April 2003 - weblog posts

4/25/2003; 6:22:14 AM: Two almost worthless opinion pieces in yesterday's Washington Post
The first is by Jim Hoagland and is entitled, "De-Baathification, Root and Branch".  His argument is that the Baath party is baaaad and that the US policy should be for "root-and-branch destruction of Baath rule".  Hoagland ignores that the Baath party totally ruled Iraq for 40 years and everybody who is anybody (except clerics) has some association with the Baath party.  Military leaders, police, ministry officials, etc.  Unless we are willing to replace every manager in the Iraqi government with a US manager, then our choice is to (a) accept leaders from the Baath party, (b) put into power exiles who know virtually nothing about Iraq or (c) establish a theocracy.  It is a lot easier to say how not to do something than it is to say how to do it.

The second is by George Will and is entitled, "Wanted in Iraq: A Few Good Founders".  Will begins with "Iraq needs only four people to achieve post-Saddam Hussein success.  Unfortunately they are George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall."  He then lays out the contributions those four made to making the American democracy a success.  Will ends with, "Iraq's success will require just four people ....But that means it also needs the social soil in which such people bloom."  Clearly, there isn't such a soil currently in Iraq.  What is Will suggesting - that Iraq is hopeless until a more democratic political life takes hold?  That the US should occupy Iraq until the social soil is right to produce democratic leaders?  Will's piece is nice history lesson, but Will cheated his readers by not applying it to our situation in Iraq.

4/24/2003; 6:45:34 AM: I'm so glad...
Our diplomacy was a total failure leading up to war – it’s the the State Department's fault.

We couldn’t get our resolution through the Security Council – it’s France's fault.

We can't find any WMD’s in Iraq– it’s Syria's fault.

We underestimated the strength of the Shiite resistance to the US occupation - it’s Iran's fault.

I am so glad we are in the responsibility era.

4/16/2003; 6:29:57 AM: Why I opposed the war (and still do)
Because I disagree with the idea of pre-emptive wars
Before the war analysis - once it becomes US policy that attacking a country that poses no imminent threat is okay, then we will not be able to criticize any other country that wants to attack another country. Any country that is angered enough to want to go to war can up with a "they could do this to harm us" scenario comparable to what we came up with Iraq.
After the war analysis - "I agree with what External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said the other day," said Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes [on 4/11]. "Pakistan is a fit case than Iraq for a pre-emptive strike". Colin Powell has been reduced to arguing, "I don't think there is a direct parallel to the two situations." That is moral clarity for you! And try explaining why we can consider imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria and India can't do something equally aggressive to Pakistan.

Because ignoring co-operation with UN weapon inspectors sets a bad precedent
Before the war analysis - No country will invite UN inspectors in because it gains them absolutely nothing. Not inviting them in at least saves them from any embarassing finds and allows them some bluff options.
After the war analysis - I was wrong. Now that Dubya's administration is accusing Syria of having WMD's, Syria is willing to have weapon inspectors. "We will not only accept the most rigid inspection regime but we will welcome it heartily," Syria's deputy US Ambassador and Chief of Public Diplomacy Imad Moustapha said [on 4/14]. "Please, come, go wherever you want." I thought I had read somewhere that Syria wanted to like weapon inspections of their country with weapon inspections of Israel, but I can't find it.

Because pursuing policies that tick off most of the people in the world will result in the creation of more anti-US governments
Before the war analysis - Given how unpopular this war is in most of countries with democratic governments, I foresee a rise of politicians in those countries who capitalize on anti-American sentiment to establish anti-American governments. This has serious long-term impacts to our future. What if European countries stop assisting us on the war on terror (as they are the only ones who can actually find terrorists)?
After the war analysis - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party is concerned it will lose big in the upcoming May 25 regional and local elections. This will take 2-3 years to see how it plays out.

Because I think the war will cause a humanitarian crisis in Iraq, leading to deaths through starvation and disease
Before the war analysis - There is no way that we will able to ship enough food through Kuwait and the port of Umm Qasr. About 60% of Iraq's 20+ million population were dependent on the UN-administered oil-for-food program. Water is a major concern. If the war lasts for any length, people will suffer severly from starvation and disease. Poor water and the lack of food will turn the Iraqi people against the coalition in a matter of weeks.
After the war analysis - It sounds like millions of Iraqis have drunk tainted water. The water situation was worse than I expected. The delivery of aid has been worse than I expected. More importantly, I had not foreseen the widespread looting and lawlessness. The looting and lawlessness have already started turning the Iraqi people against the coalition.

Because I doubt there is a peaceful solution to the Kurdish situation
Before the war analysis - The Kurds have been able to effectively set up their own country in the no-fly zone. They have an army and representative government. What do we have to offer to get them to give that up in favor of submitting to a US-run military government? Or to submitting to a Baghdad-based national government? I think they will play along with the US while doing everything they can to establish an autonomous government. But if they establish an autonomous government, Turkey will invade and the US will have to defend the Kurds. It will take some brilliant diplomacy to give the Kurds and the Turks enough to keep from triggering a Turkish invasion, and I don't think Dubya's diplomats are up to it.
After the war analysis - The US has very little troops in the Kurdish parts of Iraq. The Kurds want back their homes that Saddam evicted them from. The Kurds are so much better organized than the rest of the country, that it is hard to see them submitting to a central government. I still haven't seen what is the US's plan for the Kurds. The Kurd military did pull out of Kirkuk, solving one crisis, but I don't see the ethnic tensions easing any time soon.

Most importantly, because I don't think Dubya is willing to commit the resources to win the peace in Iraq
Before the war analysis - The sanctions have created a huge number of unemployed people. Dissolving the military and most of the government will create many other unemployed people. Unless the US is willing to pour a huge amount of money into Iraq to create jobs for all of these unemployed people, there will not be stability in a US-occupied Iraq. Also, there are huge ethnic tensions in Iraq that have been held in check by Saddam's reign of terror. It will take a huge occupation force (200K to 600K) to provide law and order to Iraq. But I don't think Dubya is willing to commit that number of troops long-term in Iraq. He certainly hasn't prepared the American people for that type of massive commitment. If he isn't willing to spend that kind of money and resources on Iraq, the US-occupation will turn into a situation like North Ireland, only nastier.
After the war analysis - Iraq isn't going to be like North Ireland - it is going to be like Somalia in all of the non-Kurdish regions. I really don't see Dubya spending the resources needed to turn Iraq around. Americans are not going to accept spending money on Iraqi schools when American schools are suffering severe funding-shortfalls. I have yet to see any plan for how much the administration is going to spend on rebuilding Iraq. In Dubya's April 8th press conference with Blair, it sounded like Dubya wanted the international community to share in the expense of rebuilding Iraq, but we ticked most of them off before the war. The recent G-7 conference produced a lot of talk about rebuilding, but couldn't decide on any specifics due to disagreements between its members over how the country would be governed. The looting has really destroyed what little there was left of the economy. Iraq can borrow to pay for rebuilding, but I think governmental borrowing will turn the Iraqis even more against the US. I just don't see any good solution.

4/15/2003; 6:59:52 AM: Dallas Morning News had a good local opinion piece yesterday
From an assistant professor of modern Middle East history at Southern Methodist University:

As the United States prepares to occupy Iraq and install a new government, it is worthwhile to revisit past interventions and occupations in the Middle East. There are plenty to choose from, but the record is uninspiring. From 1918 in Iraq to 1967 in the West Bank to 1991 in Kuwait, there isn't a single successful example to follow.

Immediately after World War I, Britain and France occupied and penciled in the borders of what would become Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. No one bothered to ask the people who lived in the new states what they desired.

In almost every case, the Europeans were greeted with massive revolts involving tens of thousands of their new colonial citizens. Iraqi, Palestinian and Syrian patriotism and nationalism were born in the caldron of colonial occupation and mass resistance. Widespread resistance was suppressed with the most brutal means imaginable, including poison gas and the bombing of civilians.

France and Britain had entered the Middle East with self-proclaimed good intentions. Britain emphasized democracy and development, while France stressed the "civilizing mission." But both countries tried to run their new possessions on the cheap. The new colonies were supposed to be profitable or at least self-supporting.

Imperial politicians used the lure of natural resources in the new colonies to convince voters at home that the colonies could be run cheaply, but the riches never materialized. All of the colonies represented a bottomless pit for British and French soldiers and treasure, and hundreds of thousands of colonial citizens died.

Britain and France abandoned their colonies after World War II. Both countries were humiliated and nearly broke from the impossible cost of forcing dominion over people who didn't wish to be ruled by outsiders.

Still, the cost to the former colonies was greater. Left with venal and untested elites who had been favored for their sycophancy, most new states succumbed to a long and painful series of military coups.

Infrastructure and industry had been underdeveloped, education had been neglected, and the Europeans intentionally had exacerbated sectarian and class divisions. Responsible and competent local leaders had been harder for the colonial authorities to deal with. Venality and corruption were encouraged. The results still are haunting us all.

Not one example of foreign intervention and occupation in the Middle East has turned out well. Misery and bitterness have been the only harvest. Why would it be any different today?

4/15/2003; 6:43:23 AM: It was obvious we didn't have enough troops to occupy Iraq
From Tapped:

OCCUPYING IRAQ
Here's an interesting Miami Herald article by military reporter Joseph Galloway looking at how big a force we'll need to occupy. As we noted last week, according to James Fallows' sources, you'd need at least 50,000 to 75,000 security troops just to police a country as big as Iraq. But that may be lowballing it:

Let's take a look at how many soldiers it takes or has taken to keep the peace in some of the world's leading trouble spots. The British Army in 1995 kept 19,000 troops in Northern Ireland to control a population of 1.6 million. That's one soldier for every 84 residents. If a similar ratio were applied to Iraq, the United States and its allies would need an occupation force of 285,000 troops.

In 1995, we had an international force of 60,000 to control the 4 million inhabitants of unhappy Bosnia. At that ratio, we would need 360,000 soldiers to occupy and control Iraq. In Kosovo, 50,000 soldiers now keep the peace among 2 million. Apply that formula to Iraq and you need an occupation force of 600,000.

What Shinseki was, in essence, saying was that unless a sizeable force of allies join us in Iraq, the peacekeeping effort there could employ virtually the entire deployable Army and Marine Corps.

Which, given the state of the world in which we live and the vagaries of North Korea's dear leader Kim Jong Il, not to mention Iraq's neighbors in Iran, is a truly scary scenario.

This is worth repeating. It's very likely that occupying Iraq for any long period of time would take up most of our deployable ground troops, even assuming we get some help from Britain and Spain. That the administration doesn't seem worried about this indicates two bad things: One, that it doesn't intend to stay in Iraq and truly rebuild it as a democracy; or two, that it is cut off from reality, refusing to listen to the counsel of experienced military officers and isn't thinking this through.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that last year, the Bush administration obtained reliable information that Saddam Hussein was three years away from obtaining nuclear weapons -- which is to say, let's assume that there is a real short-term threat; that there is no longer any doubt that Saddam would have to be taken out soon; and that the administration has been acting in good faith all along.

What would you do then? Given the challenge of occupying Iraq, you'd do one of two things. You'd either put your diplomatic nose to the grindstone, working to build consensus until we had secured an allied force big enough to do the job, or you'd be aggressively recruiting and building up the armed forces and preparing the nation for a massive deployment of reservists. Instead, the Bush administration has spent the last year screwing our traditional allies (including most of those who fought with the U.S. in 1991), fracturing treaties, sowing distrust throughout the world and generally ensuring that the U.S. would be going in essentially alone. At the same time, Bush has never once called on young Americans to enlist, and now that a large plurality of Americans no longer trust him to be honest on Iraq, it probably wouldn't make any difference if he did. The country is not emotionally or mentally prepared for a general mobilization of its armed forces, even though that's what invading and occupying Iraq will eventually require.

Thanks, guys

Now, 600,000 troops is looking on the low side.

4/15/2003; 6:42:26 AM: Does this sound familiar?
I found this 1993 Washington Post story on Somalia an interesting read:
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA, MAY 2 -- Before the U.S. Marines came ashore almost five months ago, armed young men held sway here, swaggering through the streets with their Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, "I Am The Boss" T-shirts and AK-47 assault rifles.

Now they sit idle outside the gates of camps designated for Somalia's factional fighters -- unemployed gunslingers in a city where the only firearms visible on the streets are the ones carried by thousands of American and other foreign troops.

The unlikely sight of these onetime militiamen begging for food from passing journalists stands as one of the most dramatic accomplishments of the American humanitarian intervention called Operation Restore Hope. And the question of what to do with them stands as one of the most daunting challenges facing the United Nations, which is set to assume control of the mission on Tuesday.

:

But the U.N. force is hampered by a lack of funds and by delays in developing a coherent plan. The section of the force responsible for demobilization and retraining is operating on a shoestring budget of $14 million because donors still have not come up with the $130 million pledged at a humanitarian aid conference in Ethiopia.

"The biggest problem is going to be those thousands of young men floating around the country," said Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the Rome-based World Food Program. Without a comprehensive program, he said, "that's one of the big fears: that all of these militias will start to come out of the woodwork again."

4/14/2003; 8:09:07 PM: Our government in action, protecting our free press
From the Guardian:

Clearly marked as the rabble-rouser of the [media] get-out-of-Doha movement, I was approached by some enforcer types. The first person was a version of a Graham Greene character. He represented the White House, he said. Wasn't of the military. Although, he said, he was embedded here ("sleeping with a lot of flatulent officers," he said). He was incredibly conspiratorial. Smooth but creepy: "If you had to write the memo about media relations, what would be your bullet points?"

The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform - making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): "I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." And: "A lot of people don't like you." And then: "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." And too: "This is fucking war, asshole." And finally: "No more questions for you."

4/14/2003; 6:15:04 AM:

The more I think about it, the more I disagree with Clinton as the interim Iraqi administrator
As I said in an earlier post, the blog political aims suggested that Bill Clinton be our interim Iraqi administrator.  Now, I agree that Bill Clinton is the American most capable of making the occupation a success, but the more I think about it, the more I think it is a bad idea.  The lessor reason is that for the interim Iraqi administrator to succeed, he needs to be able to control our military and foreign policy direction.  To get Europe to buy into chipping in to rebuilding Iraq, we may have to commit to signing the Kyoto treaty.  We need to set up the administration threats against Syria and instead praise whatever help they give us.  We need a lot more troops in Iraq, and the troops need to be taught how to speak Arabic and how to police.  Without the full support of Dubya's administration (which I don't see Clinton getting), the interim Iraqi administrator is going to have problems succeeding.

The main reason that I think it is a bad idea is that there are going to be lots of failures in Iraq, and if Clinton was in charge, the Republicans would blame him for everything.  If Clinton was in charge right now, the Republicans would be tearing him apart for the looting and lawlessness.  If someone ever said that perhaps invading was a bad idea it the first place, the Republicans would say that it was a great idea and the only problem was that Clinton was bungling the occupation.

The only way I could see Clinton successfully being the interim Iraqi administrator is if the Dubya and the congressional Republicans admitted that the invasion was a total failure and that Bill Clinton is better suited to cleaning up the problems they created than any other American.  I think that Dubya and the Republicans would much, much rather withdraw the troops and try to spin the losing of the peace as a victory.

4/14/2003; 5:59:28 AM: We are not occupiers - we are liberators!
The Genera Convention puts lots of responsibilities on occupiers, so I think Dubya will just define us as not being occupiers.  That means that once again Dubya will not take any responsibility for his actions. Here is what he is promising the people of Iraq (from his April 8th joint press conference with Blair):
After the current regime is removed, our coalition will work to restore electricity and water supplies, medical care, and other essential services in Iraq. We'll move as quickly as possible to place governmental responsibilities under the control of an interim authority composed of Iraqis from both inside and outside the country. The interim authority will serve until a permanent government can be chosen by the Iraqi people. The rebuilding of Iraq will require the support and expertise of the international community. We're committed to working with international institutions, including the United Nations, which will have a vital role to play in this task.

We are going to ship in some food and medicine, get the water and power working again, and we have met our obligations to the people of Iraq. Rebuilding is not our responsibility (though only US approved business can get contracts for it).

4/13/2003; 10:57:00 PM:

Dallas Morning News turns their front page over to the Bush Administration
There are two front page analysis pieces in today's DMN.  The first sentence of the first piece is, "Saddam Hussein could have stayed in power by co-operating completely with U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons."  Hold it - Saddam did co-operate with the UN inspectors, and every time he did, the Bush administration played it down.  What the Bush administration wanted Saddam to do was produce tons of chemical and biological weapons, which at this time do not appear to exist.  Dubya decide a year ago that he was going to take Saddam out, so saying that Saddam could have avoided war by co-operating more with the UN inspectors is a total lie.

The second front page analysis is entitled, "Rumsfeld's to-do list lacks lots of checks".  The fourth sentance is, "The bold invasion plan Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld credits to Army Gen. Tommy Franks - the one both of them defended against critics who said it was light on troops and long on daring - is now hailed as brilliant."  Who is hailing it as brilliant?  Rumsfeld?  The plan succeeded because after a while, the troops just took off their uniforms and went home.  It is hard to relate that to the plan - they might have done the same thing with we had done a two-week bombing campaign first.  Anyone who has witnessed the looting going on in Iraq has got to wish we had more troops there to establish control.

In the same piece, it discusses one of the items on Rumsfeld list of things to do:

Objective No. 6 - Get Humanitarian aid - including food, water and medicine - to the Iraqi people, many of whom relied on the United Nations' "oil-for-food" program for survive

4/12/2003; 4:47:12 PM:

Welcome to two new interesting blogs
I have just visited two new blogs.  The first, Political Aims, I learned about through a link on TAPPED.  There current post is suggesting that Bill Clinton be appointed as leader of the interim administration in Iraq.  The present a good argument as to why it makes sense, but it would require Dubya to do what makes sense instead of what will please his base, something he has yet to do.

The second, Whiskey Bar is by a frequent poster at Daily Kos.  I really enjoyed his post on Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden and a surprise guest.

Keep spreading the truth!

4/11/2003; 6:01:55 PM: William Saletan gets his challenge to the peaceniks wrong
William Saletan asks on his Slate Blog, "Now that Baghdad has fallen, here's my question to peaceniks: Are you against killing, or are you against war? Because what happened in Iraq suggests you may have to choose." Saletan then offers how civilian casualities due to war have dropped:

The precision of military technology is constantly improving. So are the speed and breadth of mass media, which in turn make public relations crucial to military success. As a result, the rate of civilian casualties is declining from war to war. According to the Vietnamese government, 2 million North Vietnamese civilians and 2 million South Vietnamese civilians died in the Vietnam War. Human Rights Watch estimates that in the Persian Gulf War, "the total number of civilians killed directly by allied attacks did not exceed several thousand, with an upper limit of perhaps between 2,500 and 3,000 Iraqi dead." In the Kosovo war, HRW identified "ninety separate incidents involving civilian deaths during the seventy-eight day bombing campaign. Some 500 Yugoslav civilians are known to have died in these incidents." There are no official civilian death figures for the current war, but estimates in today's newspapers range from 600 to 1,100. That includes people killed or used as shields by Iraqi troops. The number of civilians killed by errant coalition bombs or missiles could be half of that. It could be less; it could be more. Either way, it's well below the figure for the Gulf War and way below the figures for previous wars.

The second problem is that Saletan assumes that all civilian killings will now stop. Civilians are still be killed every day away from the actual fighting - some killed by Coalition troops, but most have been killed by other civilians . Saletan quotes HRW, "It is not possible to determine with certainty the number of people executed by law or government order in Iraq each year. For the past two decades and with depressing regularity, the reported figures for those executed have run into the hundreds each year and, in some years, have reached several thousand." Let's just guess that the average is roughly 5 a day. From the reports I have read, far more civilians than that are now dying every day.

So Saletan has a great argument against the anti-war crowd...as long as he contains to look at a very small portion of the total picture.

4/11/2003; 6:20:17 AM: Are we going to lose the peace because of parades?
My feeling is that we need every troop we have in Iraq to stay there until we can establish law and order and there is some civil institution to turn the law and order duties over to.  However, I am sure the reservists want to go home and I am sure that Dubya and Rove want parades to celebrate their great victory.  Dubya has done a terrible job of preparing the US for maintaining a large occupation force, so I would think that the average Joe is expecting most of our forces to come home.  If we pull out a large number of our troops to give them parades at home, I think we will never gain control of Iraq.

4/11/2003; 6:15:54 AM: A clarification to my last post
When I said, "By control Iraq, I mean that the presence of coalition troops make it safe enough for aid workers to work," I meant safe enough to work through 90% of the country. If, like Afghanistan, aid workers are safe only in a few cities, we do not control Iraq.

4/10/2003; 6:19:04 AM:

Are we ever going to really control Iraq?
By control Iraq, I mean that the presence of coalition troops make it safe enough for aid workers to work.  I am doubtful.  The fact that the troops can't control the looting is a very bad sign.  I read a story about the British in Basra, and there is bubble of peace around the troops as they patrol, but there is violence outside of that bubble.  Daily Kos has a great post on the widespread presence of armed men in Iraq.  Unless we put troops along the ratio of Kosovo (which would require 600,000 troops), I just don't think we will have enough of a military presence to maintain peace and security.  Without that many troops, I see three possible futures for Iraq:

A fractured theocracy
For several stories I have read, it seems like the clerics are the only public figures respected by the Iraqis.  I can easily see them asserting control either directly or through proxies that would be acceptable to the US.  The problem with this is that are three different major religious groups in Iraq, so the country will probably split along religious lines.

Warlordism
Another possiblity is that local strongmen will seize power over their areas, much like in Afghanistan.  Their domain will extend as far as they can command personal loyalty.  They will feign cooperation with the coalition, but will be effectively absolute rulers in the area they control.

Crime Lords
In this case, Iraq follows the path that Serbia has apparently followed - there is a veneer of civil institutions, but crime lords have far more effect on people's lives than the civil institutions.  Corruption is endemic.

The terrible thing is that all three of these groups will be using violence to try to establish control.  Unless the coalition is willing to commit massive amounts of troops to a long time in Iraq, I see the life of the average Iraqi being worse for the foreseeable future.

4/4/2003; 6:15:06 AM: Why don't our soldiers know Arabic?
In the battle to win the hearts and mind of the Iraqi citizenry, the US military apparently put itself at a severe disadvantage by not training its troops in how to speak Arabic.  I read two stories in (I believe) the NY Times about Marines searching a farmhouse then a village for weapons.  From the story, it didn't sound like any of them could do more than grunt in Arabic.  They were totally dependent on a translator.  I read another story which said that some of our troops have been trained in Arabic, but those individuals weren't around during one encounter with civilians and our troops were trying to read phrases of a piece of paper.  Why didn't the military spend the last 4 weeks giving all of our troops 20 hours of Arabic training?  Enough to be able to give some directions during any encounter?  It is rude and arrogant to not learn the language of the people we are living among.

4/3/2003; 6:28:09 AM:

CyberChase doing a show that is analogy for the 2000 election
One of my son's favorite shows is the PBS show CyberChase.  It is a show about how three kids use math to foil the plans of the evil villian, Hacker.  Yesterday's episode was about how Hacker claimed to become a good guy and runs in an election for potentate of Cyberspace against the wise leader, Motherboard.  Through media manipulation of a few good deeds, Hacker gets a vast majority of the populace to become his supporters.  Of course, it is all a ruse as Hacker plans to change the constitution once he is elected and become potentate for life.  The kids prove that Hacker told a lie in the debate and turn the election.

To me, it was an analogy for the 2000 election, except the lies Dubya told in the debate were ignored by the media and Dubya went on to win the election.  It looks to me like a subtle poke in Dubya's eye.

4/3/2003; 6:14:42 AM: In an unsurprising development, Democrats make the best Presidents
I pulled down a lot of economic data and went through it.  One of the things I did with it was determine the % GDP growth after two years for each administration since Kennedy:

Kennedy    5.19%
Johnson    6.43%
Nixon I    0.89%
Nixon II   0.89%
Carter     5.78%
Reagan I  -0.21%
Reagan II  3.40%
Bush       1.53%
Clinton I  3.31%
Clinton II 4.54%
Dubya      1.47%

4/3/2003; 12:28:22 AM: And now, for something on the lighter side...
This story (with picture) on Yahoo:

A naked Russian woman picks up her free mobile phone in Moscow. Euroset gave away free mobile phones to people who came to their shop totally naked.

A great way to get a bunch of guys to "browse" all day at your store.

Then for a picture that gave me shivers, check out this picture of twins joined at the top of the skull. Weeeeiiiirdo.

4/2/2003; 6:19:43 AM: What are we going to do about the killers of this family?
From an AP story on Yahoo:

...sobering new details were reported about an incident Monday in which members of an Iraqi family were killed when U.S. soldiers opened fire on their vehicle near a checkpoint. A correspondent for the Knight Ridder Newspapers on Wednesday quoted surviving family members as saying they had decided to leave their village and flee toward U.S. lines because they thought a leaflet dropped by American helicopters told them to "be safe." Bakhat Hassan — who said he lost two daughters, a son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces in the incident — said U.S. soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through. As they approached another checkpoint 25 miles south of Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers. Those soldiers fired. "I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," said Hassan's wife, Lamea, 36. U.S. officials originally gave the death toll as seven in the incident, while reporters at the scene placed it at 10. Hassan's father died at the Army hospital later; he said that made the toll 11.

4/2/2003; 6:13:26 AM: Hats off to the 3rd Infantry Division
From as AP story on Yahoo:

Army's 3rd Infantry Division and the First Marine Expeditionary Force both reported breakthroughs as some units entered the so-called "red zone" within 50 miles of Baghdad.

4/2/2003; 6:07:58 AM:

I think this is a bad precedent
A Scottish paper has a story stating, "American special forces have assassinated several senior Iraqi officials in a series of bomb and sniper attacks in Baghdad and other cities, it was revealed yesterday. American government sources say that in the past week of covert operations 'more than a handful' of Republican Guard commanders and Ba’ath Party officials have been killed. The ultimate aim of the undercover squads, according to sources, is to kill Saddam Hussein’s closest associates and even the Iraqi president himself."

I would have to assume that the special forces are not in uniform, therefore we are in violation of the Geneva Convention.  More importantly, we have now said that it is fair game for undercover squads to assassinate military people and government officials far from the front.  What if Iraq does the same thing to us?  A couple of agents with a high-power sniper rifle can re-create the sniper panic of a few months ago.  We are far more vulnerable to assassins terrorizing the populous through random killings than any dictatorship.  Why would we ever want to set this precedence?

4/1/2003; 7:51:06 PM: I scooped The American Prospect!
Today, The American Prospect published a web story on something I discussed on the 28th - that Dubya can't even visit our strongest allies without triggering massive demonstrations.

4/1/2003; 6:07:20 AM: I love it when pundits contradict themselves in the same paragraph
In this column, Robert Samuelson contradicts himself in the same paragraph. His column is about why Europeans have such a different attitude towards our invasion of Iraq than we do. Samuelson says, "It's also true that the administration never provided overwhelming evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or strong ties with al Qaeda." Two sentences later, Samuelson adds, "It [Bush's poor public relations] absolves foreigners from making the critical connections that Bush has made: that the threat of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction can justify preemptive strikes."

Well, if Dubya never made the case that Saddan Hussein has weapons of mass destruction or strong ties with al Qaeda, why should anyone accept those as reasons to pre-emptively invade Iraq? And it is not that Dubya provided lots of evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and/or strong ties with al Qaeda, but not up to the level of overwhelming. The US has provided no verified evidence and much of our evidence has been disproved.

Samuelson follows up with the results of a Pew poll from late last year that "asked whether the United States might invade Iraq because it 'believes Saddam is a threat' or because 'it wants to control Iraqi oil.' Oil, said 76 percent of Russians, 75 percent of French and 54 percent of Germans -- and only 22 percent of Americans." Now, if Dubya failed to make the case to Europe that Saddam is a threat, then why shouldn't they believe that there is some other reason for invading Iraq?

Rather than try to find some logical reason for why Europeans disagree with us, Samuelson resorts to making up motives:
What explains the anti-American fury, particularly in Europe? Simple. It makes people feel good. It gives them a sense of moral superiority. It doesn't cost them anything. It diverts attention from domestic discontents. It doesn't require hard decisions or hard thinking. It's a convenient moral exhibitionism that, on inspection, is full of delusion, shortsightedness and moral hypocrisy.

There is an interesting discussion to be found in why Europe disagrees so strongly with the US on Iraq, but Samuelson is not going to find it if only he is going to do is call the Europeans mean and stupid.

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