Yesterday, President Bush used the veto for only the second time since he took office to send the Iraq war spending bill back to Congress. His rational was that the bill - laden with domestic pork - fundamentally infringed upon his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief by legislating war strategy. I agree completely.

Congress has no constitutional authority to tell the President how a war should be prosecuted. Congress chooses whether or not to declare a war, and Congress pays for that war thereafter, but that's all the Constitution provides for.

If the Democrats want this war to end, then the operation needs to be de-funded. It's political suicide of course, but what's more important, putting an end to the most expensive American foreign policy boondoggle in history or covering your own ass? We're talking about Washington here so I think we can expect some world-class half-assery over the next couple of weeks after which legislation sporting some shiny new compromise language will emerge with both sides claiming victory and absolutely nothing changing for the troops in the field. Shit, they're not real people anyway.

I want this war to end. Hell, I wanted not to start. But over the past few weeks I've watched the Democrats formulate their strategy, and found it severely lacking. For years I've criticized this Administration's inability to be truthful with the American people while it played our emotions for its own political gain, now the Democrats are doing the same damn thing. There is no "immediate withdrawal." That kind of talk needs to stop. Now. The best we can hope for militarily is a phased redeployment to an area from which our forces can respond to the Middle East should a truly state-threatening crisis arise. Africa, I'm looking at you. Talk of benchmarks and surrender dates and all the rest is bullshit. There's no other word for it. Please stop. You're hurting America.

It's time for the Democrats in Congress to shut up and do their job: Oversight, oversight, oversight. If they don't like the job the President is doing, then bring the hammer down. Impeach the SOB and let it be over with.

Labels: Congress, George W. Bush, iraq

...or are you just happy to see me?

BAGHDAD, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) --The U.S. and Iraqi security forces have killed some 400 suspected insurgents and detained a similar number of people during the 11-day-old major security clampdown in the capital, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday.

Um...Nope, no human rights violations here. Move along.

I'm sure there's a reason why this isn't getting wider reportage in the U.S. media. Well, I mentioned it here a week ago. So that's something I guess.

Labels: insurgency, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki

Tits deep and falling fast the al-Maliki-led, U.S.-backed government in Iraq is struggling to provide basic necessities to a nation broken by war, civil and sectarian strife, and ancient animosities. While American troops are dying every day as the situation continues it's bottomless descent, it took a Congressional repudiation for the Bush Administration to take action.

As the symbolic, non-binding resolution moves from the House to the Senate today, Secretary of State Condoleza Rice flew to Baghdad unannounced to secure the Administration's position in the hearts and minds of Iraq's beleaguered leaders. She'll be playing hardball demanding results from the latest plan to quell the violence in the nation's capitol, while offering assurances that the Bush Administration has no intention of caving to Congress or the American people. The escalation will happen. But, if swift progress is not made, the U.S. will lessen it's support of the ruling coalition, which is essentially a death sentence to anyone working in the Iraqi government at the moment. In short: "We don't care how you do it, just get it done." The pressure is on.

The Administration's escalation plan calls for 21,500 U.S. troops to be embedded with Iraqi forces to secure key areas of Baghdad and Al Anbar province. This allows the full spectrum of American military intelligence, technology, and fire support to be made available to Iraqi units on the ground through their American embeds without compromising U.S. operational security. It also allows Iraqi troops - taking orders from their own civilian government - to effectively become the best equipped, best informed, and best trained death squads the world has ever known without asking U.S. troops to become war criminals. It's all very neat and tidy.

Dear people of Iraq, rejoice for you have been liberated.

Labels: Condoleza Rice, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki, Surge

Even as debate rages in Congress and around watercoolers throughout world regarding President Bush's Iraq escalation plan, the ground work is being laid for America's next ill conceived military boondoggle: Iran.

Across America - in Illinois, Hawaii, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Arkansas, and Kentucky - sightings of so-called UFOs are spiking. While these sightings are dismissed or ignored by military and civil air authorities, watchers of the night sky who also pay attention to global geo-politics recognize this activity for what it is: maneuvers and operations in preparation for a military strike.

With these activities taking place beneath the noses of Congress and the American people, a strike on Iran is now a foregone conclusion. It is a question of when, not if a strike will occur.

What makes these questions other than academic is that Bush is putting in place military assets that will enable him to order and effect the rapid nuclear castration of Iran. But scarcely a peep of protest has been heard from our congressional leadership.

Observers have noted the dispatch of minesweepers and another U.S. carrier to the Persian Gulf, the naming of Admiral Bill "Fox" Fallon to head CentCom, which today manages two ground wars, and the return of U.S. fighter-bombers to Turkey. ~via

Either the unitary executive is about to open another front in the struggle for Pax Americana, or the Greys are finally coming home.

Labels: Congress, iran, iraq, Surge, Unitary Executive

The spread of multi-drug resistant infection concerns us all. And having some small experience with military and VA medical facilities myself I found this article to be particularly troubling.

"The wounded soldiers were not smuggling bacteria from the desert into military hospitals after all. Instead, they were picking it up there. The evacuation chain itself had become the primary source of infection. By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world."

If you or someone you love visits VA medical facilities, be aware of the dangers and keep an eye out for symptoms of infection. If you have the choice, seek care at civilian facilities whenever possible. I know this is a no-brainer for most of you, but let your parents and grandparents know too. From the article:

"One of the most unsettling long-term questions about the military outbreak is how far the bugs of war will proliferate now that thousands of Iraq veterans have entered the VA hospital system. Many of the older vets who are already there - struggling with chronic conditions for decades, in and out of nursing homes - fall into the bacteria's target demographic."

On a conspiratorial note: Do medical investigators have access to the engineered, oil-eating versions of this bug mentioned in the Wired article? Was it used in the clean-up operations following the first Gulf War? Did the engineers build in a genetic kill switch?

~Wired

Labels: Acinetobacteria, gulf war, iraq

What a way to end the week. Bush wants a troop increase; a “surge.” One last thrust to quell the violence once and for all. You know, like Belfast. That he's had to reshuffle his military, intelligence and state department personnel to get this idea to float above outright ridicule is telling. Everyone knows a radically new strategy is necessary. And almost everyone knows a redeployment is an integral part of any such strategy, but not our Commander-In-Chief. I swear the man must think he's been chosen by God Himself to run this war. Oh wait...he does.

Our fledgling Democratic Congress has chimed in, and so has the military. It seems that while most of the plans for Operation Soup Fork call for 20 to 40 thousand additional U.S. troops, the Pentagon has reported that there's only a fraction of that number in any position to answer the call. Even a draft couldn't help with this plan. It would take months to train and deploy that many conscripts. And then there's Iran.

After a hopeful showing by moderates and reformers in the election recently, Iran has once again rattled its nuclear saber prompting Israel to intentionally leak its own military plans for a preemptive strategic nuclear strike against them. Madness just doesn't quite sum it up.

It's 2007. Any nation with the will to develop nuclear weapons shall have them. We need to accept this, and work with the facts. We didn't invade or bomb China when they went nuclear. We engaged them. The same can happen with Iran and every other nation that chooses to seek the bomb. There is always common ground, and there is always leverage. In this case we must accept that every nation has the right to self-determination (even the wacky ones). On these terms we can end our 27 year silence with Iran and re-establish diplomatic ties as co-equal, sovereign powers. Then, together with the other nuclear powers of the world we can begin what the wonks call a meaningful dialog.

Meanwhile, at the U.N., we can do something really nutty and stop behaving like hypocritical neo-nationalists and start acting like the world leader we claim to be. First step: an international nuclear open door policy. The nuclear powers of the world will police one another with a regime of inspections and standards formulated to discourage proliferation while maintaining the security of the most destructive weapons on Earth. That doesn't sound so bad now does it? For the sovereignty nuts out there I say: "Suck it." The American people have been not asked, but told that we will relinquish more civil rights and liberties for this global war on terror then I care to list here. What's the matter with letting the other kids in the club see our goods if it means we can subject them to the same mandatory inspections? It'll keep us safer in the long run while allowing us to keep an eye on our adversaries.

But that'll never happen. There will be troop increases in Iraq, and they will remain there long enough for the fat 30 year contracts to drop, so Bush & Co. can ride off into the sunset in style. Iran and Israel will forget about each other until CNN has another slow news day, and everyone will live happily ever after except the poor bastards in combat boots.

Labels: George W. Bush, iran, iraq, Israel, Surge

A week after one of his top aides was forced to resign for speaking to the press about plans for a possible amnesty for insurgents, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced his actual plan to establish a framework for peace in the war-torn nation: amnesty for insurgents.

Apparently the test balloon was well received.

Amnesty for Iraqi citizens who participated in acts of violence against Iraqi and Coalition forces is offered in hopes that such a program will marginalize foreign players in the conflict. Non-Iraqi combatants - long suspected of being the operational core of the insurgency - will become strangers in a strange land should this plan take root in the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Therein lies the problem. Amnesty as a form of mediation in civil and ethnic conflict is not a new concept. It's been utilized successfully to resolve conflicts and avert devastating violence in some of the most extreme situations of recent human strife. But there is a catch. The success of any amnesty is entirely dependent on the capacity and willingness of the parties involved to forgive and move on.

Those who currently man the opposition of occupation forces and the democratic regime it helped establish are not political dissidents. They are people who feel they have been wronged. Individuals who have suffered the traumas of an Abu Ghraib interrogation, or who have lost family in botched check-point inspections or neighborhood raids are not fighting for or against an ideology. They are fighting for vengeance. Acceptance and forgiveness are not in their vernacular.

Not that it matters. Whether the individual players in the insurgency choose to stop fighting and collaborating with non-Iraqi fighters is moot. Either way a solution is fast at hand for American troops.

If the amnesty is accepted, Prime Minister al-Maliki will have to convince the Iraqis to "just get along." A gambit which, if successful, would lead to the reduction of American troop levels at the request of the Iraqi people; The pre-requisite of coalition disengagement.

If the amnesty is denied, the Iraqi government - and by extension their coalition partners - will have a full-blown civil war on their hands. Not exactly a solution, but it would be an official evolution of the situation. New options would be available to the coalition. Options such as declaring the civil war an internal problem of a sovereign nation and walking out with a deal to provide funding, arms, training, and logistical support. A slight departure from the "you break it, you buy it" paradigm true, but also a plausibly dignified step toward tactical disengagement.

On the other hand a denied amnesty could lead to perpetual American involvement in the region. Imagine a Vietnam-eqse theater of operations stretching from Israel to the Himalayas where terrorists and other enemies of the "forces of freedom" are hunted by thinly stretched American forces for a generation. This prospect is not really a solution, but it might force the rest of America to wake up and smell the quagmire sooner rather than later and demand this Administration lead us out of the war they led us into.

Here's hoping this hand of Texas hold'em doesn't go in the toilet.

Labels: Abu Ghraib, insurgency, iraq, Nuri al-Maliki

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of the great state of California, and commander-in-chief of her formidable army, has denied a request by the Bush Administration for troops to be sent to the U.S.-Mexican border.

Money was an early concern, but Gov. Schwarzenegger took care of that. His people inked a deal with the Pentagon's people ensuring that funding for this immigrant jihad - an estimated $1.4 billion - will come from the national war chest not California's. Thanks Arnold, now my tax dollars are going towards this boondoggle too.

So if it wasn't money, why did the Governor balk? Simply put, he doesn't want to become the next Ray Nagin. Disaster looms large for California, and it's not a threat from the border-crossers who fuel the state's economic engine. It's much more serious than geography and paperwork. The Earth herself wants to drive Californians into the sea. Any combination of earthquakes, fires, drought, and rolling power outages could turn L.A. into Baghdad overnight, without warning. The Governor knows this, and he's not going to allow the Bush Administration to set the stage for the fall of California on his watch.

Schwarzenegger wants his troops trained to deal with Hollywood proportion catastrophe, not walking a fence.

That's all well and good for California, but was it worth snubbing our petulant, lame-duck, billionaire-boys-club president? Will the Governor choose anything else to publicly disagree with the president on? Will there be retribution? Why do I suddenly crave popcorn?

Labels: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George W. Bush, iraq, Ray Nagin

War: Take a good look.

Labels: iraq, Shock and Awe

The new.

I've spent the last couple of days giving myself a crash course on css. Hopefully that's obvious.

The cool.

Newsmap is a my newest, most favoritest toy. It's an app that shows a graphical representation of the amount of "ink" individual stories are getting via Google News. Awesome.

The real.

600 American lives lost so far, and it's about to get a whole lot worse.

"KUFA, Iraq, April 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - After U.S.-led occupation forces killed 20 of his supporters in An-Najaf and two others during a raid on his office in Baghdad, Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr urged his followers to "terrorize the enemy" because protests have become useless."

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Seven U.S. soldiers were killed in clashes with supporters of a leading Shiite cleric in a Baghdad neighborhood Sunday, military officials told CNN. "

Labels: bloggers, blogging, CSS, Internet, iraq, Mehdi Army, Moqtada al-Sadr, technology

A few months ago, during a White House visit by President Fox of Mexico, President Bush let slip a curious code name: Operation Desert Badger. The reference was part the President's reply when he was asked "...is it true, as your former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says, that you started planning for the invasion of Iraq within days of your inauguration? Do you feel betrayed? And should he have released those documents?"

In response, President Bush said "the stated policy of my administration towards Saddam Hussein was very clear. Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger, or fly-overs and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines. And then, all of a sudden, September the 11th hit. And as the President of the United States, my most solemn obligation is to protect the security of the American people. That's my -- to me that's the most solemn thing an American President -- or any president -- must do. And I took that duty very seriously."

So here we have one of the President's famous instances of equating the September 11th attacks with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. But there's something else. Tonight CNN reports "the secret plan Operation Desert Badger called for escalating air strikes within four to eight hours of a shootdown [of a US/UK fly-over]. Pentagon sources say a long list of targets across the country would be hit, crippling Iraqi air defenses and command and control. The plan went far beyond the Clinton administration's 1998 Operation Desert Fox, which hit 100 targets in four days...And so we were fashioning policy along those lines...One defense official familiar with the plan says, "If a plane got shot down, that was the trigger, we were going in." Over time, the source said, Operation Desert Badger evolved into a more robust plan for attacking the regime...The president would have quickly decided whether to take the next step, approving a small number of ground troops to secure key areas. At the time, only a few thousand troops were in nearby Kuwait. Sources tell CNN Operation Desert Badger was not a plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power...Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says the new options were justified by the threat..."We packaged them, we pre-cleared them with the president, and we were cocked and ready to do a variety of different things in the event something occurred that fit one of those possible unfortunate possibilities.""

Desert Badger was a planned retaliation against the Iraqi regime. One that went far beyond Desert Fox. A decapitation strike perhaps? Was Saddam one of the command and control targets? If so, with all this planning and emphasis on Saddam and Iraq ready to be "triggered" by something "that fit one of those possible unfortunate possibilities", can the Administration still say with a straight face that it didn't push Dick Clarke to fabricate a connection between the September 11th attacks and Iraq?

Labels: 9/11, Desert Badger, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, iraq, Mexico, saddam hussein, Vincente Fox

Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush has hit the administration where it hurts. He claims the White House - prior to September 11, 2001 - couldn't be bothered with talk of terrorism. Furthermore, Clarke comments on the administration's obsession with Iraq, not Osama since day one of the administration despite overwhelming intelligence that something big was about to go down.

Before, during, and after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the White House was hell bent on going to war with Saddam Hussein. So much so that Clarke was pressured to concoct a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. When he refused to do so, he was shuffled off to head a new cyber-terrorism initiative.

As expected the administration has come out with guns blazing. Fortunately for Clarke, he isn't married to a covert CIA agent whose life can be threatened by exposing her identity to the world with a few well placed phone calls. Nevertheless, it's character assassination a-go-go inside the beltway today as the White House fights to keep this story out of American diner conversation. Ain't election years a bitch, George?

Labels: 9/11, al-Qa'eda, bill clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, iraq, Richard A. Clarke, Ronald Reagan, saddam hussein

In mid-2003 the average American had grown isolated from the global community. A common attitude in many parts of the United States could be summarized thusly: “If someone doesn’t like America, fuck them. Fuck the French, fuck the U.N. and fuck those hippie scumbag protesters out in the streets.”

The Bush Administration’s policy of continuous war for continuous profit was criticized by many constituencies, but the “opposition” party fielded no fewer than nine candidates for the election in 2004. The Democratic party was plagued in the early primary season by the inability to organize the bulk of their membership behind a single candidate. This problem was solved by one candidate’s swift adoption of the Internet as a legitimate medium for serious political debate.

During that summer of odd weather, momentous discoveries, and strange occurrences few people noticed the subtle games being played in the nation’s places of power.

The news had been flooded for months with stories of war and weapons of mass destruction. Every office in America had suddenly spawned pundits in the fields of International Law, Military Science, and Politics in general. The populace was numb with talk of precision strikes, the forced exile of foreign leaders, and the role of the American military around the globe.

In the lingering glow of Baghdad’s destruction, the United States made itself ready to lead the world into the greatest period of weapons proliferation ever recorded.

The United States had pioneered use of high-precision weaponry during the first Gulf War in 1993. Guided missiles were used to great effect in destroying specific buildings in a crowded city, and leveling bridges with a single shot. Forever gone were the days of carpet bombing.

After swift success in annihilating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with judicious use of precision weapons and special forces operations, the Bush Administration set its sights on the so-called “Axis of Evil.” According to George W. Bush, three nations comprised this axis: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. While Iran and North Korea were well-known to be engaged in nuclear research with the goal of producing a weapon, it is now generally agreed that Iraq had no such program following the destruction of its fledgling nuclear research facility by Israel in 1993.

President Bush, armed with doctored intelligence reports and a determination to go to war, falsely argued that Iraq not only had a nuclear weapons program, but also vast, uncounted stores of chemical and biological weapons. He erroneously claimed these weapons could be used against the United States if the Iraqi government sold them. To this day no such weapons have yet been found.

Gulf War II saw the first use of a super bomb known as a MOAB or Big Blue in combat. At that time, it was the largest, most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever conceived. Video of a test of the MOAB was distributed to the international media before the war. No public outcry beyond a growing global anti-war movement was generated by news that the weapon would likely be used in the war. Experimental thermobaric weapons used months earlier in Afghanistan similarly drew little public criticism.

The trend of public apathy towards U.S. production and use of weapons of mass destruction was also apparent in the lack of media coverage and public outcry concerning Agent Orange and Napalm; two weapons of mass destruction which once commanded extremely high buzz-factor in the United States only a decade earlier.

The stage was set for the U.S. Department of Defense and its industry partners to re-kindle America’s love affair with nuclear weapons. With public outrage no-longer a factor in the United States nuclear policy, all that stood in the way was a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing declared in 1992. That moratorium was debated at the now historic Offutt Conference in August 2003 on the anniversaries of the first and – until that point – only uses of nuclear weapons in combat; the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States of America.

The argument was made that the casualties of the second Gulf War could have been avoided had the first surgical strike of the war, known as the “decapitation” strategy, been successful. The Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, and his top advisers had been tracked to a specific building in Baghdad. The building was destroy by precision bombs and missiles. Saddam and his inner circle escaped with there lives. Had the bombs and missiles been low-yield nuclear “bunker busters” instead of conventional weapons, the Generals claimed, the Iraqi regime would have crumbled instantly.

Their theories were tested in the next war. But that’s a different story for a different time.

Labels: bloggers, blogging, iraq, MOAB, Offutt Conference, thermobaric weapons

I was doing some research tonight and tried to find a particular link that I know I had blogged at one point. That archive of posts is getting pretty deep. My high hopes that a search for "rapid dissent" and the object of my research on google were dashed instantly. I was going to have to this the old fashioned way: I had to go back and read my own blog. It was unusual. Like reading old term papers.

Anyway, I ran across this gem from April 3rd, 2003. The links still work. Not to shabby for a washed-up, armchair intel analyst if I do say so myself:

"When you sit down across from an opponent at chess, or tic-tac-toe for that matter, it’s not very difficult to play that opponent to a draw – even if they’re a “better” player than you. If you have no intention of winning from the start, you can turn the game into a very frustrating exercise for your adversary; Especially if instead of a single match, you play a series of long, slow matches. It’s obvious that the superior player will win in the end, but who’s counting the pawns?

In reading about what’s likely to become “The Siege of Baghdad,” I’ve had to ask myself, what is an acceptable end-game for Saddam Hussein at this point? He’s not in this battle to actually win – that option doesn’t exist for him. The best he can do is inflict as much damage to US forces as possible, and hope that world and US public opinion will eventually further hamstring the Pentagon’s efforts to fight this war the way they want and need to in order to minimize the loss of American lives. This is, of course, monstrous – but all’s fair.

In my mind, it’s logical to ask what the magic number is. That being the number of US casualties Saddam Hussein’s forces must inflict before his death for this entire operation to be considered a costly “failure” on the part of the United States. In other words, how many US lives will it take before history regards this war as Vietnam II, instead of Gulf War II?

Numerically, I think it’ll take far less than the number of lives lost in Vietnam. I also think it will take far less time. The stakes are much, much higher here. The US is using 21st century technology: a constellation of intelligence satellites, precision guided bombs, special forces, the best of the best of the best…against troops employing soviet era, rusting, dilapidated armaments.

So far, we know that the US troops on the ground have had some difficultly. It’s widely believed that Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration wanted to not only do this "on the cheap,” but also to show how much the US could do with so little effort. The plan was to show the entire Axis of Evil how easy it is for the US to cut through a nation like a hot knife through butter – just like Afghanistan. North Korea and Iran are watching this unfold just as attentively as China was watching the first Gulf War. This is an international parade and review of the United States top weaponry and intelligence capabilities – every fuck-up and short-coming is being noted by military and diplomatic analysts world-wide. The precise outcome of this war will have serious long-term geo-political consequences.

So what’s the magic number? How many Americans need to die before the American public begins to loose confidence in its Discovery Channel education on the methods of modern warfare? 1,000? 2,500? 5,000? So far the count is at 78, and the siege of Baghdad has yet to begin.

Republican Guard forces have been steadily falling back to Baghdad. Behind them they’ve left skeleton crews and heavy armaments that have been “melting” away against the superior US offensive. These forces have not surrendered, nor have they been added to casualty lists. Where are they? A “standoff” in Baghdad appears eminent.

If the Bush administration pushes our troops into Baghdad, the odds of our “winning” this war in the history books get a whole lot worse. But what are the alternatives?

1. Decisive military victory: Saddam and his top officials get taken out one-by-one or en masse by special forces or surgical missile strikes before US regulars must enter the city limits. This is an on-going operation, and has thus far proven very difficult. This type of operation consumes vast amounts of intelligence resources, and risks high profile US casualties and POWs for the Iraqi regime to parade as propaganda – not to mention the potential of loss of sensitive materials (i.e. frequency lists, maps, etc.) or equipment carried by these personnel which could be later exploited by Iraqi forces should even one of the missions fail.

2. Siege, and diplomacy. The city is surrounded. Water, electricity, and food supplies are cut-off. Another ultimatum is issued calling for the head of Saddam and his top officials. Exile might also be put back on the table. At best this might result in an internal coup which has failed to materialize as of yet. This strategy commits US forces to entering the city eventually should the plan fail. It also has a time limit – the “humanitarian crisis” clock will begin ticking the moment the city’s water supplies are turned-off.

3. Shock and awe. Remember this old hat? Well it’s still an option. In fact – although I might be giving too much credit to the administration here – the battle plan up until this point, including the “setbacks,” may have all been part of a scheme to draw Saddam and his forces off-guard before the final implementation of this ambitious strategy. With several tens of thousands of US troops on the “threshold of the city,” shock and awe has a legitimate chance of striking fear and terror into troops stationed in Baghdad. A mass surrender at this point would scuttle any of Saddam’s plans. The problem is this: Do we have enough bombs left for shock and awe? Reports have been trickling out that the US forces are running out of costly precision missiles and bombs. Although it’s worth noting that we haven’t yet seen the use of the MOAB/“Big Blue” super bombs touted in the days before the initial strike of the war. Has the administration been saving them until this point? Will it matter if they have?

I’m sure there are more options available to our military planners as our troops approach Baghdad. These are just the ones that came to the top of my head this morning. Time will tell in the end, but I sincerely hope that the current strategy of a “final battle inside the capital” is not what we will see unfold. Street-to-street fighting in Baghdad will be like sending our troops into an urban warfare meat grinder, or perhaps even a chemical trap. All the while, Saddam and his forces will keep-on playing for a draw, and the rest of us will be left counting the pawns."

Labels: bloggers, blogging, iraq

In those heady days before the first bombs fell in Iraq, when worldwide protests and public outcry had a chance to change the course of world history (before the will of the people took a backseat to ideology in this country), a friend of mine hit me with the old “love it or leave it” argument.

His charge was something along the lines of “If you love Iraq so much, why don’t you go there and see for yourself what kinds of rights and freedoms you’ll enjoy under Saddam’s regime?” Despite my agreement that Saddam Hussein was indeed a colossal fuck-wad, my friend refused to see that my chief concern was not whether or not the man was fit to lead a nation, but whether or not the United States had the right to make that determination, and then act unilaterally against a sovereign government.

International law aside, many of us were also against the war on matters of principle. The Iraq-Al Qa’eda connection never existed. Not to the extent that Bush Administration claimed, and certainly not to extent of the well-known Saudi Arabia-Al Qa’ida connection. The call for war against Iraq simply made no sense to us, but no one would discuss or debate the issue. “Love or leave it,” was the mantra-like answer our questions received.

Some protesters felt very strongly – long before recent revelations - that the Bush Administration was trying to hoodwink the American public by using the War on Terrorism and the search for Bin Laden to generate support for a war against Iraq. These individuals knew then that the so-called “evidence” against Iraq was fabricated and massaged to fit the Bush Administration’s ideology of war-at-any-cost. One such individual was a retired schoolteacher: Faith Fippinger.

Fippinger was one of a score Americans who traveled to Iraq before the war began to act as a “human shield.” This group was joined by as many as 300 others from nations around the world. Their intent: To serve as a deterrent for an unjust war. Shortly after their presence was noted in the international media, it was made known that these peace-niks would enjoy no special consideration from the U.S. Military when the bullets began flying.

Despite this, many peace protesters stayed on in Iraq as long as they dared. Their efforts were in vain. The Bush Administration ignored the global demand for diplomacy, and sent the United States, Briton, and the “Coalition of the Willing” (comprised of countries most Americans can’t even locate on a map, much less pronounce) into war.

Adding insult to injury the Bush Administration, through the U.S. Treasury Department (a.k.a the U.S. Secret Service) has served Fippinger with fines totaling in excess of $10,000 for her trip to Iraq. They claim her actions were in violation of U.S. sanctions against Iraq, and that she can either pay-up or face up to 12 years in prison for the crimes of her insolence.

For her part, Fippinger has stated that she would not pay, declaring, "I will not contribute money to the United States government to continue the buildup of its arsenal of weapons." To which officials responded with the threat of increased fines or the garnishing of her retirement pay, her Social Security check or her other assets.

It’s not as bad as living under Saddam yet, but we seem one step closer to tyranny nonetheless.

Labels: activism,