Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Freedom! A view by an Iraqi Very powerful article by an Iraqi of why the war was needed. Good reading for potential human shields. Arguments are easy to understand from the point of view of the Iraqi people, at least to me. 7:09:23 PM    comment []

US Embassy rejects Chavez Government' accusations The press secretary of the US Embassy in Caracas rejected today the statements made by Hugo Chavez and Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, saying: "We reject such a representation of the coalition in Iraq. We believe in fact, that the countries in the coalition are acting to defend the interests of the United Nations. We are asking Iraq to fulfil its commitment to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, in November of last year the members of the security council recognized the grave danger which Iraq represents for the security of the whole world, we believe firmly that the current actions in Iraq are authorized by international law. There is no doubt that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, inspections have demonstrated this clearly., fifteen years ago in the war with Iran it used mustard gas in at least ten opportunities, 15 years ago it used neurotoxic gases against its Kurdish population killing thousands and thousands" He also rejected the reference (made by the Vice-President) that the US will act another countries. "Some weeks ago a representative of the Iraqi Government insinuated that after the Iraqi attack there would be one on Venezuela, that is ridiculous" 12:34:27 PM    comment []

Graphical view of fast advance In this map, which you can blow up and see much better here, you can see the advance of US troops into Iraq in the last four days. At the bottom right is Kuwait. The orange is the troops advance and the white circle is Baghdag. I think is pretty impressive, even if Reuters disagrees and financial markets acted poorly. By the way, a defense expert calls the advance: "This is one of the fastest advances ever achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944" 12:40:12 AM    comment []