--- This is the stupidest and most recklessly undertaken war in modern times. It is all about imperial arrogance unschooled in worldliness, unfettered either by competence or experience, undeterred by history or human complexity, unrepentant in brutal violence and cruel electronic gadgetry. To call it "faith-based" is to give faith an even worse name that it already has. With its too-long and vulnerable supply lines, its lurching from illiterate glibness to blind military pounding, its poorly planned logistical inadequacy and its slick wordy self-explanations, the U.S. war against Iraq is almost perfectly embodied by poor George Bush's groping to stay on cue and on top of the texts they've prepared for him and which he can scarcely read, and Rummy Rumsfeld's wordy petulance, sending out lots of young soldiers either to die or to kill as many people as possible. What winning, or for that matter losing, such a war will ultimately entail is almost literally unthinkable. But pity the Iraqi civilians who must.

Edward W. Said Al-Hayat 2003/04/14

 
--- After the relentless three weeks of bombing of Baghdad, among the blood soaked craters in the ground, dead bodies and body parts blown by bombs, ruins, burnt down wreckages, ashes and rubble of the Museum of History, hospitals, ministries, embassies, the UNO headquarters, the Olympic complex, the Baghdad library, the palaces and thousands of residential buildings, there stands proudly The Ministry of the three letter word, without even the slightest scratch, providing a solid proof of USA's "bloody miracle".



As one English educated Iraqi , who lost some of his family members in this war said angirly "I wish we did not have in Iraq the curse of this bloody three letter world, oil, then I would have lived in peace with my family. This war is not about our liberation, it is about the bloody three letter word v which has become not a good fortune but a curse for all of us."---


[Pravda.ru]

 
--- Muslims in the US are outraged that evangelist Reverend Franklin Graham will be preaching on Good Friday to the Defence Department. Graham stirred controversy in 2001 when he called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”

----

Spokesperson for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ibrahim Hooper said that inviting Graham to the prayer service “sends entirely the wrong message to the Muslim and Arab world that the Pentagon will host someone who has such Islamophobic views.” Hooper stressed concern over the perception that this will give people around the world. “This kind of incident can undo any kind of bridges built by a hundred public affairs officers at the Pentagon,” he said.---

[Al Jazeera and Agencies]

 
Name: Mike Cartier
Hometown: Lodi, NJ, untied state of Arrogance
Sent: 16.43 - 14/4

--- - I'm thoroughly disgusted by the Propaganda on Television news here in the USA (How does one apply for asylum? lol.
I do not want to be a subject of the Anglo-American Empire. The Republic has died. and so has Our freedom.
The Unprecedented new boldness of an old instituion (i.e. the elite aggrandizing their wealth by oppression of the poor) must stop! TV polls are LIES!
the majority of americans know what this War is about and oppose it but feel overwhelmed & helpless (we do not want to be the Nazis of the 21st century but the parallels are very disturbing. Amerika wake up! Our founding fathers are turning in their graves.)

 
"On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan (from Canada), I would like to thank the Academy for this award. I have invited the other Documentary nominees on stage with me. They are here in solidarity because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results give us a fictitious president. We are now fighting a war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fictitious 'Orange Alerts,' we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And, whenever you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up."

Michael Moore

 
"This killer's remorse is killing me," said Pat Calhoun of Santa Rosa, Calif., the father of a Marine currently in Iraq, in a recent e-mail. "When I see so many fellow citizens of the U.S.A. fail to comprehend that compassion for the dead, wounded and bereaved Iraqis -- civilians and soldiers -- would be appropriate, I shoulder more of the load myself."

 
'A chill wind is blowing through this nation... A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio... 'If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications'... Developing...

 
2003-04-15 | "... if the world wants to understand the invasion and occupation of Iraq, ask an (American) Indian ..."
Tony Black Feather

 
'It's an amazing thing when you see a person wounded, sitting there in a wheelchair or bound up in bandages or these different-looking metal things sticking out of them to hold them together - '

Another 'Bushism'.

 
Said Army Sgt. Jose Trinidad, who witnessed civilian shootings: "I'm going to go home and people are going to treat me like a hero, but I'm not going to feel like one. I'm not sure the people are going to like us when the story comes out, but Americans only look at the cost of war in terms of American casualties."

 
The tenor of the argument is that Saddam's regime and the Republican Guard cut a prior deal with the U.S., and the victims were the Iraqi Army and people. That seems a convenient way to absolve the Army of its responsibility for not fighting, and recourse to conspiracy theories is often how military men respond to setbacks. Having said that, to date we really have no clear account why the Iraqis so readily abandoned Baghdad. And things won't necessarily be helped by the American military's efforts to shape interpretation of the war to conform with its own interests.


In this context you might want to read John Broder's and Eric Schmitt's a long New York Times report yesterday which seemed to offer a solidly conventional (and entirely uncritical) version of the war, based almost exclusively on conversations with U.S. military personnel. Or you can try to catch what Tommy Franks told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday.

Source: www.beirutcalling.blogspot.com

 
Ala Yassin, Jordanian student transferred from Iraqi university
"These people looting and wrecking public buildings – they're not Iraqis. I think the invading armies probably brought them with them.

"Saddam wasn't worse than other Arab leaders. Iraq is difficult to rule with all the religious and ethnic groups - Saddam knew how."

 
The psychological toll of victory
The U.S. military may have defeated the Iraqi army, but killing an outmatched foe imposes its own price. According to this Christian Science Monitor article, U.S. commanders called for airstrikes to wipe out entire Iraqi regiments in Najaf to avoid the horror of having to kill them individually with direct fire. A soldier says, 'For lack of a better word, I feel almost guilty about the massacre. We wasted a lot of people. It makes you wonder how many were innocent. It takes away some of the pride. We won, but at what cost?'
April 12, 2003 @ 5:49PM

 
"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
-- Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
-- Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria