.
The documents, portions of which were released by Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, also said the State Department received information in the summer of 2003 that Halliburton officials demanded kickbacks and solicited bribes from Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company of Kuwait….
… One e-mail about an Aug. 4, 2003, meeting between U.S. Embassy officials in Kuwait and Altanmia, reported the Kuwaiti company’s claim that coalition and KBR officers “are on the take; that they solicit bribes openly; that anyone visiting their seaside villas at the Kuwaiti Hilton who offers to provide services will be asked for a bribe…”
U.S. pressed Halliburton in Kuwaiti deal
American troops entering Fallujah Iraq are showered with flowers and savory Middle Eastern treats!
Why Iraq will end as Vietnam did

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 12 2004 20:20 utc | 7

Thanks for the Martin van Creveld article on Dayan’s experience of vietnam, it’s fascinating.
I’ll just quote the conclusion again:

he third and most important reason why I think Vietnam is relevant to the situation in Iraq is because the Americans found themselves in the unfortunate position where they were beating down on the weak. To quote Dayan: “any comparison between the two armies… was astonishing. On the one hand there was the American Army, complete with helicopters, an air force, armor, electronic communications, artillery, and mind-boggling riches; to say nothing of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and equipment of all kinds. On the other there were the [North Vietnamese troops] who had been walking on foot for four months, carrying some artilleryrounds on their backs and using a tin spoon to eat a little ground rice from a tin plate”.
That, of course, was precisely the problem. In private life, an adult who keeps beating down on a five year old—even such a one as originally attacked him with a knife—will be perceived as committing a crime; therefore he will lose the support of bystanders and end up by being arrested, tried and convicted. In international life, an armed force that keeps beating down on a weaker opponent will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up by losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops. Depending on the quality of the forces—whether they are draftees or professionals, the effectiveness of the propaganda machine, the nature of the political process, and so on—things may happen quickly or take a long time to mature. However, the outcome is always the same. He (or she) who does not understand this does not understand anything about war; or, indeed, human nature.
In other words, he who fights against the weak — and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed — and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force however rich, however powerful, however, advanced, and however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat; if U.S troops in Iraq have not yet started fragging their officers, the suicide rate among them is already exceptionally high. That is why the present adventure will almost certainly end as the previous one did. Namely, with the last US troops fleeing the country while hanging on to their helicopters’ skids.

If you go look at the details of the recent deaths of US soldiers, the most striking fact is how few are listed with “Fallujah” as location. A big majority is in “al anbar” province, where Fallujah is, but also the rest of the Sunni triangle, if I am not mistaken. Where’s the fighting?

Posted by: Jérôme | Nov 12 2004 21:13 utc | 9

“…They can’t go north because that’s where we are. They can’t go west because of the Euphrates river and they can’t go east because we have a huge presence there. So they are cornered in the south,” Marine Master Sergeant Roy Meek told Reuters. ….
…..Just hours after U.S. Marines said insurgents were penned into the south of Falluja, a battle erupted in the northwest of the city, a Reuters correspondent with Marines in the area said. …
U.S. battles for control of Falluja

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 12 2004 22:03 utc | 11

Bernhard, as a European, you should know very well what that means: “no males aged 15 to 55 should be allowed to leave, arguing that insurgents could mingle with refugees to avoid being killed or captured”
It means this and nothing else, and it has always meant this in every war everywhere:
12 July 1995
Buses arrived to take women and children to Muslim territory, while the Serbs begin separating out all men from age 12 to 77 for “interrogation for suspected war crimes”. It is estimated that 23,000 women and children were deported in the next 30 hours. Hundreds of men were held in trucks and warehouses.
16 July 1995
Early reports of massacres emerged as the first survivors of the long march from Srebrenica began to arrive in Muslim-held territory. In the five days after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, more than 7,000 Muslim men are thought to have been killed.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 12 2004 23:10 utc | 13

from link (U.S. battles for control of Falluja) posted by sic transit:
“”We want to get this over with as quickly as possible, because right behind those coalition forces are reconstruction teams, are hospital teams, and ambulances, and food, and humanitarian equipment and supplies to help the people of Fallujah,” he said in a transcript released by the State Department Friday.”
“So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
(sonnet 146).

Posted by: slothrop | Nov 12 2004 23:44 utc | 15

All mankinde is of one Author,
and is one volume; when one Man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so tranlated; God emploies
several translators; some peeces are translated by age, some by
sicknesse, some by warre, some by justice, but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves againe, for that Librarie
where every booke shall lie open to one another.
No man is an iland intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were;
any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
John Donne 1623

Posted by: possum | Nov 13 2004 1:22 utc | 17

Sorry to be off-topic again, but things are brewing in regards to the election challenge, too — they need funds for this, so give if you can. The clock is ticking!
A Legitimate Recount Effort in Ohio
An effort led by Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy is underway in Ohio to conduct a statewide recount.
Efforts to launch an official statewide recount of the Ohio presidential vote are underway. While it’s unclear if a recount will result in a Kerry victory, it’s likely to highlight many flaws in Ohio elections that may have tilted results toward Republicans and against Democrats.
Common Cause of Ohio and the Alliance for Democracy, a progressive coalition, Thursday announced they were launching a recount campaign for Ohio. Columbus, Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who represents both groups, said both the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates would seek a recount if the $110,000 filing fee could be raised. “Common Cause and the Alliance for Democracy are not partisan. The purpose of the recount is to verify the honesty of the process,” Arnebeck said. “That is in the interest of anyone who would be declared the winner.”
A coalition of progressive groups will hold a public hearing on election abuses this Saturday in Columbus calling on the Kerry campaign to pay for the recount. Meanwhile, they have created a Web page to collect donations at the Alliance for Democracy site. The Kerry campaign reportedly was sending lawyers to Ohio to look into election irregularities, but Arnebeck said only the public interest groups were now committed to a recount. …

Posted by: JMF | Nov 13 2004 3:23 utc | 19

Thanks Fran,
Ms Klein keeps on hitting the nail on the head.
Her story on the Plan For A Neandercon Utopia (as opposed to the ‘no plan’ excuse) for post-war Iraq has been spot on, regardless what waterheads like Christopher Hitchens have to say.

Posted by: RossK | Nov 13 2004 6:42 utc | 21

Curfews as Iraq rebellion spreads
US troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 13 2004 7:47 utc | 23

@ Cloned
I doubt that Sistani is gleeful, but the Israeli
promises of independence seem to me to be right on
the mark. In fact, for the Likkudniks it’s really a case of “the worse, the better”. With Kurdistan already “split off”, the only thing necessary for splitting Iraq into 3 mutually hostile mini-states is to incite a fitna between Sunnis and Shiites, not
an easy task while the Americans are killing Moslems
independent their views on Imam Ali, but surely something that will not be difficult once the Yanks
are gone.
It seems (a question and conjecture really) that the U.S. is using Kurdish auxiliaries to “maintain order” after “restoring order” via the “wedding cake” of bombers, helicopters, and AWACS control posts, together, of course, with the blood of marine infantymen. This harks back to the 20-th centuries first well-publicized genocide, when the Kurds performed a similar service for
the Turks in suppressing the Armenians. Since by now my news tends to be viewed through “Moon”light (& thanks to the habitue’s all the illuminating and horrifying links), I can’t help wondering what the
at home Yanks are thinking about these events. It’s just as easy to click a link from the U.S. as it is from Europe but I have the distinct impression the Yanks at home don’t have any idea of how totally this war has immersed the name of the U.S. in shit.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 13 2004 9:09 utc | 25

@ Cloned
I have “visited” but not really looked carefully.
I’ll try a more serious visit, and in particular will
look at ThePaper. I repeat my earlier comments – with
folks like you and the other “Moonatics” to point out worthwhile links it’s easy to get non-authorized and non-official views of this tragedy. How could my erstwhile compatriots have returned that sadistic shithead to office?

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 13 2004 9:32 utc | 27

Regarding the “Israel giving the Kurds a free state” idea above, yesterday I read an article that I can’t find now that discussed a plan Turkey is preparing to send 20,000 troops into Northern Iraq in a month or two to battle Kurdish insurgents. Anybody else see this or hear anything about this? Could be another very ugly situation.

Posted by: maxcrat | Nov 13 2004 13:42 utc | 29

“How could my erstwhile compatriots have returned that sadistic shithead to office?”
“I really don’t think they did. It’s the blokes at the top who did.
Whoever they are.”
Those erstwhile compatriots did because they don’t care. I have been told on many occasions by “seemingly rational people”:
“I don’t care what’s going on over there as long as it’s not happening here.”
“I just couldn’t stomach having Kerry for President. I know Bush will do what is right.”
“We should just kill them all. They don’t care about us, so why should we care about them.”
My personal favorite: “I voted for Bush because I like Laura and Kerry’s wife was such a twat.”

Posted by: aw | Nov 13 2004 14:54 utc | 31

Iraq says Fallujah offensive over but Zarqawi slips the net

“Operation Fajr (Dawn) has been achieved and only the malignant pockets remain that we are dealing with through a clean-up operation,” Qassem Daoud, secretary of state for national security, told a Baghdad press conference.

I don´t think this will have any consequences for the US military action.

Posted by: b | Nov 13 2004 17:03 utc | 33

I was at the rugby match today……… we beat the boks!
As I never watch TV I am just a radio news junky……….. I’m dismayed at the BBC Blair spin for a long time now.
Can anyone recommend a streaming English (speaking that is) radio channel?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 13 2004 19:18 utc | 35

US War Crime No. MCCXIL
Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq has a report (pdf) about the denial of water by US troops to Iraqi citizens.

Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other coalition members, and the Iraqi government.
…
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that: ‘Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra.’
Residents of Fallujah have told the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks that ‘they had no food or clean water and did not have time to store enough to hold out through the impending battle’xiii. The water shortage has been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujahxiv, Fadhil Badrani, a BBC
journalist in Falluja, confirmed on 8 November that ‘the water supply has been cut off’.
In light of the shortage of water and other supplies, the Red Cross has attempted to deliver water to Fallujah. However the US has refused to allow shipments of water into the Fallujah until it has taken control of the city.
…
Legal implications
The denial of water to civilians is illegal both under Iraqi and international law. Article 12 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which serves as a constitution
during the interim period, states that: ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of his person’
International law specifically forbids the denial of water to civilians during conflict. Under article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions, ‘Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.’

Posted by: b | Nov 13 2004 20:56 utc | 37

Iraq: The Unthinkable Becomes Normal
by John Pilger
Edward S. Herman’s landmark essay, “The Banality of Evil,” has never seemed more apposite. “Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on ‘normalization,'” wrote Herman. “There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals … others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public.”
On Radio 4’s Today (Nov. 6), a BBC reporter in Baghdad referred to the coming attack on the city of Fallujah as “dangerous” and “very dangerous” for the Americans. When asked about civilians, he said, reassuringly, that the U.S. Marines were “going about with a Tannoy” telling people to get out. He omitted to say that tens of thousands of people would be left in the city. He mentioned in passing the “most intense bombing” of the city with no suggestion of what that meant for people beneath the bombs.
As for the defenders, those Iraqis who resist in a city that heroically defied Saddam Hussein; they were merely “insurgents holed up in the city,” as if they were an alien body, a lesser form of life to be “flushed out” (the Guardian): a suitable quarry for “rat-catchers,” which is the term another BBC reporter told us the Black Watch use. According to a senior British officer, the Americans view Iraqis as Untermenschen, a term that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to describe Jews, Romanies, and Slavs as subhumans. This is how the Nazi army laid siege to Russian cities, slaughtering combatants and non-combatants alike.
Normalizing colonial crimes like the attack on Fallujah requires such racism, linking our imagination to “the other.” The thrust of the reporting is that the “insurgents” are led by sinister foreigners of the kind that behead people: for example, by Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian said to be al-Qaeda’s “top operative” in Iraq. This is what the Americans say; it is also Blair’s latest lie to parliament. Count the times it is parroted at a camera, at us. No irony is noted that the foreigners in Iraq are overwhelmingly American and, by all indications, loathed. These indications come from apparently credible polling organizations, one of which estimates that of 2,700 attacks every month by the resistance, six can be credited to the infamous al-Zarqawi.
In a letter sent on Oct. 14 to Kofi Annan, the Fallujah Shura Council, which administers the city, said: “In Fallujah, [the Americans] have created a new vague target: al-Zarqawi. Almost a year has elapsed since they created this new pretext, and whenever they destroy houses, mosques, restaurants, and kill children and women, they said: ‘We have launched a successful operation against al-Zarqawi.’ The people of Fallujah assure you that this person, if he exists, is not in Fallujah … and we have no links to any groups supporting such inhuman behavior. We appeal to you to urge the UN [to prevent] the new massacre which the Americans and the puppet government are planning to start soon in Fallujah, as well as many parts of the country.”
Not a word of this was reported in the mainstream media in Britain and America.
“What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence?” asked the playwright Ronan Bennett in April after the U.S. Marines, in an act of collective vengeance for the killing of four American mercenaries, killed more than 600 people in Fallujah, a figure that was never denied. Then, as now, they used the ferocious firepower of AC-130 gunships and F-16 fighter-bombers and 500-lb. bombs against slums. They incinerate children; their snipers boast of killing anyone, as snipers did in Sarajevo.
Bennett was referring to the legion of silent Labour backbenchers, with honorable exceptions, and lobotomized junior ministers (remember Chris Mullin?). He might have added those journalists who strain every sinew to protect “our” side, who normalize the unthinkable by not even gesturing at the demonstrable immorality and criminality. Of course, to be shocked by what “we” do is dangerous, because this can lead to a wider understanding of why “we” are there in the first place and of the grief “we” bring not only to Iraq, but to so many parts of the world: that the terrorism of al-Qaeda is puny by comparison with ours.
There is nothing illicit about this cover-up; it happens in daylight. The most striking recent example followed the announcement, on Oct. 29, by the prestigious scientific journal, the Lancet, of a study estimating that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. Eighty-four percent of the deaths were caused by the actions of the Americans and the British, and 95 percent of these were killed by air attacks and artillery fire, most of whom were women and children.
The editors of the excellent MediaLens observed the rush – no, stampede – to smother this shocking news with “skepticism” and silence. They reported that, by Nov. 2, the Lancet report had been ignored by the Observer, the Telegraph, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Star, the Sun, and many others. The BBC framed the report in terms of the government’s “doubts” and Channel 4 News delivered a hatchet job, based on a Downing Street briefing. With one exception, none of the scientists who compiled this rigorously peer-reviewed report was asked to substantiate their work until ten days later when the pro-war Observer published an interview with the editor of the Lancet, slanted so that it appeared he was “answering his critics.” David Edwards, a MediaLens editor, asked the researchers to respond to the media criticism; their meticulous demolition can be viewed on the alert for Nov. 2. None of this was published in the mainstream. Thus, the unthinkable that “we” had engaged in such a slaughter was suppressed – normalized. It is reminiscent of the suppression of the death of more than a million Iraqis, including half a million infants under five, as a result of the Anglo-American-driven embargo.
In contrast, there is no media questioning of the methodology of the Iraqi Special Tribune, which has announced that mass graves contain 300,000 victims of Saddam Hussein. The Special Tribune, a product of the quisling regime in Baghdad, is run by the Americans; respected scientists want nothing to do with it. There is no questioning of what the BBC calls “Iraq’s first democratic elections.” There is no reporting of how the Americans have assumed control over the electoral process with two decrees passed in June that allow an “electoral commission” in effect to eliminate parties Washington does not like. Time magazine reports that the CIA is buying its preferred candidates, which is how the agency has fixed elections over the world. When or if the elections take place, we will be doused in clichés about the nobility of voting, as America’s puppets are “democratically” chosen.
The model for this was the “coverage” of the American presidential election, a blizzard of platitudes normalizing the unthinkable: that what happened on Nov. 2 was not democracy in action. With one exception, no one in the flock of pundits flown from London described the circus of Bush and Kerry as the contrivance of fewer than 1 percent of the population, the ultra-rich and powerful who control and manage a permanent war economy. That the losers were not only the Democrats, but the vast majority of Americans, regardless of whom they voted for, was unmentionable.
No one reported that John Kerry, by contrasting the “war on terror” with Bush’s disastrous attack on Iraq, merely exploited public distrust of the invasion to build support for American dominance throughout the world. “I’m not talking about leaving [Iraq],” said Kerry. “I’m talking about winning!” In this way, both he and Bush shifted the agenda even further to the right, so that millions of antiwar Democrats might be persuaded that the U.S. has “the responsibility to finish the job” lest there be “chaos.” The issue in the presidential campaign was neither Bush nor Kerry, but a war economy aimed at conquest abroad and economic division at home. The silence on this was comprehensive, both in America and here.
Bush won by invoking, more skillfully than Kerry, the fear of an ill-defined threat. How was he able to normalize this paranoia? Let’s look at the recent past. Following the end of the cold war, the American elite – Republican and Democrat – were having great difficulty convincing the public that the billions of dollars spent on the war economy should not be diverted to a “peace dividend.” A majority of Americans refused to believe that there was still a “threat” as potent as the red menace. This did not prevent Bill Clinton sending to Congress the biggest “defense” bill in history in support of a Pentagon strategy called “full-spectrum dominance.” On Sept. 11, 2001, the threat was given a name: Islam.
Flying into Philadelphia recently, I spotted the Kean congressional report on Sept. 11 from the 9/11 Commission on sale at the bookstalls. “How many do you sell?” I asked. “One or two,” was the reply. “It’ll disappear soon.” Yet, this modest, blue-covered book is a revelation. Like the Butler report in the UK, which detailed all the incriminating evidence of Blair’s massaging of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, then pulled its punches and concluded nobody was responsible, so the Kean report makes excruciatingly clear what really happened, then fails to draw the conclusions that stare it in the face. It is a supreme act of normalizing the unthinkable. This is not surprising, as the conclusions are volcanic.
The most important evidence to the 9/11 Commission came from General Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad). “Air Force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring towards the World Trade Center and Pentagon,” he said, “if only air traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner. … We would have been able to shoot down all three … all four of them.”
Why did this not happen?
The Kean report makes clear that “the defense of U.S. aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with preexisting training and protocols. … If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC). … The NMCC would then seek approval from the office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance… “Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority that there was no reason the procedure was not operating that morning. “For my 30 years of experience …” said Monte Belger, “the NMCC was on the net and hearing everything real-time. … I can tell you I’ve lived through dozens of hijackings … and they were always listening in with everybody else.”
But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC was never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was told, to America’s top military brass. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, “a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed.” As a result, Norad’s commanders were “left in the dark about what their mission was.”
The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system that worked was in the White House where Vice President Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or it could not.
In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for Bush read: “We [the CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”
On the afternoon of Sept. 11, Donald Rumsfeld, having failed to act against those who had just attacked the United States, told his aides to set in motion an attack on Iraq – when the evidence was nonexistent. Eighteen months later, the invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and based on lies now documented, took place. This epic crime is the greatest political scandal of our time, the latest chapter in the long 20th-century history of the West’s conquests of other lands and their resources. If we allow it to be normalized., if we refuse to question and probe the hidden agendas and unaccountable secret power structures at the heart of “democratic” governments and if we allow the people of Fallujah to be crushed in our name, we surrender both democracy and humanity.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 13 2004 21:23 utc | 39

RAPT, no argument from me. Last night I asked myself who would I rather fight for: Canada, a beautiful democracy where they don’t lock their door in cities & everyone has medical care, or Jerry Fallwell, DeLay, Frist, Thune, Hagel, Cheney & the Mob? Scary stuff, huh?????
(Tho since, say late ’01, I will admit to you I’ve had this fantasy – I guess since Chimpy’s so obviously a puppet – of them hanging like puppets from beams & strings atop the Washington Monument!! Anyone have friends up to speed w/computer graphics?? If so, we urgently need an update to the American Flag. I saw an upside-down one on DU. Good Start. But it needs to be rimmed in black, torn, stained w/blood, perhaps dollar signs for stars……Anyone know anyone who could get on it?????)
But back to reality, if we could be more modest, we might get them to resign before they can run out the clock. Digging around in my yard yesterday for a twig as it were, anything, w/which we could exert sufficient leverage to make the powers that be think better about allowing another theft, I think I struck pay-dirt. I mean we can’t stand around like fucking sheep & let them blithely toss the republic over the abyss. Does anyone want to do that? Surely we cannot be that powerless – somewhere we have some leverage…we are, after all the majority of citizens & the entirety of those not blinded by greed & Murdoch.
While I check out my idea, Everyone Else Has To Go Digging in their Own Gardens. What Can We Do To Force Their Resignation? Maybe Bernhard will give us a thread tomorrow to float ideas. Or perhaps you or your children want to Get Mutilated & Die for Frist, DeLay & Falwell or the Empire.
Ultimately though, they must resign, because those who make peaceful change at the ballot box impossible make Civil War inevitable.

Posted by: jj | Nov 13 2004 22:39 utc | 41

For my part, I’ve already put the wheels in motion to move to France in the New Year; for details see my Daily Kos diary.

Posted by: Lupin | Nov 13 2004 23:04 utc | 43

Lupin! Godspeed and good luck! But please find a way to keep posting here and at Kos.
Can I come visit? 😉
(I cashed out too, last year. But have no plan to leave, unless they come for my 20 year old son. For now, I will stay and fight. I’m working on my own very small plan to raise awareness and hopefully raise money for progressive causes….)
All the best….

Posted by: semper ubi | Nov 14 2004 0:03 utc | 45

@DM — still out there? Here is an article that makes the connection between the US occupation of Iraq and the British occupation and plundering of India. I don’t know the author, or his slant or background. I do know that the facts he outlines here, and the way he connects them, are familiar to me from other reading. Still can’t find the book or article in which I most recently encountered this well-known story. I’m wondering if it was something by Arundhati Roy.
The death toll from British mismanagement and looting of the Bengali economy, during the famine of 1770, was 10 million persons or one third of the population. Here’s another data point, a critique of the ghastly whitewash job the British power establishment is still doing when it looks back at the crimes of the Raj.
This is the kind of thing I mean when I ask rightists who talk about the crimes of Stalin and Mao — how many mio people killed, etc. — why they never stop to add up the mios of people killed by capitalist greed. Somehow it seems many people honestly believe that killing people out of blatant greed, dishonesty, and general mafiosism is somehow OK, whereas killing people out of a demented insistence on some idealist ideology (or to hang on to power in a society shaped by same) is Mad and Bad.
Looking at the state of the world today, I’d have to agree with Derrick Jackson that natural human greed and covetousness can reach a scale and an awfulness where they become truly Mad and Bad, and as dangerous as any of the more heady ideologies of the last century or two.

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 14 2004 0:16 utc | 47

deanader
we have here the black capitalism – which details all this & more – also hobshawn is very good. i think the numbers you gave are correct or evenb conservative
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 14 2004 0:57 utc | 49

that is the black book of capitalism – livre noir – there is of course the writings of nehru there is another magisterial history of india & the genocide of indians by the british by – i think a ardit roy – it’s a long time since i’ve read – but it is a colleague of hobshawn at cambridge
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 14 2004 1:08 utc | 51

Bonne chance Lupin!
And I’m with Kate, I wanna see the Iraqi list, with names, with faces, with stories….with loved ones…..all of it.
Because I want to know who died because hospitals, first-aid stations and ambulances were targeted.
And I want to see the pictures.
And I want to see it all archived in the pages of the goddamned Washington Post and the New York Times. And I want to see the footage on CNN.
And then I want to see it talked about in sermons in every church in every state on every Sunday from now until judgement day.
Because this is what we’ve wrought and this is what we must all know has been done in our name.
Then there will be no excuse for anyone to say a generation from now…..’I didn’t know.’

Posted by: RossK | Nov 14 2004 1:25 utc | 53

sic transit gloria usa
i thank you for your clatiy & concur with almost all that you have said
it is why i have pointedly made references to the einzatsgruppen because i think their ‘holy crusade’ against jews & bolsheviks is being replayed in iraq – against “terrorists’ & ‘foreign combatants’
the germans required the famous commisar order to juridicially slaughter people & the americans use the phantom al zaqarwi for the same reasons. it is a means to widen the slaughter, the liquidations & the assinations of the people of the sovereign nation, iraq
as you, the elections showed that this country has no shame nor the reflective capacity to understand the immorality of their actions
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 14 2004 2:22 utc | 55

Sic transit gloria USA–
Apologies for not acknowledging your efforts during my outburst of blind rage earlier.
My thanks to you also.

Posted by: RossK | Nov 14 2004 2:42 utc | 57

Stan Goff, film critic — Goff takes on Hollywood, using Man on Fire as his starting point for an analysis of the connection between fantasies of masculinity, revenge, and vigilante “justice” and imperial violence abroad and at home.

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 14 2004 4:30 utc | 59

When the smoke has cleared around Falluja, what horrors will be revealed?
US military deaths in Iraq as at Saturday November 13th 2004 – ‘at least 1,179’
Three US Marines die in ‘pacified’ Falluja, thirteen injured in firefight, ten seriously

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 14 2004 6:05 utc | 61

Four Sunni clerics are detained
Green Zone targeted in latest attacks
Iraqi Communist party official assassinated en route to home to Baghdad
Iraq officials fire thousands of policemen
U.S. helicopters, tanks hit Iraq city of Baiji
Soldier killed, three wounded in Iraq – U.S.
Ten contractors injured in attack at LSA Anaconda

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 14 2004 14:06 utc | 63

U.S. troops attend to a Bradley armored vehicle which lost a track in a roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad, November 14th 2004. One soldier of the 1st Cavalry division’s 1st Battalion 21st Field Artillery regiment suffered a broken leg in the incident
31 U.S. troops killed so far in Falluja
Falluja residents desperate for food, water, aid
Iraqi Red Crescent presses US troops for full access to Falluja
Body of blonde Caucasian woman found in Falluja – US Marines
November 14th 2004 – An Iraqi nurse treats 2-year-old child Mustafa Adnan, at a Baghdad hospital. Mustafa lost a leg when his house in Falluja’s Jolan district was shelled by U.S. forces
November 14th 2004 – A wounded 9-year-old Iraqi girl lying in a Baghdad hospital bed after her house in the war-torn city of Falluja was shelled by U.S. forces
Two-year-old Mustapha Ahmed Abed, a victim of the US onslaught on Falluja, is cradled by a male relative, as his mother lies in a nearby bed at the Naaman hospital in Baghdad, November 14th 2004
November 14th 2004 – A wounded 16 month-old child cries while lying in a Baghdad hospital bed after his house in the war-torn city of Falluja was shelled by U.S. forces

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 14 2004 15:18 utc | 65

From the Healing Iraq blog:

Nobody is following the situation in Fallujah anymore since the whole country seems to have plunged into chaos. There has been fighting in Ramadi, Khaldiya, Hit, Haditha, Garma, Abu Ghraib, Qaim, Mosul, Kirkuk, Hawija, Baiji, Tikrit, Samarra, Tarmiya, Balad, Muqdadiya, Salman Pak, Jurf Al-Naddaf, and most likely in dozens more areas that go unreported. Attacks on pipelines supplying power stations in Baiji have caused the lack of electricity for the last few days. Any other talk about ‘collective punishment’ is pure nonsense and the ramblings of lunatics.
Also, if one reflects for a moment on the abovementioned areas that are now supposedly in rebellion we come to a realisation that not one bullet was shot against the advancing US forces in these areas during the war. Why is that? The deadliest resistance to occupying forces was
in Umm Qasr, Basrah, Abu Al-Khasib, Nasiriya, Kut, and Karbala. In fact we all heard during the war about banquets for US special forces thrown by tribal Sheikhs in Haditha and other areas of the Anbar governorate. The ‘resistance’ only started after the de-Ba’athification and the disbanding of the army and security forces which tells us a lot about the mentality of the ‘freedom fighters’ who claim to be fighting to end occupation.

Posted by: b | Nov 14 2004 18:49 utc | 67

From the icasualties website, I note 51 dead US soldiers in 5 days.
That means, with the current rules of thumb:
– 1500 dead Iraqi civilians in 5 days – 300 per day – the equivalent of a 9/11 EVERY DAY
– 500 wounded US soldiers – 100 a day. See the previously posted links (and below) to the evacuations to Germany, which fit with that number.
Left unsaid:
– how many Iraqis now hate America with their life?
– how long befroe the draft if you lose 3% of your soldiers every month (and who knows what the proportion is for frontline soldiers)??
Where’s the outrage?
(At least, the media is starting to mention this. CNN.com’s headline is currently Military hospital’s workload doubles, with the following lead:

Battle casualties received by doctors at an American military hospital in Germany have more than doubled since the Falluja operation in Iraq began, the facility’s commander told reporters Sunday. “Normally, we average 32 patients a day. In the last week, we’ve had an average of 70,” Col. Rhonda Cornum said.

Posted by: Jérôme | Nov 14 2004 22:06 utc | 69

Sic transit: Frankly, if the US anti-war people were serious about it, they should decide to drop the “support our troops” thingie and go for the real deal: “Support our stormtroopers”.
And US troops MAY have committed a war crime? Fuck these idiots, this IS a war crime. The kind of crap we saw in ancient times, like when Vercingetorix sent the population of besieged Alesia outside the walls because they couldn’t feed both the Gaul army and the civilians; Caesar refused to let them pass and go outside because he didn’t want trouble and any risk of backstab, so he let them in the no man’s land between the city’s walls and his own fortifications; they begged to be let back into the city, or to go outside, but both sides let them there do die of hunger (or be crushed during various attacks, for those who survived long enough). Granted, here it was just a matter of days, but there was a heavy bombing going on everywhere in the city, so instead of starving to death, they just were bombed or left bleeding.
“‘I see the little kids in the cars and I feel sorry for them, but when they turn 16 they’re evil.'”
I said it a lot on various blogs and other boards back in early 2003, but it’s worth repeating. This is completely suicidal. What kind of objections will there be when the Chinese, Muslim, European, Congolese, Russian or Argentinian armies invade the US and do the same on mass-scale to US civilians? Will the “but they’re not legitimate military targets, they’re just peaceful peace-loving defenseless civilians” argument hold? Did these stupid fundies forget that one of the key teachings of Christianism (and many other religions) is that you shouldn’t do to others what you wouldn’t want to happen to you?

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 15 2004 0:58 utc | 71

@jerome every 10 days, no?

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 15 2004 2:57 utc | 73

DeA – i realise I was not clear. Relative to population (10 fewer people in Iraq than in the US), it is indeed each day. In absolute terms, it is of course not the same.

Posted by: Jérôme | Nov 15 2004 7:05 utc | 75

Why, Clueless, “Support our stormtroopers”. that’s kinda catchy!! Seriously, relieved to see it. I’ve been gagging all weekend at the prospect of reading yet more stories of the suffering of “our soldiers”. Maybe Stan Goff will write about it. Regardless, we’re stuck paying the bills for “our soldiers” forever, just as the poor Iraqis are stuck w/the bastards fighting on their behalf. As Arundhati Roy noted, this isn’t the soil from which a secular sensitive feminist opposition grows. MaleChristian Fascism begets MaleMuslim fascism.
At least anyone who donates their body from now on has no excuse for not knowing. And applications to Military Academies off ~20%!

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 15 2004 8:36 utc | 77

Aargh, open tag.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 15 2004 9:45 utc | 79

I want your opinion. Do you think that the Americans will give power to the Shia, as they have promised to do? Or they will try to cheat Sistani and prevent the Shia from controling the Iraqi state?
I suspect that Sistani has overestimated his power. Now he is happy with the Americans doing the job for him, crushing the Sunnis, but if they are successful, they could start pressing the Shia to accept limits to their power or not transering power at all.

Posted by: Greco | Nov 15 2004 11:56 utc | 81

“Frankly, if the US anti-war people were serious about it, they should decide to drop the ‘support our troops’ thingie and go for the real deal: ‘Support our stormtroopers.'”
I totally concur, Clueless. As the majority of anti-war activists and those who share their sentiments are on the Left, this might do much, at least in the short term, to drive more people into the arms of the Right. But the principle of it, the logical and moral consistency, are far more important than interim electoral concerns.
I suggest bumper stickers and t-shirts. And lots and lots of television ads.
I was listening to a radio show a few weeks ago in which an angry middle-aged caller described with much satisfaction how, coming upon a couple of men in uniform on a sidewalk, she rolled down her window to shout, “Why don’t you go kill some more women and children?!” This fury, this anguished awareness, deserves a wider voice, a reinvigorated movement from which it can draw hope and through which it can call attention to…itself, mainly. This is no time for restrained discourse or gentle pleading. This is no time for Kerry-esque equivocation and circumspection. This is a time for the unstinting expression of outrage – for the necessary villification and righteous rejection of George W. Bush’s willing executioners.
It grows quite late, but there is opportunity yet to impress an entire country with the uncompromising, unqualified abhorrence of every agent, every instrument, of this war. It is not enough to gloat over or revel in perceived military failures. However pleasant and justified this may be, it is merely reactionary. Seize the initiative; alter the discussion; rouse a nation.
In the end you will be thanked for your courage and conviction, just as, after the fall of Saigon, a weary nation extended its hand in gratitude to the brave men and women who dared stand up and shout “Baby Killer!” on a crowded Mall in Washington. John Kerry is not there to help this time, to lend the combat veteran’s imprimatur to the cry. He is a wary polititian now, a member of the corrupt and corrupting Establishment. You needn’t reject that Establishment; it has already rejected you. You must go your own way, find your own voice, make yourself heard. You have nothing to lose but an unproductive caution.

Posted by: Pat | Nov 15 2004 16:12 utc | 83

Pat, it’s nice to see you come out of your fascist closet from time to time, you know.
And you actually said something very true: Americans are now willing executioners and the last elections just showed to everyone that the American people, for both failing to repudiate Bush then failing to take arms and wage open civil war to oust the GOP indeed is guilty of collective responsibility for all the crimes its government has done and will do in the next 4 years.
And since you seem to like Bush taking on the whole world, the Moon denizens should get together and pay you one of these posters.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 15 2004 18:34 utc | 85

Cj and CP – it is le Mont Blanc, seen from the French side…

Posted by: Jérôme | Nov 15 2004 19:04 utc | 87

Pat ! Your advocacy, while (darkly) amusing, is I think a flight of wishfull thinking. While some lady yelling “baby killer” out her car window may seem to you like a start, I dont think you should put to much hope in it. After all, it so aberant in comparison to the spitting on all returning vets, not to mention the violent upheaval on campuses, the SDS, the Weathermen, the Panthers, and all those vets throwing medals (or were those ribbons? what-ever). Now I can see that you would really like to have a better showing, but I think at this point, it’s futle to wish for a Susan Saranden covorting erotically arm in arm with Muqtada al-Sadr.
And then even old John Kerry did surely disappoint, with all that “I’m tougher than you” , ” I coulda, woulda, shoulda”, pathetic limp wristed impotent opposition. I mean good grief, you call this political resistance? This guy, unfortunatly for us makes George McGovern look like Che Guvera.
And so Pat, as a fellow vet, I also see the impending dread. Unlike our last little swan dive into the heart of darkness, this time we will be left naked — no political wrangling and interference and bungling tying the hands of the military, no screaming and whinning from the effete snobs, no banks and police headquarters being blown up by crazed rich kids, no kidnapping of Patty Hearst under terrorist banners with six headed snakes, And most importantly and most tragically no Jane Fonda, that even today, in the lockers and on dartboards of the military elite day rooms across America still serveing that essential function of scapegoat par excellence.
It looks like this time around there will be no excuses, no blameing, no passing the buck, no hiding evading or pointing of fingers. Im afraid that this time the whole wretched failure will descend with, pristine indoubitablity, squrarely upon the shoulders of the government first, then without a doubt, the military, and finally after the recent election, the American people. This time, the denial will have be absolute and total, and most likely Divine.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 15 2004 21:19 utc | 89

“It looks like this time around there will be no excuses, no blameing, no passing the buck, no hiding evading or pointing of fingers. Im afraid that this time the whole wretched failure will descend with, pristine indoubitablity, squrarely upon the shoulders of the government first, then without a doubt, the military, and finally after the recent election, the American people. This time, the denial will have be absolute and total, and most likely Divine.”
Bye bye world.
No heaven BTW.
I wish there was a hell for the fuckers that caused this.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Nov 15 2004 21:29 utc | 91

Who needs The Guardian or the NY Times or the BBC or CNN (or Pepe Escobar) when one has the Baghdad Bob-like pronouncements of the Resistance itself?
Resistance issues communiqué on US losses in al-Fallujah. Discrepancies with Abu Sa‘d interview noted.
In a dispatch posted at 7:03pm Mecca time, the office of Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Fallujah reported that it had received a short while before a communiqué issued by the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of al-Fallujah which discussed the number of American, British, and puppet ‘Allawi Army dead, wounded, and captured.
The communiqué stated that in the operations of the last few days, the Iraqi Resistance had shot down two F-16 fighter bombers, 11 helicopters, 5 unmanned spy planes, and one Chinook helicopter with some 60 US troops aboard.
The communiqué said that 136 US troops, 15 British soldiers, and 123 members of the ‘Allawi Army (i.e., puppet so-called “Iraqi national guardsmen”) had been captured by the Resistance. About 400 American troops and 140 ‘Allawi troops have been killed, the statement reported.
The communiqué confirmed that the Iraqi Resistance had commandeered seven tanks and had destroyed a large number of other tanks, armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles.
Mafkarat al-Islam noted that the figures cited in the communiqué differed from those cited in a telephone conversation to al-Jazeera satellite TV by the Abu Sa‘d ad-Daylami, the official spokesman of the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of al-Fallujah on Saturday (see this report, below) in which he also mentioned that US forces had taken the major streets in al-Fallujah. Informed sources explained the discrepancies by observing that it was obviously much easier for the different Resistance organizations to coordinate their fighting activity than it was for them to coordinate their information gathering techniques and reporting.
The sources did express surprise at the relatively low numbers attributed by al-Jazeera to ad-Daylami, considering that there were reports from many sources that confirmed that 30 tanks and 12 other vehicles had been destroyed by the Resistance and that the Resistance had blown up the ice factory where the Americans had parked a large number of their military vehicles and where dozens of US troops were killed or wounded.
The Resistance sources repeated that the main streets of al-Fallujah – like ar-Ramadi Street, ath-Tharthar Street, al-Hadrah Street, and al-Jumhuriyah Street had been cleared of US troops, but that fighting was still underway on al-Wahdah Street and in the al-Jawlan neighborhood.
Spokesman for al-Fallujah Resistance denies US claims.
Abu Sa‘d ad-Dulaymi, the official spokesman of the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of al-Fallujah, announced that the military situation of American forces in al-Fallujah had not changed for three days. He made the remarks in reply to US claims to have completely seized control over al-Fallujah.
Speaking by telephone to al-Jazeera satellite TV Abu Sa‘d said that the occupation troops have not been able until now to get near the al-Jawlan neighborhood; all they control are the main streets in al-Fallujah, backing up their presence with fierce air strikes.
Abu Sa‘d ad-Dulaymi said that when the Americans refer to “pockets of resistance” they mean the whole neighborhoods of al-‘Askari, ash-Shuhada’, al-Jaghifi, al-Wahdah, al-Jumhuriyah and the industrial zone – if they mean all these areas when they talk about “pockets of resistance,” then I tell you these “pockets” are al-Fallujah; these neighborhoods don’t exist outside of al-Fallujah.
The US forces are in a big public relations bind, Abu Sa‘d said, since they’ve declared an end to military operations at a time when US forces are facing the Resistance on the inside and are surrounded on the outside of the city, being hit by rockets and mortars. In fact the proof that they are in a bind is the very fact that they have announced the end of the military operation.
Abu Sa‘d denied claims that 1,000 Resistance fighters had been killed. He confirmed that 100 Resistance fighters had been killed. The remainder of the casualties are civilians He also said that the Chairman of the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of al-Fallujah, ‘Abdallah al-Janabi, still leads the Resistance from within the city.

Posted by: Pat | Nov 15 2004 22:23 utc | 93

pat
you neither responded to my question 1) who are your divin miltary strategists, 2) do the lives of 2,000,000 dead vietnames not enter you moral ledger
so now a very simple & banal question
3) for you, is the murder of innocents in iraq a laughing matter & something with which to supply you with ridicule mixed with a sense arabophobia that i shouldn’t find surprising but i do
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 15 2004 22:31 utc | 95

“I think [it is] a flight of wishfull thinking”
No, not wishful thinking, anna missed. The anti-war (or anti-Bushitlerwar) industry is a sickening and painful spectacle, with enough fevered propaganda, vented spleen, and dark, insensible rumination to make the pages of World Net Daily. It’s as disappointing, alarming, and obnoxious as National Review, but half as sane and probative.
(My mother said to me in the spring of 2003, “You know this is going to tear us apart.” By ‘us’ she meant the country. We’ve been torn apart before, going back well beyond living memory. It’s not a pretty sight. It is also unavoidable. One more thing that is not to be undone, but that must take its course.)
I have seen the Resistance, in a manner of speaking, and I don’t like what I see.
The ‘Other’ which is with some frequency spoken of here at MOA – the Other that is said to be currently the object of a progrom in Mesopotamia – is not the Iraqis. It never was. The ‘Other’ is the immoderate Left, that confused, chemical-free, vegan-Progressive paradise of perpetual pique and postmodern piety, a source of boundless mirth and anthropological curiosity and, ah yes, unconcealed revulsion.
The Left, too, has its Other. No one here needs this described for him.

Posted by: Pat | Nov 16 2004 0:07 utc | 97

Few foreigners among rebels captured in Falluja
Crimes in Iraq – Pray for Falluja
The other face of U.S. ‘success’ in Fallujah
Fighting across Iraqi kills more than 50
NBC says Marine shot dead wounded Iraqi prisoner
US Marines gather around a body after killing of a wounded Iraqi in Falluja mosque – November 15th video still
US military deaths in Iraq as at Monday November 15th 2004 – ‘at least 1,193’

Posted by: Sic transit gloria USA | Nov 16 2004 0:15 utc | 99