DSL-TV
Mark Fiore at The Village Voice - Congratulations on Your Liberation - Flash animation on Iraq after the war. Hehe. [rrnd]
Derk al-Kattabi at The Exile - The Road to Perdition: America 2000 - 2005 - a fictional account of the future commU.N.ist take-over of the United States. Hehe. [whatreallyhappened]
The UN plan was a classic pincer attack. While Chinese and Russian troops drove south from Canada, European troops pushed north from Mexico. When the UN troops reached Texas, the most bitter and costly battles of the war began. What happened in Texas? Are the rumors of UN massacres true, or were these stories simply desperate, last-ditch Bushite propaganda?
Most observers agree that it was the Texans who began the cycle of tit-for-tat killings, and many Yankees will admit, in private, that Texas, tribal home for the President, "had it coming." In the rest of the Yankee homeland, especially California, Oregon and Washington, UN troops were welcomed as "liberators." In the rest of the former US, resistance was scattered and weak.
One of the surprises of the war was that the most rabid American rightwingers were the first to surrender, often volunteering to collaborate. The notorious Rush Limbaugh was one of the first Yankees to switch sides, defecting to UN Media Command as soon as the tide turned against the Yankees. Though it earned him the nickname "Rush to Surrender," Limbaugh's move undoubtedly saved his XL skin from the gallows. And liberal EU mores on homosexuality will undoubtedly relieve some of his tension.
Many of the most vociferous Bushites followed Limbaugh's example. A Chinese officer who took part in the US campaign recalls, "We were the first [UN] unit to hit Idaho, and we heard it was full of armed men who would fight to the last. But they ran and hid from us. We were very sorry, because we expected more battle. We have lost face."
Susan Orr at The Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal - Woman shoots burglar in leg - a standard defense of home story with the exception of this stellar quote. Hehe. [kimdutoit]
Just before 1 p.m., someone rang Summey's doorbell but she didn't answer it. Then, she heard someone jiggling the back door. Then, someone was moving the trash can behind her house.
"I went straight and got the .357 Magnum," she said.
"I would have used a shotgun, but I had just had new countertops done and I didn't want to tear up the kitchen."
George Monbiot at The Guardian via Arab News - Bush and Rumsfeld Had Better Watch Their Back - Donald Rumsfeld made a big deal about how displaying pictures of captured Americans on Iraqi television is against the Geneva convention. This article outlines the series of violations engaged in by the United States over the last couple of years. [smith2004]
This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the Defense Department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.
His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (Article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of Article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against Article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).
They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about Al-Qaeda. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": Sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.
...
It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras on Monday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilization, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.
J.J. Johnson at Sierra Times - Rules of Engagement: Making Up The Rules As You Go - some common sense on the way the Iraqis are fighting this war. No matter how badly Rumsfeld and company want them to follow their "rules", a guerilla war , fought by armed civilians, is the Iraqis' only rational way to fight. This is not a war of libertarion. It is a war of occupation. Expect carpet bombing of the cities before it's through. [smith2004]
Thomas L. Knapp at Rational Review - Thinking the unthinkable - could it happen that Iraq expels the invaders? Maybe, says Mr. Knapp. [smith2004]
What was inconceivable a week ago -- that the coalition's war machine might be ground to a halt and, ultimately, find itself ordered back to Kuwait and onto waiting ships for the trip home -- is a possibility that becomes more and more real with each passing sandstorm.
Fintan Dunne at GuluFuture.com - US Will Lose the Iraq War - Says Scott Ritter - the former u.n. weapons inspector is sure Iraq will prevail.
The current posture, in terms of American deployment, is predicated on a presumption that the Iraqi Army would surrender; that the Iraqi people would welcome; that the international community would support.
The exact opposite is happening.
And now we find ourselves with fewer than 120,000 boots on the ground; facing a nation of 23 million, with armed elements numbering around 7 million --who are concentrated at urban areas.
We will not win this fight. America will loose this war.
Saddam Hussein may die... But you know what?
I'm betting that Saddam's gonna be around a lot longer than anyone can predict.
Mark Tran - Bush fiddles with economy while Baghdad burns - Mr. Tran believes that the U.S. military will prevail in Iraq, but that the economy may tank afterwards. [smith2004]
Gerald Butt and David Blair at The Telegraph - Wave of fury sweeps Middle East - Arabs are mad as hell about the U.S. invasion. [whatreallyhappened]
The whole British and American aggression against Iraq is evil, but the thing I can't get out of my head is the picture of the little boy who died in Baghdad," said Khalid Ramadan, 48, an engineer in the Jordanian capital, Amman. "The picture of that child resembles the bloody hands of Bush and Blair."
Newspapers are echoing these sentiments across the Arab world. The Algerian daily, el-Kha, said young men were rushing to volunteer to defend Iraq. Beside a front-page picture of Saddam Hussein, el-Kha carried the headline: "The American and British forces become bogged down in Iraq."
Al-Riyadh, which often reflects Saudi government thinking, maintains that America's overriding aim is to seize Iraq's oil. The paper carried a cartoon of President George W Bush pouring blood and human limbs into a barrel - with oil coming out of a tap.
...
One country is dramatically out of step with these sentiments. Kuwait is the only Arab state to support the war publicly. Its commentators plaintively accuse al-Jazeera and other satellite channels of stirring up support for Saddam.
Paul Boutin at Slate - The Saddam Show: How to watch Iraqi TV on the Web - Use ish.com's Aljazeera channel (registration required) or aim your browser at a Public Proxy Server in the Netherlands and go to DSL-TV. I haven't tried this. [whatreallyhappened]
Viewers be warned: American TV networks make daily decisions on what to show or not to show their viewers. On the Internet, it's easy to route around those decisions. If blogging makes everyone a journalist, then tricks like this one make everyone their own news producer. If you're squeamish, or if you're the relative of an American soldier, you may not want to watch images that the TV networks have deemed unfit for American audiences. But if you want to narrowcast the Iraq Satellite Channel to yourself to see what's being fed to the Iraqi people during this war, you can.
