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2003-03-21 - 3:08 p.m. War news Friday March 22nd 2003. Good-time Charlies got the blues...................................................................................... http://gvnews.net/html/Crisis/gvabs089.html NEW YORK, Mar 21, 2003 -- Sir Arthur Owen, the prime minister of tiny Barbados, this week said, "This country will stand at its peril, for whatever cause, not to allow anybody to believe that a unilateral approach of the choosing of the powerful and the mighty has any place in a civilized world." He added, "there is a danger, a hypocrisy surrounding and supporting this action." ...He was responding not just to the war but also to yet another American pre-emptive strike. Across the world, American "diplomats" have been warning-- sorry, encouraging countries not to support a call for an Emergency Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly... In fact, no one has yet formally asked for such a session. ... During the Korean War, the Americans introduced the "Uniting for Peace" procedure, which allows members to take issues log-jammed in the Security Council to the General Assembly. The Americans used it often to bypass "unreasonable" Soviet vetoes... It would be a tremendous blow to the tenuous claims to legality of Britain and America if the United Nations... were to rule against the invasion of Iraq. ...Normally one would expect any such request to come from the Non Aligned Movement whose current chairman is Malaysia... It seems that there are limits even to Prime Minister Matahir's courage. Whether he has had a visit from American diplomats carrying baseball bats or not, it does not take too much figuring on his diplomatic abacus to see that there will be heavy costs for putting his head above the parapet. ................................................................................. Not a satire http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1027-2003Mar20.html The White House is vowing a strong retaliatory response after the BBC aired live video of President Bush getting his hair coiffed in the Oval Office as he squirmed in his chair and practiced on the teleprompter minutes before Wednesday night's speech announcing the launch of military operations... The British network broadcast 1 minute and 37 seconds of presidential primping to hundreds of millions of viewers in 200 countries around the world. ..."The facts are that it was an unauthorized use of footage and video," a senior White House official told us, asking not to be named... Henceforth, the official said, the White House -- not the networks -- will throw the switches that make pool feeds available to broadcast outlets. .......................................................................... http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7438 It has now become obvious that the process of embedding journalists with American troops has led them away from the real news... ABC, by far the most dependable of the commercial broadcast networks, unfortunately proved the point in the three-hour war-o-rama it broadcast to follow President Bushs speech to the nation. Heres what we saw... The screen crackled with upscale network guys wearing khaki tee-shirts and perfecting their swagger... What do we learn from ABC? That Bradley armored vehicles can speed through desert sands. That launchers can shoot multiple rockets. That poison gas suits are really, really stifling, but they can protect you! .................................................................... http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20030321-90317.shtml Retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North broadcast live from the border of Kuwait and Iraq North's continued statements that the Marines have the best protective gear available, as well as his steady hands and voice, were reassuring, but I held my breath, afraid of what might happen next While I am grateful to not have to wait for news, I am terrified of what we might see. .............................................................................. http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1048229821121510.xml Support our troops? What exactly does this mean? Are we to clear out the pantry to send cans of pumpkin pie filling to the front line? Do we give our spare change to a man ringing a bell to help foot the war's $90,000,000,000.00 price tag? No. It means don't question the government -- the same government that allowed troops of the first Gulf War to expose themselves to radioactive, depleted uranium in the battlefield and still denies them health care. Support our troops. Bring them home. ...................................................................................... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81791,00.html The "Shock and Awe" phase has begun. Allied missiles are pounding Baghdad, dropping bombs throughout the city. Explosions are rocking the center of the Iraqi capital, and the sky is filled with smoke Defense officials told Fox News that Friday is "The Day" -- the beginning of the end for Saddam Hussein -- and that as many as 3,000 precision-guided bombs will be dropped on specific targets in Baghdad. Included in the arsenal is the awesome Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, Fox News has learned. The 21,000-pound MOAB has been nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs. Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine was killed in combat on Friday, marking the first casualty of the war [sic].
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/Primetime/iraq_main030321.html U.S. intelligence sources told ABCNEWS that the operational name given to the second wave of airstrikes will be "Exemplary Destruction." . http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,58094,00.html?tw=wn_ascii PICATINNY ARSENAL, New Jersey -- It is among the most horrific weapons in any army's collection: the thermobaric bomb... Last year, the U.S. military used such weapons for the first time... in Afghanistan... The goal is to put these mini-bombs into the XM29, its next-generation rifle. ...Thermobarics inject a fine, flammable mist into the air... The fuel that's shot out of a thermobaric weapon is under-oxidized, according to Judah Goldwasser, a program officer at the Office of Naval Research. When it mixes with the ambient oxygen in a room, it begins to ignite... "For urban warfare (thermobarics) could be very effective," said Andrew Koch, Washington bureau chief of Jane's Defence Weekly. "If you lob a grenade in the entrance of a building, it hits just the people in the entrance. A thermobaric weapon would (go) though the rest of the building."
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=81033 The U.S. and British commanders in the Gulf warned that the allies might attack Iraqi mosques, hospitals and schools if Saddam Hussain used them to conceal tanks or troops. General Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander, refused in an interview with the ABC news network to say that such buildings would be off-limits. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the British commander, appeared to go further. . jimmy breslin cites the fuhrer http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/ny-nybres0320,0,974243.column "As always, I attempted to bring about, by the peaceful method of making proposals for revision, an alteration of this intolerable position. It is a lie when the outside world says that we only tried to carry our revisions through by pressure All these proposals, as you know, have been rejected -- proposals for the limitation of armaments and, even if necessary, disarmament, proposals for the limitation of warmaking, proposals for the elimination of certain methods of modern warfare ... You know the endless attempts I made for peaceful clarification and understanding It was all in vain. " I made one more final effort to accept a proposal for mediation and worked out a basis for these negotiations which are known to you. For two whole days I sat in my government and waited to see whether it was convenient for the Polish government to send a plenipotentiary or not. Wednesday night they did not send us a plenipotentiary, but instead informed us through their ambassador that they were still considering I can no longer find any willingness on the part of the Polish government to conduct serious negotiations with us. The other European states understand in part our attitude. I should like all to thank Italy, which throughout has supported us, but... we will carry out this task ourselves. "This night for the first time, Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire and from now on bombs will be met with bombs. Whoever fights with poison gas will be fought with poison gas. Whoever departs from the rules of humane warfare can only expect that we shall do the same ... until the safety, security of the Reich and its rights are secured." ............................................................................. Richard perles message to you http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,918764,00.html Saddam Hussein... will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies... the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve, the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions... We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognise that they are, by default, the best hope for that order.
who is Richard Perle? Im almost embarrassed to have to repeat this http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020823-darkness.htm Washington, D.C., is a swampy morass controlled by pencil pushers, experts in bureaucratic intrigue. Richard Perle is one of these men... Consider his current appointment as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon's advisory panel... Perle [is]... the leading voice calling on the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein... Perle influences the powerful. ...As a staffer for the fiercely anti-Communist Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, D-Wash., in the 1970s, Perle established himself as "the quintessential Washington operator...He helped Jackson scuttle dιtente. ...After President Reagan's election in 1980, Perle moved into the executive branch as an assistant defense secretary... Perle became the Reagan administration's point man on arms control, becoming known as the "Prince of Darkness" by arms-control advocates. ...Perle has also consistently fallen prey to the delusion that if only Saddam Hussein can be removed from Iraq, the seas will turn to chocolate, candy will rain down from the sky, and the international community will sing as America buys the world a Coke in celebration. "Trust me," Perle said when The Nation's David Corn asked for evidence that Saddam poses an immediate threat to the United States. As an old Cold Warrior, Perle should know better. ............................................................................. http://www.thefileroom.org/weblog/dannylog.cfm GVNews.nets Ian Williams reports: Some coalition! Bush's devoted ally Blair was only told, not asked, an hour before the shooting started. The President of Bulgaria, one so-called ally, denounced it as illegal without U.N. approval saying "I do not accept this war," while many others expressed similar reservations. The President of Latvia explained disingenuously, "we wanted to join NATO." The President of Turkey announced that unilateral U.S. action is wrong. And of course, in every country in the world except Kuwait and Israel, overwhelming majorities of the population also think that it is wrong. Jake Tapper also investigates this angle on Salon.com: Some critics have questioned how much of a coalition this is, given that only three countries -- the U.S., U.K., and Australia -- have actually sent soldiers. Asked about this apparent weakness in the "coalition," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer on Tuesday said that the White House has "all along said, in terms of actual active combat, there will be very, very few countries." ...................................................................................... http://www.newindpress.com/waronIraq/News.asp?Topic=-224&Title=From%2Bthe%2Bfront&ID=IEL20030321085251&nDate= US Marines briefly raised the Stars and Stripes flag over the new port area of Umm Qasr on Friday Some time later, Marines returned and removed the Stars and Stripes. No reason was given for the decision. . http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2003/mar/20/032009243.html FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Pierre Frik feared [that] he might be targeted by zealots because of his Middle Eastern background. He never imagined he'd be vulnerable because his chain of stores was named French Cleaners. The Lebanese native said he only picked the name on a whim [Now] customers have spit on checks and passers-by make obscene gestures, he said. On Wednesday, his Modesto store was damaged in a fire. He said he later learned his two other stores had been vandalized.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-0/104771311168115.xml David White, 29, an information technology manager, writer and Mid-City [of New Orleans, Louisiana] resident, will be collecting signatures today on a petition in Jackson Square with the aim of renaming the city's oldest neighborhood the Freedom Quarter. .. http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=SH&Date=20030320&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=303200463&Ref=AR&Profile=1060 An Englewood [Florida] radio station dropped a show called "Canada Calling" because that country has not supported the United States in its efforts against Iraq Ken Kuenzie, president of Missouri-based Viper Communications, which owns WENG, said he stands behind the station's general manager and the staff. "People need to stand behind Americans," he said. . http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/29855.html The New York Monaghan Association decided against carrying its traditional banner in the New York St Patrick's Day parade. For those readers unacquainted with County Monaghan, it's a part of [Ireland] where you can assured of "Gentle Countryside and Friendly People" There are around 100 million direct descendants of Monaghan folk currently resident in the US Why, then, can these flag-waving Irish Americans not unfurl their banner with pride? [Because it] carries an outline map of Monaghan, which bears an uncanny resemblance to an outline map of Iraq. ...Yes, it all makes perfect sense. Iraqi Republican Guards infiltrate St Patrick's Day March in New York and then run amok with outline map of Iraq. We bet Saddam and his generals were absolutely delighted with that cunning and evil plan to destroy western democracy.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2003_03_16_digbysblog_archive.html#91099076 Windham, N.Y., is a ski town, nestled in the Catskills Last Sunday, my friend Dawn and I found ourselves at this local haunt after a day of skiing. The place was dead... So we started making polite conversation with the bartender, and then the two men sitting next to us. They seemed amused to be sitting next to two young, single women from Manhattan, who were both journalists... They asked us what we thought of the war. When Dawn and I said we were against the war, the men's expressions tightened when we suggested that Sept. 11 had nothing to do with Iraq, the conversation immediately shifted. Their faces reddened, and they began to talk quickly at the same time, the businessman slapping his hand against the bar to punctuate his outbursts: "At some point, you have to trust your president! You have to believe that he knows something we don't!" "They attacked our country. Now we have to get them!" "I was down there at the Trade Center. I had a burning piece of paper on my face! Burning. Piece. Of. Paper. On. My. Face!" When we explained that nobody "supports" Saddam, they went ballistic. "You know what? You two are the reason why this country's going down the fucking toilet." "This is why I hate you city folks. Fucking city folks. Why don't you go back to New York? The fucking toilet." "Communists. That's what you are. Communist feminists. Fucking liberals." At that point all we could do was laugh. They were behaving so preposterously, each yelling louder than the other one, slamming the bar and sweating They didn't appreciate our indifference to their anger "How 'bout this. You like those people so much? You like those fuckers so much? How 'bout I throw a veil over your head and drag you by your ponytail out the door? Veil. Over your head. Drag you. By your ponytail," he said, dissolving into a bizarre, almost tribal chant. Their vitriol genuinely surprised me, especially since the prospect of gagging us with lace and pulling our hair really seemed to turn them on. Their excitement, as much as their hatred, was palpable. We grabbed our coats to leave. "Hey, so I guess this means we don't get a kiss, huh!" the lawyer called after us, cackling ecstatically as we slammed the door. ........................................................................ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&e=6&u=/ucru/the_moron_majority NEW YORK--Now it's official: most Americans are idiots. Decades of budget cuts in education are finally yielding results, a fact confirmed by CNN's poll of March 16, which shows that an astonishing 51 percent of the public believe that Iraqi President Saddam was responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Why do these pinheads think such a thing? Simple: the official Bushie pretexts don't stick Like a befuddled chemistry lab student who works backwards from the answer in order to ensure the correct results, the Moron Majority have talked themselves into an excuse they can live with for a war they can't otherwise morally justify. By a two-to-one margin, Americans think that their country should adhere to its tradition of attacking other countries in self-defense only, never preemptively. Thirty-seven percent say that they support an invasion of Iraq only with UN approval. This war against Iraq fulfills neither of these conditions, so Americans have managed to morph Bush's insinuations about a Saddam-Al Qaeda link into full-on blame. As always, however, the fools will save us from themselves. The 51 percent who currently believe what is patently false will ultimately conclude that they were duped by Bush (though it's not really true). Like stupid Americans before them (those who bought into the Domino Theory, Joe McCarthy and the necessity of interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps), they'll wonder what the hell they were thinking. And they'll have lots of time to think about it, what with not having a job and all. Then they'll vote for an Unnamed Democrat, currently leading Bush 48 to 44 percent in the Quinnipiac poll released March 6. . http://www.thefileroom.org/weblog/dannylog.cfm A man you should have been seeing in a [news] anchors chair, if his retirement had not been forced, is still speaking out. Walter Cronkite was pushed out of CBS at age 65. Company rule, he was told. Dan Rather is now 70, and Don Hewitt won a contract that will pay him until he is 90. The newsman once called the most trusted in the nation was on a campus yesterday as well, at Drew University. The college paper reported him saying: "We are going to be in such a fix when this war is over, or before this war is over," he said. "Our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for this war. I look at our future as, I'm sorry, being very, very dark." .................................................................................... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2871063.stm Police in San Francisco have arrested 1,025 people during violence at an anti-war demonstration. ...In Brussels, police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who were throwing stones outside the US embassy. ...Egyptian riot police used water canon and batons to beat back crowds throwing rocks and trying to advance on the US embassy in Cairo. ...Police in the Jordanian capital Amman used force to break up an anti-war march by lawyers belonging to the Jordanian Bar Association. ...Swiss police used tear gas against hundreds of protesters, also mainly students, who marched on the US diplomatic mission in Geneva. Spanish police fired rubber bullets at protesters in Madrid. ...Eggs were thrown at the British consulate in Venice and police used teargas to disperse demonstrators. ...There was violence in Calcutta, in eastern India, when about 1,000 protesters tried to storm a US cultural centre. ............................................................................... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=519&ncid=718&e=6&u=/ap/20030321/ap_on_re_us/300th_execution HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Condemned murderer Keith Clay became a footnote in the history of capital punishment as the 300th prisoner executed since the state resumed the death penalty 20 years ago. ............................................................... http://calgary.cbc.ca/template/servlet/View?filename=ca_ppcli20030321 It's no coincidence the report on the mistaken bombing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan last year was released on the first day of the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, a professor of international law says. An American military judge is recommending that the two American F-18 pilots who dropped the bomb should not face court martial... Four [Canadian] soldiers... were killed and eight others injured last April when the pilots...dropped a 225-kilogram bomb on them. ...Michael Byers, a professor of international law at Duke University in North Carolina who has seen the videotapes of the mission, says... "The videotapes are damning in the extreme." .............................................................................. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2421222 "The oil fields of Kirkuk which are the busiest in Iraq may have been already secured by American special forces," correspondent John Simpson told BBC World television from the region's front line. ................................................................. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56514-2003Mar19.html President Bush is struggling to rescue the heart of his domestic agenda from centrist lawmakers who are trying to chop the cost of his tax cut by as much as half. ... One of the administration's crucial tactical decisions was to market the legislation as a jobs program rather than a tax cut. That is designed to counter claims that the package is unaffordable. ............................................................................ http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/TheNote.html It seems pretty clear that the White House domestic strategy is to play the patriotism card to get their budget outline passed in the Congress, then slip the SAME card from the bottom of the deck and play it again, probably next week, in order to get more deficit spending in the pipeline to pay for the war. ....................................................................................... way to support the troops http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55960-2003Mar19.html John F. Downing doesn't understand why he was turned down for federal funds. Eighteen months ago, he took over a successful program that every night provides shelter and counseling to as many as 120 homeless veterans in western Massachusetts. When United Veterans of America, where he is the executive director, applied last year for renewal of a federal grant that subsidizes the cost of half of the 120 beds at the facility, he thought it would sail through. It didn't. ... Recent research suggests that veterans account for about 23%... of the 2,000,000 adults who experience homelessness over the course of a year. ... The key step that threatens the federal subsidy to half of the beds at the facility was the VA's decision to merge two programs for homeless veterans into one... More than half of the homeless shelters that applied for renewal of existing VA subsidies were turned down in the latest round... more than 40 percent of the [funding] recipients were faith-based organizations. Downing and others have complained that not a single application from Massachusetts was approved by the VA in the latest round... "Our issue has been we don't want to put anybody back on the streets." ...................................................................................... http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/stories/20030321/opinion/1221564.html After 12 years and untold studies and tests, you might think the American medical community has gotten a handle on Gulf War Syndrome. If you do, you're wrong... Thus its name. The term "Gulf War Syndrome" has no scientific basis. The shame of it now is that the United States has sent healthy troops back to the source of this affliction without understanding what caused it. ...Of 697,000 troops who served during Operation Desert Storm, fully 100,000 have registered their health concerns with the Department of Veterans Affairs...15,000 [15%] of them have remarkably similar complaints: fatigue, headache, muscle and joint pain, diarrhea, memory loss and sleep disturbance... The good news is that any Gulf War veteran can be part of the VA's confidential registry program for Gulf War Syndrome. Those on active duty can register with the Department of Defense by calling 1-800-796-9699. Those who have left active military service should call the VA at 1-800-749-8387. ................................................................... http://www.napanews.com/templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=F2529660-D153-468A-9635-9CA04480FD28 SAN FRANCISCO -- A 44-year-old man who survived a previous plunge off the Golden Gate Bridge 15 years ago returned to the span to protest the war against Iraq -- and then committed suicide in full view of police who were trying to coax him back to safety. .................................................................................... http://www.iht.com/articles/90236.html Confounding a widely held impression, a large U.S. federal study has found that hormone therapy for menopause does not affect quality of life. Women taking the drugs did not feel more energetic, or have more sexual pleasure or even more restful sleep. They were not less depressed, their minds were no clearer and their memories did not appear to have improved... The study of 16,608 women... says that while the drugs somewhat diminished hot flashes and night sweats in a subgroup of women, they were no better than placebos in improving other measures of quality of life. ................................................................................... http://www.gsenet.org/mon.php#HIGH LEVELS OF CHEMICALS DISCOVERED IN MOMS, BABIES Indiana University researchers have found relatively high [sic] levels of potentially harmful flame-retardant chemicals in the blood of Indiana mothers and their infants. The chemicals, called polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, were found at levels 20 times higher than those reported in Sweden and Norway Their findings were published this week in the online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives. A companion study from California, also published this week, found similar levels of the chemicals, which are used to prevent fires in computers, TVs and other electronic products and in polyurethane foam. .
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