Cheryl Seal writes: "We are appalled by the spin we keep hearing from the Bush campaign and its media minions on John Kerry's plan for Iraq. We hear the media claiming that they have 'never heard a plan' from Kerry, when he has, over and over, reiterated a detailed plan. We hear Bushies claim Kerry has 'flipflopped' on a plan when, in fact, Kerry's plan has not varied at all, except to adjust for new crises created in Iraq by Bush. Even search engines have been manipulated to make it all but impossible to find any info on Kerry's plan. Now, as the Bush campaign's last-ditch spin to deflect the impact of the debates, we hear that Kerry's plan is actually 'just like Bush's plan. To remedy this gross failure of information, here is an outline of Kerry's plan for Iraq and how it differs by about a thousand light years from the Bush plan."

Despite the best trained, highest skilled, bravest soldiers in the world, the US admits that we are losing certain regions in Iraq. The NY Times writes, "top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas." Once again the war in Iraq is proven to be a Bush failure. Bad planning, bad intelligence, not enough forces, Halliburton, a strategy that only consists of Bush friend's making enormous profits, and a Commander in Chief that was AWOL is not a recipe for success. Move aside George, and let a real War hero, a leader with vision, John Kerry lead America to help achieve real freedom and security in Iraq.

Today (8/16), Bush made a noisy, headline-copping show of announcing the "realignment" (corporate speak for shuffling aimlessly from place to place without a plan) of 70,000 troops from Europe. Maybe he was hoping nobody would then notice that while he was drowning out other news that the largest deployment of National Guard troops since World War II was underway in Texas. 3,000 Guard troops, part of the 56th Brigade, 36th Infantry Division (formerly 2nd Brigade, 49th Armored Division), based in Fort Worth are being shipped to Iraq and into combat. This is the first divisional brigade in the Texas National Guard to be mobilized for duty outside the US since World War II, and represents the largest TX Guard formation shipped into combat since the IRaq war began. Funny, we didn't hear about this on the nightly news - all we heard was Bush's smokescreening "realignment" sound byte.

David Corn writes, "While I was tussling with rightwing activist Grover Norquist this morning on NPR's 'Diane Rehm Show,' Norquist did what many conservatives do when confronted by the charge that George W. Bush dishonestly hyped the WMD threat in Iraq. He referred to Bill Clinton. The 42nd president, Norquist maintained, supported Bush's invasion of Iraq because he (Clinton, that is) also believed there were WMDs in Iraq." Incredibly, Bill Clinton was just entering Rehm's studio, so Corn asked Clinton if it was true. Clinton said he only endorsed the congressional resolution granting Bush the authority to wage war... because he had figured Hussein would not have permitted weapons inspectors to return to Iraq without the threat of force. "Hans Blix [the chief weapons inspector] was tough," Clinton said, adding that he had wanted to see inspections continue. Hey rightwingers - quit lying about Clinton!

"The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials. Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many - including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons - appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said. In retrospect, the failures were an early warning sign about the thinness of American intelligence on Iraq and on Saddam's inner circle. Some of the officials who survived the raids have become leaders of what the Defense Intelligence Agency now believes has been a planned anti-American insurgency."

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was a colonial war and there were some in the United States who saw it as a means of getting their hands on Iraqi oil, a senior Saudi ambassador was quoted as saying Monday. Prince Turki al-Faisal, ambassador to Britain and Ireland, told the Irish Independent newspaper Washington's stated aims in going to war in Iraq masked a more cynical reality. "No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war, in the final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars conducted by the ex-colonial powers when they went out to conquer the rest of the world," Prince Turki said. Prince Turki said U.S. pledges to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq remained "still just aims..."The individual Iraqi, until he can actually declare that his government is truly representative of his wishes and aspirations must still consider himself occupied."

Ray McGovern writes: "Even with 500,000 troops. But who will tell the president? Not the sycophants around him who parrot what he and Cheney want to hear. It is time for the president to widen his circle of advisers to include experienced specialists inoculated against charges of lack of patriotism for questioning the wisdom of this war. President Lyndon Johnson did precisely that immediately after the countrywide Tet offensive in early 1968 in Vietnam. Johnson's panel of 'wise men' came up with solid recommendations in three weeks during March 1968, prompting him to turn toward negotiations and refuse to run for another term. My colleagues and I are appalled at how few lessons have been assimilated from the experience of Vietnam. Most of us had a front-row seat in that misguided war and had hoped it would be the last such 'march of folly' in our lifetimes."

"Spain's prime minister said Sunday he hopes the deteriorating situation in Iraq will serve as a warning to countries against using preemptive wars in the future. 'The mission in Iraq, which is showing itself every day to be a failure, should serve as a lesson to the international community: preemptive wars, never again; violations of international law, never again,' Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said."

Ted Koppel's effort to show the faces and names of the Iraq war dead has been vehemently opposed by the White House and some of its media minions. Why? Gary Fisher writes: "During the Vietnam war the media reported the weekly body count of U.S. servicepersons killed in the conflict. These reports went on inexorably, week after week after week. And over time these numbers became just another mildly interesting statistic dropped in between the local news, sports and the weather. And then on June 27, 1969 Life Magazine published the pictures of a single week's Vietnam War American dead. Page after page after page of bright young faces and the realization that they were all gone, killed, dead. These faces had families. And these were just the American dead. The totality of the pictures made a statement that transcended all the rhetoric on both sides of the issue. They were shocking where the numbers were not. The pictures personalized the war."

In a stunning show of just how out of touch with reality the Bush administration really is, an attack on Fallujah has been ordered. Fewer than 3,000 US troops have been pitted against a city of 300,000 (the news reports keep trying to falsely pare the figure down). In a Sharon-style "hammering", AC-130 gunships pounded the poor district of Jolan, setting fire to multiple buildings. The ships dropped leaflets that are straight out of a Bush Rambo fantasy: "Surrender, you are surrounded. If you are a terrorist, beware, because your last day was yesterday. In order to spare your life end your actions and surrender to coalition forces now. We are coming to arrest you.'" While Bush plays out his belligerent fantasies, our soldiers are being thrust into extreme danger.

AP: "U.S. troops shot to death two employees of U.S.-funded TV station Al-Iraqiya on April 19 and wounded a third in the central city of Samara, the station said. Correspondent Asaad Kadhim and driver Hussein Saleh were killed. Cameraman Bassem Kamel was wounded 'after American forces opened fire on them while they were performing their duty,' the station announced. The station, which is funded by the Pentagon interrupted its broadcasts to announce the deaths and aired Koranic texts as a symbol of mourning. The U.S. military had no immediate comment."

Robert Freeman writes: "Both Iraq and Vietnam were founded on lies...With Iraq, we don't need to wait for a Pentagon Papers to know the trigger or the extent of the lying. It is already notorious. Because of Bush's strategic commitment to global hegemony and his messianic ideological persuasions, the U.S. cannot get out of Iraq; but because of the realities of colonialism, guerilla war, phony democracy, and the foundation of lies to justify it all, it will not be able to win either. In Iraq...there is no independent media capable of calling out the emperor's nakedness. There is no China next door to threaten another Asian land war should U.S. aggression become too heinous. There are no allies the U.S. needs to heed... The damage to U.S. prestige in the world for its illegal invasion of Iraq is already done. The danger now is that in his desperation to 'avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat,' the repudiation of his entire presidency, Bush will resort to apocalyptic barbarism."

Woodward "says Cheney's well-known hawkish attitudes on Iraq were frequently decisive in Bush's decision-making. Cheney pressed the outgoing Clinton administration to brief Bush on the Iraq threat before he took office, Woodward writes. In August 2002, when Bush talked publicly of being a patient man who would weigh Iraqi options carefully, the VP took the administration's Iraq policy on a harder track in a speech declaring the weapons inspections ineffective. Cheney's speech was viewed as the beginning of a campaign to undermine or overthrow Saddam. Woodward said Bush let Cheney make the speech without asking what he would say. The vice president also figured prominently in a protracted decision March 19, 2003, to strike Iraq before a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave the country had expired... 'I think we ought to go for it,' Cheney is quoted as saying. Bush did." Did Cheney start the war to steal Iraq's oil? We DEMAND the release of Cheney's Energy Task Force papers!

Sf.gate: "A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support U.S. Marines battling for control of the city, senior U.S. Army officers here said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on U.S. plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces. The refusal occurred the first time U.S. commanders have sought to involve the postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and came as large parts of Iraqi security forces have stopped carrying out their duties. The 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Armed Forces refused to fight Monday after members of the unit were shot at in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad while en route to Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold....The convoy then turned around and returned to the battalion's home on a former Republican Guard base in Taji, a town north of the capital. Eaton said members of the battalion insisted during discussions: 'We did not sign up to fight Iraqis.'"

Thomas Shanker writers, "U.S. commanders are preparing for a prolonged campaign to quell the twin uprisings in Iraq, issuing orders to attack relentlessly any members of a rebellious Shiite militia in southern cities while moving methodically to squeeze Sunni fighters west of Baghdad until they lay down their arms. Officials in Baghdad and at the Pentagon said the military is prepared, if no peaceful solution materializes, to use two distinct sets of tactics to counter what they viewed as two different insurgencies -- both of them dangerous and complex situations on difficult urban battlefields. One campaign would entail retaking cities around Baghdad, if necessary block by block, against an entrenched Sunni foe." And Bush cheerleaders say this is NOT the beginning of another Vietnam? The only difference is that this is an asphalt jungle.

Reuters & AP via Gulf News: "Supporters of firebrand cleric Moqtada Al Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early yesterday evening, a coalition source in southern Iraq said. The source told CNN that Al Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of the holiest Shiite shrines, and Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations. The source also said Al Sadr was bringing in followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces." Meanwhile, the US Media, including the NY Times, insists the fighting is confined largely to Fallujah, involving mostly Sunni Saddam loyalists -- when in fact Shiites and Sunnis are now uniting AGAINST the coalition.

"George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington... Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan... Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'"

"The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair. Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal... And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith's final advice. Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed a specific UN mandate to authorise military action."

Before Bush's invasion of Iraq, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research provided the most accurate information about Iraq's alleged weapons program -- information that undermined the case for W-ar. Now, Senate Republicans have disinvited the Bureau from testifying at an annual Congressional hearing on worldwide security threats, even though it has participated every year since its founding in the early 1990s. Busheviks don't want to know the truth -- they only want reinforcement for doing whatever they plan on doing.

"Archbishop Desmond Tutu will challenge Tony Blair and George Bush today to apologise for their pursuit of a counter-productive and 'immoral' war in Iraq. In a scathing analysis of the background to the invasion, he will ridicule the 'dangerously flawed' intelligence that Britain and the US used to justify a military action which has made the world a 'great deal less safe'... Delivering the Longford Lecture, sponsored by The Independent, the emeritus Archbishop of Cape Town will argue that the turmoil after the war proved it is an illusion to believe that 'force and brutality' leads to greater security. 'How wonderful if politicians could bring themselves to admit they are only fallible human creatures and not God and thus by definition can make mistakes. Unfortunately, they seem to think that such an admission is a sign of weakness. Weak and insecure people hardly ever say 'sorry'... 'An immoral war was thus waged and the world is a great deal less safe place than before.'"

BBC News: "A leading human rights group has said the US and UK are wrong to use the toppling of a brutal regime in Baghdad to justify going to war against Iraq. The group, Human Rights Watch asked why George Bush and Tony Blair did not try to remove Saddam Hussein much earlier. Its report comes as the former US chief weapons inspector questioned the CIA's assessment of the threat from Iraq."

Robert McNamara, who learned the hard way that a war can be a major mistake, says about the occupation of Iraq: "It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong.... There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-a -vis the other nations of the world." In his 1995 memoir, McNamara described 11 specific mistakes that United States made in Vietnam. He says now that George W. Bush is repeating those mistakes in Iraq.

"In a Wednesday letter to the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the JBA said the invasion of Iraq without UN approval put the US and UK on the wrong side of international law. 'The officials of the invasion forces, regardless of rank, are considered war criminals and their crime is considered an act of international terrorism,' said the letter calling for them to be tracked down, arrested and tried."

"A report published by the Army War College calls the Bush administration's war on terrorism unfocused and says the invasion of Iraq was 'a strategic error.' The research paper by Jeffrey Record, a professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, [Alabama] said the president's strategy 'promises much more than it can deliver' and threatens to spread U.S. military resources too thin. Record also wrote that Saddam Hussein's Iraq did not present a threat to the United States and was a distraction from the war on terrorism... The paper was published last month by the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute."

"Hundreds of civilian deaths in the US-led invasion of Iraq could have been prevented, says Human Rights Watch. A new report by the New York-based group, entitled 'Off Target', examines the circumstances in which civilians were killed. It concludes that many deaths could have been avoided if the US and Britain had abandoned what it calls 'two mis-guided military tactics'. Cluster bombs and attacks on Iraqi leaders are singled out for criticism. This is a thorough and thought-provoking report from an organisation with a strong track record in analysing civilian casualties in warfare. Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians died in this conflict. Human Rights Watch did not set out to provide its own figure but to look at the circumstances in which they died. The organisation says that US and British forces generally tried to avoid killing Iraqis who were not involved in combat."

"A USA Today study has found that the U.S. dropped or fired nearly 11,000 cluster bombs or cluster weapons on Iraq during the invasion and Britain dropped 2,000 more. It is unknown how many Iraqis died from cluster bombs. One estimate puts the total at 370. And the attacks left behind thousands of unexploded bomblets. At least eight U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of Iraqis have been killed by unexploded bomblets."

"Last month, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked in a memo, 'Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?' If the latest news is any indication, the answer is not encouraging. As the Baltimore Sun reports, 'The American invasion and occupation of Iraq has provided al-Qaida with a powerful propaganda tool in its holy war against the West, injecting new energy into the worldwide network.' Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said 'Iraq is a rallying cause for al-Qaida - it's allowed them to attract new recruits. Iraq has put new wind in its sails.' The NYT reports 'U.S. intelligence officials said they are troubled by evidence suggesting that more young militant men are becoming terrorists than ever before.'"

Richard Perle says it outright: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing... international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone." Perle is one of Bush's most influential advisers. If he knows it's illegal, Bush and Cheney know it's illegal. It's past time to start those impeachment proceedings.

Here is the Washington Post's page of "Faces of the Fallen", the brave American soldiers that gave their life for our country.

More 'collateral damage' - the psychological effects of war: "Four soldiers at Fort Benning have been arrested and accused of stabbing to death a member of their infantry unit, setting the body on fire and leaving it in the woods just days after their return from Iraq. Police said the soldiers had gotten mad at Spc. Richard R. Davis for insulting a dancer at a strip club and getting them kicked out of the place... Ft Benning investigators had received a tip to search the woods near the Army post. Three of the soldiers - Jacob Burgoyne, Mario Naverrete and Douglas Woodcoff - were arrested Friday and charged with murder. A judge on Monday reduced the charges against them to concealing a body, though prosecutors said they will press for murder charges.... All five soldiers belonged to same company and had returned to Fort Benning from Iraq just days before the slaying. Their unit is part of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which led the assault on Baghdad."

Jim Lobe writes, "Between 21,000 and 55,000 people have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, according to a new report that also warned of rapidly deteriorating health conditions for those who survived. London-based Medact concluded that the war's continuing impact -- particularly the failure of occupation authorities to ensure security -- has resulted in a further deterioration of the Iraqi population's health status... The report's funding was provided by Oxfam and the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation. 'The health of the Iraqi people is generally worse than before the war,' according to an executive summary of the 12-report, which noted that the state of health in Iraq was already poor by international standards. It said women and children were particularly at risk due to the breakdown in law and order and damage to infrastructure and that women were also being affected by the emergence of religious conservatism after the war."

"A former chief of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, has accused the United States and Britain of lack of foresight over the Iraq invasion and warned of even greater violence unless the civic infrastructure is established quickly. Major General Danny Yatom said the presence of Western forces in Iraq has presented the opportunity for a holy war, or jihad, by Islamists in a country surrounded by Muslim neighbours. Speaking during a visit to London, Gen Yatom said: 'Colin Powell has always said that if the coalition went into Iraq, they had to get out. But it seems America did not have such a plan in place. They are lacking such a plan, and that is what is urgently needed now.' The failure to restore basic amenities such as water and power has been one of the biggest obstacles to winning over the Iraqi people to 'show that the democratic system works,' said Gen Yatom, whose visit was organised by the group Friends of Hebrew University."

NY Times reports, "Mr. Perle said he subsequently contacted a C.I.A. official to ask if he should meet with the Iraqis. 'The answer came back that they weren't interested in pursuing it,' Mr. Perle said in an interview, 'and I was given the impression that there had already been contacts.' Mr. Perle now plays down the importance of his contact with Mr. Hage. He said he found it difficult to believe that Mr. Hussein would make serious proposals through such a channel. 'There were so many other ways to communicate,' he said. 'There were any number of governments involved in the end game, the Russians, French, Saudis.' Nonetheless, Mr. Hage continued to deliver messages from the Iraqis to Mr. Maloof. In one note to Mr. Perle in mid-March, Mr. Maloof relayed a message from Mr. Hage... said, 'Such a meeting has Saddam Hussein's clearance.' No meetings took place, and the invasion began on March 20... 'At least they could have talked to them,' Hage said." WHY DID BUSH REFUSE?

Guardian: "As many as 15,000 Iraqis were killed in the first days of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq, a study produced by an independent US thinktank said yesterday. Up to 4,300 of the dead were civilian noncombatants. The report, by Project on Defence Alternatives, a research institute from Cambridge, Massachussets, offers the most comprehensive account so far of how many Iraqis died. The toll of Iraq's war dead covered by the report is limited to the early stages of the war, from March 19 when American tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border, to April 20, when US troops had consolidated their hold on Baghdad... The new report, which estimates Iraq's war dead at between 10,800 and 15,100, uses a far more rigorous definition of civilian than the other studies to arrive at a figure of between 3,200 and 4,300 civilian noncombatants."

"War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al Qaeda and galvanized the Islamic militant group's will, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday in its annual report... The report [is] widely considered an authoritative text on the military capabilities of states and militant groups worldwide... Washington must impose security in Iraq to prevent the country from 'ripening into a cause celebre for radical Islamic terrorists,' it concluded... 'On the plus side, war in Iraq has denied al Qaeda a potential supplier of weapons of mass destruction and discouraged state sponsors of terrorism from continuing to support it,' the report said. [Because Iraq had SO many WMDs, didn't it? And Bush has done SUCH a great job protecting the conventional arms sites, right? Wrong!] 'On the minus side, war in Iraq has probably inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased al Qaeda's recruiting power and morale and, at least marginally, its operating capability,' it said."

On the one-year anniversary of the congressional vote on Iraq, Howard Dean released this timeline entitled "A Year to Regret: 12 Months of Failed Leadership": "October 5, 2002: P/resident Bush warns that Saddam Hussein could strike without notice and inflict 'massive and sudden horror' on America. (AP, 10/06/02); October 5, 2002: CIA letter to Congress does not support the White House's view that Iraq presents an immediate threat to America. (Knight-Ridder 10/05/02); October 2002 Steven Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor receives two memos from the CIA and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons. Both memos are also sent to chief speechwriter Michael Gerson and one is sent to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. (CNN.com, 7/23/03)..." Click below to relive this sad tale...

"FRONTLINE traces the roots of the Iraqi war back to the days immediately following September 11, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the creation of a special intelligence operation to quietly begin looking for evidence that would justify the war. The intelligence reports soon became a part of a continuing struggle between civilians in the Pentagon on one side and the CIA, State Department, and uniformed military on the other-a struggle that would lead to inadequate planning for the aftermath of the war, continuing violence, and mounting political problems for the resident." TONIGHT (Thursday) 9 p.m. EST.

"Saddam Hussein had been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, a British tabloid newspaper said today. According to the Sunday Mirror report, Saddam was demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus in exchange for information on WMDs and his bank accounts. US Resident George W Bush was being kept up to date on the talks by his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice who was coordinating negotiations led by US general Ricardo Sanchez, the Sunday Mirror said. Sanchez is the commander of US forces in Iraq. 'A representative of Saddam in Western-style civilian clothes came to coalition people at Tikrit at sunset on September 12. He led them to a house where the security official was waiting,' the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior Iraqi as saying.... The source maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal 'because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter,' the tabloid said." Be skeptical.

"Under fire from Republicans on Friday, Sen. Edward Kennedy defended his harsh criticism of Resident Bush's policy on Iraq, in which he charged that the threat from Saddam Hussein was exaggerated by the administration for political purposes. 'This is a failed, flawed, bankrupt policy,' the Massachusetts Democrat said on CNN's... Inside Politics.' 'The American people want answers.' Kennedy spoke in the wake of an interview with The Associated Press in which he said the threat from Iraq was concocted to suit the administration's political agenda." Now THAT sounds like an aggressive progressive! Right on, Ted! Oh, wait - who's that wild babbling Bushnazi in the distance? It must be Tom DeLay! "DeLay said Kennedy 'went too far' and he called on Democrats to repudiate Kennedy's comments. 'It's disturbing that Democrats have spewed more hateful rhetoric at Resident Bush than they ever did at Saddam Hussein,' DeLay said in a written statement." Hey Tom, Reagan-Bush ARMED Hussein!

"The International Federation of Journalists said today that revelations about how an injured television reporter being rushed to hospital was fired upon by US forces in Iraq raise 'grave new concerns' about war crimes and has exposed a culture of 'secrecy and deceit' among military chiefs. Terry Lloyd and his team working for Britain's ITN network were caught in the crossfire of fighting on March 22nd.... It had been thought that he died later of wounds received in that attack, but this week - six months after the incident - new evidence reveals that a civilian minibus taking the wounded reporter to the hospital was fired upon. Lloyd was wounded a second time and was dead on arrival at a hospital in Basra.... 'It is shocking that six months after the event, the truth is slowly emerging of a scandalous incident that once again points the finger at military incompetence, or worse, for the killing of journalists,' said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary."

"It was a private exchange BHP never expected to be revealed. Amid the smouldering diplomatic files strewn around the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ransacked foreign ministry in Baghdad fluttered a handful of pages that caught the eye. Punctuating the flowing Arabic script was an English-language acronym: BHP. Translated and investigated, the documents show a BHP executive met a senior representative of Hussein's regime at the height of Western sanctions on Iraq, in the hope of winning lucrative oil contracts.... The Iraqi records of the 1999 meeting say [BHP Petroleum executive] Mr. Davidson Kelly...'said that the Australian backing of American policies is imposed by the fact that Australia depends on the United States in defending its security in an extremely turbulent environment, particularly in the light of the current developments in Indonesia and the possibility of Indonesia falling apart, and the impact of such things on Australia.'"

"The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud 'made up in Texas' to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward Kennedy said Thursday. [He also] said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops. He called the Bush administration's current Iraq policy 'adrift.' The White House declined to comment. [The Massachusetts Democrat also] said administration officials relied on 'distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence' to justify their case for war. 'There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud,' Kennedy said."

Moonie Insight reports: "Since Persian Gulf War II began about 6,000 soldiers have been shipped home for recovery. Of these, 1,200 were wounded in combat. Many of the others consider themselves part of an army of 'walking dead' - troops who appear to be so physically and mentally exhausted that the military has no recourse but to discharge them. Why they are ill has become a matter of intense debate inside the Pentagon. Some claim a series of anthrax and smallpox vaccinations made them so gravely ill that they have trouble breathing or sleeping and have experienced a loss of memory. Others have been diagnosed with lupus and heart problems. At least six died shortly after rolling up their sleeves to receive the anthrax and smallpox shots. But the Pentagon dismissed related claims with such regularity and intimidation that many GIs tell Insight they no longer report the illness. They are told to 'suck it up' and move on."

"The true scale of American casualties in Iraq is revealed today by new figures obtained by The Observer, which show that more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously. The figures will shock many Americans, who believe that casualties in the war in Iraq have been relatively light. Recent polls show that support for Resident George Bush and his administration's policy in Iraq has been slipping. The number of casualties will also increase pressure on Bush to share the burden of occupying Iraq with more nations."

James Ridgeway writes: "But by far the most interesting and quite possibly most realistic report comes by way of Jude Wanniski, the supply-side economist and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter who has struck up a correspondence with Mohammad al-Obaidi, an Iraqi doctor living in Britain. Al-Obaidi coordinates the small Iraqi Freedom Party, which favors free enterprise and is both anti-Saddam and anti-U.S. Al-Obaidi told Wanniski that 'hundreds of our party's cadre' spent five weeks interviewing undertakers, hospital officials, and ordinary citizens in all of Iraq (except for what's controlled by the Kurds) and came up with a total figure of 37,137 civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion, 6,103 of them in Baghdad. Those figures, according to al-Obaidi, do not include members of unofficial militias, paramilitary groups, or Saddam's Fedayeen units."

Salt Lake Tribune reports: "They are called WIAs for wounded in action, but their numbers are not listed under casualty postings from the U.S. Central Command or the Pentagon. Reporters must specifically ask for those tallies. (as of 8/17/03) 1,007 U.S. military personnel have been wounded since March 19 when U.S. troops crossed the border into Iraq, said Lt. Ryan Fitzgerald from Central Command. That number compares with 467 'nonmortal wounds' in the 1991 Gulf War, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. 'I know of no other war in which WIAs have not been listed among the casualties,' said Robert Voyles, director of the Fort Douglas Museum. 'I have no idea why this conflict would be any different.' Fitzgerald said WIA numbers are not publicized because the military has no way of determining the severity of the wounds." Now that's a likely excuse - NOT!

Heather Wokusch writes: "A lawsuit on behalf of over 100,000 Gulf War veterans has the Bush administration on edge and businesses running for cover. The class action suit names 11 companies and 33 banks alleged to have helped Iraq with its chemical weapons program in the 1980's, despite knowledge Saddam Hussein was actively using WMD against both Iranians and his own people. At the time, Reagan's Middle East envoy was one Donald Rumsfeld, hard at work opening doors for Hussein's regime to purchase millions in aircraft, hardware and other potential weaponry. But after the invasion of Kuwait bumped Hussein from Pentagon friend to the 'Most Wanted' list, coalition forces got stuck with the nasty task of dealing with the same chemical weapons that businesses had profited by helping Iraq amass. Unfortunately, most Gulf War troops didn't realize that in destroying Hussein's WMD, they would also be endangering their own lives."

AP reports: "Blaming corporations for fueling former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program, victims of the first Gulf War filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking compensation for illnesses affecting more than 100,000 soldiers. 'Anyone with eyes and ears knew Saddam was killing people with poison gas in the 1980s,' lawyer Gary B. Pitts said outside federal court. 'These companies have to be held accountable or they'll do this same thing in the future with some other tyrant.' The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for more than 100,000 soldiers who it says suffered severe injuries and staggering economic losses after they were exposed to chemicals when coalition forces blew up Iraqi ammunition dumps. Lawyers said they hoped to force chemical corporations from France, Germany, Switzerland and the United States to reject future requests for business from tyrants around the globe." Under Reagan-Bush, this was the Iraqgate scheme that armed and financed Hussein's military.

"The [US] military has admitted it used napalm-type weapons in Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman had told the [Sydney Morning] Herald it did not have any stocks of napalm, but it seems the denial was a quibble. The Pentagon no longer officially uses the brand-name Napalm, a combination of naphthalene and palmitate, but a similar substance known as fuel-gel mixture contained in Mark-77 fire bombs was dropped on Iraqi troops near the Iraq-Kuwait border at the start of the recent war. 'I can confirm that Mark-77 fire bombs were used in that general area,' said Colonel Mike Daily, of the US Marine Corps... Napalm was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980, but the US did not sign the agreement. The US military considers the use of Mark-77 weapons to be legal... A spokeswoman for Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois said it was producing a further 500 Mark-77s for the marines. She said she did not consider them napalm bombs, but they are still referred to as napalm in some US documents."

AP reports: "Marine Corps fighter pilots and commanders say they dropped firebombs similar to napalm on Iraqi troops earlier this year, according to a report published Tuesday. The Marines say that in March, U.S. warplanes dropped dozens of incendiary bombs near bridges over the Saddam Canal and the Tigris River in central Iraq to clear the way for troops headed to Baghdad... 'We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,' said Col. James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. 'Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video. 'They were Iraqi soldiers there. It's no great way to die,' Alles added. He could not provide estimates of Iraqi casualties. 'The generals love napalm,' said Alles. 'It has a big psychological effect'... 'You can call it something other than napalm, but it's napalm,' said John Pike, defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, a nonpartisan research group in Alexandria, Va." This is an outrage!

The UK Guardian reports: "US military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media. Since May 1, when Bush declared the end of major combat operations, 52 American soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, according to Pentagon figures quoted in almost all the war coverage. But the total number of US deaths from all causes is much higher: 112. The other unreported cost of the war for the US is the number of American wounded, 827 since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Unofficial figures are in the thousands."

Alan Bisbort writes: "What really is the difference between the killing of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay and a Mafia hit? Think about it: $15 million was paid to some tipster... and another $25 million sits on Saddam's head. That's $40 million of our money used for two hits on former business partners of the Bush family. Whatever one thinks about the demise of the loathsome Hussein boys, we should at least be honest about what has occurred -- unprecedented in U.S. history. When a civilized nation's government pays to kill people -- then waves their mutilated corpses in the world's face -- there is reason to be queasy... Did anyone stop to consider that Saddam's sons may have been more valuable alive?... Imagine their value as prisoners. Bullies are cowards; they'd have spilled their guts to save their skins. Oh, that's right: Bush doesn't do intelligence. Besides, Uday and Qusay knew too much about Bush family business."

Lisa Walsh Thomas writes: "Were it not for the pathos of Mustafa's still being a child, the events would evoke the last scene in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.' It's not, however, very comfortable to laugh at the image of a brave 14-year old boy, his dead father and uncle at his feet, mustering the courage of legendary heroes to fight off two hundred men from the world's mightiest military, all armed to the teeth against whatever small arms one boy could grab. It's a cruel story with which civilized people will never be comfortable, as we wonder what kind of thoughts ran through the boy's head in his last moments... For reasons we don't yet understand, Uday and Qusay appear to have been wanted dead, not alive. It speaks poorly for the mentality of the designers of this killing. Captured, the brothers could have been tried by their own victims and a picture of some kind of justice could have replaced the barbaric embarrassment of two hundred soldiers."

Chris Floyd writes: "The armchair warriors who directed the American-led conquest of Iraq would like us to believe that the estimated 10,000 innocent civilians who died in the invasion were simply unfortunate, inadvertant, unavoidable, accidental victims of a just and noble action. No one wanted these innocent people to die. Surely no American leader ever knowingly ordered a mission with the certain knowledge that innocent people were going to be killed by it. These deaths just happened; no one is to blame for them... But like almost every other statement issued by the Bush Regime on the subject of Iraq, this comforting fairytale is a cynical, blood-soaked lie... More than 50 times, Rumsfeld was approached with mission plans likely to leave at least 30 innocent people vaporized and mutilated by unstoppable high-tech weaponry crashing down on them without warning, without the slightest chance of escape. More than 50 times, Rumsfeld signed his name to these multiple death-warrants."

Robert Fisk writes: "Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants... whatever political advantages were gained by the killing of Saddam's sons have been squandered. A doctor at the Yarmouk hospital, which received four of the dead, turned on me angrily last night, shouting: 'If an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him.'"

ABC News reports: "Two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed and one was injured in an ambush early Sunday when their convoy came under rocket-propelled grenade and gunfire in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said. The deaths brought to 151 the number of American soldiers killed in action since the March 20 start of the war, four more than the total killed in the 1991 Gulf war. Also Sunday, a U.S. soldier was killed and two others injured when their vehicle crashed and flipped over near Baghdad International Airport." Meanwhile, "an angry confrontation developed to the south of Baghdad... In the holy city of Najaf 10,000 Shiite Muslim demonstrators were blocked by U.S. troops from entering the American headquarters. Some clerics urged demonstrators to turn back. Soldiers used Humvees to barricade the building. There were no reports of shooting or other violence."

NY Times reports, "Among the disclosures provided in the internal briefings and in a later interview the General Moseley: New information has shown that there was not a bunker in the Dora Farms area near Baghdad, where American intelligence initially believed Mr. Hussein was meeting with his aides. The site was attacked by F-117 stealth fighters and cruise missiles as the Bush administration sought to kill Mr. Hussein at the very onset of the war. Still, Iraqi leaders were believed to be in the Dora Farm area, General Moseley said. Air war commanders were required to obtain the approval of Defense Secretary Donald L. Rumsfeld if any planned airstrike was thought likely to result in deaths of more than 30 civilians. More than 50 such strikes were proposed, and ALL of them were approved." Now read Bush's 9-12-02 speech to the UN: "More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemies value none - not even the innocent." Another Bush Lie!

Do you think Bush's illegal war on Iraq began with the bombing of Baghdad on 3-19-03? Wrong! Under Operation Southern Focus, "American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war," according to the NY Times. The bombing targeted fiber-optic cables, key command centers, radars and other important military assets - 606 bombs were dropped on 391 carefully selected targets. Read this carefully: In mid-2002, Bush launched an unprovoked war WITHOUT A DECLARATION BY CONGRESS. If that's not an impeachable offense, what is??? Impeach Bush Now!!!

According to the right-wing WorldNetDaily, Cheney began planning the invasion of Iraq in April 2001 - five months BEFORE the September 11 attack that was the ultimate excuse for the invasion. Cheney's "secret White House task force solicited input from the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. The Baker report, which was submitted to Cheney in early April 2001, recommended considering a 'military' option in dealing with Iraq, which the report charged was using oil exports as a 'weapon,' by turning its spigot on and off to 'manipulate oil markets,' WorldNetDaily has learned. The report advised the Bush administration to, at a minimum, bring UN weapons inspectors back to Iraq, and then, 'once an arms-control program is in place, the United States could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq' to gain greater control over the reserves, and 'inject' more stability into world oil markets." Impeach Bush Now!

From Reuters: "U.S. troops are facing a classic guerrilla war in Iraq spearheaded by Saddam Hussein loyalists, and American forces need to adapt their tactics to crush this increasingly organized resistance, the head of the U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday. This contrasted with an assessment given by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on June 30 that it was not 'anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance.' But Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid, who commands U.S. forces in Iraq, said a guerrilla war is exactly what U.S. troops are confronting. 'It think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is, you know, a proper thing to describe in strictly military terms,' Abizaid said during a Pentagon briefing."

Peter Stothard, editor of the Times of London, has published a important new book called "30 Days." Stothard had first-hand access to Tony Blair's government in March and April, before and during the War. He cites 6 policies that governed Tony Blair's actions towards Iraq, most importantly this one: "Gulf war 2 - President George W Bush v Saddam Hussein - would happen whatever anyone else said or did." But now we need to find out WHY Gulf War 2 was inevitable, since we now know Saddam had no WMD. Was it to complete the job Poppy left unfinished? Was it to steal Iraq's oil? Someday the truth will come out...

A few weeks ago, W denounced those who thought we invaded Iraq to disarm Saddam's WMD as "revisionists." Didn't Bush & Co. repeat that mantra hundreds of times? Nah, we must have been dreaming. Here is the "real" reason we invaded Iraq, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Friedman: "to install a decent, tolerant, pluralistic, multireligious government in Iraq that would be the best answer and antidote to both Saddam and Osama." Excuse us, Tom, but could you find ANYTHING resembling those words in ANY of the hundreds of statements by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Perle, Wolfowitz, or even Powell? As a so-called "journalist," don't you have the slightest responsibility to write something remotely resembling the facts? E-mail letters@nytimes.com

Before Bush took office, planning for post-war scenarios (called "operations other than war") were built into any war plan and considered as carefully as military action. Bush has not only failed to plan for any scenario other than a welcoming, "liberated" people, he has scorned, and encouraged his military leaders to scorn, peacekeeping operations. And, writes Michael Bhatia, under Rumsfeld's 'restructured military', "the leader development system seeks to minimize risk and uncertainty, and tends to reward reactive rather than proactive thought. It does not permit young leaders 'to fail, learn, and try again.'" Instead, our young officers have been sent into hell with no preparation, no safety net, and no room for margin of error.

"That I have died means I have failed to achieve the one thing in life I truly longed to give the world -- peace," the letter reads. "The plight of human suffering consumed me and I dedicated much to trying to find the ideas that might lead humankind toward alleviating it for all. It was a quest which was inextricably intertwined with my quest for freedom. If you know anything about me you know that. Understand it and come to understand how the suffering of others tormented my soul. Then seek to honor my memory by trying to achieve what I could not."

Who is responsible for the lousy "intelligence" on Iraq - before AND after the war? According to Robert Dreyfuss, "The Pentagon's Office of Special Plans funneled information, unchallenged, from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who in turn passed it on to the White House, suggesting that Iraqis would welcome the American invaders. The Office of Special Plans is led by Abram Shulsky, a hawkish neoconservative ideologue who got his start in politics working alongside Elliott Abrams in Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson's office in the 1970s. It was set up in fall 2001 as a two-man shop, but it burgeoned into an eighteen-member nerve center of the Pentagon's effort to distort intelligence about Iraq's WMDs and terrorist connections. A great deal of the bad information produced by Shulsky's office, which found its way into speeches by Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, came from Chalabi's INC."

PentaPost reports, "In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, Resident Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda... Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that 'go back a decade.' He said 'we've learned' that Iraq trained al Qaeda members 'in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.' Although the resident offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the" National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the "consensus of the intelligence community," which considered Bush's allegations about Iraq-Al Qaeda ties to be utter Bushit. Impeach Bush Now!

Remember those papers picked up in Iraq that "proved" George Galloway, British member of Parliament and a prominent opponent of George and Tony's war, was on Saddam's payroll? They're forgeries. (Gosh. What a surprise.) The Christian Science Monitor has reached this totally unexpected (not) conclusion after an "extensive investigation" of the papers. This immediately raises a few important questions: Why did the Monitor report the libel against Galloway BEFORE testing the papers' authenticity? And who planted the papers? And why should we believe anything the war's backers tell us?

AP reports: "U.S. officials had been confident that a coalition airstrike killed one of Iraq 's most notorious officials, the man nicknamed 'Chemical Ali.' Now, they are not so sure. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that interrogations of Iraqi prisoners indicated Ali Hassan al-Majid might be alive."

The UK Guardian reports: "Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a 'bureaucratic' excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is 'swimming' in oil. The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt." Did you hear that? It was not Operation Get-WMDs, or even Operation Iraqi Freedom. You know why they didn't call it Operation Iraqi Liberation? Because the acronym would have pointed up the obscene truth early on -- O-I-L! Bush and his gang lied to us about WMDs! Impeach Bush Now!

Christian Science Monitor reports: "'Evidence is mounting' that suggests as many as '10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country... Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam... US and British military officials insisted throughout the war that their forces did all they could to avoid civilian casualties. But it has become clear since the fighting ended that bombs did go astray, that targets were chosen in error, and that as US troops pushed rapidly north toward the capital they killed thousands of civilians from the air and from the ground.' A Human Rights Watch researcher says 'they have found evidence of 'massive use of cluster bombs in densely populated areas, 'contradicting coalition claims that such munitions were used only in deserted areas.'"

"In the days after the fall of Baghdad, reports started bubbling up that there was a reason why the U.S. won Gulf War II so easily: the fight was fixed. The French newspaper Le Monde reported on April 15 that the commanding general of Iraq's Republican Guard, Maher Sufyan, cut a deal with U.S. forces in exchange for his escape. The Republican Guard had 20,000 well-equipped troops defending Baghdad. This was the force that was fully prepared to raise hell with U.S. forces, but suddenly melted away without a fight. Why? Citing anonymous sources, Le Monde's correspondent in Baghdad wrote that Sufyan ordered his troops to lay down their arms and go home. A short time later, an Apache helicopter escorted Sufyan from the Al Rashid camp, east of Baghdad, to an undisclosed safe haven. Sufyan was not included in the deck of cards created by the U.S. Defense Department that contained pictures of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. His whereabouts are still unknown."

Bloomberg reports: "The U.S. and U.K. went to war against Iraq because of the Middle East country's oil reserves, an adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. Sir Jonathan Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission, which advises Blair's government on ecological issues, said the prospect of winning access to Iraqi oil was 'a very large factor' in the allies' decision to attack Iraq in March. 'I don't think the war would have happened if Iraq didn't have the second-largest oil reserves in the world,' Porritt said in a Sky News television interview."

From Tom Paine.com: "Editor's Note: There was a late development in the story reported below. At 6:20 pm EDT on Tuesday, April 29 -- hours after the story was posted and long since an ad based on it was submitted to The New York Times for publication on April 30 -- the Pentagon abruptly switched its position on medical testing of troops, the subject of this story. While the Pentagon's announcement is a step forward -- and we are pleased that they have felt the heat -- it's no great victory for the troops. The Pentagon is still not admitting culpability: it clearly violated the law at the expense of soldiers' health. It has not promised to undertake the legally mandated medical exams for troops still being deployed. And, as doctors have testified, the post-deployment exams will be of questionable value because the pre-deployment data is not comprehensive."

There they go again - the Busheviks are rewriting history! Forget "weapons of mass destruction"... forget "regime change"... forget "democracy". The REAL reason for invading Iraq, according to the Busheviks, was to send a message to Syria and Iran: "If you collaborate with terrorists, you do so at your own peril." Since the Busheviks have failed to accomplish any of the other "justifications" for the Iraq W-ar, will they succeed in muscling Syria and Iraq? Syria is a small, poor country Bush can easily muscle, but Iran is a big, well-armed, sophisticated country that is becoming a STRONGER regional power as a result of Bush's W-ar.

"In a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) requested that the Department of Defense release the total number of Iraqi casualties incurred in the war in Iraq."

Robert Scheer writes: "Now that the war has been won, is it permissible to suggest that our emperor has no clothes? I'm not referring to his abysmal stewardship of the economy but rather the fig-leaf war he donned to cover up his glaring domestic failures. Resident Bush went to war with Hitler's Germany and found another Afghanistan instead. After comparing the threat of Hussein to that of the Fuehrer, it was odd to find upon our arrival a tottering regime squatting on a demoralized Third World populace."

The Washington Post reports: "As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. The burst of Shiite power--demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday--has US officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein. As the [Bush regime] plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into a fundamentalist government...'This is a 25-year project,' one three-star general officer said. 'Everyone agreed it was a huge risk, and the outcome was not at all clear.'"

AFP reports: "Colin Powell said that France would face consequences for its opposition to the war in Iraq as senior aides to Resident George W. Bush met to consider ways to express Washington's anger. Asked in an interview whether Paris would be punished for its anti-war stance, Powell replied bluntly: 'Yes.' [Bush] officials, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office had been particularly vocal in pressing for some kind of punitive measures to be taken against France. The defense department is in general agreement with Cheney's office that France should pay some price for its opposition to the war on Iraq and its refusal to back the deployment of NATO assets to help defend Turkey during the conflict, the officials said."

Turns out about 800 people are stranded between Jordan and Iraq. Jordan Times states: "With sandstorms sweeping the desert, the living conditions of those in the no-man's-land are extremely poor: No water, no food, no shelter, no healthcare. UN officials have said these people had to flee Iraq to save their lives, and some are elderly. The officials have also rightly noted that those are no conditions for people who need assistance. So, who is to blame? The People's Mujahedeen, the movement opposed to the Iranian regime that had moved to Iraq in the mid-1980s under an agreement with Saddam Hussein, has been classified as a terrorist group by both the US and the European Union. By not letting them in, Jordan risks to be accused of insensitivity towards the plight of refugees--Jordan, of all countries!--and by letting them in, it would risk to be accused of providing safe haven to terrorist groups--a charge that has become increasingly popular in Washington these days."

From the Village Voice: "Raw sewage courses through canals and riverbeds. Toxic clouds from burning oil and smoldering buildings billow into the air, raining particles on the countryside. Heavy metals and a stew of chemicals from bombed industrial plants spill into the soil and pollute drinking-water supplies. Iraq doesn't look as bad as a smoky Kuwait did in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, but Iraq's air, land, and water have been battered in 2003, and some experts say more Iraqi civilians will die from post-war environmental problems than have been killed during the fighting."

Will Pitt writes, "We lost the war. We defeated the Iraqi military, to be sure, and we fired Saddam Hussein. [But] we have lost the real war, the important war, the war against those who attacked us on September 11... We have lost the war because our actions have given aid and succor to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, whose agents were and are nowhere to be found in Iraq... We have lost the war because the Iraqi people themselves already understand that the 'liberation' they were promised is as false as the evidence we used to invade their country. We lost the war because our moral standing to make it in the first place was utterly bereft of substance. We lost the war because the rest of the world sees the American government for what it is - a mob of hyperactive right-wing extremists with an army to play with and a dream of global dominance glowing like coals in their eyes. There is no victory here. We lost the war before the first shot was fired."

David Olive writes, "The opponents of war in Iraq - France, Germany, Russia, China, Canada, Mexico, the Arab nations - were vindicated last week when Baghdad fell [in] just 21 days. The anti-war argument had always been that Saddam Hussein posed no significant threat to the U.S. or its neighbours because Iraq's military power was vastly degraded after Saddam's humiliation in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent dozen years of punitive UN-imposed sanctions. And that any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Iraq might still possess could be destroyed through the U.N. inspection process without resorting to a war that has cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis. With an invasion force the U.S. itself now boasts was of relatively minimal strength, Saddam's regime was easily toppled... Pushed to the wall, the Iraqi regime did not try to blunt the enemy advance by dipping into its vaunted stockpile of 'weapons of mass destruction' - or perhaps that, too, was a paper inventory."

The Angry Liberal (aren't we all?) captured this classic Bushit from Ari Lie-Sure at Friday's nookie with the in-bed DC press corps: "The President [sic] has always said that is the mission [disarming Iraq's WMD], but I'm not going to define for you what the President [sic] will later define as victory." TAL adds: "Here's what Bush has been reading from the teleprompter since last summer: 'If Saddam Hussein will not disarm, we will disarm him'... So off to war we go. After a large number of body parts are removed from a large number of bodies (yes, folks, those bright flashes you see off in the distance on CNN aren't solely for our entertainment), the only arms we've removed from Iraq have been a bunch of obsolete Russian tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, and AK-47s. Big deal. Former Congressman Bob Barr has more stuff than that in his garage. As for Bush's stated Holy Grail, the WMDs, none have shown up yet. Will these weapons ever be found? The answer is irrelevant."

Asked about the widespread looting in Iraq, Rumsfeld got a bit testy. "Think what's happened in our cities when we've had riots and problems and looting. Stuff happens! But in terms of what's going on in that country, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to see those images over and over and over again of some boy walking out with a vase and say, 'Oh, my goodness, you didn't have a plan.' That's nonsense. They know what they're doing. And they're doing a terrific job. And it's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here." Hey Don - was that worth 110+ American deaths, plus 1200+ Iraqi civilian deaths?

Philip Gordon and Michael O'Hanlon write, "Everyone's definition of 'cakewalk' is different, and if Ken Adelman's is stretched to include a campaign in which we so far have deployed 300,000 troops, spent $70 billion, lost more than 130 servicemen and women, suffered hundreds of wounded, and killed many thousands of Iraqis, that is his right. But his trivialization of the costs of war becomes pure chutzpah when he gloats about the success of the military strategy that he and many of his intellectual allies had opposed for years... A massive invasion force has been winning an ugly fight. The Powell doctrine of overwhelming force has not been repudiated. With Saddam Hussein's irregulars bold enough to engage in serious firefights, harass coalition flanks and intimidate the Iraqi population into subservience, one can only imagine what would have happened if the United States had limited its military contribution to a small number of troops."

The UK Guardian (why not a US paper?) reports, "This is the tale of two privates. They were sisters-in-arms - two young women fighting for Uncle Sam. They were roommates at Fort Bliss military base in Texas; tentmates in the Gulf, and close friends at all places in between. Then they (and 13 other members of the US Army's 507th Maintenance Company) took a wrong turn in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya and were ambushed. One, Jessica Lynch, 19, was injured, hospitalised and then rescued by Special Forces to emerge as the poster girl for American resilience and camaraderie. The other, Lori Piestewa, 23, was killed, with the gruesome distinction of being the first native American in the US army to be killed in combat [error: over 200 native Americans were killed in Vietnam alone] and the only American servicewoman to die in this war."

The Independent reports, "The United States stepped up military and psychological pressure on the Baathist stronghold of Tikrit yesterday as the hunt for Saddam Hussein and leading [Baathist party members] began to focus on areas to the north and west of Baghdad. In what looked to be a calculated propaganda move, the Pentagon issued a thinly disguised threat to deploy--for the first time in the war--the biggest non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal, the 21,000 lb massive ordnance air burst. The warning came as Allied forces continued the aerial bombardment of Tikrit and the Republican Guards protecting the town...American commanders believe that some [Baathist] members may have fled north to Tikrit or west to Syria. Tikrit, whose symbolism is enhanced by the fact that it was the 12th- century birthplace of Saladin, the legendary Muslim leader who defeated the Crusaders, is thought to by some experts to be the likeliest redoubt for a last stand by President Saddam."

NY Times reports, "The effort to number the dead on the Iraqi side begins with a conundrum: who is a civilian and who is a soldier? Are people working in government ministries civilians or, as the Pentagon likes to call them, 'regime targets'? Bombing and ground combat left the Baghdad Division of Iraq's army reduced to 'zero percent strength,' a division once thought to number 10,000 soldiers. Where are they? The bombing campaign [and] ground actions to squeeze Iraqi military units into ever-smaller 'kill boxes' almost certainly left thousands dead, perhaps tens of thousands. But the world will probably never know how many, and no Iraqi authority is left to count them...Neither British nor American military officials will provide even rough estimates of the number of Iraqi soldiers [or others] killed in the war. The question of enemy dead does not come up in daily briefings for senior commanders at Central Command. Nor are field commanders being asked to count Iraqi casualties."

"Here's the prewar zeitgeist in a nutshell: In a widely reported January 16 speech, Tony Blair proclaimed that the impending invasion of Iraq 'has nothing to do with oil, or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward.' One week later, Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, quietly passed word to Russia and France that their countries will be frozen out of staggeringly lucrative postwar oil contracts unless they roll over and endorse the US attack... Behind the Invasion of Iraq, the startling new book-length report authored by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), synthesizes the seemingly disparate threads of the US war drive in what amounts to a blistering indictment of American foreign policy. The report (available on the Web at www.rupe-india.org) is lavishly documented and jargon-free; the effect, especially for readers with limited understanding of global commerce and finance, is of puzzle pieces clicking decisively into place."

Gee, what a surprise (NOT!) According to the foe of the right winged nuts, Peter Arnett, those impressive two thousand pound bombs targeting Saddam on Monday missed the "al-Sa'ah" restaurant altogether and instead blew up small homes behind it. The "prize?" Abdil Hassad's wife and two children ages seven and ten. Abdil is a Christian who owns a shop. "He is a handsome, well-dressed young man in his mid-30s." stated Arnett. Abdil escaped injury from the blast but his wife Sena, 36, and daughters Rana, 10, and seven-year-old daughter Maria were killed in the explosion. Arnett found Abdil sobbing uncontrollably by a pile of rubble. "My wife and children are there, he cried as he crouched over the pile of masonry. As he spoke a frantic search to find people alive was going on. Neighbours threw bricks out with their hands.There were 100 or so people from the community gathered there All were very, very angry."

Henry Michaels writes, "The longer the Iraq war continues, the more Orwellian the language and the more sinister the methods adopted by the [Busheviks]. While [they] depict Iraqis resisting the US-led invasion as 'terrorists' and 'death squads,' CIA and Special Forces assassination squads are at work in Iraq, seeking to eliminate Iraqi leaders and other opponents of the US occupation of the country. In the language of the White House and Pentagon, the thousands of Iraqi citizens in plainclothes-whether ordinary people, militia members or soldiers-who are resisting the invading forces in any way they can, are 'war criminals.' But the undercover US hit squads and other military-intelligence operatives roaming throughout Iraq in civilian clothes, terrorizing the population, are 'heroes' in the cause of democracy and liberation."

Since no weapons of mass destruction have been found, we wanted to be of help to this administration, in helping them to come up with the most credible case of WMD yet. First the US should examine door knobs. Do you realize how many people get colds due to not washing their hands enough and touching these WMD devices? Next oil. Think of the environment consequences of Saddam burning the oil fields in Gulf War I, and better yet, think of all the innocent Iraqi people that have given their life because of this WMD. Next we have pesticides. Tell the media you have a smoking gun of WMD, yet forget the small print that the "substance" that may be pesticides was found in an agricultural compound, known for using pesticides. Mr. Resident how about this one, money was used for terrorism, you have lots of money, does this mean you are harboring terrorist? If you look at the Carlyle Group, you may seriously question that!!

"A facility near Baghdad that a US officer claimed contained 'smoking gun' evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas. A military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division's aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensive tests Monday determined the presence of the pesticide compounds. Initial tests had reportedly detected traces of sarin -- a powerful toxin that quickly affects the nervous system -- after US soldiers guarding the facility near Hindiyah, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, became ill. Mastrianni said: 'They thought it was a nerve agent. That's what it tested. But it is pesticide.' He said a 'theatre-level chemical testing team' made up of biologists and chemists had disproved the preliminary field tests results and established that pesticide was in fact the substance involved."

Ha'aretz reports: "Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behavior of the Americans in Iraq, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, the cradle of democracy, the leader of the free world, is behaving like us... As soon as the United States starts to become mired in the occupation, today's enlightened soldiers will become tomorrow's inhuman troops. They will lose the remnants of their moral image and will kill, destroy and abuse... If there is one lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is that every occupation is appalling, that it tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier... An occupier is an occupier, whether he comes from a democracy that is two- and-a-quarter centuries old or from 'the only democracy in the Middle East.'"

"Much attention has been focused on the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who served with Pfc. Brandon Sloan in the 507th Maintenance Company. But many more families of members of the unit are not being lavished with attention by the Defense Dept. and politicians. They are not flying to Germany, like the Lynch family, to reunite with their loved one. 'Being a pastor does not insulate you from the hurt, the pain, the anger,' said Pfc. Sloan's father, Rev. Tandy Sloan. 'The natural inclination is toward resentment, bitterness, even hatred,' he added, noting that he had thought all along that Bush should have given diplomacy more of a chance before invading Iraq. The 507th Maintenance Company was attacked in southern Iraq on March 23, and at least six members, including Pfc. Lynch, were captured by Iraqi forces. Five members of the company, who were shown being interrogated in images broadcast on Iraqi television, are listed as prisoners of war, and 12 have been declared dead."

"As thick black smoke hung over the outskirts of Baghdad last night, American troops stood stunned by the number of enemy forces they had killed. Bodies dressed in the uniform of the Republican Guard and burned-out vehicles were strewn around the roadways. Buildings were riddled with bullet holes. 'I hope we don't experience anything like that again,' said Sgt. Simon, 38, who gave only one name. 'It is like [the 1991 Persian Gulf war]. When I see that many bodies, I just don't want to be here anymore.' As the unit regrouped on a stretch of open land, a soldier stood looking dazed. 'When do we know when it's over?' one Sgt. Scott said. 'You could have sent two men in to kill Saddam Hussein. Why did we have to kill so many people? There were so many deaths today.' In a day of often-brutal fighting, the troops destroyed Iraqi units equipped with T-72 tanks and infantry armed with rocket launchers and mortars. Not one American was reported killed." - story in (amazingly) Washington Times.

AP reports: "Up to 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed in a show-of-force foray into Baghdad by American armored vehicles, the U.S. Central Command said Sunday... Though Saturday's 25-mile incursion through an industrial section of southern Baghdad was brief, it inflicted a heavy toll, according to command spokesman Jim Wilkinson. More than three-dozen tanks and armored vehicles were involved; U.S. casualties were described as light... The U.S. Central Command said the estimated toll of 2,000 to 3,000 deaths referred to fighters only. Later, asked at a news briefing to explain how the number was calculated, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks gave no specifics, but said it was a reasonable estimate based on the resistance U.S. column encountered from Republican Guard units and militiamen and the weaponry used in response."

"Dear Mr. Bush: The bombing has been very heavy for the past two nights, with blasts that cause the floors, windows and walls to shudder. Bombing continues during the daytime. Here at our hotel are two little girls whom I've grown to love, Zainab (1 and 1/2 years) and Miladh (age 3). They sleep in the bomb shelter with their mother, Umm Zaineb, while Abu Zaineb works as the night manager at the front desk. They laugh and play and sing and cuddle when I join them and their mother on the bed they share. But both little girls grind their teeth now. Miladh, a delicate child, often pretends that an airplane is coming toward her, and then she stiffens her back and flips backward, as though dead. It's very difficult to distract her from this routine."

Joan Walsh writes: "Why are so many war critics flummoxed by talking about the war? Isn't it possible to critique Bush without giving aid and comfort to the enemy? And is pointing out the effort's shortcomings the same as glorying in them? ... The administration's arrogance and misjudgments also deserve denunciation if you take seriously the notion that we are trying to liberate the Iraqis from Saddam, and bring democracy to the region... Most war critics still hope for an American victory, one that results in as little loss of life and as much freedom for Iraqis as possible. But it's already clear that [Bush's] neocon friends designed a war that wouldn't ensure we could do either, and they and their war deserve criticism. There will be a reckoning for bullies like Kristol, and all the pampered, pink-cheeked scions of no-sacrifice who sold this war dishonestly. Yet I fear there will be a lot more Iraqis and Americans dead before that day comes."

Mark Morford writes: "Dang that pesky collateral damage. Darn those brutal civilian deaths. Hundreds and hundreds of 'em, bloody decapitated mutilated bombed-out burned-out women and children and families, over there in Iraq... Did no one tell them we are the Great Liberator, the bringer of peace and calm and nice big oil conglomerates that will soon help them 'manage' all their hundreds of billions' worth of delicious natural resources?... Hell, a few dozen families, especially mothers and children, get themselves decapitated by a U.S. missile striking a civilian market -- hey, that's not our fault, is it?... After all, if Saddam hadn't been so downright evil in the first place, we wouldn't have to be invading his country and blowing up everything and killing children in the name of freeing them, and none of this would've happened, now would it? Beautiful is the logic of the Great Liberator. All hail."

"Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw 'incredible' levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad. Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad. 'There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla,' Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone. 'We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening.' Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of 'bombs, projectiles.'"

"Bush officials have scaled back their talk about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq partly because they are still missing the 'smoking gun' that prompted the invasion in the first place... If the weapons are never found - or found after the US has controlled the country for a long period, fuelling speculation that they were planted - the Administration will at the very least be highly embarrassed. However, if the war goes badly, or terrorist attacks on troops during an occupation lead to numerous casualties, the failure to find any banned stockpiles could become a political and diplomatic liability for Bush... Evidence was released earlier this week that some Islamic militants in northern Iraq may have been developing such weapons, but the region was not under the control of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein... Some Democrats opposed to the war against Iraq worry privately that coalition forces will resort to planting weapons to prove the invasion of Iraq was justified."

"The White House said on Friday it would consider military action in Iraq a success even if U.S. forces failed to find Saddam Hussein, whose appearance on Iraqi television could prove he survived a U.S. bombing raid on the first night of the war. While finding Saddam - either dead or alive - would be 'helpful,' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush 's 'definition of victory' was removing the current government from power and eliminating the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction... If Saddam eludes U.S. forces, he would join the ranks of America's most wanted, a list now topped by al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, whom Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States." Osama who?

MSNBC reporters "embedded" with US Special Forces allegedly tested a boot they allegedly found at the Ansar Al Islam camp in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The Busheviks are trumpeting this as "proof" that IRAQ had WMD. But Ansar has no ties to Saddam's regime - as proven by the fact that when the US attacked, their leaders fled to IRAN . Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar, said "Our aim has always been the toppling of the Iraqi Baath regime," (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mullah1feb01,0,7768057.story). So these alleged toxins - if they are real - were probably meant to assassinate Saddam, not to help him attack anyone else. (To understand how the Busheviks are lying about Ansar, search "Ansar" in our .Compass search engine.)

Reuters reports, "When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spelled out the eight U.S. objectives in Iraq on day two of the war, he said the first was to topple Saddam Hussein and the second to locate and destroy Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. On day 10 of the war, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke restated those eight objectives... Ending the Iraqi president's rule remained top of the list, but finding Saddam's suspected chemical and biological weapons had slipped to fourth place and destroying them to fifth. Objective No. 2 was 'to capture or drive out terrorists sheltered in Iraq' and No. 3 was to 'collect intelligence on terrorist networks,' Clarke said...'Freeing the Iraqi people' has replaced disarming Iraq as the main focus of Bush's speeches... Many analysts, both in the United States and abroad, however, see the shifts either as a consequence of Bush's failure to making a convincing case for war or as evidence of a hidden agenda in the Middle East."

Fasxist News is obsessed with the Ansar Al Islam chemical weapons lab story. So what did US special forces find there? "Latex gloves, penicillin, a freezer and lab equipment." So what does that prove? Maybe they were using penicillin to treat infections... Maybe the latex gloves were to protect the nurses... Maybe the freezer was to keep the medicine from spoiling... What was NOT found was any chemical weapons arsenal that posed a military threat to the US or anyone else. Also NOT found was ANY connection to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Here is the proof: Where did Ansar's leaders flee when attacked? Right over the border to IRAN. The notion that Ansar Al Islam's activities justified the conquest of Iraq will rank as one of the Big Lies of history.

Guardian reports, "Martin van Creveld's advice to the US marines on what lessons to draw from Israel's bloody urban battle in Jenin was precise: Forget the helicopters, invest in armoured bulldozers. For months now, the Pentagon has been taking notes from the Israelis in preparation for what looks increasingly likely to be an arduous house by house, street by street, fight for Baghdad. Pentagon strategists have pored over videos of the Israeli military's assault on Jenin a year ago, when 150 lightly armed but determined Palestinians kept the army at bay for 11 days and killed 23 soldiers."

Many military analysts say Rumsfeld's entire war plan rested heavily on "uprisings" and "military defections," especially by key Iraqi officers. But just like the predicted - and falsely claimed - Shi'ite uprisings, the predicted - and falsely claimed - defections have failed to materialize. We misjudged their tenacity," a senior U.S. intelligence official says of Iraq's leaders. "These guys are driven by a hatred (of the United States) that we may have underestimated." Hey Rummy - your brutal "Sherman through Georgia" strategy is just gonna ratchet that hatred up another ten notches or so.

Dilip Hiro writes, "In their enthusiasm to topple Saddam, the hawks overlooked major differences between the current situation in Iraq and the one that prevailed after the Gulf war. In March 1991, the retreating, demoralised Iraqi soldiers - who had hardly a clue why they had occupied Kuwait in the first place - rebelled spontaneously, and found many civilians joining them. They also knew that they had been put on the run by a coalition in which 13 of the 28 countries were Arab or Muslim. This time, Iraqi soldiers see their country invaded by non-Muslim troops from America and Britain, their old imperial master. Many of those Iraqis who hate Saddam loathe America more. They hold it responsible for the UN sanctions which over the last dozen years have reduced their living standards by 90% and caused them untold misery. They know, too, that it is the Pentagon that has bombed Iraq six times since the end of the 1991 Gulf war."

Seymour Hersh writes, "Rumsfeld's personal contempt for many of the senior generals and admirals who were promoted to top jobs during the Clinton Administration is widely known. He was especially critical of the Army, with its insistence on maintaining costly mechanized divisions... Gradually, Rumsfeld succeeded in replacing those officers in senior Joint Staff positions who challenged his view. 'All the Joint Staff people now are handpicked, and churn out products to make the Secretary of Defense happy,' the planner said. 'They don't make military judgments - they just respond to his snowflakes.' In the months leading up to the war, a split developed inside the military, with the planners and their immediate superiors warning that the war plan was dangerously thin on troops and materiel, and the top generals - including General Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-supporting Rumsfeld."

ABC's Jim Sciutto reports, "U.S. Special Forces troops went on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in northeastern Iraq today but came up empty handed. The site they hit was identified by Colin Powell, in a high-profile address before the U.N. on Feb. 5, as a base for a radical group with possible ties to al Qaeda. Powell, who at the time showed a satellite photograph of what he said was a chemical weapons training center in Northern Iraq used by al Qaeda and protected by Ansar al-Islam, called it evidence of a 'sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network.' Intelligence officials were convinced they would find the toxin known as ricin, which is deadlier than cyanide, or the apparatus to make chemicals at the facility... Inside, they found mortar shells, medical supplies and grim prison cells but no immediate proof of chemical or biological agents... It was a disappointing day for these troops on the front line of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction."

"Whatever happens in the weeks ahead, George W. Bush has 'lost' the war in Iraq. The only question now is how big a price America will pay... That is the view slowly dawning on U.S. military analysts, who privately are asking whether the cost of ousting Saddam Hussein has grown so large that 'victory' will constitute a strategic defeat of historic proportions. At best, ... the Bush administration may be looking at an indefinite period of governing something akin to a California-size Gaza Strip. The chilling realization is spreading in Washington that Bush's Iraqi debacle may be the mother of all presidential miscalculations - an extraordinary blend of Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking with a 'Black Hawk Down' reliance on special operations to wipe out enemy leaders as a short-cut to victory... Few analysts today, however, believe that George W. Bush and his senior advisers...have the common sense to swallow the short-term bitter medicine of a cease-fire or a U.S. withdrawal."

While the Bush-Rove propaganda team are cynically playing the 'Support our Troops' card to silence dissenters, AWOL Bush and the GOP have been trying to slash benefits for veterans - a real show of support for the troops of the past (NOT!). But it is the words of Rumsfeld that really belie the Bush Regime's 'respect' for our soldiers. "If you think back to when we had the draft, people were brought in; they were paid some fraction of what they could make in the civilian manpower market because they were without choices. Big categories were exempted... And what was left was sucked into the intake, trained for a period of months, and then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time, because the churning that took place...'" After an uproar by veterans' groups, the narcissistic Rumsfeld "apologized" not for HIS words, but for "any veteran who misinterpreted my remarks." Support the troops by bringing them home!

David Corn writes: "It took US policymakers and the American public many years, perhaps decades, to realize that hubris - arrogant and uninformed self-confidence - had played a crucial and negative role in the Vietnam tragedy. As Richard Helms, the CIA director for much of the Vietnam War, said in 1981, 'We were dealing with a complicated cultural and ethnic problem which we never came to understand. In other words, it was our ignorance or innocence, if you will, which led us to misassess, not comprehend, and make a lot of wrong decisions, which one way or another helped to affect the outcome.' This time out, the nation is more fortunate: the perils of hubris have become evident within days of the first attack."

"The US is prepared to pay a 'very high price' in terms of casualties to capture Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein , a senior U.S. Central Command official [Gen. Tommy Franks] said on Monday. 'We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away... If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties... There will come a time maybe when things are going to be much more shocking... In World War II, there would be nights when we'd lose 1,000 people... I think we bear a certain responsibility for what we didn't do in 1991 and it's playing itself out on the battlefield. I mean you let somebody down once, you don't want to let them down twice. I guess I'm being too candid.' ... He said he sensed anti-Saddam popular uprisings were 'near' in the southern city of Basra and in Nassiriya. 'I think once the tipping point comes, it starts to spread,' he said." Yet another fatal self-delusion!

AP reports, "U.S. troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint Monday when the Iraqis' van would not stop as ordered... Reports indicated the soldiers followed the rules of engagement to protect themselves. 'In light of recent terrorist attacks by the Iraqi regime, the solders exercised considerable restraint to avoid the unnecessary loss of life,' the statement said. The soldiers involved were from the 3rd Infantry Division, the same unit that lost four soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf Saturday when an Iraqi soldier dressed as a civilian detonated a car bomb. The seven dead and two wounded on Monday were among 13 women and children in a van that approached the checkpoint but did not stop... Soldiers motioned for the driver to stop but were ignored. The soldiers then fired warning shots, which also were ignored. They then shot into the vehicle's engine, but the van continued moving toward the checkpoint." No doubt these families will celebrate their "liberation."

Scott Carrier reports, "Before the bombing started... there was a nearly unanimous belief that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed from power... After the bombing started, the worm turned. We were counting on struggling masses yearning to breathe free, but video of the bombs hitting Baghdad, the video of crying children, the reports of dead civilians...these have been played over and over, sometimes with sentimental Enya-like music, and it's just been too much for the people here. They are Kurds and their identity is linked to their Kurdish culture, but, apparently, their religious identity is stronger than this. Our attack on Iraq is being seen as an attack on their Muslim brothers and sisters. It has become a religious war, and Saddam Hussein is now being called a hero, even among the Kurds. In fact, the war has given the Kurds and the Turks a common ground, perhaps the first time they've ever agreed on anything. It seems we've blown it, again, by not understanding the Muslim mind."

Guardian reports, "Three British soldiers in Iraq have been ordered home after objecting to the conduct of the war. It is understood they have been sent home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians. The three soldiers - including a private and a technician - are from 16 Air Assault Brigade which is deployed in southern Iraq. Its task has been to protect oilfields... The three soldiers, based in Colchester, Essex, face court martial and are seeking legal advice, defence sources said yesterday... Any refusal of soldiers to obey orders is highly embarrassing to the government, with ministers becoming increasingly worried about the way the war is developing. It is also causing concern to British military chiefs who are worried about growing evidence of civilians being killed in fighting involving American soldiers around urban areas in southern Iraq."

UK Times reports, "The light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I walked slowly towards the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead. Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning. Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery. Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved."

UK Times reports, "Three wounded British soldiers described yesterday how they survived a terrifying attack by an American anti-tank aircraft that killed one of their troop and destroyed two armoured vehicles. One of the survivors criticised the American pilot for showing 'no regard for human life' and accused him of being a cowboy who had gone out on a jolly. Another survivor said that he had stumbled out of the burning wreckage of his light tank and waved frantically to the pilot of the low-flying A10 to try to halt his 'friendly fire' as he returned to attack again. The blunder, 35 miles north of Basra, left one soldier missing, presumed dead, and another in intensive care on the hospital ship RFA Argus. A sixth Household Cavalry soldier escaped without injury when the two Scimitar light tanks were destroyed."

1. The anti-war movement supports our troops by urging that they be brought home immediately so they neither kill nor get killed in a unjust war. How has the Bush administration shown its support for our troops?- a. The Republican-controlled House Budget Committee voted to cut $25 billion in veterans benefits over the next 10 years.- b. The Bush administration proposed cutting $172 million from impact aid programs that provide school funding for children of military personnel.- c. The administration ordered the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to stop publicizing health benefits available to veterans.- d. All of the above. Take the whole quiz!

Robert Fisk writes: "Sergeant Ali Jaffar Moussa Hamadi al-Nomani was the first Iraqi combatant known to stage a suicide attack. Not even during the uprising against British rule did an Iraqi kill himself to destroy his enemies. Nomani was also a Shia Muslim, a member of the same sect the Americans faithfully believed to be their secret ally in their invasion of Iraq. Even the Iraqi government initially wondered how to deal with his extraordinary action, caught between its desire to dissociate themselves from an event that might remind the world of Osama bin Laden and its determination to threaten the Americans with more such attacks... Within hours of his death, Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice-President, was talking like a Palestinian or Hizbollah leader, emphasising the inequality of arms between the Iraqis and the Americans."

"Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq... Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way. 'He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn... This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground.' [Rumsfeld overruled Gen. Franks to delay the invasion until more troops could be deployed and miscalculated the Iraqi resistance. A former intelligence official says the war is] now a stalemate. Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment... 'The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive.'"

Reagan's Navy Secretary James Webb writes that Iraq's "actions, while reprehensible, are nothing more than classic guerrilla warfare, no different in fact or in moral degree from what our troops faced in difficult areas of Vietnam. In the Fifth Marine Regiment area of operations outside Da Nang, we routinely faced enemy soldiers dressed in civilian clothes and even as women... On one occasion a smiling, waving girl - no more than 7 years old - lured a squad from my platoon into a vicious North Vietnamese crossfire... The moral and tactical confusion that surrounds this type of warfare is enormous. It is also one reason that the Marine Corps took such heavy casualties in Vietnam, losing five times as many killed as in World War I, three times as many as in Korea and more total casualties than in World War II... Welcome to hell. Many of us lived it in another era. And don't expect it to get any better for a while."

Simon Jenkins writes, "For the first time in modern history a city with the population of London is preparing to resist assault from a land army. The outcome of such a struggle is wholly imponderable. Cities hate soldiers. Sometimes they throw them kisses. More often they throw them grenades. Defiant cities are near impossible to conquer.... In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall. It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taleban drove out of town... The rulebook says it needs 'ten-on-one' to fight in cities." Even with 200,000 troops, we're outnumbered 25:1.

The early stages of this war recalls Vietnam more than "the conflict the Pentagon planners had led the nation to believe it could expect -- one in which a stunning display of air power -- 'shock and awe' -- would leave Saddam Hussein and his leadership cadre cowering, if not dead, in subterranean bunkers, his troops surrendering and joyous Iraqis welcoming their liberators. Instead, there has been fierce resistance, highlighted by an effective if brutal use of paramilitary forces that have bloodied American soldiers and Marines and their British allies... In March 1965, American military units landed in what was then South Vietnam. 'Welcome to the Gallant Marines' read the signs that greeted the troops as they rolled ashore unopposed near the city of Danang. Ten years later, in April 1975, the American mission to that distant battleground ended in failure. In between, some accounts from the field and from the home front mirrored events today."

PentaPost reports, "Ten days into a war fought under the flag of disarmament, U.S.-led troops have found no substantial sign of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction... U.S. forces have tested 10 of their best intelligence leads, four that first day and another half-dozen since, without result. There are nearly 300 sites in the top tier of a much larger list that the DIA updated in the run-up to war. The 10 sites reached by Friday were among the most urgent. If equipped as suspected, they would have posed an immediate threat to U.S. forces. 'All the searches have turned up negative,' said a Joint Staff officer who is following field reports. 'The munitions that have been found have all been conventional.'... [Bush] is determined to conduct the weapons hunt without the U.N. agencies... [Hans Blix said UNMOVIC 'would not accept 'being led, as a dog' to sites that allied forces choose to display.'" The Democrats.com $1,000 reward for evidence of Iraqi WMD remains unclaimed...

Guardian reports, "As US officers in the field have discovered, the defenders of Saddam's regime are using all means at their disposal, no matter how low-tech, to repel the US forces. [US commanders were shocked to encounter a barrage of small arms and machinegun fire that shot down one Apache helicopter and left] 33 others so badly damaged that only seven were considered battle-worthy on returning to their base... It has long been known that Saddam is an admirer of the tactics of Stalin, particularly his order of 'Not One Step Back', issued for the defence of Stalingrad... Despite all claims to the contrary last week from US and British politicians and generals that the war is going to plan, this was not how it was supposed to be. [The failure of strategy is a willful desire by the Bush Chickenhawks] to ignore professional intelligence analysis and warnings on all matters relating to the war."

"They don't think much of the view, they miss their families and they worry about getting killed. A week after invading Iraq, some U.S. troops are wondering what happened to their hopes of a three-day race to Baghdad, waved on by the white flags of surrendering enemy soldiers. [American Marines are learning] first hand what senior U.S. officers are only now beginning to admit in public -- Iraqi resistance is a lot tougher than they were expecting... On this road leading to the southern town of Nassiriya, there are no garlands offered by grateful young women to the 'liberators' -- only a threat of ambush, mines and booby traps. 'I hate this place,' shouted one Marine from a trench he had dug by the road. 'Where's the exotic women, I thought they were supposed to do some belly dancing or something?'"

"The Pentagon signaled the most radical amendment to the strategic plan since the war started nine days ago, by announcing yesterday that an extra 100,000 troops would be sent to fight Iraq, in addition to the 30,000 from the 4th Infantry. [Don Rumsfeld, who hoped to win on the cheap, has called some of the Iraqi forces 'thugs'. Armies who have no respect for the enemy often lose. The Iraqis are brave, tough, and doing a lot better than many people expected. Their defensive strategy is clever. In] the Second World War the British faced a great German general, Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox. The British beat him in the end, but they respected him. It is better to be frustrated by a knight than by a knave, after all. Perhaps the Iraqis have been reading Sun Tzu, again. 'Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him; pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.' We should not be arrogant. We should respect the enemy."

ABC Australia reports, "They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President [sic] George W Bush. Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called 'A Christian's Duty,' a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush. 'I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God's peace be your guide,' says the pledge... The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for Bush, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches. Sunday's is 'Pray that Bush and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding.'" Amen to that! Here's our own prayer: "Pray that Bush and his advisers will resign and then enlist as front-line troops in the war they started."

NY Times reports, "At the base camp of the Fifth Marine Regiment here, two sharpshooters, Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, 28, and Cpl. Mikael McIntosh, 20, sat on a sand berm and swapped combat tales while their column stood at a halt on the road toward Baghdad. For five days this week, the two men rode atop armored personnel carriers, barreling up Highway 1. They said Iraqi fighters had often mixed in with civilians from nearby villages, jumping out of houses and cars to shoot at them, and then often running away. The marines said they had little trouble dispatching their foes, most of whom they characterized as ill trained and cowardly. 'We had a great day,' Sergeant Schrumpf said. 'We killed a lot of people.'... 'We dropped a few civilians,' Sergeant Schrumpf said, 'but what do you do?' [In one incident], he recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. 'I'm sorry,' the sergeant said. 'But the chick was in the way.'"

BBC's Andrew North reports, "Quite a few of the troops have said to me that this isn't what they were expecting. They have had a tiring week of guerrilla-style fighting and it continues. They are frustrated that their political masters gave the American public the impression that it would be easier than it's turned out to be. But, also that they should have given them more expectation about Iraqi resistance like this. They don't want to admit they can't deal with it, but I think there is definitely a sense that it is not the kind of fighting that they were really trained for. One Marine told me: "I've had enough of being fired at from all directions, I just want to go home".

NY Times reports, "It troubles him, now that the battle is over. Sgt. Mark N. Redmond remembers shouting 'qiff,' Arabic for halt, but they did not halt. The Iraqi fighters just kept coming. Sergeant Redmond's unit spent three days and nights fighting for the bridge at Kifl, a village on the Euphrates River about 75 miles south of Baghdad. By any military definition - the territory seized, the number of enemy killed, the mission accomplished - the unit's fight ended in victory. After victory, though, comes rest. And with rest comes reflection. 'I mean, I have my wife and kids to go back home to,' he said, sitting atop a box of rations back at his base camp, whiling away a lull as unexpected as it was appreciated. 'I don't want them to think I'm a killer.'"

"Why is Rumsfeld defying generations of hard-won tactical wisdom by leaving the flanks of our forces totally unprotected? This is Combat 101, first-year stuff they teach at West Point, and Rumsfeld is not paying any attention to it. Instead, he reduced the heavy divisions recommended by the Pentagon, and dead Marines have paid the price for his idiocy."

PentaPost reports, "Marine Cpl. Bret Woolhether heard the first round and tried to take cover, but it was too late. 'I just turned my head, saw the flash of white, saw the warm red running down my hand,' the 20-year-old from Fond du Lac, Wis., recalled at a hospital today. 'I thought it was the end. I saw that round hit. I thought I was done.' They call it the turkey shoot, and they are the targets. Every day, Marines trying to keep critical supply lines open to forward units heading toward Baghdad run a gantlet through the strategic crossroads city of Nasiriyah -- over one bridge, up a few miles and then over another bridge. If they make it without getting shot at, they are lucky. [It] has become perhaps the most treacherous few miles in Iraq. A contingent of about 120 Marines trying to make it to the first bridge Wednesday came under fire from assault weapons and RPG's; about 15 of their Humvees and seven-ton trucks were destroyed and more than 60 of the Marines were wounded."

Arshad Mohammed writes, "A leading U.S. hawk defended an article in which he said a war with Iraq would be a 'cakewalk' but said he underestimated the extent to which Iraq would use guerrilla tactics against U.S. forces. Kenneth Adelman, a former Pentagon aide, U.S envoy to the UN and arms control negotiator, said he stood by the February 2002 article [which said] 'I believe demolishing (Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk... In his piece, Adelman specifically criticized two Brookings Institution scholars, Philip Gordon and Michael O'Hanlon, for having suggested that a U.S. war against Iraq would require 'at least 100,000 to 200,000' ground troops. There are now some 125,000 U.S. and British troops fighting in Iraq and U.S. officials on Thursday said they planned to insert another 100,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of April... 'The bottom line is he got it wrong,' Gordon said" - and Americans and Iraqis are paying with their lives.

LA Times reports, "A highly publicized U.S. campaign to persuade senior Iraqi military and civilian leaders to surrender has failed to produce any significant defections, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that those closest to President Saddam Hussein are unlikely to give up. The effort now appears to be one of several miscalculations in a high-stakes U.S. strategy to use bombing, secret contacts and inducements -- including cash payments -- to key Iraqi leaders to quickly overthrow Hussein. 'We underestimated their capacity to put up resistance. We underestimated the role of nationalism. And we overestimated the appeal of liberation... I think the inner circle are in it for the long haul,' the intelligence official said Thursday... The U.S. effort to encourage defections, run jointly by the Pentagon and the CIA, has been scaled back sharply since last weekend. 'The negotiations went nowhere,' said a former senior CIA official. 'All of them have proved futile.'"

"A pretty 19-year-old country girl who joined the US Army to escape unemployment was feared to be the first woman soldier to die yesterday. Blonde Jessica Lynch was among 12 soldiers in a US supply convoy ambushed by Iraqi troops. Her parents were left weeping like others in America and Britain as more Coalition victims of the war were identified. Supply clerk Jessica was feared dead after five survivors from the ambush were paraded before Iraqi TV cameras in sickening footage beamed around the world on Sunday. Also shown were the bodies of the other seven members of the 507th Maintenance Co convoy, but Jessica's parents could not identify her among them... Private Jessica -- known as Jessie -- only joined up because she could not find a job in her farming community home town of Palestine, West Virginia."

From a Russian intelligence mirror site: "The US made serious errors in their estimates of the Iraq's army strength and combat readiness. The US military intelligence and the CIA failed to uncover the true potential of the Iraqi forces and, in essence, misinformed the top military and civilian leadership of the coalition member countries."

"Rumsfeld's big pitch was all about flexibility. Gotta have more and more of it... in fact, just hand Dubya and me a blank check and we'll be on our way. However, when the issue of 'accountability' was raised, Rumsfeld was annoyed. 'Later,' he said. The whole wacky idea was tabled in favor of 'flexibility.' ...It was revealed during the hearing that Rumsfeld, while exhorting the average American to do their patriotic duty by supporting HIM, is shoveling taxpayer bucks into the pockets of foreign companies, even though American companies are producing the same products or services more cheaply. In fact, as we speak, Rummy is currently using taxpayer cash to have a foreign company work on an office addition. God Bless 'Merica! " -Cheryl Seal Reports

St. Petersburg (FL) Times opines, "Richard Perle is the guru of the civilian ideologues who are the architects of the Bush administration's Iraqi war plans... Dick Cheney, a longtime associate of Perle, said American soldiers would be 'greeted as liberators' by the people of Iraq. And Perle said most of Saddam Hussein's troops would surrender rather than fight, while Iraqi opponents of Hussein would lead an armed uprising to topple his regime with little or no help from U.S. forces. Perle... envisioned before the war that U.S. forces would make 'a much more modest effort' than in the 1991 Gulf War, needed only to 'assist Iraqis in freeing their country.' At times, Perle predicted that no U.S. ground forces would be required. At most, he said, only about 40,000 U.S. ground troops would be needed... The lives of American soldiers are put at risk if our battlefield plans are based on the political assumptions of civilian ideologues instead of the expertise of our military leaders"

Are you tired of Pentagon-censored news coverage? ElectronicIraq.net is an outstanding source for front-line reports from peace activists who are "embedded" with the suffering people of Iraq. You can subscribe to their e-mail newsletter for daily updates.

"For the second time in two days, an American Patriot missile defence battery has apparently locked its sights on a coalition fighter plane, raising fears that the system's targeting software is infected with a deadly glitch... A Patriot system about 48 kilometres south of Najaf apparently locked on to a US Air Force F-16 fighter on Monday and prepared to fire. The F-16 responded by firing a high-speed anti-radiation missile at the battery and destroying its radar dish. No one was injured. The incident came a day after a Patriot missile shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado, killing both crew members... 'It's obviously a software glitch,' one defence official said. 'Jets go fast, but there's no way they should be mistaking them for a Scud going supersonic.'" Let's pray the Patriots aren't running on Windows 95...

USA Today reports, "Water shortages continued Thursday in Basra, and are growing in Baghdad, according to the Red Cross. Refugees have not streamed across Iraq's borders, as some experts had predicted. But thousands of Basra residents fled Thursday in search of water and to escape battles between fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein and British troops. In northern Iraq, Kurdish officials said food prices have doubled as stockpiles have dwindled and concerns have mounted about when new supplies will arrive. UN officials are warning that Iraqi society is so fragile because of all the hardships the nation's people have endured under Saddam's regime that it will not take much to bring about disaster. 'A million Iraqi children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition,' said Shashi Tharoor, UN undersecretary-general. Civilian suffering could prolong the conflict, making Iraqis less willing to challenge Saddam's troops. Aid is essential to win the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds."

PentaPost reports, "Intelligence analysts at the CIA and Pentagon warned the Bush administration that U.S. troops would face significant resistance from Iraqi irregular forces employing guerrilla tactics, but those views have not been adequately reflected in the administration's public predictions about how difficult a war might go, according to current and former intelligence officials. CIA analysts 'thought there was a good chance we would be forced to fight our way through everything. They were much more cautious about it being an easy situation.' With U.S. and British troops being forced to defend a more than 200-mile supply line from the Kuwaiti border to U.S. troops 50 miles from Baghdad and to fend off small-scale attacks by the Iraqi irregular forces, analysts at the CIA and the DIA are complaining that their reports [were] softened as they moved to the White House." Just like 9-11, Bush ignored the warnings - at the cost of precious American lives. Impeach Bush Now!

NY Times reports, "In the first seven days of the war in Iraq, two dozen Americans have died. Modest as the latest losses are by historical standards of combat, they have already prompted sharp shifts in public perceptions about how well the campaign against Saddam Hussein is going.... As coalition forces face unexpected complexities on their march to Baghdad, the Bush administration faces the political challenge of preparing a public lulled by the relatively low losses in Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf war for a conflict that could be costlier than some optimists predicted. What level of casualties does the White House think the American public will tolerate? 'I'm not going there, because I don't know,' said White House communications director, Dan Bartlett [architect of Bush's AWOL scrub]... In Gallup surveys taken this month, just 5% of respondents expected casualties of several thousand, while 4 in 10 expected fewer than 100 American casualties."

AFP reports, "The US does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said.'The US is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win,' he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast [in Portugal] Tuesday. 'We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the US in this war is inevitable,' he said. 'Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost,' Ritter added. Stiffening Iraqi resistance as US-led forces close in on Baghdad have prompted questions about the strategy to use precision air power and a smaller, fast moving ground force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Some military analysts have said there are not enough allied troops in Iraq to take control of Baghdad."

AP reports, "Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested on Thursday that U.S. forces bearing down on Baghdad might lay siege to the capital and hope anti-Saddam Hussein citizens rise up against the government before American troops have to invade the city of 5 million. Rumsfeld also said the United States and its battlefield allies would accept nothing short of total victory in Iraq. 'There isn't going to be a cease-fire,' Rumsfeld told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. He said later, 'It will end at the point where that regime does not exist and a new regime is ready to go in its place.' Rumsfeld appeared before two congressional committees Thursday amid efforts by the Bush administration to counteract speculation that the war effort is bogging down and that it underestimated the need for armored forces to protect attacking U.S. troops' long supply lines inside Iraq." Support US troops - bring them home now!

PentaPost reports, "Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday. The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American military might has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them see even the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more and more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military commanders were talking yesterday about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said. 'Tell me how this ends,' one senior officer said yesterday."

Bob Novak writes, "'There were some who were supportive of going to war with Iraq who described it as a cakewalk,' Tim Russert told Donald Rumsfeld on NBC's 'Meet the Press' last Sunday. [Rummy] seemed surprised. 'I never did,' he replied. 'No one I know in the Pentagon ever did.' While Rumsfeld spoke the literal truth, his response was still disingenuous. Rumsfeld had been asked about the cakewalk description several times, rejecting it but still defending the premises for such a judgment. Its source was ... longtime Rumsfeld friend and lieutenant: Kenneth Adelman, appointed by the secretary to the Defense Policy Board. In demanding military action against Saddam Hussein, Adelman has promised repeatedly there would be no military difficulty... The cakewalk image took hold among some of the strongest hawks in Congress and in the public mind. That has led to widespread surprise and dismay in beholding what Rumsfeld accurately told Russert: 'A war is a war. It's a brutal thing.'"

Reuters reports, "Russia on Wednesday fired a new broadside against the United States over its military action against Iraq, scorning claims its troops were 'liberating' Iraqis and accusing it of defying world opinion. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said: 'What the United States is doing challenges not only Iraq, but the whole world.' 'It is already becoming clear how far removed from reality are their attempts to present military action against Iraq as a triumphant march for the liberation of the Iraqi people with minimal casualties and destruction... If there are claims by coalition forces about discovering weapons of mass destruction...only international inspectors can make a conclusive assessment of the origin of these weapons. No other evaluation and final conclusion can be accepted.'... Ivanov's sharp attack, following President Vladimir Putin's fierce denunciation at the onset of U.S. military action on March 20, nonetheless marked another downturn in relations."

"Gen. Brooks' press conference was one of the most pathetic spectacles, in terms of real information, honesty, and directness, that I have witnessed since the last time I was cornered by a desperate salesman at a used car lot. Some of Brooks' statements represented such an extraordinarily primitive, crude type of propaganda that it seems bizarre anyone in their right mind would try to pass it off on a modern press corps, however gullible said press corps may be. Example: Brooks actually denied that any civilians had been killed by U.S. bombs - despite ample eyewitness reports by non-Iraqis, photos, video footage, and what sheer rational logic alone would tell you.. He went onto claim that any Iraqis being killed in battle, in fact, were being killed by their own troops! These statements that are more reminiscent of 'Weekly World News' headlines ('GMC Pickup Truck Found on Moon!') than responsible commentary by 'leaders.'" - Cheryl Seal Reports 3/26

"Australian Prime Minister John Howard has declined an invitation to attend the Iraq war summit in Washington with US resident Bush. Bush invited Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to attend Camp David talks, but a spokesman for Howard said he thought it best to stay in Australia for the moment." Lest he be told not to return?

NY Times reports, "Gen. Richard Myers acknowledged today that the Pentagon's strategy to shock the Iraqi government quickly with a devastating early air assault has not worked exactly as desired... Three weeks ago, Myers said the military would inflict 'such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable.' He made no predictions, but said the goal was a 'short conflict' that would be 'much, much, much different' than the 43-day Persian Gulf War in 1991... 'The main thing we've learned from this is that `shock and awe' hasn't panned out,' said Robert A. Pape... 'The targeting hasn't broken the back of the leadership.' Mr. Pape said that over the last 17 years, this strategy has been tried six times and backfired or proved ineffective in each instance. He cited examples ranging from the 1986 strike against the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to the 1999 air campaign aimed at toppling the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic."

Guardian reports, "Hopes of a joyful liberation of a grateful Iraq by US and British armies are evaporating fast in the Euphrates valley as a sense of bitterness, germinated from blood spilled and humiliations endured, begins to grow in the hearts of invaded and invader alike. Attempts by US marines to take bridges over the river Euphrates, which passes through Nassiriya, have become bogged down in casualties and troops taken prisoner. The marines, in turn, have responded harshly. Out in the plain west of the city, marines shepherding a gigantic series of convoys north towards Baghdad have reacted to ragged sniping with an aggressive series of house searches and arrests. A surgical assistant at the Saddam hospital in Nassiriya, interviewed at a marine check point outside the city, said that on Sunday, half an hour after two dead marines were brought into the hospital, US aircraft dropped what he described as three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing 10 and wounding 200."

"LINDA MOTTRAM: Despite stated Bush administration optimism about a short war in Iraq, should it happen, there are those with immense experience in such matters inside the Pentagon who fear that it'll bog down in a siege of Baghdad, in part because, for all its assembled military muscle, the US battle plan has too few troops. Retired General Joseph Hoar was the Chief of the US Central Command, the rank held by General Norman Schwarzkopf, the 1991 Gulf War Commander. The current incumbent of that position, General Tommy Franks, will be leading any military strike on Iraq this time. General Hoar says that the determination of Iraq's Republican Guard and the unprecedented control of intimate battle plan detail by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, will ensure that the battle will not be swift."

The Moonie UPI writes: "Bush acknowledged reality on a day when the drive to Baghdad suddenly no longer looked like a walk in the desert park. 'It is evident that it's going to take awhile to achieve our objective,' the resident said on his return to the White House Sunday from a weekend at Camp David. And then he added that he could assure the American people 'that this is just the beginning of a tough fight.' Yes indeed. Yet the war on Iraq was not sold to the American people as a tough fight. It was sold to them as a combination of a walk in the park, an essential operation to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and, most of all, as a crusade to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of President Saddam Hussein. The curious thing is, almost none of them appear to be want to be saved."

"Remember the 'Kuwaiti babies ripped from incubators' story in 1991? That tale really got Americans whipped into a frenzy, cheering the bombers on. Then, after the war, the woman who disseminated the story tearfully admitted it was a total fabrication during a Congressional hearing. Now the Bush II folks are spreading similar 'urban myths' to keep American bloodlust at fever pitch. The latest: UPI (now owned by Bush's friend the Reverend Moon) and his fellow rightwing religious fanatic Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network are currently spreading around a manufactured story about how Saddam fed an officer into a paper shredder, delighting in his screams...this lurid fiction was reported 'first hand' by a 'human shield pastor' who from the 'Assyrian Church of the East.' Turns out there is no such 'pastor,' and, by extension, no such person." Cheryl Seal Reports 3/25

LA Times reports, "Saman Atef was finishing a late breakfast Monday when he heard a long, whining whoosh. Before he had time to ponder the noise, three of his neighbors' houses exploded in a rain of bricks, glass and dust. In the instant the bomb or missile hit, four people were killed and 23 were injured, Atef said, and the people of his working-class neighborhood of northern Baghdad counted one more reason to feel angry with the US... The U.S. war strategy has counted in part on separating the people of Iraq from the government of Hussein. But the deaths and injuries from misdirected or errant bombs, or from shrapnel and fragments that spray into nearby homes even when the munitions find their intended target, are making more and more people believe that the US is heedless of the Iraqi public. Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf said Monday that 62 civilians had been 'martyred' in the last 24 hours across Iraq and that hundreds had been injured."

Nat Parry writes: "As U.S. forces encounter stiffer-than-expected resistance in Iraq, the Bush administration and the U.S. news media are gaining a sudden reverence for international law. [When] five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast Sunday on Iraqi TV, Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews with the prisoners as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. [But on Sunday] Iraqi POWs were paraded before U.S. cameras as 'proof' that Iraqi resistance was crumbling. Some of the scenes showed Iraqi POWs forced at gunpoint to kneel down with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Yet neither the Bush administration nor a single U.S. reporter covering the war for the major news networks observed how those scenes might be a violation of international law." And not a single Pentagon stenographer has asked about the illegal treatment of POW's in Afghanistan or Guantanamo.

NY Times reports, "American and British ground forces on Sunday suffered their worst casualties so far while they battled determined Iraqi forces on two fronts in what an American commander said were 'the sharpest engagements of the war.' Military officials in the war zone reported that at least 20 American soldiers were missing or killed and 50 or more wounded in a day of ambushes, accidents and tank and artillery engagements... Saddam appeared on Iraqi national television this morning to rally his troops and condemn the US... Obviously aware of the events of the past few days, he cited the battle for Umm Qasr and praised individual army commanders as a way of exhorting the troops to fight in Basra and around the country. 'Strike them until they come to the conclusion that they are not in a position to commit crimes against you and your people. God has ordered you to cut their throats.' He added, referring to battles yet to come, 'We will make it as painful as we can.'"

Reuters reports, "Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Monday called for a session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the U.S.-led war in Iraq. 'The UN and the Security Council cannot, of course, remain without getting involved in what is happening in Iraq. We hope this question will very soon become the subject of thorough and detailed discussion in the Security Council,' he told journalists... Ivanov expressed concern at mounting casualties in the conflict and warned that a humanitarian and ecological disaster could be imminent. 'We are concerned about the fact that peaceful people keep dying (in Iraq), about the level of destruction and the increasing flow of refugees. This could lead to a humanitarian and ecological catastrophe in the region,' he said." But there is no indication that Russia set a date for this Security Council meeting.

Reuters reports, "U.S. military prowess suffered another setback in Iraq on Monday and another omen that bullets rather than liberators' garlands may await the invasion force when it finally reaches Baghdad. In what could have been a scene from the movie 'Blackhawk Down' which showed U.S. troops under fire in Somalia, farmers with grubby rifles were filmed swarming over one of the world's top attack helicopters. The AH-64D Apache Longbow of the U.S. Cavalry was somehow brought down after running into a storm of ground fire during a combat mission by up to 40 of the formidable flying tanks... In one of the most stinging setbacks for modern U.S. military prowess, Somali gunmen with adapted RPG launchers brought down two Blackhawk helicopters in Mogadishu [in 1993]... Together with errant missiles, crashing helicopters and the mistaken destruction of a two-man British Tornado fighter by a U.S. Patriot missile, the loss of the Apache was an unwelcome embarrassment for the U.S. forces."

Aljazeerah.info reports, "Fires dotted a smoke-shrouded skyline in Baghdad Saturday after US and British forces unleashed a bombardment of unprecedented ferocity on its dazed residents. Buildings across the Iraqi capital shook as the overnight pounding from bombs and missiles, which sent fireballs and mushroom clouds of smoke billowing skywards, extended into a daylight blitz for the first time in three days of hostilities. "The first two nights (of war) were a joke compared to this," said a hotel driver. "So this is what they meant by shock and awe. It is shocking and awesome. They meant what they said." Parents said their children trembled with fear at the onslaught... Iraq said yesterday 250 civilians had been wounded in the bombing. Speaking at a news conference, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf said Friday night's raids alone wounded 207 civilians. The remaining casualties were caused by earlier raids."

"The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq... The following is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russian military intelligence reports. Latest information from the Russian Army Intelligence: work is paralyzed at the coalition press-center in Kuwait. Journalists are not able to get any information except for the hourly press communique' from the command. A variety of reasons are cited by the military to reduce the number of trips into the combat zone for the journalists."

A BuzzFlash reader writes, "The 'discovery' of the 'huge chemical weapons factory' in Najaf is not a discovery. This facility has been known about since 1991: 'Summary: Several sites in Iraq with the capability to produce and store BW weapons. Although the capability exists, no evidence of current production or storage was found. Enclosures. Text 1. Background [deleted] suspected biological warfare sites. Among the sites were the Al-Kindi company, An-Najaf, Taji, the Serum and Vaccine institute, the Agriculture Research and Water Resources Center, and the Ibn Haithan institute.' " Maybe that's why the Pentagon loudly celebrated its initial "discovery," but within minutes started backing off the story - to the point where it barely made the morning newspapers.

From the Blog of Iraqi Salem Pax: "3/22 4:30pm (day3) half an hour ago the oil filled trenches were put on fire. First watching Al-jazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few minutes earlier bit when I went up to the roof to take a look I saw that there were too many of them, we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousin came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city. Today the third in the war, we had quite a number of attacks during daytime... The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire."

If you want to know what's happening on the war front - but can't stand to watch Pentagon-approved propaganda on TV - then check out this outstanding pizza-powered war blog by Sean Paul Kelley.

On Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer asked Rummy whether there is evidence that Iraq is "getting ready to use chemical weapons against our forces?" Rummy replied with meaningless Bushit: "We have seen intelligence that capabilities are dispersed, and whether it's true or not, indications that orders have been issued that permit selected commanders to make judgments with respect to that... We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." Do these words have any meaning? None that we can discern. Naturally, he offers no real evidence to back up his words - because he doesn't have any. But you can bet Pentagon teams are busy cooking up pseudo-evidence, like the pseudo-facts Colin Powell presented at the UN...

Karl Rove and the Pentagon think the images of dead American soldiers is too dangerous for the American public to see, and they have ordered the media not to show these pictures, which have been broadcast around the world on Al-Jazeera. Matt Drudge sees these images as justification for War - whereas we see them as more justification for impeaching Bush, since this War is unnecessary and criminal. Now that Bush has American blood on his hands, it's time for Congress and the media to start asking the tough questions: What right did a cabal of chickenhawks have to send brave soldiers to their deaths? Why are Americans sacrificing their precious blood for Iraq's oil? What possible good can come out of this evil war?

Reuters reports, "Iraq said on Sunday that it would respect the Geneva Convention guaranteeing humane treatment of prisoners after taking at least five U.S. soldiers captive and displaying them on television. 'Iraq will not harm the captured prisoners of war,' Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed told a news conference. 'It will treat them in accordance with the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.' At least four dead Americans and five prisoners were filmed by Iraqi television, in footage relayed on Sunday by the Arabic network Al-Jazeera, which said they had been taken during a battle at the southern town of Souq al-Shuyukh. The prisoners were asked questions in what Washington said was a violation of the Geneva convention. Pictures of Iraqi prisoners have also been shown widely in the United States" - is there anyone who didn't see pictures of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers walking with their hands up, scenes that were shown repeatedly on TV?

Australia's Herald Sun reports, "Former Iraqi army chief Nizar al-Khazraji, who disappeared from his home in Denmark last week, was spirited away by CIA agents and taken to Saudi Arabia, a Danish newspaper has said. Khazraji, believed to be the highest ranking officer to have defected from Iraq and touted by US media as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein, was reported missing from his address on March 17. Danish newspaper BT said the 64-year-old former general, who has been charged with war crimes for alleged chemical weapon attacks on Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s and was under house arrest in Denmark, was useful to US intelligence in their war against Iraq. The paper said he had detailed knowledge of the Iraqi terrain and military installations and could help plan US and British attacks against the northern oil city of Kirkuk... The Danish police are continuing to hunt for Khazraji and have said that if he is discovered in a foreign country they will ask for his extradition."

NY Times still believes Saddam has chemical and biological weapons, in spite of the complete absence of any evidence and hundreds of inspections that came up empty. "America will not be able to claim victory in Iraq until it secures Saddam Hussein's missing troves of unconventional weapons, the ingredients for making them and the network of scientists able to produce them." So where are these "troves of weapons", exactly? The Times quickly backs off: "Some experts believe that to avoid detection, Iraq may have retained only seed stocks, growth media and the technical know-how to be able to start up production again quickly." In that case, they don't exactly have "troves," do they? Then the Times wanders off into the merits of bribing "sadistic members of the Iraqi Baath leadership" to find the "troves." What a melange of muddled misinformation!

Robert Fisk writes, "Donald Rumsfeld says the American attack on Baghdad is 'as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed' but he should not try telling that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looked at me yesterday morning, drip feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tried vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her tiny legs - they were bound up with gauze - and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg. Her mother bends over the bed and straightens her right leg which the little girl thrashes around outside the blanket. Somehow, Doha's mother thinks that if her child's two legs lie straight beside each other, her daughter will recover from her paralysis." This is one of several eloquent first-hand reports on the consequences of Bush's Shock and Awe bombing.

"The conduct of all warring parties in Iraq will be under unprecedented scrutiny and they should strictly adhere to the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today (3-19-03) in releasing letters to the governments of the US, the United Kingdom, Australia and Iraq... HRW highlighted the following concerns: No party to the conflict should use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction under any circumstances, be it in first strike or reprisal. Iraq must not use human shields, but if it does, U.S. and allied forces must still assess the potential harm to civilians and take all feasible precautions in carrying out such attacks... The US and its allies should only use precision-guided munitions in populated areas. Cluster bombs should not be used in populated areas, nor antipersonnel landmines under any circumstances."

AP reports, "Al-Jazeera aired footage from Iraqi television Sunday of interviews with what the station identified as captured American prisoners, and also showed bodies in uniform in an Iraqi morgue that it said were Americans... At least five prisoners including one woman were interviewed separately. Two were bandaged. They spoke American-accented English... The prisoners looked terrified. One captive, who said he was from Kansas, answered all his questions in a shaky voice, his eyes darting back and forth between and interviewer and another person who couldn't be seen on camera. Asked why he came to Iraq, he simply replied 'I come to fix broke stuff.' Prodded again by the interviewer, he was asked if he came to shoot Iraqis. 'No I come to shoot only if I am shot at,' he said. 'They (Iraqis) don't bother me, I don't bother them.' Another prisoner, who said he was from Texas, said only: 'I follow orders.'" Are American soldiers told about the Nuremberg trials?

Reuters reports, "Al-Jazeera television, quoting Iraqi medics, said 50 people were killed when U.S. F-16 planes bombed near Basra. Raw video footage, beamed across the Arab world by the Qatar-based satellite channel, showed a child with half its head blown off. It was unclear if it was a boy or a girl. 'It's a huge mass of civilians,' one angry woman told al-Jazeera, standing among the wounded. 'It was a massacre.' The Iraqi government said three people died and 207 civilians wounded in heavy bombing on Friday and into Saturday." Do Pentagon propagandists still think US troops will be greeted with flowers and kisses?

BuzzFlash reader Mary carefully analyzed a PentaPost article on "valuable new information" on Iraqi chemical and biological weapons. "This article tells us that the inspections were always a farce and a set-up. First because we were not interested in disarmament in the first place, or we would have planned for it - rather than planning to attack Iraq for a year before we got around to dealing with disarmament. And secondly, because we sabotaged the very inspections that we insisted on being held. We are furthermore going to supplant the UN's legitimate role in post-war inspections and replace it with a team of people who spied for us on the previous set of sham UN inspections... The whole thrust of the new "inspections" team they are setting up is only to come up with a 'smoking gun,' and fast. It is all appearances, all fakery."

Will Pitt writes, "We are the terrorists now, stupid underinformed terrorists who dance to the tune of a corporate media machine that will profit wildly from this attack. NBC, MSNBC and CNBC are owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors on earth... Americans are not often afforded the opportunity to witness a war crime live on television. Today's actions bring to mind a war crime from a generation ago: The shooting of a prisoner by Vietnamese General and American ally Nguyen Ngoc Loan. General Loan put a pistol to the head of this bound prisoner and blew his brains into the street, an image that millions of Americans saw after it had taken place. We are here again today. The poverty of the Iraqi people leaves them bound, unable to escape the wave of steel. We have blown their brains out. We have incinerated them in place. We will continue to do so, and you can watch it from your couch. Today, you are the terrorist. So am I."

MSNBC reports, "The Pentagon unleashed its 'shock and awe' aerial strike across Iraq on Friday, defense officials told NBC News. As word of the promised massive bombardment came from the Pentagon, Baghdad and its outskirts were rocked by new explosions... One US official told The Associated Press that hundreds of sorties were planned against target sites in Iraq on what he called 'A-Day,' meaning Aerial Day. In Baghdad, correspondent Peter Arnett saw one explosion over one of the palaces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Arnett, who is reporting from Baghdad for National Geographic Explorer and NBC News, said the first explosions lasted for only a few minutes. One U.S. official involved in military planning told AP that B-52 bombers had been scrambled en masse from a base in England and would launch cruise missiles in a strike that would be bigger than anything seen thus far in the conflict. Separately, a British official said Baghdad faced a 'big blast.'"

Reuters reports, "A U.S. defense official said that while the Pentagon was pleased with the rapid ground progress so far, massive air and missile strikes were still in the battle plan. 'I don't think anyone is surprised about the progress down south, but it could change when we get closer to Baghdad,' the official told Reuters. Jacques Beltran said there could be a watershed in the conflict in as little as two to three days. 'Either the regime will have fallen by then, or it is still intact and we have to prepare for a battle in Baghdad against Saddam's elite troops that would have much more serious risks.' He pinpointed three areas of risk: a 'Stalingrad' siege scenario in Baghdad, an Iraqi resort to biological or chemical weapons, or an escalation elsewhere with fighting either between Turks and Kurds in the north or an Iraqi attack on Israel."

PentaPost reports, "U.S. and British marines took over the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr today, and other U.S. troops rolled northward toward Baghdad as the United States and Britain expanded their campaign to oust President Saddam Hussein across several fronts. TV images of the U.S. Third Infantry division rolling across the desert unimpeded created the impression of a cakewalks, but in southeastern Iraq, British and U.S. marines reported surprisingly stiff resistance as they advanced toward key oil installations and port facilities. At one point U.S. Marines were pinned down in a two-hour firefight as Iraqi troops opened fire with machine guns and anti-tank rockets. One U.S. Marine was killed in fighting inside Iraq, the first casualty of hostile fire since the war began on Wednesday, according to U.S. Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a military spokesman in Doha, Qatar. No other details were given. Earlier, eight British marines and four Americans died in the crash of CH-46E Sea King helicopter."

"U.S. Marines briefly raised the Stars and Stripes flag over the new port area of Umm Qasr on Friday after facing tougher than expected resistance in and around the southern Iraq port. Reuters correspondent Adrian Croft, traveling with the Marines, saw troops lower an Iraqi flag soon after they arrived at the port complex, replacing it with the U.S. flag. Some time later, Marines returned and removed the Stars and Stripes. No reason was given for the decision, but Washington has consistently stressed that invading U.S. forces want to liberate Iraq, not occupy it." The article includes a photo of a Marine raising the flag.

NY Times reports, "Some wars begin with a bang. Others begin with limited airstrikes, stealthy border movements and psychological operations to weaken the enemy's resistance. This war began with both. The major blows were cruise missile attacks from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and strikes by F-117 stealth fighters against three 'leadership targets,' an apparent effort to decapitate Saddam Hussein's regime. The strike recalled the cruise missile attack the Clinton administration mounted - unsuccessfully - to try to kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It was an attempt to end the war with a single, decisive blow" - but not the virtual nuclear attack called "shock and awe," which is being saved for later. We'll call the Day 1 strategy "stick and jaw" - trying to poke a fatal stick into the eye of Saddam's regime, while putting Bush on camera to "jaw" about freedom and hardship.

USA Today reports, "Armed with high-tech weapons, night-vision goggles and pictures of their targets, small teams of Delta Force commandos will soon descend on the outskirts of Baghdad to begin the most anticipated mission of the war: capturing or killing Saddam Hussein. Teams of the Army's elite 360-man force have been assigned to hunt and, if necessary, kill Saddam, his sons Qusai and Uday, and at least a dozen of Iraq's top military and political leaders... In private, few officials are talking about capturing Saddam or letting him leave. 'The expectation is to kill him within days' of the start of the war, a Pentagon official says. 'It's what Delta has been training 24/7 to do.'... Within the Bush administration, there is concern that [keeping Saddam alive to stand] trial could rally sympathetic Arabs around Saddam. A trial also could fuel continuing criticism of the administration's single-minded push to remove Iraq's leader." Of course assassination is illegal, but who cares?

"Administration sources said the decision to strike came after a nearly four-hour meeting in the Oval Office in which CIA Director George Tenet and Pentagon officials told Bush that they could lose the 'target of opportunity' if they didn't act quick; Bush then gave the green light. Whether the mission succeeded is not known. Pentagon officials said it is very difficult to successfully target a single person on the ground in such a bombing. More than 40 satellite-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from U.S. warships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, military officials said. F117 stealth fighters, which carry two 2,000-pound bombs apiece, also were involved in the strikes, though apparently on a target other than Saddam."

"My fellow citizens [until I revoke your citizenship, or lock you up because I don't like what you're thinking], at this hour, American and coalition forces [UK, Australia, and Poland - hey, that's better than none!] are in the early stages of military operations to disarm [that's spelled C-O-N-Q-U-E-R] Iraq, to free its people [so they take orders from Gen. Tommy Franks, who is obviously not a military dictator because he doesn't have a scary-looking mustache] and to defend the world [that's Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Israel - not you, France!] from grave danger [that I could never prove - but hey, I didn't won the Presidency either, and I'm still the Big Cowboy in the Oval Office!]."

London Evening Standard reports, "British and American troops were involved in fierce fighting near Iraq's main port today as the war to topple Saddam Hussein began. The firefight broke out near Basra as men of the Special Boat Service targeted the strategically vital city and the oilfields in southern Iraq. At the same time allied troops were flooding into the demilitarised zone on the Iraqi border with Kuwait 40 miles away to take up positions for an all-out invasion. The fighting reported at Basra was believed to involve British special forces and US marines in an operation to prepare landing sites for amphibious craft during an invasion. Other special units were deep inside Iraq on secret operations to prepare landing strips in the desert for airborne troops." This battle apparently followed the earlier minesweeping battle.

"Bush met with his war council and the White House sent Congress formal notification of justification for war. The three-paragraph document says diplomacy has failed to protect America's security, and it links Saddam's regime with the al-Qaida network, implicated in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks... Aides said war wouldn't automatically start the moment the deadline expires. [LIE: shooting began Wed a.m.] The White House released a letter Bush sent Congress [that] says diplomacy has failed to bring Iraq into compliance with United Nations resolutions and protect America's interests. [LIE: we were just weeks away from full compliance]. It also says the Constitution gives the president [sic ]authority to 'take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.' [LIE: Iraq had NO role in 9-11]."

Guardian reports, "Blair tonight saw off the final obstacle to UK involvement on a war with Iraq, defeating a Commons anti-war vote with a majority of 179 (396-217). 217 Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and nationalist MPs voted against war, on an amendment saying the case was 'not yet established', with early estimates putting the Labour rebellion at 140 - up 17 from the vote last month... Despite a total of seven resignation from the government, and three from the Tory shadow cabinet, a defeat for the prime minister was never in question... Highlights of the debate included the Tory whip, John Randall, who resigned over his party's stance on Iraq, and passionately anti-Bush speeches from Labour's Bob Marshall-Andrews and John McDonnell... Mr Blair began the debate nearly 10 hours earlier by facing his critics head on, admitting both his party and the Tories were divided, that he had lost a cabinet colleague on a 'point of principle' and that the public were undecided."

BBC reports, "The United States says American forces will enter Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction even if President Saddam Hussein complies with an ultimatum to leave. George W Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer said that allied troops would go into the country 'no matter what', but warned the Iraqi leader that if he did not leave it would be his 'final mistake.'" Congratulations, Ari - you're about to create history's greatest martyr for the radical Islamic cause.

CTV reports, "Hans Blix is scheduled to outlines key disarmament demands on Iraq at a UN meeting Wednesday. The report comes one day after 134 weapons inspectors evacuated Iraq and hours before U.S. President George Bush's 8 p.m. ET deadline for Saddam Hussein to step down or face a military invasion. Foreign ministers from five Security Council nations -- France, Russia, Germany, Syria and Guinea -- are all scheduled to speak at the meeting, and they'll likely denounce Bush's plans... Colin Powell will not attend Wednesday's session, which was described by one U.S. official as 'detached from reality in many respects.'... Blix expressed disappointment that inspections were not allowed to continue. 'I don't think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after three-and-a-half months. I would have welcomed some more time,' said Blix. 'But then some didn't have the patience a little earlier than others have done, and I think that's a pity.'"

London Times reports, "The first shots of the war have been fired, killing at least one Iraqi during a suspected operation to mine the waters off Kuwait. But that opening skirmish is about to be dwarfed by the most formidable military assault in modern warfare: 250,000 British and American troops - backed by more than 1,000 aircraft, 400 tanks and a 110-strong armada - are poised to unleash their awesome power on Saddam Hussein's Iraq the moment the order is given. The first clash occurred in the mouth of the Khawr al-Zubayr river, a few miles south of the port of Umm Qasr, when a Kuwaiti gunboat challenged a flotilla of about 25 Iraqi dhows. The boats failed to respond and the Kuwaitis opened fire. It was unclear whether the dhows had laid any mines" - or whether they even had any mines. If they actually did, we would no doubt have been told. So begins "Operation Bush Empire I" - America's W-ar of Global Conquest.

Salon reports, "On March 10, the Wall Street Journal reported that USAID had invited a handful of large engineering firms to bid on a $900 million contract for rebuilding Iraq. The Journal described the agency's efforts as 'quiet,' but 'secret' seems a more apt term. In a procedure designed to respond to 'urgent circumstances,' the agency decided not to put out a public notice soliciting engineering bids and instead approached select firms... All of these firms are American, and many have close ties to present and former government officials. One of the companies is [Cheney's Halliburton]. USAID declined to discuss the sort of work it had asked the companies to do... The news that some well-connected American firms will be first in line for these billion-dollar deals did not help the Bush administration's case for war internationally. Headlines all over the world questioned the White House's true motives for war."

NY Times reports that Bush "has deployed mobile labs and new specialized teams of intelligence officials and disarmament experts to Kuwait to help the military search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as soon as war begins... The administration has assigned top priority to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. After months of relatively fruitless international inspections, the discovery of such arms, officials said, would vindicate the administration's decision to go to war to disarm Iraq. Conversely, failure to find them would leave the administration vulnerable to charges that it had started a war needlessly." Well D-U-H! And will anyone in the world believe Bush when he suddenly "finds" WMD? Rummy's "Operation Plant the Evidence" stinks so bad even the CIA doesn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole!

AP reports, "Iraq's al-Shabab television, owned by Saddam's son Odai, said the decision to defy Bush 's ultimatum was made in a joint meeting of the Revolution Command Council and the leadership of the ruling Baath party. Saddam chaired the session... 'Iraq doesn't choose its path through foreigners and doesn't choose its leaders by decree from Washington, London or Tel Aviv,' it said. 'The pathetic Bush was hoping ... to achieve his evil targets without a fight through that declaration (the ultimatum) which reflects a state of isolation and defeat from which he and his pathetic allies are suffering from,' the statement from the meeting said. Odai Hussein had already issued his own rejection of the ultimatum in a statement distributed by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. He said Bush was 'unstable' and that the U.S. leader 'should give up power in America with his family.' He also warned that a U.S.-led attack will force Iraq to broaden the war against the US."