Dan Lyons
~ Thursday, July 31, 2003
 
HELPING OSAMA: The Bush-team is constantly telling us that the Iraq invasion filled an important role in the War on Terror. A full Committee of the British Parliament concluded that the Iraq invasion may have impeded the campaign against terrorism, in at least 2 ways:
1) Muslim rage at the tens of thousands of Iraq Muslims killed, maimed or wounded by our Forces makes it easier to recruit terrorists around the world, and easier to persuade more passive Muslims to shelter and aid the 'Hard Men'.
2) The arrogance of Britain and America in defying the UN and world opinion (including that of the Pope!) has chilled any cooperative international spirit, making it harder to nab the terrorists./GUARDIAN 31JY
 
Pentagon now says China is working hard on missiles to attack Taiwan (plus GIs on Okinawa).
So of course, we must match this effort with new, expensive weapons.
BUT WHO'D BELIEVE THEM? (That doesn't mean Congress won't go along !)/
China responded plausibly that the Bush-team just want an excuse to sell hi-tech weapons to Taiwan/reuters1au
 
SABOTAGING TALKS AGAIN W/N.KOREA: John Bolton, super-hawk and liar (he once said that CUBA had war-germs!) has been sent to Korea by D.C. hawks to sabotage possible talks between N.Korea and U.S. & allies. He deliberately insulted Kim regime. /Reuters31jy /
One recalls the last big talks between Peking, U.S. and N.Korea. In their midst, Pentagon leaked a memo by Rumsfeld calling for 'regime change' (not just nuclear disarmament) in North Korea. The Kim regime ended the talks early and announced that they were indeed developing nukes to deter U.S. from first-strike attack./
The Rumsfeld/Cheney hawks want to bomb N.Korea so bad they can taste it. When they do, they will provoke a war that will cost up to one million casualties in Korea and Japan--slaughtering thousands of GIs in a few days./
The bombing will not, however, destroy N.K.'s nuclear capacity. We bombed them flat fifty years ago; you can bet their main nuclear plants are buried safely in tunnels under mountains now, in locations unknown to us. (Our superbombs in Afghanistan couldn't even blow up Osama.)
The Russ say the N.K. ambassador to Russia has suggested '6-sided' talks, including Russia. /Reuters31jy / Bush-team has hitherto used N.K's insistence on bilateral talks with U.S. as an excuse not to negotiate. U.S. says it will go along, even offers bilateral talks within the multilateral framework. We'll see what excuse the Bush-team willl find now to refuse negotiations./
U.S. is determined to bring the N.K. n-issue to the UN--thus pushing Pyongyang's button to say this would be equivalent to an act of war, and would cancel the 6-power talks./Reuters2au/
The fight between the StateDept.'sanes' and the Pentagon 'crazies' becomes quite clear in the crazy issue of 'bilateral' talks. N.K. says they'll accept multilateral talks only if bilateral talks are scheduled within that framework. Bolton says that bilateral talks are out,even within multilateral framework. Mild StateDept. voice says 'C'mon..at multilateral talks, 2 parties can always talk to each other across the table!"/FIN.TIMES2AU/ WHAT THE HELL?
/
At the meeting where Bolton mouthed off, several South Koreans predicted that his tirade would drive North Korea further into its shell [which of course is exactly what Bolton wanted!] "We'll see gridlock..for a long time. He is saying that Kim is not redeemable....I think Kim will wait for a regime change in U.S.!"/NYTimes31Jy A Brit columnist describes the Bolton-type approach: "Keep the other guy guessing; wear him down. When he gives a little, demand a whole lot more. Then zap him anyway." [The hawks are lusting for a war also with Iran.] /Guardian9au

/
Remembering the awful stakes: Rumsfeld and his henchmen act like monstrous madmen.
 
GUERILLA WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: Taliban/alQaeda in Afghanistan are giving exploding pens to women & children to blow up GIs. /USATODAY31JY/
The real purpose of such tactics is to get GIs to start killing women & children nervously, thus enraging enough ordinary Afghans so they'll shelter and aid the guerilla fighters.
We haven't learned the lesson the British learned (over 700 years!) in Ireland: civilians are usually passive; but you don't get in a war where the women and children can be recruited against you! That's the kind of thing that finally drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Vietnam. (A platoon leader in Vietnam wrote to a friend: "At first I ordered my men to be very careful to avoid killing civilians. Then a few old ladies threw grenades at them from market-baskets. A commander's first duty is to his troops; now I tell them to shoot everything that moves.")
Civilian involvement (aiding guerilla use of snipers, land-mines,etc.) will likely drive the Russ out of Chechnya, and the U.S. out of Afghanistan and Iraq./
9 GIs were wounded last week in Afghanistan; Americans mistakenly shot 3 Afghan officers of the new 'army' they're training. 2 Muslim clerics have been killed and one wounded by Taliban guerillas, in a 'council' of Muslims collaborating with the Americans. Several German peace-keepers have been killed./Reuters31jy/
There are rocket-attacks every day vs. Yanks--but so far they haven't hit the bases or hurt GIs/Reuters9au
The Bush-team says we can't judge reconstruction efforts in Iraq as failing after such a short time. But 18 months after the fall of Taliban, observers agree things in Afghanistan are awful & still deteriorating./GUARDIAN31JY
Americans (sensibly) don't care enough about Empire to tolerate even 'moderate' numbers of GI casualties.
 
SMART & DUMB /letter to USATODAY:
Pres. Bush has to be desperate for re-election to trot out the trivial issue of 'gay-marriage'.(31jY) Why would he think this works?
Well, if the ordinary worker were thinking of his own interests--a secure job, adequate raises, good health-care, and what protection is possible from terrorists--he'd avoid Republicans like the plague. But many Americans are foolish enough to fume mainly about gays, abortions, and uppity feminists--so the right-wing can take them for granted.
This confirms my opinion: wealthy Republicans are the smartest Americans; the dumbest are the UNrich Republicans.
~ Wednesday, July 30, 2003
 
GLOOMY FORECAST: /
'STRATFOR' is highly respected journal of internatl.relations. [ full text of their take on Iraq is in
WWW. INFORMATIONCLEARINGHOUSE.INFO/ARTICLE 4286.HTM) Here is a summary:
U.S. is in global War with militant Islam. (It can't win unless it can divide Islam, as Nixon divided China vs. Russia). Outcome in Iraq will be decisive./
American govt. has given up on trying to be liked in world; it's trying to be FEARED, as relentless, irresistable./ [Lyons: ..not unlike the Nazis.]
U.S. 'conquered' Afghanistan & Iraq, but imposed PAX AMERICANA on neither. Next few wks.or months will be decisive.'
4 possible outcomes in Iraq:
1) Baath (centralized control of guerillas) shattered by killing Hussein sons. Then U.S. can exploit its full victory in Iraq to 'redefine Islamic dynamics' [Lyons: impose its empire]./
or: 2) Guerillas don't collapse, but don't step up the killing of GIs./
or: 3) Guerillas able to increase killings--this undermines the 'relentless, irresistible' image U.S. is trying for. [Lyons: so would #2]./
or: 4) Increased guerilla strength in North PLUS MASS UPRISING IN SHIITE SOUTH! U.S. forced to withdraw, as from Vietnam. Disaster!/
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Good news for U.S.: we broke into Baath security (to find sons).
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So far, U.S. deaths have INCREASED since sons were killed. Possible explanations:/
1) Guer. are decapitated, but body is still wriggling--but not for long./ HURRAH!
2)or: Hussein Bros. were NOT Baath leaders--that's why they weren't protected. (Lyons: Their house had 4 defenders!)
3) or: Baathists have switched to 'decentralized' mode, so the movement can't be decapitated.
4) or: Guerillas are not controlled by Baathists at all, but by some combo of Jihad-crusaders and remnants of well-trained, religious Saddam soldiers./
(2,3,or 4 = U.S. disaster.)
Shiites hate Saddamites, but now they might cooperate with Sunnis against U.S.
U.S. Gen.Sanchez sees 'multifaceted' opposition; there is now evidence of weapons alqaeda used in Afghanistan; as multi-faceted, the guerilla movement won't collapse soon.
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Shiites intend to govern Iraq. U.S. says 'No Way!'
Combo of guerilla killings in North and mass uprisings (intifada) in Shiite South = worst disaster.
U.S. must come to some agreement with Shiites.(This requires clever, coordinated political effort from U.S.)
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Trouble is, the Bush team squabbling--not over stragtegy, but over who's to blame (e.g., for 'Africa/uranium' scandal !
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Summary of Stratfor analysis (understated!): "At the moment, our expectations are low."
In other words, the disaster will not be avoided.
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SHIITE RESISTANCE: Al-Sadr, a popular leader (followed by about 1 in 10 Iraquis) has formed an 'army' to drive out Americans. So far, no specific threats of violence--but his spokesman says, "They won't fight with sticks..this is an army." 10,000 enlisted in Shiite territory, and 1000 more in a poor section of Baghdad once called 'Saddam City', but now 'Al-Sadr city'./ASIA TIMES, cited in INFORMATION CLEARINGHOUSE.
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LYONS: Who dreams that the Three Stooges running D.C. could ever be cool and clever enough to reach accomodation with Shiites? Instead, they try to threaten Iran, even though Iran might very well be able to push the Iraq Shiites into open war. Their only real weapon is the threat of bombing, and that's not enough for their dream of empire!
On the other hand, why should ordinary Americans care if our 'empire' collapses? It's designed only to protect the transnational corporations. Why should we care if we're 'feared as relentless and irresistible'? Our bombing-capacity makes every NATION fear us-- but not our real enemies, the individual terrorists: they're too fanatic to be afraid.
 
ATTACK THE VILLAIN? /
Whenever our invasion is criticized, someone always reminds you what a nasty killer is Saddam Hussein; but consider this comparison:
Suppose,running some distance ahead of you, you see a wicked villain, but ONE YOU HAVE NO REASON TO THINK NOW HAS THE POWER TO HARM SOCIETY IN GENERAL,only his own family. In between are innocent bystanders; you have only a machine-gun. You have no police authority; you are just a self-appointed vigilante. /
You fire at the villain, and--as you should have foreseen--you kill many bystanders..but you MISS the villain! Then YOU are a villain.
Our vigilante invasion--as was foreseeable--has killed, maimed or wounded over 35,000 Iraqi civilians. Children are still being blown up by unexploded munitions. The occupation is killing more: (in our blitz on Saddam's sons [4 people in the house, attacked by hundreds of soldiers and helicopter-rockets!] , we killed 11 bystanders, including 2 children, their mother, and their disabled father./In our latest failed blitz vs. Saddam--he wasn't home--we killed 5 bystanders.) One or more of our GIs dies now each day. This is the price paid in our attempt to 'get the villain'.
We know now that our rulers lied: Saddam did NOT pose a current threat to us or to the world, only to his own people. (The rest of the world knew this all along--the Pope said early on that the invasion would be unjust, illegal, and disastrous.) Charles Taylor has slaughtered hundreds of Liberians--yet only now are we saying we MIGHT send troops in, AFTER he abdicates.
Whether our rulers were motivated (as is probable) by greed for controlling the oil, or by the desire to revenge insults to Israel--or by misguided zeal against villainous Saddam, we have no reason to feel righteous.
~ Tuesday, July 29, 2003
 
DANGER TO BUSH FROM UNEMPLOYMENT: Under Bush, there has been the greatest drop in pvt-sector employment since the Great Depression. Employment has not begun to recover at all. [ Indeed, payrolls dropped by 44,000 just in July(after 5 months of similar drops)--vs. the rise of 18,000 predicted by private analysts)./Reuters1Au ]
(Lyons:Much unemployment is of middle-class people, likely to vote. Unemployed techies are especially furious because their jobs are being 'outsourced' overseas--to foreign techies getting paid $6000, not $60,000--or filled by cheap techies coming here.)
Trouble is, firms can increase output without hiring human workers. The surge in 'productivity' (output per hour of human input) has not abated. /
EXCESS PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY: there is a gap of 2% between possible output and actual output (the amt. of goods/svcs that can be sold..the level of 'effective demand'.) That 2% of 'inadequate demand' would have to be made up, plus handling the growth in the number of workers, before unemployment could drop. [Lyons: an oddity: only 86% of factory capacity is being used, because more goods can't be sold.]
[Ominously, in July the 'consumer-confidence' rating fell markedly when compulsively optimistic analysts had predicted a rise--suggesting a coming fall in consumer demand..USATODAY30JY]
For every 4 people looking for jobs, there is 1 'discouraged worker', who has quit looking. If there were an increase in demand for workers, these people would all come rushing back to the market, and the unemployment rate would not drop. Also there are millions of people unwillingly working part-time, people who'd compete for full-time jobs./'
Bush has made himself more vulnerable by talking about his silly tax-cuts as a 'jobs-and-growth' program. This reinforces Americans' tendency to blame the President for unemployment. /FINANCIAL TIMES/29JY
This, plus the 'at-least-one-a-day' GI death figures from Iraq (not even counting the maimed or wounded) will make Americans unhappy with Bush, especially those who realize his lies lured us into this 'guerilla-plagued' occupation.
Only 47% say now they would vote to re-elect Bush. USATODAY30JY /
It's over a year till the '04 election; perhaps his team can turn things around; perhaps they don't care about the next election--they've hijacked so many billions already for their wealthy patrons, they might be willing to hand the WhiteHouse over temporarily to Democrats, to get the blame for coming disasters. Perhaps they see the Dems as so feckless that they can't lose the election, no matter how bad the data. Or perhaps they don't intend to hold another election. Or perhaps the Bush-team are so dumb they actually think that their tax-cuts for the wealthy will augment 'effective demand'--at least until Nov.04! / We'll see.
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DEFENSE ORGY: Pentagon spending jumped 44% in 3 months! Mainly in weapons spending, of course, not for soldiers'' salaries or benefits. And all that spending (much of it going to foreign corporations!) did nothing to increase the number of jobs./GUARDIAN 31JY/
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WHO CARES ABOUT RECESSION? That right-wing rag, the RockyMountainNews ,just published a silly cartoon, showing illiterate Democrats bellowing: "The Recession ain't over till we SAY it is!"
As a technical economic term, the Recession may be over. But what most of us care about is when High Unemployment will come down. The economy has lost more jobs that it has since the Great Depression. The latest 'optimistic' figures on new unemployment-claims have been trumpeted; but the 4-month-moving average index still shows unemployment increasing. (In the same paper, one Denver store-chain laid off 300 more workers!) Our present situation is called a "jobless Recovery"--an oxymoron.
So let's agree that we don't give a damn about recessions starting or ending; what we care about is Full Employment. Those who still have jobs have no security, and bosses, of course, feel no reason to offer good raises or good benefits--not with the Reserve Army of the Unemployed anxious to take any jobs on any terms.
Business pages praise 'productivity' as ENABLING firms to raise wages without inflation. But no firm is going to pay its workers more than it has to. Increasing productivity to raise wages is like PUSHING A STRING! Productivity increases are the enemy of workers.
Screw the Recession-figures, or worship of GROWTH! Let's talk about Jobs.
 
THE RELIGION OF AMERIKANISM: A perceptive article in GUARDIAN(29jY) by Geo. Monbiot explains why the Bush-team is so dangerous. They want the oil in Iraq, yes; they wanted to revenge Israel for Saddam's insults, yes; but there's more./
Following an old American tradition, they see us as the NEW JERUSALEM, called to spread our gospel of Free Enterprise and (illusory) Democracy to the benighted areas of the world--and our enemies as the loathsome CANAANITES, the Evil Empires, whom God calls us to eliminate. (If the Iraqis decline to be converted, then they must be controlled by Devils--that's why the Bush-team fondly thinks that by killing Saddam they will castrate the guerilla movement.) /
Lately the Bush team have prudently quit talking about the WMDs we went in to remove. Now they say the point of the invasion was to set up a democratic Iraq and then a democratic MidEast (as earlier we set up democratic Germany and Japan) , and thus save America from fundamentalist terrorists. (WASHINGTONPOST1AU) [THOMAS FRIEDMAN, NOW A FLACK FOR THE BUSHIES, REPEATS THIS DREAM IN NYT,4-5au] This idea is patently nutty:
1) Most Muslims loathe us since the invasion. If Iraq and the Middle East were really controlled by majorities, this would be disastrous for U.S./
2) We have no reason to think we'll be able to stay in Iraq as long as we stayed in Germany and Japan. [See GLOOMY FORECAST above on 30 July.] Over HALF of Americans now want us to pull out if GI casualties continue--which they certainly will! (GUARDIAN4AU)
(3) Even with 'democratic' Middle Eastern governments [i.e., U.S. puppets], individual terrorists would pose just as urgent a threat to our Homeland Security--perhaps with their headquarters in Indonesia. /
(4) Dumbbells like Rumsfeld and Cheney (not to mention Bush!) don't have the brains that Roosevelt, Truman, and George Marshall needed to reform Germany and Japan. (See my piece REBUILDING CONQUERED NATIONS, 7/19.) /
All empires have been motivated by similar dreams. But the big difference is this: the American People are flattered by this vision. But they have no realization of the Price of Empire, and certainly no intention of paying that Price--e.g., by learning foreign languages. They certainly are not going to tolerate months or years of U.S. casualties!
/
The Roman Empire couldn't really get going until the voice of the rabble, in the Roman Republic, was silenced by conversion into the Roman Empire. Similarly, our imperialists will sooner or later see that, along with super-weapons, they will need absolute acquiescence on the part of our People..i.e., they need to silence any dissenters, they will need to strip off the illusion of democracy and impose an open dictatorship--which they can do with their military robots. (U.S. soldiers wouldn't fire on Americans; American robots won't hesitate.)
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Brad Delong in FIN.TIMES29JY is puzzled why the Bush-team has shown 'blithe unconcern' for the prospect of facing the voters in '04 with jobs 2 million fewer than before. He finally guesses that these people have a quasi-religious aversion to using Keynesian triggers to boost employment (e.g., a tax-cut for those likely to spend it, thus raising effective demand--rather than to the wealthy).
They may have written off the '04 election, in spite of the tens of millions Bush has already raised for it. Perhaps they intend to take over as dictators before '04! But it doesn't seem their robots are yet in enough full production to do that. Perhaps they're just economically-illiterate fanatics.
~ Monday, July 28, 2003
 
GULF WAR III? A D.C. think-tank issued a study warning that U.S. hasn't learned from past conflicts. We are in danger of a Third Gulf War, this time against the Iraqi people. It's not clear that we could win such a war. /FIN.TIMES27JY
(At best, we'll be in a really ugly situation, further alienating the rest of the world, and upsetting Americans by daily reports of GI casualties.)/
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Iraqis informing the U.S. about guerillas are themselves being targeted. Villagers forced one father to shoot his own son, or else face village revenge against the whole family. Americans are unwilling or unable to protect their informants. /WASHINGTONPOST1AU
 
WOLFOWITZ ON PRUDENCE: This gentleman admitted the invasion was based on 'murky data', but said that since 9/11, we have to attack without waiting for solid evidence of imminent danger. /FINTIMES28JY/
We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, when the real power behind 9/11 was Saudi Arabia! /LATIMES2au/
The usual description for such a policy is "READY, FIRE, AIM!"
 
HAWK OPTIMISM: /letter to ROCKYMOUNTAINNEWS/
Chas.Krauthammer(28jy) cites various MiddleEast improvements caused by our invasion. But pull back from the details a little. Of course the rulers of these countries will quit OPENLY supporting martyr-murderers in Israel, etc. They don't want to get bombed./
(The rulers in Iran think they're going to be attacked in any case. So they are openly lunging for a nuclear 2d-strike deterrent, building long-range missiles. The Syrian government may be developing a germ-war deterrent.) /
The Pew polls show that the invasion has made huge majorities in every Muslim country loathe us. These populations will eagerly support, finance, and hide terrorists out to kill Americans. We say we want democracy in the MiddleEast--but that would be a disaster for us. Remember, it was new democracy in Turkey that blocked our use of Turkey in the invasion. No, we'll back dictators as usual who promise to hold their populations in line./
The question is, CAN these dictators now control their 'crazies'? The Saudi rulers long ago reached an agreement to let their crazies run loose (financing the 9/11 hijackers, financing mosques in America, bringing U.S. youths to S.A. to get further indoctrinated) in return for the crazies not attacking the Saudi society. This agreement has now lapsed, with the bombing of the apartments in S.A./
Pakistan can't control its tribes on the border with Afghanistan, where the Taliban is quite effectively regrouping. Only 15% of the Indonesian people now favor Americans; the 280,000,000 people there will gladly hide terrorist training camps in their jungles, no matter what the Jakarta government pretends to do./
As Arab rulers predicted before the war, our invasion has drastically DEstabilized the
region--and the world. Earlier, the Pope--a well-informed expert on world affairs--called the invasion "unjust, illegal and
DISASTROUS." The disasters are just beginning.
~ Sunday, July 27, 2003
 
TERRORISTS IN IRAQ: U.S. Gen.Sanchez said that Iraq has become a magnet for foreign terrorists..[in other words, our GIs are now SITTING DUCKS...as anyone could have predicted!] He was honest enough to say there is no evidence of other countries sponsoring these terrrorists. [These fanatic individuals NEED no State support!] /
"American presence in Iraq creates targets of opportunity" [If the foreigners--easily recognized by natives--don't get turned in, that means the natives are sympathetic to their project! All this is reason to pull out of Iraq.] /
But then Sanchez said. "We must win this battle in Iraq; otherwise Americans will be taking on terrorists at home." /Reuters27jy./
However, whether we win in Iraq or not we will face terrorists at home! The battles in Iraq and Aghanistan are distractions (in attention and in money) from our vitally needed--but grossly neglected--defense of our Homeland.
 
THE FELONIOUS NUNS: / Letter to ROCKYMOUNTAINNEWS:
3 nuns ennobled a silly and irrelevant nuke missile with their own blood. A prosecutor, a Colorado jury, and one Judge Mcgovern sent them to prison for 'interfering with the defense of America.' /
About this crew we can say what was said of 16th-century Cardinal Wolsey (who kept his mistress' brother as his confessor): they not only lack morality; also, they have no sense of humor./ Like Wolsey, these 'vindicators of the Right' can't see they're being ridiculous.
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Many protests were held over the sentencing of the nuns. One apt sign read:
49 WMDs FOUND IN COLORADO!
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Gov.Bill Owens of course, like a good, solemn pharisee, had to add to the nonsense. (RMN29Jy) The paper says Owens is a practicing Catholic. He needs much more practice.
~ Saturday, July 26, 2003
 
PERSISTENT GUERILLAS: A journalist claimed to talk to a former bodyguard of one of Saddam's sons. This bodyguard predicted continued guerilla activity because the movement is 'decentralized' (can't be decapitated) and motivated by simple Islamic resentment of the infidel occupiers/ CNN26jy
 
POLARIZED: U.S. people are polarized (with little 'moderate middle'): Republican legislators twice try to arrest Dem.legislators (in TExas and D.C.). Dem.candidate says openly that Bush qualifies for impreachment. 37% of Americans polled are STRONGLY pro-Bush, vs. 31% STRONGLY anti-Bush. Absurdly,45% say STRONGLY that Bush earns us respect in the world outside(!), while 36% STRONGLY deny this./FINTIMES26JY /
THE 45% ARE WRONG ABOUT OBVIOUS FACTS. (DenverPost27jy ran a full page or more on world antipathy to Bush's America.) Or maybe these committed Americans are expressing their FAITH in Bush's good-sense and good-will: this kind of Faith is believing what you know damn well ain't so!/
(What counts is how people feel who are LIKELY TO VOTE. Last such poll showed 47% anti-Bush, 46% pro-Bush.)
~ Friday, July 25, 2003
 
BACK IN AFGHANISTAN: 9 GIs wounded last week. MULLAH OMAR (still on the loose, along with Osama!) has ordered stepped-up attacks on GIs./Reuters26jy/ ..also on any Afghans 'collaborating' with the 'U.S. puppets' in Kabul. /Reuters27jy
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The new Afghan 'army' consists of 2700 half-trained soldiers, paid $50 a month, being sent against resurgent Taliban/al Quaeda guerillas, stepping up their attacks./
Many of these troops are loyal to warlords, not to Kharzai's 'central government'; desertions are common.Things will get worse as it gets clear that they are cannon-fodder, intended to minimize U.S. casualties./ASIA TIMES/23jy
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In the region that was once the heartland of Taliban, the pro-U.S. governor complains that 500 Taliban guerillas are wandering freely in the bazaars, with the Yanks doing little to nab them./Reuters27jy
 
v.p. Cheney came out of his rabbit-hole to try to justify the invasion by saying the 'Natl.Intelligence Estimate' last Autumn said Saddam had germs & chemicals and long-range missiles--and would have nukes within a decade. /INDEPENDENT25JY
All those claims have later been seen as clearly false, so the only issue Cheney is addressing is 'Whose Fault?' for the lies./
The intelligence people must be enraged, after he pressured them mercilessly for months to hype the WMD threat, to hear him blame them for the hyping.
 
TIP-OFF FROM THE RIGHT: WALL STREET JOURNAL24jy wants us to trust (riskily) the new Iraqi recruits for our security forces further than we plan to do. "Using Iraqis is far better than asking UN. UN involvement would mean too many limits on the way we fight." The willingness to take such risks is a tipoff about the intensity of right-wing U.S. determination to control Iraq (and its oil) semi-permanently./
Wolfowitz just told the Senate that we'd be glad for any help from the UN, but we would not give up any of our power to control Iraq.
 
MORE FLAT LIES FROM BUSHIES:
Besides lieing about Saddam's nuclear goals, Bush's STATE-OF-UNION lied flatly about ties between Saddam and the terrorists. Bush: "Evidence..reveals that Saddam aids and protects terrrorists, including members of AlQuaeda."/
This statement was AFTER the Congressional report on 9/11 terrorism was finished, AFTER it said there was NO EVIDENCE of any such tie. The Bushies delayed the publication of the report until the Iraq war was started and finished./UNITED PRESS INTERNATL23jy.
The Iraq invasion was in fact unnecessary--and therefore, as the Pope said, "Unjust, illegal and Disastrous."
(Whether Bush was in on the lie or was stupidly deceived is irrelevant: the point is that we cannot count on govt. statements being true, even in the most solemn presidential address.
 
BANKRUPT AMERICA MUST GIVE UP EMPIRE--OR DEMOCRACY:/
By 2030, the number of U.S. retirees will double, while number of workers will rise 18%. U.S. government is bankrupt. Expected shortfall (income vs. expenses) is $44,000 billion! (vs. $6000 billion present debt)./
Govt. just ignores this--but investors can't. Sooner of later, investors will mark down our treasury bonds with a vengeance. If investors hesitate to buy our long-range bonds, long-range interest will rise. (Lyons: Mortgage-rates will rise; housing bubble could burst.)Even a significant rise in inflation won't help much. (One third of our bonds must be refinanced next year!)/
The only solution is to raise taxes (Republicans never will!) or to cut expenses. But our 'non-discretionary' expenses must rise. One obviously discretionary expense is for empire, for 'nation-building'. The Collossus that bestrides the world has feet of clay. U.S. could retreat from Empire as fast as it rushed into it./FINANCIAL TIMES25JY
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In other words, there will be a dog-fight between low-tax wealthy, the demanding retirees (who vote!) and the infinitely-greedy Pentagon (Empire) . It will interesting to see who wins. (Young Americans, who don't vote, will of course be trampled.)/
(UNHAPPILY, Govt. will be tempted to eliminate pressure from retirees by ripping off the veil of democracy, using military robots to enforce open dictatorship.)/
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The Bushies hoped to finance our occupation of Iraq with oil money. But sabotage, etc., has prevented almost all marketing till now. And the price of OIL FUTURES in September is over $30 a barrel--which means no one expects a quick flood of Iraqi oil to cheapen the world price.
~ Thursday, July 24, 2003
 
HOMELAND DEFENSE PITTANCE: The Senate voted $29 billion for the Homeland Security Dept. for the coming YEAR:more than Bush wanted, but far less than Democrats wanted. /Reuters24jy/ That equals Pentagon money for TWENTY-FOUR DAYS! Republicans show tremendous contempt for the intelligence of the American people--a contempt that is perhaps justified..after all, they keep getting elected.
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11,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate have been stolen in California & Colorado. Tim McVeigh needed only a truckload of the stuff to wreck that federal building (from some distance) in Okla.City./ Many uniforms and ID cards have been stolen or forged; a standard terrorist move is to use these to get closer to their targets.24hour.com/25jy
 
COST FOR EACH HUSSEIN KILLED: /
While hunting down the Hussein sons (even after the house had been properly missiled), U.S. soldiers shot up dozens of passing cars, killing 11 Iraquis, including two children, their mother, and their crippled father./ INDEPENDENT28JY. /
A woman who chanted pro-Saddam slogans was bound and gagged !/CNN28jy /
That's NOT the way to persuade Iraqis not to shelter the guerillas.
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CASUALTIES UNDERCOUNTED:/ The Pentagon tells only the total of GIs killed by hostile combat; but as many die in accidents or 'friendly fire'. If not for the invasion, they'd be alive; they should be included in judging the human cost of the invasion/occupation. (Pentagon also ignores the wounded; only when asked directly by CNN, a couple of weeks ago, did they give the figure as 1500. That figure likely ignored those not wounded by actual foes.)/
IRAQ COALITION CASUALTY COUNT (website) tries to keep total correct count.
224 dead altogether; 85 (not 33 as Pentagon says!) in the 83 days since 'end of major combat'. Lyons' guess: number maimed and wounded is about 7 for each soldier killed. (Americans tend not to count the wounded; that's why we should always refer to the 'MAIMED or wounded'.)
Do Americans care? EDITOR & PUBLISHER magazine online ran an editorial reproaching the media for helping Pentagon undercount the casualties. They had the HEAVIEST E-MAIL RESPONSE IN 4 YEARS.
The hawks are gloating that we've killed 2 Saddam sons. The cost comes to over 100 GIs dead for each son./
(We mustn't let Americans forget the ONGOING toll, which will almost disappear from mainline media coverage. I'm displaying on busy street corner a sign with few words, large print, readable from across the street, by traffic going all 4 ways: EACH DAY NOW, A GI DIES FROM THEIR LIES. / Even fewer words: MORE GI BLOOD FOR OIL?)
And of course--even if we see them as not-quite-real--we really should count the tens of thousands of IRAQI CIVILIANS who have been killed, maimed or wounded, and are still being hurt by unexploded munitions. (Reuters guesses up to 7000 killed..that means up to 49,000 maimed or wounded,.) Reuters27jy/ You can bet that one billion enraged Muslims all over the world are counting them. (WWW.IRAQCOALITIONBODYCOUNT.NET estimates about 8,000 civilians killed as of 27Jy..that would mean 56,000 maimed or wounded.)
 
IRAQI POLL: A right-wing Brit magazine THE SPECTATOR, and ITN, sponsored a poll of Iraqis. Almost 50% of Iraqis said the invasion was right. (Of these, only 7% are hostile to occupation forces, and half say their life is better today.) /27% said the invasion was wrong (the remaining 23% gave no answer or undecided?)
Of these 27% , half feel hostile toward our troops, 70% said the invasion was to help Israel, 25% want Saddam to return, and 70% say their life is worse now. (Only 16% of manual workers complained of lack of clean water, vs. 29% of professionals..a hawk interpreter says this may mean that the complainers are mainly Baathists who have lost their privileges; but [Lyons]another interpretation is that ignorant manual laborers don''t understand how important clean water is.)/Scipps-Howard24jy./
Let's assume we trust the poll--though we might expect Iraqis to hesitate to say openly to a Brit poll that the invasion was wrong, and that they're hostile to the occupying troops!/
Perhaps as water-systems etc. are repaired, the 27% number will diminish. But for now 16% of Iraqis--7% of the 50%, and half of the 27%--say openly that they feel hostile toward our troops. That may be all it takes to provide cover for the guerillas. What matters now is not how popular we are generally, but how safe the guerillas are from capture; what matters now is how long it will take for the several-a-day number of GIs killed to shrink. (3 GIs were killed on 24Jy.)
Would all this make our GIs feel safe or friendly, to find out that in crowds facing you , at least 1 in 6--[remember the 23% who didn't commit themselves]--is openly hostile, perhaps protecting people who would shoot you or bomb you?/
In Falluji,where GIs have killed many: "I don't understand why Amer.say it is Baathists killing their soldiers. All Iraquis want to kill Americans because of the way they act" (e.g., frisking women and humiliating heads of households). "A lot of the killing is tribal revenge. Revengers can wait 20 years; there are 15 tribes in Falluja; "There will definitely be revenge."/Reuters25jy.
~ Wednesday, July 23, 2003
 
BEGGAR-THY-NEIGHBOR: In early 1930s, faced with worldwide low 'demand backed by money', the big economic powers went ferociously after more than their share of the low export market: they imposed tariffs against imports into their country, and they devalued their currency(to make exports cheaper and imports more expensive). Result? the whole world plunged into the Great Depression.
Now, when worldwide effective demand is low again (because of computer/robot overproduction) WILLIAM KEEGAN, a very respected Brit economist, fears that U.S., Britain, China and Japan (by devaluing their currencies or preventing their rise) have set out to squeeze Europe out of the export market. They have, in K's words, 'declared war on the Euro.' (The big force behind this is Bush's worry that unless his economy picks up a lot,soon,--needing high exports, low imports--he won't get re-elected.)/OBSERVER25JY (What counts is the unemployment rate, which is remaining quite high.)
Trouble is, Europe will retaliate with 'beggar-thy-neighbor' policies of their own. Reckless Bush could get a nasty surprise if world deflation takes over BEFORE Nov.'04!
 
IRAQI DEBT: Iraq already owes other countries $100 billion. Even if its oil starts flowing again, its ratio of debt to exports will be the highest in the world./
Naturally, the U.S. would like this debt erased, so the oil money can be spent on reconstruction. But the main creditors, Russia, France, and Germany, will agree only to postpone payments (with interest accruing) which is the normal result after a regime-change./ FIN.TIMES23JY
It seems reasonable for these countries to say to us, "You destroyed the country in an 'unjust,illegal invasion' [the Pope's words] ; you should pay ALL the reconstruction costs." (After all, we're backing Kuwait in demanding restitution for Iraq's unjust invasion of Kuwait.)
=======
'WAR IS A DEMENTED ENTERPRISE, WITH PERSONNEL & POLICIES CORRESPONDING.'
For a true, black-humor 'war' story: under ARCHIVE at left, click on week 6/22 - 6/28, then go down to 6/23: ARMY MEDICINE.
 
HOMELAND SECURITY 'LAX, INADEQUATE': a Center-left think-tank, with ties to Dems, gave Bush-team a 'D' in guarding
homeland security. Bush has not made H.S. his 1st priority, as he promised. Biggest failure is not issuing yet a comprehensive threat-assessment (so we can concentrate on MOST URGENT threats), which would be easy to do.
(Lyons: A possible reason for Bushies' reluctance to issue this finding: the assessment would likely show that the Big Cities (mostly Democratic) are the most urgently threatened (insurance companies are reluctant to insure city offices!) And the Bushies want the pittance available for Home Defense to go to the smaller states, to go to Republicans running those state governments.)
An'A' was given for nuke-plant security./Reuters23jy
~ Tuesday, July 22, 2003
 
NO LINGUISTS BECAUSE NO REAL U.S. INTEREST IN FOREIGNERS:
In a book on terrorism, one Neil Herman (retired FBI chief for domestic terrorism) refers to a shocking lack of linguists among our 'intelligence' personnel (even after earlier alQaeda attacks): "Once we tried to 'wire' some Taliban operatives in NYCity. But we had no translators! We tried to get some from Dept.of Defense;there was a clearance problem.And the CIA had NO TRANSLATORS AT ALL."/
The Congressional Report on 'what went wrong before 9/11" notes, as one problem, the messages intercepted by nifty devices, messages which lay around UNTRANSLATED!/
That same report says that in a recent year, only 6 college degrees IN ALL AMERICA were earned in Arabic. This is after danger from alQaeda has been known for years. "Most CIA language employees don't have necessary skills."/"Very few NSA language analysts have done grad work in Islamic Studies."/ One hears about people realizing the need to understand Chinese, but fewer than 150 undergrad degrees in Chinese were awarded in the surveyed year./ Complete text of Congr.Report is on NYTIMES.COM/WASHINGTON
U.S. university presses are cutting their publication of foreign books in translation, because Americans don't want to buy them./NYT26jy /Only a tiny proportion of Americans have passports. No censors or Iron Curtains are needed here; our tame, comfortable people don't want to peek outside, to see anything they can't find on FOX TV./ (There is a small contingent of Americans who contact foreigners on the internet--but only those foreigners who speak English.) /
A society whose intelligence elite has so little interest in foreigners that they don't study foreign languages--such a society should not be meddling overseas! Reckless interventionist lunges based on ignorant isolationist thinking.
---------------
IRAQI INFORMANTS: Bremer said the number of anti-guerilla informants is increasing; it's hoped that the killing of Saddam's 2 sons will relieve fears of potential informants. Not all the guerillas are puppets of the Husseins; what might change is that less-committed Iraqis might be more willing to turn in guerillas.
Of course the Americans are dependent on the truthfulness of English-speaking informants or of Iraqi translators, who might name INNOCENTS as guerillas--their own enemies, or even those friendly to U.S. (In Afghanistan, innocent people were bombed or killed in this way.) / A man in FAlluji explained why GIs are hated: "30 showed up, kicked down our door, hauled off my son--I still don't know why."
In Viet war, a bilingual observer reported a 'dialogue' between a U.S. officer and his 'ARVN' colleague: the American spoke, then his translator distorted what he said; then the Viet officer replied, and was mistranslated similarly.
We'll see if the death of the 2 sons cuts down on the 'at-least-one-a-day' killings of GIs. That's all that counts.
============
POODLE BLAIR CAUGHT BUSH'S FLEAS:/
Blair has sunk in Brit polls: only 39% are happy with him, 54% unhappy. Only 39% now see him as trustworthy.
He has dragged down with him the Labor Party, now only 2% ahead of wretched, feckless Tories./Guardian22jy/
42% think Blair intentionally misled country into invasion. While 42% still approve of the invasion, 45% disapprove. /CNN28JY (The British were slower than Americans to get swept up in war-frenzy; now they're waking up faster.)
There is now a general 'crisis of trust' in Britain: these groups are trusted by fewer than 45%: union-officials (33%), Business leaders,Government ministers, Journalists, Politicians(18%).
There is a big fight between BBC & Blair's crowd, calling each other liars. THREE TIMES as many Brits trust BBC as trust the Blairites./FINTIMES26JY
 
2D-STRIKE DETERRENCE: Both Iran and North Korea are rushing to produce a few nuclear bombs--to threaten the world? hardly!--but, hopefully, to deter U.S. from launching a first-strike against them, as we did vs. Iraq./
How could a few nukes threaten mighty U.S. enough to deter us? Our Homeland is absurdly vulnerable to dozens of kinds of terrorist attacks; hundreds or thousands of enraged Muslims, from all over the world, are eager to die killing Americans--and are thus available to inflict any available weapons on us. If Iran and North Korea threaten to provide these terrorists with small nukes, plutonium to create Dirty Bombs, and designer-war-germs immune to our vaccines--such threats OUGHT TO DETER a sane U.S. government--considering that we have nothing really to gain by attacking either country./
Ah, but the trouble is that the Bush-team may not be sane.
 
PATIENCE IS NOT THE PROBLEM: A ROCKYMOUNTAINNEWS editorial says we have the resources to rebuild Iraq, over the YEARS (!) the question is 'whether we have the patience.' One is reminded of Vietnam days, when the hawks said we could prevail if we had the patience to suffer U.S. casualties for an extra decade or so. /
The point then was that Americans slowly realized we had NOTHING TO GAIN--and plenty of GIs to lose--by staying in Vietnam. Americans are now realizing, with a few GIs being killed each day, that ordinary Americans (vs. oil corporations) have NOTHING TO GAIN by staying in Iraq./
52% of Americans say the number of GI casualties is 'excessive'. The respected, right-wing CATO INSTITUTE says flatly we should pull out of Iraq.
Even some Republican Congressmen are asking why should we stay in Iraq!(FINTIMES23JY)
==========
YOU COULD GET KILLED OVER THERE!/
The Japanese (militaristic) govt. supported our invasion (against popular opinion) and now they want to send over Japanese troops to help our Occupation. But Japanese voters, worried about occupation troops getting killed, now oppose this measure by 55% (up quickly from 42%). and the premier's popularity is slipping fast.. FINTIMES22JY/
The Japanese also seem to be asking, "What do WE have to gain from forcing occupation on Iraq?"
-----------
UPDATE: The Japanese militarist govt. (In spite of the cold rage of China and other victims, the premier still makes pilgrimage to the Shinto shrine to war criminals!) will send over 1000 Japanese troops, who for the first time will carry guns and ammo. They got the law passed over the opposition of over half the people, and over a filibuster in the parliament. However, the premier faces an election in Sept. so he won't send the troops till October. /GUARDIAN28JY /
The remilitarization of Japan might be considered a vote of no-confidence in America. They can see how we are double-crossing our clients the South Koreans, deliberately picking a fight with No.Korea that could cause a million casualties and destroy the great city of Seoul in a day or two. So the Japanese leaders may think it prudent to get ready to defend themselves, not to count any longer on U.S. protection (the thousands of GIs stationed in Japan and Okinawa)./
The super-technical Japanese could convert from nuclear power to nuclear bombs in a flash. Then you can bet that Taiwan and South Korea would quickly follow suit.
~ Monday, July 21, 2003
 
NEWS CONTROL: The London INDEPENDENT runs a story (21jy) that the Pentagon is not revealing all the attacks on our GIS in Iraq. (I couldn't read the full story, because I don't subscribe). However, one wouldn't have to read this to expect any War Dept. to minimize the number & severity of guerilla attacks on its invading force. The only thing they HAVE to tell is the deaths; and several of these each day are enough to turn Americans against the whole project.
 
OUR DANGEROUS ATTITUDE TOWARD IRAN:[ summary of a piece by an official of Carnegie Endowment for Peace in FIN.TIMES,21JY]/
Suppose we set out to change Iran's regime AND eliminate their n-development, using any means, (e.g., bombing supposed N-sites)--this could lead to full-scale war. Iran may be only 2 years away from finishing an n-deterrent; they may succeed even without Russ help. (and the Russ refuse to quit helping!)/
Full invasion is not a prospect, but instead 'armed insurgency backed by U.S.' [..by U.S. airpower????] Similar moves in past have led to war. Retaliation? Iran could pump up Hezbollah again and wreck Bush's 'path to peace' in Israel. And/or they could stir up the Shia in Iraq. The strength of their influence is not clear; but Shia Islamists have great power to mobilize the masses. U.S. has no way to handle massed unarmed crowds--without awful slaughter./
If U.S. gets in even bigger Iraqi trouble--however this happens--Bushies may try to blame Iran (and Syria)--especially just before '04 election. [Lyons: Bush, from his Texas redoubt, has just publicly warned Syria and Iran not to harbor terrorists. He's dumbly not waiting until just before the '04 elections!]
And of course such threats to Iran will make them even more determined to make an n-deterrent. (Both conservatives and reformers in Iran agree on this project.)
-----------
The writer (Anatol Lieven) makes a general point: the Bushies think only of dangers from States, not from individual terrorists. They crazily gave 2-weeks freedom-to-loot radioactive stuff--potential for Dirty Bombs--at civilian n-sites in Iraq./
A terrorist on trial in Germany said the objectives of his nonAlQaeda group included overthrowing the government of Jordan/MIDDLE EAST ONLINE 2jy./
[Lyons: The Bush team harps on 'STATE-SUPPORTED terrorism' because they don't want to admit irrelevance of $1500-millions-per-DAY Pentagon gadgets against our real danger from terror-individuals.]
--------
What a fun group are the Bushies! Chest-deep in their quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, they still have energy to pick fights with Iran and North Korea, and to growl at Syria./
==========
The EU have threatened Iran with economic sanctions if they persist in developing nukes./INDEPENDENT22JY/
But Iran, reasonably fearing U.S. attack (our airpower backing Iranian rebels), is not likely to quit developing a nuclear 2d-strike deterrent against America!/
-------------
William Safire says the world is safer because of our invasion. That's just nonsense. Of course, as a major SHARONISTA, he may mean that Israel is safer..he cites the removal of Saddam, one who was subsidizing martyr-murderers (only in Israel). /
But the invasion hasn't even made Israel safer. Now Iran [energized by fear of a U.S. first-strike like that against Iraq] has developed a long-range missile that can reach Israel. /USATODAY8Jy./ The Sharonistas confuse the undoubted satisfaction from the invasion of their revenge-instinct against Saddam with the protection of Israel.
 
THE NEED FOR CLOSE READING:/
I went to buy a lawn-sprinkler. They were all cheap, breakable plastic; one was cleverly painted to look like metal. But one said in big print on the front LIFETIME GUARANTEE! This seemed like a modest, realistic guarantee for a man 73 years old; 'forevermore is shorter than before'. I took it to the counter, then looked at the back, where the small-print said, "Guaranteed for the lifetime of the product." In the one month before the crappy thing dies, it is firmly guaranteed!/
This experience reinforced my belief that our corporate and government leaders count on our inability to comprehend what we read. I recalled the ad for Bayer Aspirin: UNSURPASSED! Well, yes, considering that all aspirins, cheap or super-expensive (like Bayer) are roughly equal in quality--the cheapest aspirin is also UNSURPASSED. Having taught for 50 years, I feel compassion for the typical college grad facing a health-insurance contract./
A recent scandal also illustrates this point. Bush uttered an obviously false 13 words in the hitherto-prestigious STATE OF THE UNION speech--13 words which helped to lure us into a stupid, wicked war. His apologists say that his actual words were true: The British did claim that Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger--whether or not that claim was true. HOWEVER, that's not what he actually said: he said "The British have learned that.." When you say someone has LEARNED something, you're saying that what they LEARNED was true. So Bush's remark was simply an untruth, and his handlers knew it (whether HE understood all this is questionable--see below.) But such subtle deception was wasted; it turned out that much later, 72% of Americans were completely unaware of the issue!/
The trouble is that many of our political leaders are also semi-literate. Pres. Bush, especially, showed himself a typical American when he described the vast CONTINENT of Africa--as a NATION! Again, the value of the yen plummetted temporarily when 'W' told the Press that he and the prime minister had discussed the devaluation of the yen; the next day we were told he meant STABILIZATION. His brother, Governor Jeb, referred in Spain to that 40-year-old monarchy as a Republic.
It's assumed that State Legislators are semi-literate, so they hire a language-expert to put their pidgin law-proposals into adult English. But even these 'experts' lately are flawed: in Kansas, they wanted to forbid homosexuality--but by misunderstanding the word 'or', they promised to prosecute any husband who touched his fully-clothed wife lasciviously. In Colorado, they had to revoke a law and pass a substitute because the first law misused the word 'unless' to say the opposite of what they intended./
Most of these blunders could be prevented if honors high-school students passed tests in the rudiments of informal logic. People notice that the young can't write well; this is mainly because they don't (indeed, can't) read adult English. Meanwhile MAs in philosophy, trained in close reading, qualified to teach informal logic, go underemployed. ColoradoStateUniversity pretends to require 'logic and critical thinking' of all undergraduates; but enough loopholes have been slipped in so that only a small minority actually take that course./
Non-reading citizens are of course ignorant. A recent nation-wide NAEP test asked high-school seniors to choose: "An ally of ours in World War II was (a) Italy, (b) Japan, (c) Germany, (d) the Soviet Union." Only half the seniors chose (d)./
Ignorance is not the same as stupidity, which is SELF-CONFIDENT ignorance, the delusion of adequacy. People know there are things they don't understand. Luckily all these mysteries turn out to be unimportant; they feel sure they understand all the important issues. (They rarely answer a poll with 'Don't Know'.) So they don't feel they need to learn. Whence this maxim: THE WICKED CAN REPENT--BUT STUPID IS FOREVER.
 
WOLFOWITZ in WONDERLAND: Paul Wolfowitz, a major architect of the disastrous Iraq invasion, has recently invaded the country personally--feeling safe under elaborate guarding. Needless to say, he sees everything as a PR exercise: resistance fighters must be relabeled "forces of reaction"; Baath loyalists as 'sadists'./
He publicly warned neighboring countries 'not to interfere with Iraq' (Iranians commented that an invading country is hardly in a position to denounce 'foreign interference'!)/Assoc.Press 20/21jy/
Thus he unwillingly admitted the major threat of non-Iraqi Islamists coming to help the guerillas. (These foreigners would be easily recognizable by ordinary Iraqis; if they're not turned in, that means the ordinary Iraqis are on their side!)
Wolfowitz did say, however,that [hip-deep in a quagmire of our own making] we would welcome foreign help with our hostile occupation. That, apparently, would not count as interference with Iraq!
 
DENIABILITY: In corporations and government, underlings do the dirty work, make up the actual lies, so the top guys can say "I didn't know!" without fear of disproof. And Pres. Bush has credibly used that defense, because people know he is a pawn--he only reads the lines others write for him./
But whether he is deceived or deceiving, by now Americans know they can't count on his words being true.
The latest polls (CNN/TIME, 19jy) show that: 47% see him as a leader they can trust (down from 56% in March); 51% have doubts and reservations (up from 41% in March).
A country without a trusted leader is in trouble; suppose,for instance, that false rumors circulate of a smallpox attack, and he denies this, hoping to avoid a panic--who would believe him? In a way, it's more harmful for a President to tell obvious lies than to murder someone! (The murder affects only one person, and it's conceivable that if he confessed people would still trust his word. It is the blundering coverup of crimes that undoes Presidents.)
~ Sunday, July 20, 2003
 
NONAGGRESSION PACT? Rumors spread that, if N.Korea dismantles its nuke-program, U.S. might sign a formal agreement not to attack N.K. unless 'provoked'. hat the hell counts as 'provoked' ? !! Then White House spokesman denied all this, saying that "We never take an option ('the military option') off the table."/reuters23/jy/Arrogant!
U.S. & other countries plan to stop N.K. ships (on high seas?) to search for drug/nuke exports. N.K. has threated 'horrible war' if they do this. N.K. indicates it will announce completed nukes by 9 Sept.
Bush pointedly doesn't growl at N.K; he's too busy growling at Iran & Syria.
----------------------------------------------------------------
A FRIVOLOUS LOOK AT APOCALYPSE:/
In a piece the NYTIMES took seriously enough to publish as an oped,19jy,one Ian Bremmer advocates that we use the threat of military force with North Korea./[His words in BOLD; my comments unbold]
"They offered to freeze all present nuclear programs in return for American security guarantees."/
In other words, they want us to guaranteee that we won't launch a first strike at them. Is that so unreasonable?/
--------
"..the central objective of N.K. regime: its own survival." Of course it is, given our threats.
----
"Its bargaining chips are limited to the development of WMDs and the threat of proliferation."
NOT SO: they can fire 300,000 shells per hour at Seoul. And they have missiles. AND THEY ALREADY HAVE WMDs (wargerms, they say, plus a few nukes.)
-----------
"Our worries should not focus on N.K.'s lobbing a nuclear bomb toward Tokyo or sending a million troops across the border to Seoul. Either action would bring about the end of the N.K. regime..."
We are in a game of 'chicken'; he says we shouldn't worry about their destroying Tokyo or Seoul because that would end their regime. BUT:
(a) We bombed N.K. flat (almost no buildings were spared) 50 years ago, and that DIDN'T destroy their regime.
(b) They may figure we're going to bomb them flat again anyway; so they might decide they have nothing to lose by striking first themselves, by destroying Seoul and Tokyo and 50,000 GIs now stationed in Korea (perhaps out of their artillery range--IF they wait till the announced move is implemented!--why should they wait?--But even then, not out of their missile range.)
--------------
"Escalation will force Kim to make concessions."
What does 'escalation' mean? preparing to bomb them? We could hardly escalate in that line more than we have already--with an armada of B-52s moved to Guam! /
Actually bombing them? One doubts that will lead to concessions.
--------------
"Stepping up the military pressure..gives China a further incentive to help change N.K. behavior.."In other words, we're going to cow N.K. by blackmailing China? That sounds chancy.
--------------
"If brinksmanship proves necessary...Mr. Kim is likely to blink first."
That's an incredible statement. If we step up the game of 'chicken', apocalypse is LIKELY not to happen? How could a sane man lean on such an assessment?
----------
"The Bush-team have made it abundantly clear that they would welcome a regime-change in N.K.But this is an unrealistic goal. And talking about this goal is counter-productive."
Ah, but the Bushies HAVE made it clear--just as they made clear all along that they were going for regime-change in Iraq, not just for destroying WMDs.IF Mr.Bremmer's disapproval forces the Bushies to shut up on this, why would Kim not still know that is their goal?--especially when Perry says that Bush's loathing for Kim is the main reason we won't negotiate?
-------------------------
"Our main objective should be removal of all nuclear capacity from N.K. This policy, backed by the real threat of military escalation, is the best approach."
Just the real THREAT of U.S. 'escalation' (i.e., of first-strike bombing) could easily lead to a war causing one million casualties, including 50,000 GIs in Korea and perhaps more in Japan./
This is the best approach??!!
 
WOOLSEY: One of the worst 'Sharonista' hawks is James Woolsey. In a speech a couple of months ago, he said we were at the start of 'WORLD WAR IV', and would be attacking Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (all hated by Israel).."WE ARE ON THE MARCH'./ Now in OBSERVER20jy he has a long article AT WAR FOR FREEDOM, defending our invasion and advocating WWIV again.
Read it [find it on NEWS.GOOGLE.COM] to see how crazy some of the 'intellectuals' are in the Bush Team.
~ Saturday, July 19, 2003
 
UNREST OUTSIDE THE 'TRIANGLE': U.S. has consoled itself that most guerilla attacks are from the Sunni 'TRIANGLE' region most supportive of Saddam. But a protest of 10,000 people erupted in a holy SHIA city over rumors that GIs had surrounded the house of a popular cleric who has been denouncing the U.S. occupation. Shia spokesmen said GIs had just 3 days to get out of the city or face a popular uprising. The U.S. officer in charge there dismissed the protesters as 'riff-raff."/ Reuters20jy/
Also 2 GIs were killed in a guerilla attack near MOSUL, outside the 'Sunni Triangle' where the U.S. claims anti-Americanism is concentrated./ FIN.TIMES/20jy
======
GI MORALE: "It's not high or even low; it's nonexistent" an email said from an unidentified soldier. It's not just the length of stay for the 3d Division; they were repeatedly told they were on their way home. Much equipment is in poor condition; they are short of ammunition AND FOOD! "We feel betrayed; it was a big slap in the face."/ They are now committed to noncombat roles of rebuilding; they are told not to draw their weapons, so they don't feel safe./"We were told to take Baghdad, to kill; now they want us as peacekeepers; it's very hard."/They can't venture outside their outposts for fear of being shot./Various family problems are developing while they're gone./NYTIMES19Jy/One sergeant told a reporter: "I have my own deck of cards (like the 'deck' of wanted Saddamite leaders)..Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Wolfowitz..."/
"We're being told to stay on by commanders who have been here only a month!"/and much more dangerously,
"God, I hate these people! (Iraqis)"/INDEPENDENT20jy
When word gets out about these conditions (pus the shameful neglect of veterans' health problems, and the Republican Congress's rejection of pay-raises for servicemen) there might be a problem in getting volunteer soldiers to re-enlist! (Many men enlisted in the Reserves just to meet the other guys--not to end up in a hellish place with hellish things happening. Now the Pentagon is talking of a wholesale call-up of National Guardsmen and reservists, for ONE-YEAR terms./A sign on a military vehicle in Iraq says, "ONE WEEKEND A MONTH--MY ASS!" )
===========
Secy Rumsfeld personally approved more than 50 airstrikes, each of which were likely to kill MORE THAN 30 Iraqi civilians.
SNEAK ATTACKS IN UNDECLARED WAR:/
U.S. officer admitted that bombing Iraq over the last 10 years, supposedly just to protect our planes enforcing no-fly zones, PROVIDED A COVER, beginning in '02, for bombing to weaken Iraqi anti-invasion defenses./FINTIMES20jY/NYTIMES19jy./
That means that BEFORE the U.S. even asked the UN to back its attack, it was already committing acts of (undeclared)war --sneak attacks--against a sovereign nation.
 
REBUILDING A CONQUERED NATION: Before the Iraq invasion, optimists said that if U.S. could rebuild Germany and Japan as prosperous democracies after WWII, then we could rebuild Iraq after conquering it. After all, the Japanese hara-kari pilots were as obdurate as the Islamist suicide-murderers are today; and the divine-Emperor cult was stranger than the familiar 'One-God' religion of Islam./
But Roosevelt and his team were far more intelligent than the Bush-team. While the war was still going on, they hired experts (e.g., anthropologists) to help them understand the German and Japanese cultures. The most surprising--and successful--feature of their occupation-policy was to let the Emperor (himself a war-criminal) continue to reign (as their puppet) in Japan ! /NYTIMES19JY/
The Bushies had plenty of time to prepare for occupation: they had decided to invade Iraq even before 9/11/01. Yet they were obviously surprised at the anti-Americanism provoked by the invasion; they thought only of how bad was the tyrant they deposed, and how grateful the Iraqis SHOULD BE at their liberation. /
Of course, it shouldn't take a PhD in anthropology to reason thusly: a) we buried alive hundreds of teen-age Iraqi conscripts in Gulf War I; (b) we have bombed Iraq intermittently for almost a decade; (c) we imposed economic sanctions for a decade under which the Iraqis suffered horribly, and thousands of children died; many Iraqis likely believed Saddam when he said this suffering was our fault; (d) we assaulted them this year with mountains of explosive, (20,000 airplane-stikes, besides thousand of missiles)--including indiscriminate cluster-bombs--killing,maiming or wounding tens of thousands of Iraqis; (e) our occupation troops have not been men trained as such, but combat-exhausted specially-trained killers, with the manners one would expect; (f) the Bush-team has been unwilling to invest much in restoring, say, the electrical system needed for refrigerating food in incredible heat--
SO (g) many Iraqis were likely to hate us more than they hated Saddam./
Even though they knew that non-Afghan Muslims slipped in to help the Taliban, and non-Chechen Muslims have been helping the Chechnya rebels, The Bushies were surprised at the non-Iraqi Islamists who have slipped into the country to bolster the Iraqi guerillas. It hasn't really sunk in for them that we have somehow enraged an unknown portion of one billion Muslims worldwide, and that our invasion magnified that rage. (The Nazis or the Shinto militarists did not have such a backup for possible guerilla action.)
Roosevelt's team engineered an international coalition to stand up against the Soviet Union.
Bush's team has alienated the people in almost every country in the world (as the Pew polls show); now they dream that other nations are going to help bear the burden of occupation (e.g., GI casualties every day) which is proving too burdensome for us--but we will still control the oil, of course./
The nincompoops who have been talking of 'the New American Empire' thought that an empire can be built just on explosives. A British historian (N.Fergiss) said he believed in the American Empire--(God knows the anarchic world needs a powerful, intelligent ruler!) till he moved here and got to understand Americans./
The Bushies don't understand Americans either: while their polls went up with the excitement of TV pictures of whooshing missiles,etc., now the childlike Yanks are worse-than-bored at hearing of a few GIs being killed every day while trying to help ungrateful, very strange strangers.
 
MANDELA AND BUSH: All over the world, people are celebrating the 85th birthday of SouthAfrica's 'saint/sage', Nelson Mandela. Any foreign leader visiting So.Africa has to pay a tribute-visit to Mandela..all except Pres. Bush: when in S.Africa, he DIDN'T DARE visit Mandela, who has denounced him and his invasion again and again with prophetic zeal./
To smooth over this problem, Mandela arranged to be out of the country while Bush was there.
 
MISSING THE POINT: Three instances of hawks missing the point of data (or trying to get U.S. nincompoops to miss the point):
--WALL STREET JOURNAL18JY quotes anonymous Chinese officials as saying that North Korea may very well have at least one nuclear-bomb made already. Then the story says this will strengthen the case for U.S. hawks, who want to bomb N.K. (so badly they can taste it--Lyons). /
But IF N.K. already has 'the bomb'--and the plutonium to make 8 more--that should be a reason NOT to pick a fight with them. /
If N.K. feel sure that we're going to strike first, the sensible thing would be for THEM to strike first, perhaps conveying a nuke to Los Angeles harbor via one of the thousands of uninspected ship-containers entering our ports daily. (Also of course they can wipe out 50,000 GIs stationed in South Korea in a couple of days, using their awesome artillery and missiles.) /
It might be thought we must bomb them to stop the nuke-program ; (nobody expects the Bush-team to be so dumb as to INVADE N.K., facing their one million impressive troops) . But the N.K.s are world-famous tunnelers; the nuke-plants are likely buried in some tunnels under the mountains where we can't locate them. Indeed, our 'intelligence' now sees EVIDENCE of such a hidden n-plant!
(After all, our famous 'daisy-cutter' superbombs didn't even manage to kill binLaden at Tora-Bora!)/
Actually, we have NOTHING TO GAIN by provoking a war with N.K. The fact that our hawks keep pushing to provoke them--e.g., refusing to negotiate with them because of the 'shape of the table' --is a sign of the Bush-team's madness.

--WSJ also has a story that Iraqi scientists tried (unsuccessfully) to make a bomb out of RICIN toxin. This was BEFORE THE FIRST GULF WAR, back when everyone admits Saddam was trying for WMDs. You can bet the U.S. knew all along that RICIN is useful only for individual assassinations, not for WMDs.


---The Bush-team just released prewar documents that are supposed to justify the invasion. These documents reveal CIA worries that Saddam might line up reluctantly with alQaeda IF HE FEARS HE'S GOING TO BE INVADED. That's exactly what CIA's Tenet told Congress on the very day those morons endorsed the invasion. That is of course reason NOT TO INVADE!
(If Saddam, knowing his regime was doomed, donated supergerms to terrorists who could easily inflict them on our homeland, we'd regret the invasion. That might have happened; perhaps the blow just hasn't fallen yet.) )
~ Friday, July 18, 2003
 
TWO CHOICE ITEMS FROM LONDON INDEPENDENT19jy:
--The Pentagon may hire a private corporation to train Iraqis to replace GIs as guards. Questions: will the Kroll personnel speak Arabic? Can they tell which Iraqis are on our side and which are pro-guerilla?
--'Bush plans magazine to make young Arabs love America." NO COMMENT NEEDED.
 
RUMSFELD ASKED FOR IT: R. commissioned an independent committee to investigate Iraq situation. They reported that we have only about 3 months to turn things around: to provide security, basic services, opportunity for broad political involvement, and economic opportunity. Wanna bet?/
They note the 'rising anti-Americanism' among Iraquis. They say Bremer's regime is disconnected from reality, is 'living inside a cocoon inside a bubble'. /FIN.TIMES18JY/
One recalls that a State Dept. anonymous voice earlier told NEWSDAY: "What Bremer knows about Iraq would fit in a thimble."/
The respected (right-wing) CATO INSTITUTE earlier said we should pull out of Iraq. Sen.Kerry seems to be recommending a pullout also. (TRUTHOUT.ORG) Annan of UN said we should set a timetable telling when we'll end the occupation. We HINT we MIGHT pull out troops after Iraqi election, perhaps in '04./
Wanna bet? And leave all that oil?!
 
FOOL ME TWICE? SHAME ON ME!/
The Bush-team got away once with pressuring the CIA not to contradict hawk lies (see TRUTHOUT.ORG: the spies who pushed for war, from Guardian17Jy)--then they cast the blame on the CIA when the lies were exposed. But not again. /
J.R. Bolton is one of the most frothing hawk liars on the Pentagon team(in May 2002, he said that CUBA had biowar germs! This was just--finally--contradicted by the CIA.) He was scheduled this week to tell Congress that puny monster SYRIA's germs were now so developed that they threatened Middle East stability. But this time the CIA spoke up, and his testimony was delayed while the bureaucrats fight out the exact wording./NYT18jy
==========
SHRUB WITHERING: When asked if they approve of Bush, 55% answer yes (his rate before the war; the boost has gone).
More likely voters now oppose Bush than favor him./ "Do you expect to back Pres.Bush in 2004?" the YESes have dropped 9 points in the last month to 42%./Reuters18jy
One poll showed Bush-support at 60%. But only 45% think we're in control of Iraq events. 8 out of 10 fear that U.S. will get bogged down in a long,costly peace-keeping mission./
Four times more people rank the economy as their first concern, vs. Iraq or terrorism. The number of people on jobless relief is highest in 20 years./David Broder,WashPost15Jy/
----------
LATER POLL:CNN/TIME poll 18Jy: Only 4 in 10 (down from 52% in March) now see the Iraq campaign as a success. 55% now approve of Bush's handling of Iraq campaign (down from 69%). 52% disapprove of his handling of the economy. /
Overall, 55% approve of Bush (down 8% since May). 50% expected to support Bush in '04 election; 46% said they probably wouldn't. But 66% thought he would likely win the '04 election./Guardian19jy
~ Wednesday, July 16, 2003
 
LAME CASE FOR WAR__TO GERARD BAKERat FINANCIAL TIMES:
You claimed on 16Jy that our invasion of Iraq was justified, even though (you admit) the specific claims by Mr.Bush and Mr.Blair about WMDs were 'dodgy'. You hint super-briefly at several arguments to justify the war.
Basically you say that it was fine that we went to war to remove a bad leader.
--'His criminal background': Sharon of Israel was guilty of murder in Lebanon...
--'his brutality toward his own people': are we entitled to invade any country with brutal leaders? Why not China then for oppressing Tibet? or Russia, for Putin's brutality toward Chechnya, a part of Russia..their own people?
And why are so many Iraqis so UNGRATEFUL for our liberating invasion?/
--'his accumulation and past use of WMDs'.. He used them a decade ago...he seems to have accumulated NO such weapons recently! (It's pretty clear that U.S. has stocks of war-germs; the 'anthrax' guy used American spores.)
--'his known support for international terrrorists': the only known instance of this was his admittedly vicious and stupid rewards offered to families of suicide-bombers in Israel. It's not up to Britain and America to protect Israel..let SUPER-ARMED Israel invade or bomb where it will. One sometimes wonders whether Bush & Sharon are in bed together, with Sharon on top./
--'his contempt for international authority': a contempt matched by Israel--and for that matter, by America.
--'he was a serial offender vs. human rights.' So, to some degree, is Israel, so is America.
--'he was a serial offender vs. international law.' Likewise Israel, likewise America. (see SNEAK ATTACKS IN UNDECLARED WAR above, 19JY).
--'he was a crippling source of instability in a volatile region.' Before the war, Arab leaders agreed publicly that the invasion would make the region MORE unstable. Indeed, the invasion persuaded Iran to hurry up their development of nukes--(also North Korea).It strengthened radical Islamist movements all over that region. and so on.
IN SUM: you speak obvious falsehood when you say we removed an 'unacceptable threat to peace, security and the international order." Saddam perhaps would have LIKED to pose such a threat, but the crippled pygmy of his Iraq posed no important threats.
Your 'argument' is a shameless assertion of a series of irrelevancies--as dodgy as the 'Africa/uranium' claim or the absurd '45-minute-claim' made by Blair. None of your sketchy hints justify an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.
You have the grace not to claim a 'consequentialist' justification of the invasion, saying "it worked out so well, that's all that counts." It is NOT working out well.
~ Monday, July 14, 2003
 
CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: One agency guesses that 4-7 thousand Iraq civilians were killed in the war./Guardian14jy/ If we figure 4 to 1, that makes 16,000-28,000 civilians maimed or wounded. Indeed, the unexploded cluster bombs all over the place mean that people (especially children) will go on being killed,maimed or wounded.
 
PREPARED? NO./
Is the danger of terrorist attacks on our Homeland real? Yes; half of corporations interviewed said they had trouble getting insurance for their city offices. But the corporations have increased their security-spending very little(ONLY 1 IN 4 NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE CONSIDERED PREPARED!) and the HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT's idea of help is to issue awards for those corporations that do increase their security spending./FINTIMES14JY
 
NO MORE 'GO-IT-ALONE' ?/
The desperate Bush-team has asked 90 countries to contribute 'peace-keeping' troops to help our hostile occupation of Iraq. Unsurprisingly, the response has been meager. A few puny nations have offered a few hundred personnel, mainly non-combat. Pakistan and Bangladesh haven't answered yet, but India has: they said, NO./ Reuters14jy/
India has a huge army available, and the government would have liked to curry favor with Washington by offering the troops, but they found out they didn't dare. The Indian populace (70-89% of one billion people!) are united in rejecting Bush's America and especially our invasion. / The Japanese people now oppose by 55% any sending of troops to Iraq./
Actually, the Brits, our sole vaunted allies, have pulled out several thousand of their troops, leaving only 11,000 to match our 140,000 potential victims.
Germany has said they'll send troops, but (like India) only if the whole project is run by the UN. That would mean we'd give up control of the oil. Bloody likely.
So the puny contributions from puny nations will have to serve as the tiny fig-leaf covering a huge reality: the fact that it is Americans forcing occupation on indignant Iraqis; GIs will continue to be picked off, a few each day.
 
FALLACY OF 'STATE-SUPPORTED' TERRORISM: A terrorist bomb just went off near the Indonesian parliament (Reuters14Jy), one of a series of attacks on symbols of the Indonesian government. This illustrates an important point:
there is plenty of terrorist danger from Indonesia (e.g., training camps hidden in the jungles)--but the danger is not from the government; indeed the Indonesian terrorists are in a life/death struggle with the government./
The Bush-team is constantly hinting or saying that we will strike at any government 'harboring' terrorists. Would it help to bomb Jakarta? Hardly--the terrorists would love to have the central government weakened./
Why do our rulers harp about 'state-supported terrorism'? Because all the nifty Pentagon gadgets are designed solely to strike at national governments..and they don't want Americans to discover how irrelevant all this expensive hardware is to the vital job of defending our homeland from terror./
Let me repeat a metaphor: a leopard unwittingly stirred up a huge nest of hornets. He was always proud of his awesome claws and teeth, so in this crisis he used them in the only way he could: attacking another mammal.
A stupid and irrelevant move./
We face hundreds or thousands of individual terrorists (alQaeda is not a central command-post that could be removed by bombing; it just functions as a facilitator for these individually-motivated volunteer-murder-martyrs.) / The Pentagon (getting $1500 millions every DAY!) is useless for defending us from these terrorists./
Local police, firemen, border-guards, nurses--these are our front-line defenses against terrorists. But we can't afford to fund these relevant resources adequately. Criminally stupid.
~ Sunday, July 13, 2003
 
VICIOUS AND STRANGE: U.S. troops did not guard an Iraq nuclear site. Someone made off with much nuclear material.
When the international agency for checking such things showed up, the U.S. military would let them investigate only what happened to the low-grade uranium: not the health of the nearby natives, nor what happened to high-grade nuclear material, which could be used in 'dirty bombs' (with radioactive shells outside of explosive cores, which could render areas uninhabitable for some time). Greenpeace investigators found one empty canister which was 10,000 times as radioactive as is considered safe; also villagers suffering from radioactiviy./Reuters15jy/ What the hell is going on?/
=============
DANGER FOR RUSSIANS IN IRAQ? Uniquely, the Russians didn't close their embassy in Baghdad during the war.
Now the Americans have warned publicly that there can't be an embassy when there isn't an independent government in Iraq to accredit it. Therefore the people in the 'embassy' don't count as diplomats. (This claim is questionable under international law.) Therefore the Americans can't guarantee their safety. /Reuters13Jy
A public statement like this is odd. Why should the Americans feel so threatened by Russian observers in Baghdad as to issue what sounds like veiled threats? (Previously we fired missiles quite close to that embassy.)
 
BLEEDING AMERICA SLOWLY:/
Whether by luck or by skill, the Iraq guerillas seem to be using a very effective strategy to turn Americans against the occupation-project./
They sabotage pipelines and powerlines (e.g., they disrupt the underground lines, then bury the rupture again to make it hard to find): hundreds of miles of lines cannot be effectively policed. /
This disruption involves very little risk to the guerillas. But such attack-capacity makes foreigners reluctant to invest in reconstructing export-capacity...these exports are essential to pay for rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure. (Nobody cares about rebuilding Afghan infrastructure--even the main roads are left destroyed--but then Afghanistan doesn't have oil.)/
The Bremer regime keeps claiming that the guerilla-problem is just temporary: the dying reflex of the defeated Saddamites. But a British Security firm warns possible investors that the guerillas include alQaeda and Saddamite operatives, AND LOCAL PEOPLE ENRAGED BY THE OCCUPATION./ OBSERVER 13JY The 'security' problem might discourage foreign investment for some time./
The Americans will have to pay to rebuild the oil industry. They've already let contracts for rebuilding (with Bush-friendly corporations) that will have to be paid for. The Bush-team now has the clever idea to 'borrow' from future oil-exports to fund this payment. But Iraq already owes huge, crippling debts; moreover, legal experts say that an occupying power cannot oblige future Iraqi governments to pay off the debts the occupiers contract.. It is now said that the U.S.costs for war/occupation will total $400 billion for this year, twice what was estimated recently/.
Oil exports are now beginning, but at a trickle; each optimistic prediction so far has had to be revised. Immediately-foreseeable exports will be nowhere near enough to finance Reconstruction.
---------------
The guerillas settle for killing or wounding just a few GIs each day. They could perhaps launch larger attacks, killing more GIs for a while--but those more ambitious attacks might expose them to awesome American firepower. Americans are rather childlike--they pay more attention to the few GIs killed every day than a cool military planner would expect. Already, 52% say the casualties are excessive.
Some critics say we don't have enough soldiers in Iraq (especially now that the exhausted troops there must be rotated)..but more troops just mean more targets for the potshots of the guerillas.
-----------
A possible counter-strategy: the U.S. could withdraw its troops into centralized depots, heavily guarded, and thus cut down the few-killed-per-day problem. From these bases, they could prevent any real comeback by the Baathists.
Then we could let chaos reign outside the bases until the Iraqis solve the 'security' problem themselves. After all, that's what the U.S. has done in Afghanistan; very few GI s are getting killed there, so far. (Of course the 'security' problem is not getting solved by the Afghans; the country is sinking into warlord anarchy again. There's every reason to think that unpoliced Iraq would shortly be torn apart by rival Shiite, Kurd and Sunni forces.)
Unfortunately, such a withdrawal would end any chance to rebuild and exploit the Iraqi oil industry. Since that was likely one of the main goals of this invasion, such a withdrawal will never happen. (We might have to stay in control there for years and years, until we can 'pay ourselves back' for the money we'll spend to reconstruct the oil industry there!The GI s will remain vulnerable, and the slogan 'GI blood for Oil?' will get more vivid in America. /
The tame U.S. media can move unhappy Iraq stories to p. 24B of newspapers, so they are seldom read. But Democrats and other critics will keep reminding Americans of what's happening.
W.Kristol, a right-wing hawk, says breezily that the guerilla war will last only a couple of months--[we'll see!]--and that one GI killed each day is matched by toll in training accidents/FIN.TIMES23JY/ Of course the killed-rate is ADDED to the training accidents, not substiututed..and the noncombat GI deaths in Iraq(from accidents, 'friendly-fire',etc.) must be added to the human cost of invasion; they wouldn't happen if we weren't occupying Iraq.
It's not at all clear that the typical American will dismiss the one-a-day killed so breezily;(nobody counts the maimed or wounded--e.g., 9 wounded on 23jy!) FIN.TIMES23jy says that even some Congressional Republicans are asking why we're staying in Iraq!

-----------------------/

Daddy Bush was greatly admired for his triumph in Iraq--but he was diselected shortly after.
The polls still seem to show great popularity for Bush Jr. But more discriminating polls, (e.g., by NEWSWEEK) show a really surprising fact: among REGISTERED VOTERS (the only people who count in America), 47% now want Bush reelected; already, 46% DON'T WANT THIS!
He can only go downhill from here--his economic policies are proving disastrous for most Americans, and the news from Iraq will be dispiriting.
(The Bush-team's main hope could be to provoke the Kim regime in North Korea to attack first, slaughtering thousands of GI s in a few days. Then Bush could play the role of War-President again. But even that would have to happen just before the 1994 election--our only response would be to bomb North Korea flat--even the Bushies wouldn't be dumb enough to try an invasion!--and that glamorous bombing would take just a few days or weeks. Even if N.K. didn't manage to retaliate against us with their nukes and war-germs, then, after another frenzy of chest-beating rage, there'd be another sag in national morale--when critics ask vividly why these vulnerable GI s were still stationed there, 50 years after the Korean War ended!)
As of 23Jy, Bushies seem to be backing off from confronting N.K., and growling more at Iran and Syria. If they bomb either country, there'll be retaliation against our troops in Iraq and against Israel./
SUMMARY: History may record that the Bush-team was brought down mainly by Iraqi guerillas. (Afghan guerillas had a big role in toppling the Soviet regime.)
~ Saturday, July 12, 2003
 
HAS ANYONE NOTED that the typical Iraqis are fully, even excessively, armed? Reporters before the war must have known of this. Relevance? A really hated regime would never let its people be armed so fully.
That should have tipped off the Pentagon that our troops would not face a people all grateful to be liberated from loathsome Baathists.
~ Friday, July 11, 2003
 
WEASELLING OUT OF IT:/
Get this: the CIA says now it didn't veto Bush's nutty claim (in State-of-Union speech) (that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa)--because WHAT BUSH ACTUALLY SAID was NOT that Saddam WAS doing so, but only that BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SAID he was doing so./NEWSDAY11JY./ (And now Condoleeza Rice says that the British claim was based on U.S. 'intelligence' !) What a transatlantic brood of weasels./
This gang is so crooked they can't quote 16 words correctly! Bush said that British intelligence 'have learned' that Saddam was doing so..that phrasing implies not just that the British said it, but also that it was true. (You don't say someone 'learned' something unless you think what they learned is true.)
So all this dodging was pointless; the President said something clearly false (and crazy--the CIA had noted that Iraq had plenty of uranium ore itself--why would it be sneaking around to buy more?!) /Newsday11jy
If the Bush-team didn't know the story was false, they sure should have known. See the 'Wilson' story below. (Cheney commissioned Wilson to investigate the 'Niger Uranium' story; Wilson reported back (A YEAR BEFORE BUSH'S SPEECH) that the claim was unfounded. But now Cheney & gang say THEY DIDN'T KNOW!
They are rather clumsy and shameless liars. And liars who lure their country into a pointless war with their lies should properly be called traitors.
----------------
Luckily for these villains, 72% of Americans have never heard of this issue./NEWSWEEK poll, reported in Reuters12jy.
 
‘FREEDOM’ ISN’T FREE: ‘King’ Bremer of New Iraq exults, “The Voice of Freedom is upon the land.” He sees the rising number of attacks on GIs as good news: “As Freedom gets entrenched, the few who can’t fit in get desperate.”
Things look different to reporters on the streets, who speak Arabic. They say the circle supporting the guerillas is wider than a handful of Saddam diehards./
After an attack, people don’t tell reporters they feel sorry for GI victims; more often, they celebrate the guerillas’ deeds.
For instance, when a Humvee was hit by a grenade, people stamped on it in delight and then set it on fire./
Iraqis seem not to care so much for political 'freedom' as for normal living. “After Gulf War I, Saddam restored electricity quickly—why can’t the Americans?”/Guardian11jy
---------------------
In Fallluja, Iraqi police 'accredited' by the Americans want the Yanks to move out of the city, leaving them to do the policing. When the police and the GI s go on joint patrols, the locals feel rage, seeing the police as traitorous collaborators; this makes the police fear for their lives./ Reuters12jy
 
WAKE UP—WHEN? /
57% of Americans still approve of our invasion. (They aren’t about to admit they were wrong earlier in endorsing the war; almost to the bitter end, most Americans approved of the Vietnam war.) /
However, they show more sense when asked a specific question: a new Pew poll shows that the number who think the war’s going well has plummetted from 61% in April to 23% now./
The first to wake up are the families of the GIs over there serving as sitting ducks. In Georgia (a militarist stronghold), a colonel had to be escorted for safety from a group of angry military wives./GUARDIAN11jy.
--------------
A new AP poll shows the number of Americans saying the war was worth fighting is down from 70% to 57%. 52% now say present U.S. casualties are UNacceptable./Newsday11jy
53% approve of Bush's handling of the war, down from 74% in April./
Among registered voters (the only people who count) 47% want Bush reelected, 46% DON'T!/Newsweek poll reported by Reuters12jy/
The awakening has begun.

 
SIMILAR FIASCOS: VIETNAM & IRAQ/
British police officials (experienced in decades of dealing with Ulster guerillas) warn that the U.S. 'kick-ass' policy against guerillas in Iraq is backfiring, resulting in MORE attacks on GIs (10-25 each day now, up from 13 per day earlier.) FIN.TIMES/11jy /
It was not reassuring to read (about our 'race to head off guerilla war' in Iraq/3Jy) that we're using the same strategy as in the Vietnam fiasco, trying to combine civil and humanitarian aid with the tough use of force. Publicly the military said then they would attract the 'hearts and minds' of ordinary natives; in private they chuckled, "We'll grab 'em by the balls; their hearts and minds will follow." We did that, but all that followed was their kicking our ass out of the country./
In Iraq, GIs who are attacked tend sometimes to shoot everyone around them. Observers note that U.S. did not send in people experienced in crowd-control; they have to use soldiers trained only to kill. /
While 'King' Bremer sees released criminals and 'Saddam leftovers' as the main guerillas, other observers say the harsh and wild reaction of Americans to threats tends to alienate and enrage ordinary Iraqis, who then may hide and support the guerillas./
Secy. Rumsfeld has dismissed any analogies betweeen the two wars: "It's a different time; it's a different era; it's a different place." Yes, but the ignorance and arrogance of the people running the two shows are uncomfortably similar./
One DISsimilarity is quite disturbing: In Vietnam, we didn't have to fight foreign volunteers as well as the natives. (The ancient hatred between China and Vietnam prevented the Chinese from intervening as they did in Korea.)
But in Chechnya, the stupid cruelty of Russian troops has made the natives welcome volunteer Islamist fanatics from other countries. There are stories now of foreign guerillas in Iraq--these foreign guerillas have now been acknowledged by the Pentagon; and the borders have not been secured to prevent the entry of more./FIN.TIMES/15JY The Pentagon is talking of counter-measures, but the timeline mentioned is 'next year' !/NYTIMES17jy
This possibility reminds us that we seem to have taken on ONE BILLION Muslims!
 
SAFER? Bush keeps saying that our invasion made the world safer--but that's just FALSE. Rage among 1 billion Muslims worldwide was likely increased by pictures of the Iraqi children we blew to bits--most dangerously, among 288,000,000 Indonesians: those favorable to U.S. went from 70% to 15% in one year! (The jungles of Indonesia would make the best hiding places for new terrorist training camps.)
Over 70% of people in Turkey,Russia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia fear that the U.S. might attack their country ! /
After 9/11, practically everyone supported our 'War on Terror'. But such support has dropped by 15 points in France, 10% in Germany, and fewer than 1 in 4 now support it in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan and Morocco.(Pew polls) /
All this means that recruiting terrorists all over the world has become easier, and cooperation in nabbing them is disappearing. U.S. just complained publicly--in an unusual breach of protocol--that Russia is not really helping to nab Saddam. /reuters/13Jy/
Such developments do NOT make the world--nor America--safer!
 
NEWS BITS,11jy
One U.S. outpost has been subject to 9 mortar attacks in 10 days. /Each day, there are 10-25 attacks on our troops./Reuters
--Gen.Tommy Franks told Congress that we might have to keep troops in Iraq for FOUR YEARS (still being shot at? Reuters says that a Shiite speaker called for a 'jihad' against GIs if they're not out in 6 months.)
-- Asked why he didn't want to call the problem a 'guerilla war' or an insurgency, Franks said it didn't have general support or national coordination./ Assoc.Press. This displays a basic confusion:/
1) The Majority of every population is passive; in 1776, only 1 in 3 Americans sided with the revolutionary activists. Successful guerilla operations don't need popular SUPPORT, only popular PASSIVITY (so ordinary citizens don't turn them in.)/
2) A centralized guerilla movement is the easiest to handle--you can decapitate it by nabbing the leaders--but a movement consisting of many, many independent cells of 7 members each is the most terrifying kind./
3) These guerillas seem to understand that they need kill only a few GIs each day (to make Americans disillusioned about their 'victory')..this they can do at fairly low risk to themselves..they don't NEED to escalate to large attacks vulnerable to our praeternatural fire-power.
---'King' Bremer thinks that convoking a 'Council' (under his thumb) will appease the Iraqis. But a Shiite leader just said that a council serving under the consent of foreigners was no legal council at all.(Reuters) We convoked a similar 'council' in Afghanistan; they named our puppet Kharzai as President; he is now called 'mayor of Kabul' because his writ doesn't run outside the city; HE STILL NEEDS U.S. BODYGUARDS, BECAUSE NO AFGHANS CAN BE TRUSTED AROUND HIM!

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