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An historical document, from Time magazine

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030331/wroad.html

"F___ Saddam. We're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room.

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http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030325_1960.html

President Bush issued an executive order Monday that will delay the release of millions of historical documents for more than three years and make it easier to reclassify information that could damage national security... Bush's action gives agencies until 2006 to release the documents... The reclassification provision applies to documents between 10 and 25 years old, which would include periods in which Bush's father served as president and vice president, the White House said.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,922116,00.html

Subscriptions to the Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera have doubled since the war on Iraq began last week, signalling a significant demand for an alternative to western media coverage.

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http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/032103/032103j.htm

At the beginning of this year, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., along with Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced the Universal Service Act 2003, a bill requiring two years of compulsory military or alternative civilian service from all American men, women and legal permanent residents ages 18-26... Deferments would be limited to those completing high school, up to the age of 20, with no exemptions for college or graduate students.

...The Pentagon recently issued Stop/Loss orders for all branches of the armed services, prohibiting anyone, even those whose term of service has ended, from leaving.

...Draft counselors, including J.E. McNeil, executive director for the Center on Conscience and War, believe reinstatement of the draft is unlikely for the immediate future... But should a draft occur, it would come quickly, implemented with a single vote from Congress, McNeil warned. No new legislation is needed; the Military Selective Service Act contains a draft law and a process for implementation that merely need presidential approval of funding to activate... [Under the current rules,] college students who are called up will only be allowed to finish the semester... [and] twenty-year-olds will be the first to be drafted.

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http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030325_2026.html

The Security Council, responding to Arab and nonaligned nations that demanded an end to the war in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops, scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday.

Guinea's U.N. Ambassador Mamady Traore, the current council president, announced Tuesday that he had received letters from both groups asking for an open meeting where any of the 191 U.N. member states can speak on the situation in Iraq.

...Arab nations called Monday for an emergency Security Council meeting, following up on a decision made earlier in the day by Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, Egypt. They called on the United States and Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately and unconditionally... If a resolution is vetoed in the Security Council, the Arab Group has been instructed by the Arab ministers to seek an emergency meeting of the 191-member General Assembly. To get a special session, supporters have to present a petition signed by 97 nations.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20030326/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear_17

PANMUNJOM, Korea - North Korea on Wednesday cut off the only regular military contact with the U.S.-led command that monitors the Korean War armistice... Meanwhile, U.N. envoy Maurice Strong said that North Korean officials told him in meetings in Pyongyang last week that they "reserved the right" to reprocess their spent fuel rods that experts say could yield enough plutonium for several atomic bombs within months... North Korea claimed again Tuesday the United States may attack the communist state after the war in Iraq and spark a "second Iraqi crisis." It pledged to beef up its defenses.

...The U.N. Command, which has monitored the armistice since the end of the 1950-53 war, had no immediate comment. Without a peace treaty, the Korean Peninsula is still technically at a state of war... President Bush has branded the North part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2510339,00.html

In Japan, space agency officials were preparing to launch their first spy satellite into orbit on Friday. North Korea has condemned the move, prompting fears it may retaliate and test-fire a long-range missile... President Bush has branded the North part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran.

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http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1199072

The Air Force has hit Iraqi TV with a secret, experimental electromagnetic pulse device called the E-Bomb... Although the Pentagon officially does not acknowledge the weapon's existence, in a Time Magazine article, Rumsfeld said that E-bombs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours.

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2450833

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The head of the world's biggest journalists' organization said a U.S. bomb and missile attack on Iraqi television on Wednesday was an attempt at censorship and may have breached the Geneva Conventions... A U.S. official in Washington earlier said the raid had hit the main television station... damaging the government's command and control capability... [Aidan White, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists] said the IFJ, which represents more than 500,000 journalists in 100 countries... [asserted that] international law forbids attacks on television and radio stations unless they were used for military purposes, and there was no evidence this was the case in Iraq. Nor did the IFJ believe television broadcasts could include coded messages to the Iraqi army. "The idea that Iraqi soldiers are sitting in the desert watching television to get their orders is absurd," White said.

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http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1085101,00.html

Iraq's Satellite TV went off the air at 4.30 a.m. local time (01.30 GMT) as explosions rang out in Baghdad. Sky News reporter David Chater said the station was back on air by 7.30am GMT. It was not immediately clear if the domestic television service, Iraq Television, was affected as it does not broadcast overnight. But it began broadcasting versus from the Koran around 9 a.m. (6am GMT).

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http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/104859720379330.xml

SALEM [Oregon] -- A bill that would define violent protesters as terrorists and subject them to possible life imprisonment came under attack Monday at a packed and sometimes tense legislative hearing.

...John Minnis, R-Wood Village, author of the bill, threatened to clear the hearing room after repeated bursts of applause for speakers and interruptions shouted from the audience. Minnis said he introduced the measure to put all crimes that could be construed as terrorism into a single law with tough punishment guidelines, and to require Oregon police agencies to cooperate with federal investigations into terrorists... The wording of the bill left many concerned that it could be applied to relatively minor acts of vandalism or misbehavior during a demonstration. The bill applies to acts of violence committed while someone is disrupting commerce, transportation, schools or universities. Anyone convicted of terrorism would get an automatic life sentence with a 25-year minimum before being considered for parole.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/international/worldspecial/25PATR.html?ex=1049625045&ei=1&en=a63ce77d01861cca

The United States government has resumed 24-hour air patrols over New York City after law enforcement and intelligence agencies warned that the city was in special danger from terrorists during the war with Iraq, senior government officials said today.

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http://www.troyrecord.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7490242&BRD=1170&PAG=740&dept_id=226958&rfi=6

Vice President Dick Cheney's office denied reports on Tuesday that either of his daughters was even considering becoming a human shield in Iraq.

...The United States has reiterated that it does not target civilian facilities and indeed has no plans to during its operations in Iraq.

When asked where the daughters were now, the staff member said, "Both the vice president and his daughters are in the United States." A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Amman, the Jordanian capital, also denied that Cheney was on his way to Jordan: "The embassy has no information that the U.S. vice president will arrive in Jordan Tuesday to convince one of his daughters not to travel to Iraq to join human shields opposed to war," he said.

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http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2443840

America's top military officer suggested on Tuesday that Western troops were paying a price for trying to spare Iraqi civilians. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that great care was being taken in trying to avoid killing civilians... Asked whether the U.S. military was taking additional risks in a bid to save Iraqi civilians, Myers said it was always hard to find a balance between protecting civilians and reaching military goals.

...Bush, meanwhile, viewed his emergency spending request to Congress as an "urgent need"... a senior U.S. official said... The official disputed criticisms by some Democrats that the request failed to make sufficient provision for humanitarian aid and post-war reconstruction...He said "billions and billions" of additional dollars would be available from frozen Iraqi assets and Iraqi oil.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s816271.htm

A US warplane has dropped 1,000-pound (500 kilogram) satellite-guided J-Dam bombs on military sites hidden in civilian buildings in Basra, British officers say... The change in tactics, according to British military analysts, has likely been prompted by fears that... paramilitaries are operating from the city, hiding in civilian buildings and having swapped their uniforms for ordinary clothing.

...Captain Johnny Williamson, a spokesman for the 7th Armoured Brigade... warns that many of the buildings likely to be hit in coming days might appear to be non-military targets but insists it is because Iraqi forces are hiding among the civilian population... “Chances are that it could be someone's house, but they are military sites.

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What’s a j-dam [joint direct attack munition]? It is basically an upgrade to a regular bomb, providing ‘smart’ targeting to your average half- or one-ton bomb. Note: “dense” refers to depleted [sic] uranium.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/jdam-upgrade.htm

The Ballasted Penetrator in GBU-32 concept is a 1000 pound dense or ballasted penetrator integrated with a GBU-32 guidance kit using compressed carriage for internal carriage in advanced fighters (F-22, JSF) or carriage in cruise missiles (JASSM, CALCM, ACM, ATACMS, Tomahawk.) The warhead would either be designed with a dense metal case or contain dense metal ballast for maximum penetration. The warhead will be filled with an advanced insensitive explosive to compensate for the reduced charge weight. The warhead will be integrated with the GBU-32, the JDAM tail kit for 1,000 lb class warheads.

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How smart is smart? Archived from 2001

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/b10132001_bt509-01.html

At approximately 6:30 p.m. EDT yesterday (Oct. 12), a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet missed its intended target and inadvertently dropped a 2000-pound GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) in a residential area near Kabul Airport, Afghanistan. The intended target was a military helicopter at Kabul Airport, approximately one mile from the residential area. We regret the loss of any civilian life... Preliminary indications are that the accident occurred from a targeting process error.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=390813

Two British soldiers were killed and two others are missing after their tank was destroyed in yet another 'friendly fire' tragedy... There have been 20 confirmed British deaths since the war began, with four missing. Only two of them were killed in action; the rest died in 'friendly fire' incidents and other accidents.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048653751202.html

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.

United States defence officials said on Tuesday that 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... "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."

...John Pike, a defence technology expert, said... "There is evidently a problem." The Patriot system is far too important for the two incidents to take it out of action, Mr Pike said.

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http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=24074

A US newspaper has quoted an army captain as saying that Iraqi prisoners of war will be fed on meals containing pork. The Kansas City Star in a March 11,2003 report quoted US Capt. Jeff Searl of Camp Virginia in Kuwait as saying that “prisoners will eat what US soldiers do. That could mean meals-ready-to eat, the vacuum sealed food packs that often include some form of pork, which observant Muslims aren’t supposed to eat. We found in the Gulf War they ate them anyway. They were glad to have the ham slices,” he added.

In another report published in The Scotsman a US soldier based in Camp Matilda in Kuwaiti desert talked about what to do when prisoners or refugees turn aggressive when offered foods containing pork. "We’ve learnt that if we give a ration pack containing pork to an enemy prisoner of war or refugee they may become aggressive. If that happens we are to make conciliatory gestures and say ‘Salaam’," said Lance Corporal Chris Lucio.

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Uncle noam comments

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3293

...One immediate task is to lend what weight we can to more benign outcomes. That means, primarily, caring for the needs of the victims, not just of this war but of Washington’s vicious and destructive sanctions regime of the past ten years... Elementary decency would call for massive reparations from the US; lacking that, at least a flow of aid to Iraqis, so that they can rebuild what has been destroyed in their own way, not as dictated by people in Washington and Crawford.

...The [world] opposition may be focused on the invasion of Iraq, but its concerns go far beyond that. There is growing fear of US power, which is considered to be the greatest threat to peace in much of the world, probably by a large majority. And with the technology of destruction now at hand, rapidly becoming more lethal and ominous, threat to peace means threat to survival.

Fear of the US government is not based solely on this invasion, but on the background from which it arises: An openly-declared determination to rule the world by force... Preventive wars are to be fought at will: Preventive, not Pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might sometimes be, they do not hold for the very different category of preventive war: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented threat. The openly-announced goal is to prevent any challenge to the “power, position, and prestige of the United States.”

...It is worth bearing in mind that the words I quoted are not those of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or other radical statist extremists now in charge. Rather, they are the words of the respected elder statesman Dean Acheson, 40 years ago, when he was a senior advisor to the Kennedy Administration. He was justifying US actions against Cuba... He instructed the American Society of International Law, no “legal issue” arises in the case of a US response to a challenge to its “power, position, and prestige.”

...I bring this up as a reminder that the issues are deep-seated. The current administration is at the extremist end of the policy-planning spectrum, and its adventurism and penchant for violence are unusually dangerous. But the spectrum is not that broad, and unless these deeper issues are addressed, we can be confident that other ultrareactionary extremists will gain control of incredible means of devastation and repression.

...[Before the invasion started,] intelligence and international affairs specialists were informing anyone who wanted to listen that the policies Washington is pursuing are likely to lead to an increase in terror and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for revenge or simply deterrence. There are two ways for Washington to respond... One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed...That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species – not an idle speculation. Terminal nuclear war has been avoided by near miracle in the past; a few months before Acheson’s speech, to mention one case that should be fresh in our minds today.

...The people who are best placed to relieve those fears, and to lead the way to a more hopeful and constructive future, are the citizens of the United States.

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