The Real War Story
If you can get past the too-clever covers, you might consider selling your TV and subscribing to The New Yorker for all your war news needs. And even if you don't, you can while away your Monday morning with a few long-attention span links. The New Yorker on collateral damage: "Within hours of the war’s beginning, the Cuban government began systematically arresting its nonviolent opponents and confiscating their papers, typewriters, and other records." The New Yorker on how the war's going (and whose fault it is): "Rumsfeld simply failed to anticipate the consequences of protracted warfare. [...] Pentagon officers spoke contemptuously of the Administration’s optimistic press briefings. 'It’s a stalemate now,' the former intelligence official told me. 'It’s going to remain one only if we can maintain our supply lines.' " The New Yorker on exactly how Dubya's goons got political authorization to get us into this mess: "On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. 'The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,' ElBaradei said. [...] Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei’s report, dismissed the subject by saying, 'If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved.' " On the media coverage: "There is the danger of our becoming too fascinated by the level of detail we have the privilege of seeing, and of becoming passive, follow-along tacticians." The New Yorker quoting a "senior administration official" on how the war will play out: "'It’s one thing if you challenge the conventional wisdom and are proved right. It’s quite another'—he [the official] chuckled mordantly—'if you challenge the conventional wisdom and the conventional wisdom proves to have been right. I just think America’s reputation would have taken a real battering. We’d probably also find increased terrorist attacks, because we’d be seen not as invincible, and bogged down, and all that. This is all—this is a big throw of the dice.' ”
And there's sooooo much more that Paula Zahn will never tell you...
Concept: Broadcast news
Severity: It's an oxymoron
True Colors Shining Through
From Reuters: "Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday Washington would not cede control of Iraq to the United Nations. 'We didn't take on this huge burden with our coalition partners not to be able to have a significant dominating control over how it unfolds in the future,' Powell told a House of Representatives subcommittee." Significant dominating control? Jesus, could you maybe sprinkle a little sugar on that? In addition to potentially costing us our only ally in this escalating debacle (the U.K.), this new bit of news reinforces the worst nightmares of all the nations in the region, setting the stage for something very much resembling World War III, within two or three years at the latest. Be very afraid.
Concept: We're not Crusaders
Severity: Yeah, right, whatever
Lethal Is As Lethal Does
An unfortunate news lead for any day: "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 15 Iraqis were killed in a Baghdad street on Wednesday in what furious residents said was a U.S. missile strike, as President Bush praised the 'lethal precision' of American pilots and warned Saddam Hussein that his day of reckoning was near." What the cold hard rules of newspaper writing leave out is the way Dubya lovingly emphasized the word "lethal."
Concept: Righteousness
Severity: Blah
Weapons of Mass Prevarication
The war keeps on grinding on... Grinding U.S. soldiers down under withering crossfires... Grinding Iraqi civilians in Basra down under the weight of starvation and dehydration... Grinding Iraqi cities to dust under a barrage of air power... And grinding forward toward a moment of truth regarding those much-talked-about chemical weapons. So far, not a single weapon of mass destruction has been found as the U.S. campaigns deeper and deeper into Iraq. There probably are some. Probably. It's an ugly Catch-22 for the U.S. On the one hand, we have to hope there really are no chemical weapons, because it's likely U.S. troops will shortly be facing any that do exist. On the other hand, you really hope that there are some. Because if there are at least some chemical weapons, then this war remains simply a morally offensive and intellectually outrageous ad hominem application of an irrational double-standard in foreign policy. If there are not any meaningful weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then this war becomes a devastating fiasco that reduces the U.S. to a rogue nation, making the Bush administration a criminal regime willing to employ any lie to advance its military adventurism, willing to carelessly spend the lives of its soldiers and the lives of the "enemy" simply for the sake of misdirected rage... A madman's crusade, with a nation's youth sacrificed to sate the blood-lust psychosis of a handful of bitter and ugly men...
Concept: Not knowing what to hope for
Severity: I'll just keep hoping for "the best" without being specific
Bottom Line
While a relentless hoard of paunchy, graying adolescent boys filled the airwaves with prattle about "shock and awe," "decapitation" and "targets of opportunity," dozens of coalition soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis (at minimum) died for three days in a row. They died in crashes, they died in explosions. They died under "bunker busters," and they died from asphyxiation. Some were cut in half by gunfire, some were ripped to pieces by fragmentation grenades thrown by their own comrades, some had the flesh burned from their bodies.
And that's the news at this hour.
Concept: War
Severity: There are no words
The Spy Who Luvved Me
Let's pause from our obsessive war-watching for a moment here, and consider an entirely different kind of travesty. You will recall the last year's indictment of a CIA analyst for espionage on behalf of Iraq and Libya. Now this guy was responsible for North Africa — a hotbed of al Qaeda activity and one of several focal points for 9/11 operatives. The recently unsealed indictment features excerpts from this guy's letters pitching intelligence info to Saddam and Khadafi. Here are a few letter-for-letter verbatim quotes:
"I have included the cover page to a classified CIA bulliten, as well as a table of contens to the joint-service tacticial explotaion of national systems (JTENS), and some satelight photos..."
"If I am caught I will be enprisioned [...] My wife and daughter will be discrased and harrashed by everyone in our community."
"There are many people from movie stars to atheaths in the US who reciveing tens of millions of dollars a year for their trivial contrabutions."
"This will give you insite into what the US knows about your country as well as examples of the quaility of the signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery intelligence (IMINT) sytems that spy on you daily."
Now, I would say that the recipients of these letters had already gotten important "insite" about the "quaility" of the intelligence spying on them, wouldn't you? I am not such a writing snob that I measure a person's worth solely by the "quaility" of their spelling, but this is a little over the top (not to mention the utterly juvenile resentment of "movie stars and atheaths"). This guy was covering North Africa? And we wonder why the intelligence community failed to prevent 9/11?
You can read the whole indictment by clicking here (PDF).
Concept: Konfidense in the kompatense of the inteligense couminity
Severity: Culd bee butter
Fucked with no foreplay
Lee Harvey W. Bush addressed the nation at 10:15 p.m. last night to assure Americans that we are still good and pure. Whew! That's a relief! Sources explained that the U.S. was last night's surprise bombing in Baghdad is part of a "decapitation" strategy. Maybe someone should explain to the government that "propaganda" is about substituting "nice" words for "unpleasant" words. "Decapitation" is not a real big improvement on "assassination." At any rate, Saddam was on TV by this morning to let the world know he was still capitated, so it looks like last night was only a "target of inopportunity." Meanwhile, bad things were brewing around the world, but the Bush administration is only capable of executing a one-front thought process, so no one was particularly worried.
Fucked Concept: Peace, vis a vis "giving it a chance"
Severity: Boom
The Coalition Is Willing, But...
Whew! I'm sure glad we've got a " coalition of the willing" in this war! With countries like Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan on our side, how could anything go wrong? I'm particularly glad Eritrea signed up. I wouldn't feel right about this without the Eritreans in our camp. In case you only counted 28 countries, as opposed to the announced 30, add the UK to that list. Oops! Only 29! Turns out Japan is a member of the coalition, except that they're only signed up to help after the war.
Oh, and Turkey isn't really in the coalition per se; it's only allowing the U.S. limited flyover privileges and no ground presence. Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Nicaragua, Philippines, Romania, Slovakia and Uzbekistan really have far too many of their own problems to offer meaningful assistance, while the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Netherlands and Poland are more stable but really don't have much to offer by way of resources or available soldiers. So the ACTUAL coalition is more like the U.S., the UK, Australia, Italy and Spain, which appears to be five countries. Except the Spanish just announced they won't take part in fighting. So four. The "coalition of the willing" is really more of a "coalition of the willing to wait and see what happens."
And in case you thought " Three Reaons Iraq Will Be Worse Than Vietnam" was unrealistic and over the top, check the following from Time Magazine:
TIME: How worried should we be that a war will further radicalize Muslims?
CHANDRA: Things could get dangerous. Jemaah Islamiah will want to target Singapore, as it's the operational center of America's military command in this region. In Indonesia and the southern Philippines, an attack on Iraq will worsen the political violence already occurring.
KARIM: Indonesia can burst apart so very easily. The government is not strong.
AKBAR: Pakistan, too.
Concept: The world
Severity: Orange fucked ultra
Three Reasons Iraq Will Be Worse Than Vietnam
Well, we're invading Iraq and the world be damned. The war to start all wars appears ready to launch at a moment's notice, driven entirely by the emotional inadequacies of George W. Bush. The prospect of imminent hostilities has been greeted with resounding disinterest, even by the American people, who have more complaints about France than they do about Iraq at this point. The war in Iraq might not last longer than Vietnam, but there are three big reasons why its consequences are likely to be far worse:
1) Ideological vacuum: The Vietnam war, for all the division it caused at home, was at least grounded in a consistent ideological viewpoint which consistently drove U.S. foreign policy for two decades. The Iraq war not only lacks any real ideological grounding, the ideological and political pretext for a first strike flies in the face of U.S. foreign policy practices in regard to other countries (by the Bush administration's rationale, we should be invading Pakistan before Iraq).
The Iraq war drive is almost entirely motivated by emotional issues on the part of individual U.S. policy makers ("this is the guy who tried to kill my dad") and justified by outright lies. This two-pronged approach has already severely damaged the United States' international standing, and will do even more damage when it inevitably collapses on itself.
2) Home Front: By actively fostering and enabling an alliance between al Qaeda and Iraq, the administration creates a silver platter on which it serves to Iraq a volunteer mujahideen militia with the will and the proven capability to attack civilian targets on U.S. soil. By literally creating and promoting this alliance, the administration risks a perpetually self-sustaining conflict in which guerilla warfare will be fought in the streets of U.S. cities with American civilians as the victims.
3) Escalation: The nuclear standoff between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. kept the Vietnam war from escalating into a regional or global conflict. There are no such restraining factors in the current situation. In fact, it's the exact opposite situation: There are numerous factors that are likely to lead to an escalation of this conflict beyond the borders of Iraq.
The unpopularity of this ad hominem war effort is likely to reverberate all over the Eastern hemisphere. The Arab nations have not been convinced of the legitimacy of this effort; some Arab states could turn on us or Israel during this conflict. The really sad thing about that is: It's the least of our worries.
A much greater concern lies in Southeast Asia and Northern Africa. All around the Middle East, there are dozens of regimes which are already dealing with large militant Islamic movements that were already laying plans for revolution. A major terrorist network in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiah, is led by a terrorist named Hambali. While we've been giddily chasing bin Laden, Hambali has been hoarding explosives and recruiting operatives in Southeast Asia to execute his goal of creating a unified militant Islamic superstate incorporating the countries currently known as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand.
If the war in Iraq inflames such a revolution and drives the massive Muslim fundamentalist population in these countries over the edge into militant extremism, open revolution could break out throughout Southeast Asia, where the existing governments taking heat for their support of U.S. efforts in the war on terror. Indonesia and Malaysia are particularly at risk. If Hambali's dream is realized, it would create a new global superpower with a larger population than the U.S., a chokehold on shipping lanes in the South China sea and Osama bin Laden (or someone just like him) as president.
Meanwhile, there's Pakistan. The same political and cultural dynamics apply in the paranoia-riddled Pakistan, except possibly worse. If a revolution or coup takes place in Pakistan in the middle of our Iraq war, Pakistan would instantly join the battle — and it would bring a terrifying arsenal to Iraq's defense, including thousands of mujahideen fighters and an unknown number of nuclear weapons.
Osama bin Laden is very likely already in Pakistan, and could actually take power in the event of a coup or revolution. Bin Laden has an army of unknown size already in the country — made up of Afghani mujahideen, the surviving and still-active Taliban forces, thousands of terrorists trained in regional camps — and a strong power base within Pakistan's KGB-style intelligence service, the ISI. bin Laden wouldn't even need to grab the whole country. All he needs is to get his hands on those nuclear weapons to permanently change the face of warfare.
Vietnam was bad, but Iraq could be infinitely worse. Let's just hope that 20 years from now, there are still a few people around to make movies about what happened back in 2003.
Concept: The future
Severity: Fucked
Orange Zest
The color-coded terror alert system is being "upgraded" — and that is a very loose usage of the term. The federal government wants to add an "orange plus" level to the scale. The reason? They don't want to do a pre-war red alert because they figure it will destroy the economy. Nevertheless, the "orange zest" level would still pretty much BE a "red" alert. They just won't CALL it that. Clearly, the Bush administration assumes everyone in the country is as moronic as they are...
Concept: Orange-ina
Severity: I see a red alert and I want to paint it black
Dumber, Dumberer, Dumberest
So Bush, Blair and the prime minister of Spain are meeting this weekend in the Azores, a group of Islands off the coast of Portugal. Now whose brilliant idea was this? Have you looked at a map lately? The Azores are a short hop from Morocco, a North African country dealing with a significant militant Islamic movement which threatens to destabilize the country. The British government recently issued a terror alert for Morocco, shortly after the government there convicted three al Qaeda operatives who were planning to attack U.S. warships by sea with a dinghy full of explosives. Now, just suppose that al Qaeda (or Iraq, for that matter) actually has some of those weapons of mass destruction we've heard so much about. Let's say it's a radioactive dispersal device (a dirty bomb) or maybe a biological agent. The President of the Great Satan and the Prime Minister of the Second-Best Satan are known to be on a group of islands smaller than Hawaii. Do you see where I'm going here? Is it just me, or is this idiotic?
Concept: Painting a giant bullseye on the president
Severity: If you think Dub is bad, just imagine how rabid Cheney would be in this scenario
The Perils Of Padilla
Whether or not you buy into my pet conspiracy theory, one thing is clear from reading the latest court order demanding Jose Padilla be allowed to talk to a lawyer — the government is DESPERATE to keep this guy under wraps. The judge blasted the latest government arguments out of the water as both logically flawed and improperly filed. He also made it clear that he believed the government was being deliberately obstructive, seeking to delay its compliance with the court's order by filing meritless arguments and defying both the spirit and the letter of the order. Whether Padilla is John Doe 2, or whether he's simply bleeding out the eyes from U.S. sponsored torture sessions, this has gone on long enough. It's time for the government to cough this guy up.
Fucked Concept: Secrets
Severity:Any thing they want to hide that bad, I want to know
The Art of Diplomacy
What if you gave a war and nobody came? The U.S. continued down the rocky path to embarrassing disaster Tuesday, as the world took a sharp left turn against George W. Bush's adventuresome war plans. With potentially three vetoes in the U.N. Security Council (and only one actually needed), Dub and his band of misfit hicks spent the weekend on the phone trying to convince world leaders that this war is necessary and moral. The end result of all these calls? We're still looking at three vetoes (out of five possible); the Secretary General says the U.S. will violate the U.N. charter if it takes unilateral action; and WE LOST BRITAIN! Yes, faithful lapdog Tony Blair has picked an inopportune time to develop a spine, as Britain suddenly agreed to consider some sort of "test" which would allow the Iraqis to demonstrate their "good" intentions. On top of all that, the U.S. military deployment has progressed to the point that it would practically be more expensive to STOP the war than go ahead with it! What a fucking mess! It's a quagmire before it even begins! You know, Kissinger might have been a mass-murdering psychotic, but at least you got the impression he knew what he was doing.
Concept: Looking before you leap
Severity: At this rate, Dub is going to get Saddam the Nobel Peace Prize
No Comment
But then this story hardly needs one...
Concept: Shame
Severity: No Such Thing
Hint: It's A Trick Question
Fill in the blank from Dubya's speech Thursday night! "________ is a part of the war on terror. ________ is a country that has got terrorist ties. It's a country with wealth. It's a country that trains terrorists, a country that could arm terrorists. And our fellow Americans must understand in this new war against terror, that we not only must chase down al Qaeda terrorists, we must deal with weapons of mass destruction, as well."
a) Saudi Arabia
b) Pakistan
c) Iraq
d) The United States
If you said a) Saudi Arabia, you would be wrong. Saudi Arabia has wealth which it spends liberally on terrorists and it gives safe haven to wanted terrorists sought by the U.S., but it doesn't train terrorists and has no weapons of mass destruction. If you said b) Pakistan, you'd be wrong. Pakistan harbors and trains terrorists and has nuclear weapons, but it doesn't have wealth. If you said c) Iraq, you'd be wrong. Iraq trains terrorists, but fewer of them than Pakistan does, and it has chemical and biological weapons, but no nuclear weapons.
If you said d) the United States, you are correct! The United States has been riddled with al Qaeda cells in the last 10 years. It is a wealthy country that funded and armed both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It GAVE Iraq its chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s (including smallpox, anthrax and bubonic plague) as well as components that could be used to create nuclear weapons. And last, but not least, it hoards the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the entire world.
Concept: Rationalizations
Severity: If you're going to use them, try to come up with some that are less blatantly hypocritical
Silly Boy, You Got So Much To Live For
Girl, I want you here with me. But I'm really not as cool as I'd like to be, 'cause there's Iraq, under my bed, and there's a little dictator in my head. And there's al Qaeda cells inside of me, that keeps bombin' ya, touchin' ya, watchin' ya, lovin' ya. Paranoia, the destroyer! Paranoia will destroy ya! Tony, Tony, help me please, I know you'll understand! There's a tiny voice inside of me, I'm a self-destructin' man! There's Tom Ridge, duct taping my bed. And John Ashcroft put a bug in my head! Self-destroyer, destroy your wealth! Destroy your friends, destroy yourself! It's about one week 'till self-destruction Light the fuse and start eruption!
Concept: Paranoia
Severity: May destroy ya
Somebody Explain This
OK, so Iraq is doing whatever the hell it's doing over there within the borders of its country, and we're pissed off about that, so we're going to invade them. But North Korea is buzzing our planes with fighter jets in international airspace, threatening World War III and openly building nuclear weapons with which to equip their arsenal of missiles with the range to reach the West Coast, and we think diplomacy is the answer? WHAT THE FUCK? Is this logic? Is this consistency? Is this foreign policy? I guess North Korea doesn't feed Dubya's Oedipal complex enough to get on the radar screen.
Concept: Fuck orange alert, whatever happened to Defcon One?
Severity: 50 megatons
Nobody Here But Justice Chickens
Don't you hate it when your words haunt you? Pakistani authorities this weekend arrested Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attack on America (and a major figure in the whoisjohndoe2.com investigation.
Remember when Dubya promised we'd either bring the terrorists to justice or bring justice to the terrorists? Well, justice is going to have a tough time finding Khalid, who is being held in an undisclosed location, in an undisclosed country, by an undisclosed (but possibly U.S.) agency. He's going to be held indefinitely while we "don't" torture him for information. and will likely never face trial either on the 1996 bombing plot for which he has already been indicted nor for the Sept. 11 attacks — of which he is the single most responsible perpetrator.
Concept: Justice
Severity: Maybe a corrupt prison guard will smuggle some justice to Khalid in a cake
P.S. Have you noticed how no one is talking about an "orange alert" in light of the likely pending retributionary plans of al Qaeda?
P.P.S. Andrew Conway pointed out to me, quite correctly, that the above comment presumes the report of Khalid's arrest to be true, which it might not be. Having done a great deal of research on Khalid, I am inclined to disagree with the view presented in this link as to his importance in al Qaeda, but stranger things have happened. I also would be amazed if even THIS administration would be so stupid as to confirm such an arrest if it didn't happen, given the ease with which it could be proven wrong, but then I get a little nervous when I start making assumptions that are predicated on the Bush administration "not being that stupid." Anyway, click the link and judge for yourself.
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