Taking a leaf out of the book of Richard Herring, I've started blogging again as an exercise in improving my written English, this time with a less counter-intuitive URL. As I'm also trying to wean myself off political commentary, on the very sensible ground that I suck at it, don't come looking for topical material unless you're ready to click through to the best of snark as listed in my huuuuge blogroll.

The new stuff's here.

As I write this, there's not much to see yet, but hopefully...

Pynchon on Orwell

Just a brief note, for those of you still bothering to drop by, drawing your attention to this extract [Update 30-06-03: That link is dead, try here], published in the Grauniad, from Thomas Pynchon's introduction to a new edition of 1984. An excellent piece, sez I. Those interested in Orwell (or prefaces) might wish also to stroll by this page from my li'l ol' pre-blog website, if you haven't already. (Mirror here if the other one is down.)

TTFN

What with having no home PC at present - and the unexpected discovery that I have a work ethic, albeit feeble - posts here will be noticeably thin in the short- to medium-term future, if not absent entirely. Such a hiatus will allow me the opportunity to consider if I can be bothered continuing with this vicarious (now there's a euphemism) endeavour. Which doesn't mean I'm starting to think this blog is, in its triviality, unworthy of my time: complaining that a weblog is trivial is like saying someone's stamp collection lacks geopolitical depth. But I have neither the time nor the surfing skills to construct the link-resplendent posts that mark the best webloggers - nor for that matter, the burning desire to be a human ricochet - and, more to the point, if people wanted to read unreasonable, poorly researched rants largely devoted to bitching about the opinions of others, there are any number of professional pundits that can fill that need. And so I retire, more or less, from the voluntary panopticon. Pax vobiscum.

Which probably means I'll be posting tomorrow.

The Pledge

I had toyed with the idea of composing a pledge that US leaders and their hangers-on can take now that they've apparently sworn off supporting dictators. Perhaps a twelve step program for the more weak-willed recidivists. However, Fox pundit Col. David Hackworth seems to express my views adequately, while giving a detailed rundown on how "we" got into this mess in the first place, thereby saving me the trouble. Hackworth's no peacenik, as his presence amongst the demented lib'ral-hatin' hacks of the World Net Daily site attests, but I found this via Tom Tomorrow who found it via Cursor, which makes you wonder if Hackworth is playing for the right team.

Update: Of course, if denying past US support for military coups is State Department policy, Hackworth may be hoping in vain for change from America's thug-supporting habits.

Next!

Just in case you were worried about Syria:

The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon...

Not a surprise to me, I gotta say. I doubt even Rummy is so deranged as to think Americans will cheer for perpetual war. Of course, they might try it on after Bush is re-elected, which means, of course, never.

Wha? You're not implying Bush might lose, are you, Rob? Why, he just won a war! That's gotta make him a shoe-in. Why, his Dad won a war, and he was - oh, wait, now I see.

Nothing of Interest Here

First, an epigram:

At the same time, I learnt that you always lose. Only the bastards think they win.

Jean-Paul Sartre*

"Yeah but what would that commo surrender-monkey know about it?"

Trawling through various newspapers' letters pages on Friday, I couldn't help noticing that only a few of the pro-war writers could celebrate the fall of Saddam without turning such into a gloating attack on the anti-war movement. This approach to jubilation gives the impression that the liberation itself occurs some way down the list of what these people are actually celebrating. Let's hope that's a false impression. The opportunities pro-war commentators are taking to settle ideological scores entirely unconnected to the situation in Iraq contrasts neatly with their scorn for anyone on the anti-war side who devotes even a skerrick of attention to anything other than triumphant proclamations of Iraqi liberation.

I'm not complaining though. I've been taught a salutary lesson about assessing the potential costs of war - a lesson that will save me a lot of time spent needlessly reading and thinking for myself. The next time we decide to liberate someone, I'll know to ignore the assessments of humanitarian agencies, military experts, veteran war reporters, public officials and intelligence agencies, and open myself, innocent and accepting, to the soothing words of those who know best, and hope that they're right. Because there's no reason to believe they won't ever, ever be wrong, regardless of how many, many opportunities they pursue to be so.

Here's Peter Preston in the Observer talking about the "I told you so" position in the UK.



I notice in passing that on Friday (3:26 PM post) Tim Blair was still trying to nail Media Watch for Insect Metaphor Hypocrisy. Let it go, Tim.†



If you're into conspiracy theories (and old news), this is a beauty.

Saddam Hussein's secret archives could already be in Moscow despite American Central Intelligence Agency's bid to block their evacuation by firing at the Russian diplomatic convoy near Baghdad on Sunday...

From the Times of India, found via William Gibson's collection of web bric-a-brac (scroll down).

* I hasten to point out that I discovered that in a book of quotes while looking for something else, not wanting to give an impression of well-read intellectualism.
† Those of you who have anything of value to do should probably skip this. As for the rest of us, let's find our pin head, line up those angels and watch 'em dance.
Mr Blair notes that Paul McGeough used the term "locusts" to describe the actions of looters in Baghdad and expects therefore that David Marr will serve Mr McGeough up with the same benign scolding MW gave Miranda Devine for her description of non-Iraqi volunteers as "cockroaches". Well, let's see -
A cockroach is generally understood as the verminous insect infesting domestic living areas. As a metaphor, it is a general pejorative, or a more specific pejorative enfolding the concepts of "unhygienic things" and "unpleasant things hidden or about to hidden from view". It is always an insult, and has no other metaphorical usage with the possible exception of "things capable of surviving a nuclear war".
A locust is a type of grasshopper, best known for migrating in voracious swarms. As a metaphor, the term is used to refer to the kind of fast and/or massive resource stripping associated with the swarm. It can be pejorative: "They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet...their whole civilization. After they've consumed every natural resource they move on...and we're next." Or not: "Those children went through that table of cupcakes like a swarm of locusts!"
So, kids, here's your starter for ten: you're a deadline-pressed foreign correspondent looking for a pithy figure of speech that clearly conveys the speed and completeness with which a group of people have stripped a building of everything in it. What word do you choose? Careful now, you'll lose marks for mentioning arthropods!
A-a-nd we're done.

Saudis and Syrians Say: "Let the People Speak!"

I wasn't going to post again for a while but this was too good to leave alone.

From AFP via the SMH:

Arab heavyweights Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria in unison called for allowing the Iraqi people chose its government as quickly as possible.

What, no endorsement from the Ultra-Democrats in Kuwait?

Tom Lehrer was right. Satire is dead.

Mmmmm, It's Good to Be Wrong

As we all know, Iraqi civilians took to the streets yesterday and gosh darn it was great to see 'em. I'll go out on a three-millimetre long limb here and say that Hussein's regime has indeed collapsed and won't be troubling anybody any longer. This watershed this early in the Baghdad end-game means those of us who believed there would be a bloody and protracted finale to this bullshit war were wrong. Not wrong to fear it; but dead wrong to expect it. I don't know how other pessimists feel about this failure of prediction, but I was simpering with glee as I watched BBC footage of Saddam city residents ripping off Ba'ath Party office supplies and pelting Saddam's visage with shoes. When you fear the worst, it's good to be wrong. Pro-war visitors are now encouraged to view my post of 19 March and hoot with derision. Hoot away, it's music to my ears.

I do realise that even our leaders are sounding the obligatory note of caution. There is still some fighting to do - not all of it "mopping up". I guess those tossers at FoxNews will be disappointed they never got to see the MOAB used - maybe the Air Force will drop it on Tikrit for them. That said, I've been worried to bits for four weeks now and I'm bored with it. Let's just watch people dance on bad art and hope everything's plain sailing right up until the moment Dubya tries to install some pampered quisling in Saddam's place.

Those of us peaceniks who never bought the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" casus belli du jour are now better placed than our pro-war colleagues in embracing such optimism. Intelligence experts have been covering themselves by suggesting the possibility of dire surprises to come, but I don't see much chance of same. If Saddam had the WMD option, he's left it very late to use. I think we all know what the reason for that is, and it's not because he's a big fan of The Wrath of Khan. Perhaps he's a chronic hoarder. In any case, I'd rather believe the best, than hedge my bets in hope of the paltry consolation prize of being right when something godawful comes down.

Now the Iraqi people have - pretty much - risen en masse, we can welcome not only the end of Saddam but also the end of the worst of the bombing campaign. It's probably a toss-up as to which the Iraqis are happier to see the back of - yes, fair enough, I can't say I've seen footage of anyone beating the crap out of a Raytheon logo. Perhaps they should send over a few catalogues to give the revelers that opportunity, y'know, in the interest of balance.

Of course, if the Iraqis stay in the streets proclaiming their liberation, it's going to be that much harder to take it away from them again. Then again, if they stay pro-US, perhaps nobody will try. They certainly seem keen to emulate the American way, if yesterday's widespread looting is anything to go by. (Nyuk, nyuk.) And let's have none of this racist cant about the Iraqi people not being ready for democracy. Everyone is ready for democracy - it's not touch-typing, no training is required. Even if you don't hold with that overarching political philosophy, you can be sure that anyone who thinks the problems the Iraqis face in rebuilding civil society are going to be diminished by leaving the government in the hands of some US selected proconsul hasn't been paying attention. A political structure designed to lessen local resentment will be the better option, I would suggest.

So, we'll see. The BBC commentator describing the crowd scenes - no, I didn't catch his name, I was too busy chortling - did briefly mention that some Iraqis had explained they didn't want the Americans there, as much as they were happy to see Saddam go. Must have been historians. That's not ingratitude, by the way, I think you'll find it's called freedom. If that word means anything, it means at least the right to tell your liberators to bugger off once they've worn out their welcome. Well, perhaps not "bugger off". That would be rude.

Probably I don't mean there's definitely a free and democratic Iraq coming around the corner. Almost certainly I mean there'd bloody better be a free and democratic Iraq coming around the corner. I know why I opposed this war and I stand by it: I'm a bleeding heart worry-wart who gets pissed off watching people being bombed. Oh, yeah, and there was that whole "international law" thing. And hopefully, my merry band of doves will now buckle down to the campaign of keeping the liberators honest. Freedom and democracy, and using Iraqi oil revenues to rebuild Iraq, were the offers on the table, if memory serves. Those who supported the war might like to consider what they'll be doing to ensure things turn out the way they were presented in the brochure. Like I say, I know what I am; but if our warbuff brethren, having got their rolling victory, now lose interest in the fate of Iraq's people and retire to their buttgroove in front of Fox, there to wait numbly for the next episode of "America Kicks Ass!" - well, I don't think the dictionary has a word for what they are. As for the architects of Operation Iraqi Freedom themselves, if they don't come good on their promises, may they spend eternity speared daily on the Dark Lord's hard, scaly and behorned todger.


Good Lord, what a long and windy post, I think I might take a week off. I was going to rip into Imre Saluszinksy today but under the circumstances it didn't seem that important. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.



Good Old Rummy

"Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, [Vladimir] Lenin and [Romanian dictator Nicolae] Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed, brutal dictators," Rumsfeld declared.

He might be light-headed but, as far as the Stalin reference goes, it never struck me that keeping an iron grip on power right up until you die of natural causes amounts to much of a failure, at least on the standards brutal dictators usually apply to themselves. Unless he means in comparison to those immortal dictators we knew and loved in the past. And present, and future, I suppose.

Don't you love the way AFP assumes we don't know who Ceaucescu and Lenin are? I assume the "Vladimir" is for the benefit of the people now exclaiming "Oh, that Lenin!"

And here's another example of our prominence on the world stage. Yeah, I know, you read that two hours ago.

Oh, and I sent this to the Tele yesterday, but they didn't have room for it what with all the people praising Greenpeace's recent PR coup.

I notice a lot of your letter writers have been suggesting that recent reports of atrocities in Iraq "prove" the anti-war movement was wrong. Let's skip the fact that the main atrocity claim - hundreds of bones of torture victims - turned out to be false. After all, no-one is now or has ever denied that Saddam is/was a brutal dictator. It beggars belief that pro-war types think peace protestors were unaware of the savage nature of his regime. What shall be their next revelation: the 2002 election in which Saddam got 99.96% of the vote was rigged?

The fact of the matter is that Saddam's brutality has never been a revelation to the "peaceniks" and "bleeding hearts". They always knew, even during the 1980s when Saddam and the US were as cozy as lice. It's the pro-US crowd, including those spruiking for this war, that changed their minds about Saddam. Hours after he invaded Kuwait in 1990, threatening US interests, it came to them in a blinding flash: this so-called friend is an evil dictator. So don't waste your time lecturing those whose opposition to oppression and violence has been consistent, rather than convenient.

You'll notice I refer to those who have been consistently anti-Saddam as "they". This is because, as for most who passed through the Eighties in an intoxicant-addled haze, the events of that decade are a bit of a blur to me, so in the unlikely event I was straight enough to denounce Halabja and other such atrocities at the time, I can't say I recall doing so.

Never Mind the Details

Let's compare and contrast some reports of yesterday's assassination attempt of Hussein. First, from Paul McGeough of The Age and the SMH, from Baghdad:

Four or five houses have disappeared and in their place is a crater maybe 30-40 metres wide and 15-20 metres deep.

Some of the photographers use a chilling term they picked up from the US military in Afghanistan to describe what might have happened to a dozen or more people thought to have died in this missile attack. They have become "pink mist".

The smouldering crater is littered with the artefacts of ordinary middle-class life in Baghdad - a crunched Passat sedan, a wrought-iron front gate, the armrest of a chair upholstered in green brocade and a broken bedhead.

The top floors of surrounding buildings are sheared off. Mud thrown by the force of the blast cakes what is left of them, and the nearby date palms are decapitated. Bulldozers and rescue crews work frantically, peeling back the rubble in the hope of finding survivors.

Neighbours and relatives of the home-owners weep openly in the street, some embracing to ease the pain and all of them wondering why such a powerful missile was dumped on them after the US has stated its heavy bombing campaign is over.

But this is an opportunistic strike. Four bunker-busters - 2000-pound JDAM bombs - are dropped on the house in which the US "believes" Saddam, his sons and other top officials "might" have been meeting.

Anonymous US officials are quoted saying that on Monday they had received intelligence of a high-level meeting in Mansour of Iraqi intelligence officials and, "possibly", Saddam and his two sons, Qusay and Uday.

But that cuts no ice with the neighbours. The nearest house has stood for 43 years but now it is on the verge of collapse and the adult children of the blood-splattered engineer Fadel al-Imam, aged 75, are working to convince him he must leave.

With his back to the door of his wrecked library, where floor-to-ceiling shelves bulge with a lifetime's collection of engineering texts and there is a shattered photo of his policeman father in the service of the last Western occupiers of Iraq, the British, he says: "I reserve the right not to obey any government.

"This will create more enemies for the Americans. Even those who were feeling good about the arrival of the Americans will want to fight now."

There's also this.

Next, Murdoch broadsheet The Australian:

Monday's swoop on Hussein and his cronies, with four 900kg "bunker-buster" bombs delivered by a US B1 bomber, was believed to be based on information that the regime's leadership was deliberately meeting in a residential area to avoid being targeted.

The Washington Times reported that the meeting was under the al-Saa restaurant block in the Mansur district, in the city's inner west, between 2pm and 3pm local time on Monday.

The operation's success was unclear. While the building was destroyed, and US officials were optimistic, they were not certain whether the Iraqi leader was present.

The Washington Times reported that the site was used by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the Mukhabarat, and was in the same neighbourhood in which Hussein made a filmed street walk on Friday, greeting supporters.

Pictures yesterday showed a massive crater in Mansur, where a building apparently had stood.

And lastly, The Daily Telegraph:

AMERICAN generals were last night hoping they had killed Saddam Hussein and his sons by dropping four giant bombs on a Baghdad restaurant.

The 900kg satellite-guided JDAM bombs reduced the building, in up-market Mansur, to a cavern of rubble.

"Whoever was in there is dead," one US official last night said.

The raid was launched after military chiefs received "extremely reliable information" that Saddam and sons Qusay and Uday were meeting senior party and intelligence officials beneath the al Saa restaurant block on Monday afternoon, Baghdad time.

US intelligence identified the neighbourhood from the film footage and the tip-off came from an informant in Baghdad.

The restaurant was in the neighbourhood where Saddam, or a lookalike, was filmed on the weekend walking and greeting people.

Sources said: "We are certain he [Saddam] went in and we did not see him leave. There's a strong chance we got Saddam and both sons."

Forensic experts will be sent to the scene as soon as it is secured to determine if Saddam was killed. They will use the same technology that helped identify victims of the World Trade Centre attack.

Sources said they believed those at the meeting were discussing how to flee the city.

It is understood up to 30 military chiefs, intelligence officials and party leaders had joined Saddam and his sons at the meeting.

Witnesses said two houses were flattened and four others badly damaged in the raid. Nine Iraqis were killed and four wounded.

Full marks to the Tele for bothering to mention how many were killed.

Tim Flannery: Tree-huggin' Whale-hater

This is interesting. Stephen Romei belatedly brings to my attention that Tim Flannery, author of The Future Eaters, will be the latest contributor to Quarterly Essay and his piece, Beautiful Lies, while painting a grim picture of future environmental problems, contra Lomberg, will also say, in passing, that there's not much point in saving whales. See what you miss when you're focussed on some useless bloody war? You miss useless bloody trivia like this.

Well, It Looked Like a Baby On a Bayonet to Us

So much for the main atrocity story in yesterday's Tele:

More than 400 sets of human remains discovered in a barracks outside of Basra are of soldiers killed during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the leader of a U.S. military team that examined them said Sunday.

Forensics experts sent to southern Iraq to analyze the makeshift coffins and plastic bags in which the human body parts were found said all the injuries appeared consistent with combat, contrary to initial reports from an Iranian news agency some showed signs of torture.

From CNN - more.

But in just a few hours, Chief Warrant Officer Dan Walters, the leader of the task force's Criminal Investigation Division unit, said a preliminary examination of the remains and some of the thousands of pages of documents that were abandoned in a building next to the warehouse suggested that atrocities had probably not occurred here. Rather, he said, Iraqis had apparently been processing the remains and preparing to exchange them with Iran.

From the New York Times - more.

In case you missed the Tele's original report, check out the room for doubt here:

Something terrible happened here. Something murderous. Something evil.

The proof lies in a cargo container nearby. Its metal door hangs open and inside are pages and pages of files.

The Murdoch mouthpieces will probably claim that they did include quotes from a spokesman that "We can't speculate on what this is until an investigation." Of course, the very next paragraph states:

But one officer, speaking privately and looking on in shock was more blunt. "Just look at those photos. Look at this place. People were being tortured and executed here," he said.

The real foolishness here is that Hussein is demonstrably a vicious thug, and the head of a vicious thug regime; and other reports of torture and mistreatment, particularly to force loyalty to the regime during this invasion, could be very relevant to understanding how quickly this war is going to end, and how the post-invasion reconstruction should go. But what credibility can we give claims that issued from a source as unreliable as these craven Murdoch whores? What use are they as a news source?

Update: I got those two links from an SMH article by Margot Kingston, not my favourite source. Intellectual giant Tim Blair takes Ms Kingston to task for referring to the Telegraph story as a "scoop" invented by Newscorp - which given it was featured on all the television media over last weekend, it wasn't. Sadly, this isn't the first occasion Ms Kingston has lobbed Mr Blair a slow, high one through her sloppy use of the English language. That said, it was nice of Mr Blair to provide links to earlier reporting of the story from the Independent and the BBC to allow us to compare the cautious balanced journalism of these news outlets with the yenta-fest the Tele ran from the Observer. (And, before you ask, I don't believe those effete small-l liberal wankers at the Observer would know any better.) So Murdoch's myrmidons didn't write this trash themselves, they just borrowed the most inflammatory op-ed they could find and ran it on page one - I stand corrected. (Mr Blair's permalinks don't seem to be working so if you want to read his piece try April 8 2003 at 2:42AM. His 1:10PM post is also a hoot. In the Media Watch episode I mentioned below, David Marr complained about Miranda Devine's use of the word "cockroach" to describe people we were about to bomb. Timmy trumps him with a quote from previous Media Watch host Richard Ackland describing people who were about to face a judicial enquiry. Touché, O Champion of Logic!)


Update to Update [9-4-03]: Mr Blair pointed out in a most congenial e-mail that Ackland's "cockroaches" were to be taken before a public enquiry of the ABA, not a "judicial enquiry" as I slapdashedly referred to it. I'd do obeisance for the error, but after reading it again I think leaving my lame-ass "O Champion of Logic" insult there for all to see and mock will be punishment enough.

No Atheists in FoxNews

Another excellent performance from Media Watch last night, comparing Fox News and Al Jazeera.

"I pray for our President. I pray God will give him wisdom. I pray for our military commanders. And I watched Olly, and I watched the other reporters tonight on your program give their reports. I pray for these men who bring us the news, whose lives are on the line. I just say God bless these men, keep them safe, keep them all safe and bring them home safely."
- Fox News, 29 March 2003

More.

"Should they have used more? Should they, you know, use the MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs and a few Daisy Cutters. You know, lets not just stop at a couple of Cruise Missiles."
"Only 40, huh?"
"I want to see them use that MOAB. We all want to see them use that MOAB."
- Fox News, 25 March 2003

More.

Fox downplayed that carnage in Baghdad but when an Iraqi missile landed near an almost deserted shopping mall in Kuwait city, the network went into hyperdrive.

Reporter: "This happened about 1.30 to 1.45am local time and only two injuries. Sean and Alan -"

"Adam just a quick question if I can my friend - great reporting tonight - we have no doubt, obviously, this is from the Iraqis. Now I wanted to ask - and now obviously they're attacking malls where there are civilian populations - I hope the French take note..."
- Fox News, 29 March 2003

No one, thank God, was killed and hardly anything was damaged, but Fox made it sound like a king hit.

"This is where at any other time of the day hundreds of people might have been walking. Thankfully it was the early hours of the morning, but take a look at the front of the shopping mall there. That's the kind of damage it did."
- Fox News, 29 March 2003

Meanwhile, Aljazeera took it's viewers to see the carnage Fox wasn't keen to show.

Translation: "Aljazeera travelled from the village to the town hospital. This family of eight was injured. This physical and psychological injury perhaps explained the absence of expression on the father's face...
This woman who lived in Baghdad moved with her husband to escape the American and British bombardment in this very remote village.
They said it would be a clean war.
They said they would not target infrastructure.
They said they were not the enemy of the Iraqi people. They said, they said, they said.
Faiza Alizzy, Aljazeera, from the village of Manar, in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad."
- Aljazeera, 29 March 2003

More.

And that was an NBC reporter I saw two weeks ago bugging Iraqi POWs while they were trying to sleep.

Marr also took a serve at the Tele for its ludicrous war-spruiking so he should be getting a fulminating counterspray in a day or two from Akerman or another of Rupert's happy little elves. I can't wait.

Septic Tanks in the Suburbs

Hmmm, it appears I was a little testy on the fourth. I wonder why.

The weekend long story - not blogging from home any more, the PC is dead, dead, dead - was the tank incursion the Seppos made into "the center of Baghdad". Looking at the map of the route in the Herald this morning, I assume this must be a technical military usage of the word "center". As the last Australian journo in Baghdad (Arnett's a Kiwi) mentions in another report, this is like saying Parramatta is the Sydney CBD. Here's a similar article (on the lies from both sides) by Fisky in The Independent.

Today, of course, the Telegraph is full of atrocity stories. Circa 1914 the Tele's front page would have undoubtedly been adorned with "babies on bayonets" cartoons. They're such troupers. The mind boggles as to what their stories would have been if Murdoch had decided he was against the war: "Saddam rescues drowning kitten", perhaps.

Excellent article from the Age on not knowing what to root for. Most of the anti-war crowd I know are much less precious about this. They want - or say they want, this place is up to the rafters in bellicose gallows humour - to see the Americans get their arses kicked. I don't - that'll just make things worse for the Iraqis. That's not the only reason: why wish death or injury on some working-class schmoe or some panicky farmboy from Iowa who are only there because they were told to be? Okay, point a camera at some of these jarheads and stupidity flows out of them like a recently unblocked drain. But hoping for significant US casualties because it will give Washington a salutary lesson is the kind of cold-blooded sociopathic armchair wargaming that we see from the types who have been favourably comparing this invasion to chemotherapy. As we despise it in them, so we should despise it everywhere.

Speaking of the "Save Iraq With Bombs" crowd, here's the elder Cockburn brother talking about the humanitarian fiasco in Umm Qasr, among other things.

Correction [14.4.03]: This post referred to Paul McGeough of the Herald as the last Australian journo in Baghdad. Actually, he was the last Australian journalist reporting from Baghdad, as Peter Wilson and photographer John Feder, both from News Ltd, were in the Iraqi capital, but under house arrest. My admittedly twitchy memory recalls that Tony Jones spoke to Peter Wilson on the Thursday (10/4) edition of Lateline about lawlessness in the city, but they don't seem to have posted a transcript. Full list of Aussie Second Gulf War correspondents here.

(Note also that Alexander Cockburn is not a member of the "Save Iraq With Bombs" crowd, as that badly written last sentence implies, but a critic of them. Perhaps I need ESL classes. )

Note to correction [30.4.03]: Peter Wilson e-mailed me about the above correction to point out that he and Mr Feder had been reporting from Baghdad throughout the war but, as he says, "[o]ur material was deliberately kept off the net because we had been ordered by the Iraqis not to file." I would hope that nothing above gives the impression Paul McGeough was the only Australian journalist in Baghdad for the whole of the war - after all, apart from Mr Wilson and Mr Feder, Ian McPhedran of the Daily Telegraph was also there until being expelled by the Iraqi authorities - but I've added this note just to make things clear.

So Very, Very Tired

Okay, Rob, we know what you hope will happen; but what do you think will happen?

I don't know. I have no fecking idea, and neither do you, so why don't we all just shut our yaps until this lunacy is over.

(Can't help thinking I should have posted this on the 20th and taken a month off.)

Endgame

That erudite bastard Guy Rundle once again plagiarises my thoughts before I've even expressed them. Does he have any idea how annoying that is?

I might take mild issue with him over his concern that a swift victory in Baghdad will increase American enthusiasm for future unilateral acts of this sort. I'm not entirely convinced of that, both in terms of cause and of effect. Firstly, the US military got its ass kicked in Vietnam* and the pause before the next major overt armed intervention was only eight years - Vietnam to "Urgent Fury", the invasion of Grenada (a brave endeavour to protect the world from the evil Grenadians and their Nutmeg of Mass Destruction). Leaving aside the covert ops, the minor interventions, and the funding and training of proxies, "Vietnam Syndrome" lasted less than a decade. Or, more accurately, the American antipathy to wars occasioning large numbers of American casualties has never really gone away. All American military ops since Vietnam have been small scale, against opponents who are easy - or seemingly easy - to defeat. Gulf Wars I and II are not exceptions. Either way, whether the US government is eager to act in its self-appointed role as world cop, or, like a veldt predator, gingerly seeking out the weak and infirm to attack and avoiding serious fights, this mentality has been well-established for some years and it is unlikely the results of this war will be any cause for it to change, unless it goes extraordinarily badly - which would require at least a US defeat - and that seems unlikely.

Even if the city of Baghdad falls tomorrow, it is most unlikely the US will be pulling another imperial stunt like this for a while. One obvious reason is that the spoils of attacking other countries are measly in comparison to those gained by conquering Iraq. Also, the unpleasant consequences are greater for other possible military adventures - the two other countries in Dubya's absurd "Axis of Evil" are either well-armed with powerful friends (North Korea), or well-armed with a nascent democratic structure (Iran), meaning that any attack would face even greater indigenous opposition and world-wide protest than encountered in this war, if that's possible. So I'm not worried that the US government will emerge any more arrogant from victory in Iraq than it would have been in "defeat" (after all, in defeat there would always be the peaceniks and French to blame) and there's little chance that the next US agenda item will be anything on this scale. I doubt they will even try to take down Chavez. It'll be the usual covert ops and propping up of friendly dictators that we've seen for decades. I don't see the modus operandi changing, whatever happens in the Gulf.

Of course, a relatively quick and bloodless end to the war from here on will make the war-buffs, neo-cons, George W., Blair, Howard and the Murdoch media all look good, but is massive carnage a supportable price to pay to see them with egg on their faces? Of course not, and I can't begin to comprehend the sort of demented insularity that would think it was. The only real worry I have is: well, yes, I say that, but do I really think it?

* Actually, by any sensible standards the US won in Vietnam. They destroyed both halves of the country (and two others) and turned Vietnam into an economic basketcase for two decades and a salient example of what happens to Third World countries that don't do what they are told. Specifically, they completely destroyed the National Liberation Front with the post-Tet counterattack and ensuing death squad operation (the "Phoenix program") and the NLF were the enemy � let's have no right-wing fantasies about the US being there to defend South Vietnam from an invasion from the North. The US victory in the South allowed the North to completely supplant the NLF when the North did invade in force in 1975. Many of the surviving NLF leaders ended up in re-education camps.

No Rest for the Willing

In the back of Gore Vidal's The Last Empire, he includes a table of US military operations since the Second World War. As PR awareness increased, the titles of these operations have become more and more bumptious; so the list makes for amusing reading, in a gallows humour way. Vidal extracted the list from that provided by the Federation of American Scientists; the original is here. The table below has been sorted chronologically.

Name	Place	From	To	US Forces
King William's War		1689	1697
Queen Anne's War		1702	1702
War of Jenkins' Ear		1739	1742
King George's War		1744	1748
French and Indian War	North America	1754	1763
Revolutionary War	United States	19 Apr 1775	19 Oct 1781	~200,000
Shays' Rebellion		1786	1787
Indian Wars	United States	1790	1891
Whiskey Rebellion		1794
Quasi-War with France	United States	1798	1801
Barbary Wars	Libya	1801	1805
War of 1812	Worldwide	18 Jun 1812	17 Feb 1815	286,730
Barbary Wars	Libya	1815	1815
African Slave Trade Patrol	Atlantic Ocean	1820	1861
Patriot's War	Canada	1837	1840
Aroostock War	Canada	1838	1839
Mexican War	Texas	8 May 1846	13 Sep 1847	78,718
Walker's Expeditions	Nicaragua	1855	1860
Utah (Morman) War Expedition	Utah	1857	1858
Civil War	Southern States	12 Apr 1861	9 Apr 1865	2,213,363
Controversy of 1889	Samoa	1889
War with Spain	Cuba, Phillipines	22 Jun 1898	13 Aug 1898	306,760
Philippine Insurrection	Philippines	4 Feb 1899	15-Jun-13
China Relief Expedition	China	13-Jul-00	05-Aug-00
Safe Border	Peru / Ecuador	1995	30-Jun-99
Latin American Campaigns	Cuba	1906	1909
Nicaragua	Nicaragua	1909	1933
World War I	Europe	01-Aug-14	11-Nov-18	4,734,991
Latin American Campaigns	Haiti	1915	1920
Latin American Campaigns	Dominican Republic	1916	1924
Mexican Expedition	Mexico	14-Mar-16	07-Feb-17
Russian Revolution	Russia	12-Nov-18	01-Apr-20
Yangtze Service	China	1926	1927
Yangtze Service	China	1930	1932
China Service	China	1937	1939
World War II	Worldwide	07-Dec-41	14-Aug-45	16,112,566
China Service	China	1945	1957
Cold War	Worldwide	28-Feb-46	25-Dec-91
Berlin Airlift	Berlin	26-Jun-48	30-Sep-49
Korean War	Korea	27-Jun-50	27-Jul-53
Korea	Korea	1953	ongoing
Taiwan Straits	Taiwan Straits	11-Aug-54	01-May-55
Suez Crisis	Egypt	26-Jul-56	15-Nov-56
Blue Bat	Lebanon	15-Jul-58	20-Oct-58
Taiwan Straits	Taiwan Straits	23-Aug-58	01-Jan-59
Taiwan Straits	Quemoy and Matsu Islands	23-Aug-58	01-Jun-63
Congo	Congo	14-Jul-60	01-Sep-62
Laos	Laos	19-Apr-61	07-Oct-62
Berlin	Berlin	14-Aug-61	01-Jun-63
Operation Ranch Hand	Vietnam	Jan-62	1971
Vietnam War	Vietnam	15-Mar-62	28-Jan-73
Cuban Missile Crisis	Cuba, Worldwide	24-Oct-62	01-Jun-63
[NONE]	Chinese nuclear facilities	15-Oct-63	Oct-64
Red Dragon	Congo	23-Nov-64	27-Nov-64
Operation Rolling Thunder	Vietnam	24-Feb-65	Oct-68
Powerpack	Dominican Republic	28-Apr-65	21-Sep-66
Operation Arc Light	Southeast Asia	18-Jun-65	Apr-70
CHASE	various	1967	1970
Six Day War	Mideast	13-May-67	10-Jun-67
Red Fox [Pueblo incident]	Korea theater	23-Jan-68	05-Feb-69
Graphic Hand	US Domestic	1970	1970
Operation Tailwind	Laos	1970	1970
Ivory Coast / Kingpin	Son Tay, Vietnam	20-Nov-70	21-Nov-70
Operation Ivory Coast / Kingpin	North Vietnam	21-Nov-70	21-Nov-70
Red Hat	Johnston Island	Jan-71	Sep-71
Operation Endsweep	North Vietnam	27-Jan-72	27-Jul-73
Operation Freedom Train	North Vietnam	06-Apr-72	10-May-72
Garden Plot	USA Domestic	30-Apr-72	04-May-72
Operation Pocket Money	North Vietnam	09-May-72	23-Oct-72
Operation Linebacker I	North Vietnam	10-May-72	23-Oct-72
Operation Linebacker II	North Vietnam	18-Dec-72	29-Dec-72
Nickel Grass	Mideast	06-Oct-73	17-Nov-73
New Life	Vietnam NEO	Apr-75
Eagle Pull	Cambodia	11-Apr-75	13-Apr-75
Frequent Wind	Evacuation of Saigon	29-Apr-75	30-Apr-75
Mayaguez Operation	Cambodia	15-May-75
Paul Bunyan / Tree Incident	Korea	18-Aug-76	21-Aug-76
Coronet Oak	Central/South America	Oct-77	17-Feb-99
SETCON I	Colorado	1978	1978
Ogaden Crisis	Somalia / Ethiopia	Feb-78	23-Mar-78
Red Bean	Zaire	May-78	Jun-78
Yemen	Iran/Yemen/Indian Ocean	06-Dec-78	06-Jan-79
Elf One	Saudi Arabia	Mar-79	15-Apr-89
ROK Park Succession Crisis	Korea	26-Oct-79	28-Jun-80
EAGLE CLAW / Desert One	Iran	25-Apr-80
SETCON II	Colorado	May-80	Jun-80
Creek Sentry	Poland	Dec-80	1981
Central America	El Salvador / Nicaragua	01-Jan-81	01-Feb-92
RMT (Rocky Mountain Transfer)	Colorado	Aug-81	Sep-81
Gulf of Sidra	Libya / Mediterranean	18-Aug-81	18-Aug-81
Bright Star	Egypt	06-Oct-81	Nov-81
US Multinational Force [USMNF]	Lebanon	25-Aug-82	01-Dec-87
Early Call	Egypt / Sudan	18-Mar-83	Aug-83
Arid Farmer	Chad / Sudan	Aug-83	Aug-83
URGENT FURY	Grenada	23-Oct-83	21-Nov-83
Intense Look	Red Sea / Gulf of Suez	Jul-84	Jul-84
Achille Lauro	Mediteranean	07-Oct-85	11-Oct-85
Alliance	US Southern border	1986	Present
Attain Document	Libya	26-Jan-86	29-Mar-86
EL DORADO CANYON	Libya	12-Apr-86	17-Apr-86
Blast Furnace	Bolivia	Jul-86	Nov-86
ERNEST WILL	Persian Gulf	24-Jul-87	02-Aug-90
Golden Pheasant	Honduras	Mar-88	Present
PRAYING MANTIS	Persian Gulf	17-Apr-88	19-Apr-88
Agate Path	CONUS	1989	???
Nimrod Dancer	Panama	May-89	20-Dec-89
Hawkeye	St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands	20-Sep-89	17-Nov-89
Classic Resolve	Philippines	Nov-89	Dec-89
JUST CAUSE	Panama	20-Dec-89	31-Jan-90
New Horizons	Central America	1990?	ongoing
Badge	Kentucky	1990	Present?
Ghost Dancer	Oregon	1990	Present?
Grizzly	California	1990	Present?
Wipeout	Hawaii	1990	Present
Promote Liberty	Panama	31-Jan-90	??
Ghost Zone	Bolivia	Mar-90	1993?
Sharp Edge	Liberia	May-90	08-Jan-91
Greensweep	California	Jul-90	Aug-90
Steel Box / Golden Python	Johnston Island	26-Jul-90	18-Nov-90
Desert Shield	Southwest Asia	02-Aug-90	17-Jan-91
Imminent Thunder	Southwest Asia	Nov-90	Nov-90
Southern Watch	Southwest Asia / Iraq	1991	present	14,000
Desert Falcon	Saudi Arabia	1991	present
Coronet Nighthawk	Central/South America	1991	present
Support Justice	South America	1991	1994
Eastern Exit	Somalia	02-Jan-91	11-Jan-91
Proven Force	Southwest Asia	17-Jan-91	28-Feb-91	550,000
DESERT STORM	Southwest Asia	17-Jan-91	28-Feb-91
DESERT SWORD / DESERT SABRE	Southwest Asia	17-Jan-91	28-Feb-91
Desert Calm	Southwest Asia	24-Feb-91	28-Feb-91
Desert Farewell	Southwest Asia	01-Mar-91	01-Jan-92
Provide Comfort	Kurdistan	05-Apr-91	Dec-94	42,500
Productive Effort / Sea Angel	Bangladesh	May-91	Jun-91
Fiery Vigil	Philippines NEO	Jun-91
Provide Comfort II	Kurdistan	24-Jul-91	31-Dec-96	??
Victor Squared	Haiti NEO	Sep-91
Quick Lift	Zaire	24-Sep-91	07-Oct-91
GTMO	Haiti > Guantanamo, Cuba	23-Nov-91
Safe Harbor	Haiti > Guantanamo, Cuba	1992
Desert Farewell	Southwest Asia	01-Jan-92	1992?
Provide Hope I	Former Soviet Union	10-Feb-92	26-Feb-92
Provide Hope II	Former Soviet Union	15-Apr-92	29-Jul-92
Garden Plot	Los Angeles, CA	May-92		4,500
Silver Anvil	Sierra Leone NEO	02-May-92	05-May-92
Provide Promise	Bosnia	03-Jul-92	Mar-96	1,000
Maritime Monitor	Adriatic Sea	16-Jul-92	22-Nov-92	??
Provide Transition	Angola	03-Aug-92	09-Oct-92
Provide Relief	Somalia	14-Aug-92	08-Dec-92	??
Sky Monitor	Bosnia-Herzegovina	16-Oct-92	present
[none]	Liberian NEO	22-Oct-92	25-Oct-92
Maritime Guard	Adriatic Sea	22-Nov-92	15-Jun-93	??
Restore Hope	Somalia	04-Dec-92	04-May-93	26,000
Iris Gold	SW Asia	?? 1993	present
Provide Hope III	Former Soviet Union	1993?	1993?
[none] (cruise missile strike)	Iraq	13-Jan-93	17-Jan-93
[none] (cruise missile strike)	Iraq	17-Jan-93	26-Jun-93
Korean Nuclear Crisis	North Korea	10-Feb-93	Jun-94
Deny Flight	Bosnia-Herzegovina	12-Apr-93	20-Dec-95	2,000
Continue Hope	Somalia	04-May-93	Dec-93	??
Sharp Guard	Adriatic Sea	15-Jun-93	Dec-95	11,700
[none] (air strike)	Iraq	26-Jun-93	13-Jan-93
Steady State	South America	1994	Apr-96
Provide Hope IV	Former Soviet Union	10-Jan-94	19-Dec-94
Distant Runner	Rwanda NEO	09-Apr-94	15-Apr-94
Sea Signal / JTF-160	Haiti > Guantanamo, Cuba	18-May-94	Feb-96
Able Sentry	Serbia-Macedonia	05-Jul-94	present
Quiet Resolve / Support Hope	Rwanda	22-Jul-94	30-Sep-94	2,592
Safe Haven / Safe Passage	Cuba > Panama	06-Sep-94	01-Mar-95
Uphold/Restore Democracy	Haiti	19-Sep-94	31-Mar-95	21,000
Vigilant Warrior	Kuwait	Oct-94	Nov-94
Gatekeeper	California	1995	present
Hold-the-Line	Texas	1995	present
Safeguard	Arizona	1995	present
Selva Verde	Colombia	1995	present
Constant Vigil	Bolivia	199?	??
Green Clover	South America	199?	199?
United Shield	Somalia	03-Jan-95	25-Mar-95	4,000
Determined Effort	Bosnia-Herzegovina	Jul-95	Dec-95	6,900
Nomad Vigil	Albania	01-Jul-95	05-Nov-96
Quick Lift	Croatia	03-Jul-95	11-Aug-95
Third Taiwan Straits Crisis	Taiwan Strait	21-Jul-95	23-Mar-96
Vigilant Sentinel	Kuwait	Aug-95	15-Feb-97
DELIBERATE FORCE	Bosnian Serbs	29-Aug-95	21-Sep-95
Joint Endeavor	Bosnia-Herzegovina	Dec-95	Dec-96	6,900
Decisive Enhancement	Adriatic Sea	Dec-95	19-Jun-96	??
Intrinsic Action	Kuwait	01-Dec-95	01-Oct-99
Zorro II	Mexico	Dec-95	02-May-96
Decisive Endeavor / Decisive Edge	Bosnia-Herzegovina	Jan-96	Dec-96	??
Nomad Endeavor	Taszar, Hungary	Mar-96	Present
Laser Strike	South America	Apr-96	Present
Assured Response	Liberia	Apr-96	Aug-96
Quick Response	Central African Republic	May-96	Aug-96
Desert Focus	Saudi Arabia	Jul-96	present
DESERT STRIKE	Iraq	03-Sep-96	04-Sep-96
Pacific Haven / Quick Transit	Iraq > Guam	15-Sep-96	16-Dec-96
Guardian Assistance	Zaire/Rwanda/Uganda	15-Nov-96	27-Dec-96
Assurance / Phoenix Tusk	Zaire/Rwanda/Uganda	15-Nov-96	27-Dec-96
Joint Guard	Bosnia-Herzegovina	Dec-96	20-Jun-98	6,900
Decisive Guard / Deliberate Guard	Bosnia-Herzegovina	Dec-96	20-Jun-98	??
Determined Guard	Adriatic Sea	Dec-96	Present	??
Northern Watch	Kurdistan	31-Dec-96	Present	1,100
Guardian Retrieval	Congo (formerly Zaire)	Mar-97	Jun-97
Silver Wake	Albania	14-Mar-97	26-Mar-97
Noble Obelisk	Sierra Leone	May-97	Jun-97
Bevel Edge	Cambodia	Jul-97	Jul-97
Phoenix Scorpion I	Iraq	Nov-97	Nov-97
Noble Response	Kenya	21-Jan-98	25-Mar-98
DESERT THUNDER	Iraq	Feb-98	16-Dec-98
Phoenix Scorpion II	Iraq	Feb-98	Feb-98
[none]	Asmara, Eritrea NEO	05-Jun-98	06-Jun-98	130
Shepherd Venture	Guinea-Bissau	10-Jun-98	17-Jun-98	130
Determined Falcon	Kosovo & Albania	15-Jun-98	16-Jun-98
Joint Forge	Bosnia-Herzegovina	20-Jun-98	Present	6,900
Deliberate Forge	Bosnia-Herzegovina	20-Jun-98	Present
Resolute Response	Africa	Aug-98	Present
Infinite Reach	Sudan / Afganistan	20-Aug-98	20-Aug-98
Strong Support [Fuerte Apoyo]	Central America	Oct-98	10-Feb-99	5,700
Determined Force	Kosovo	08-Oct-98	23-Mar-99
Cobalt Flash	Kosovo	08-Oct-98	23-Mar-99
Eagle Eye	Kosovo	16-Oct-98	24-Mar-99
Phoenix Scorpion III	Iraq	Nov-98	Nov-98
Provide Hope V	Former Soviet Union	06-Nov-98	10-May-99
Shining Presence	Israel	Dec-98	Dec-98
Phoenix Scorpion IV	Iraq	Dec-98	Dec-98
DESERT FOX	Iraq	16-Dec-98	20-Dec-98
Allied Force / Noble Anvil	Kosovo	23-Mar-99	10-Jun-99
Shining Hope	Kosovo	05-Apr-99	Fall 1999
Sustain Hope / Allied Harbour	Kosovo	05-Apr-99	Fall 1999
Provide Refuge	Kosovo	05-Apr-99	Fall 1999
Open Arms	Kosovo	05-Apr-99	Fall 1999
Joint Guardian	Kosovo	11-Jun-99	TDB 200?
Avid Response	Turkey	18-Aug-99	Sep-99
Stabilize	Timor	11-Sep-99	Nov-99
Desert Spring	Kuwait	01-Oct-99	present
Fundamental Response	Venezuela	20-Dec-99	early 2000
Enhanced Ops	CONUS	???	Present
MONUC [UN PKO]	DR Congo	Feb-00	ongoing
Silent Promise	Mozambique / South Africa	Feb-00	? Apr 2000
Sierra Leone NEO	Sierra Leone	May-00
Operation Enduring Freedom	Afghanistan	Oct - 2001	ongoing
Operation Iraqi Freedom	Iraq	Mar - 2003	ongoing

Sheer poetry, n'est ce pas?

News, As It Happens

An article in Editor & Publisher has listed fifteen stories the media has already got wrong.

1. Saddam may well have been killed in the first night's surprise attack (March 20).

2. Even if he wasn't killed, Iraqi command and control was no doubt "decapitated" (March 22).

3. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 22).

4. Most Iraqis soldiers will not fight for Saddam and instead are surrendering in droves (March 22).

5. Iraqi citizens are greeting Americans as liberators (March 22).

6. An entire division of 8,000 Iraqi soldiers surrendered en masse near Basra (March 23).

7. Several Scud missiles, banned weapons, have been launched against U.S. forces in Kuwait (March 23).

8. Saddam's Fedayeen militia are few in number and do not pose a serious threat (March 23).

9. Basra has been taken (March 23).

10. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 23).

11. A captured chemical plant likely produced chemical weapons (March 23).

12. Nassiriya has been taken (March 23).

13. Umm Qasr has been taken (March 24).

14. The Iraqi government faces a "major rebellion" of anti-Saddam citizens in Basra (March 24).

15. A convoy of 1,000 Iraqi vehicles and Republican Guards are speeding south from Baghdad to engage U.S. troops (March 25).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this every story we've had from the embedded reporters and from the briefings? Is there anything coming out of Iraq, that's not from the "unilaterals'" in Baghdad, that hasn't been corrected?



Fisky reported details of the missile that hit the Shu'ale market. The Australian press didn't cover this so a chap called Bill Holland wrote to The Age quoting the article. Today Vangel Cvetkovski tracked down the source of the serial number:

That smoking gun

Yes, Bill Holland (31/9), Robert Fisk was only too aware of what he was referring to when he quoted the serial number on the fragment of the missile found at the Baghdad market where more than 70 people were killed. He saw a similar part number (30003 70 4 AS 4829 MFP 96214 (AP)) in Kosovo, after a missile was dropped near Ribinica, near Vranje in Yugoslavia during NATO's bombing of that country. He reported that incident in one of his dispatches from that war. Clearly Iraq was not a participant on that occasion.

As Fisk suggested, this can be "easily verified and checked by the Americans - if they choose to do so". Easy is an understatement. After mentioning this report to a colleague of mine, a quick Google search of the serial numbers pointed to none other than Raytheon Company, manufacturers of the Tomahawk cruise missile. The company's award/contract reference number is MFP 96214.

Vangel Cvetkovski, Sydney

I guess we can now expect Central Command to allege Fisk is lying.

Lynne Cheney Has A Glass Leg

I understand April 1st is to be International Make Fun of Lynne and Dick Cheney Day. I'm not sure if this is April 1st "Absolut" or the U.S. April 1st which those wacky Americans celebrate on April 2nd. I know only one Dick Cheney joke, and it actually makes fun of other people:

How do you know if Dick Cheney is lying?
George W. Bush's lips move.

How do you know if George W. Bush is lying?
Tony Blair's lips move.

How do you know if George W. Bush's arse is lying?
John Howard's lips move.

The original riff on "How do you know if _______ is lying? His lips move." was my "How do you know if Rupert Murdoch is lying? Piers Akerman's lips move." but outside Australia almost no-one knows who Piers Akerman is, half their luck, hence the internationalised triptych above.

Polls

Here's some discussion of polls showing the level of Australian support/opposition to the war. Other commentary here and here. Raw figures here. Here's the most recent Newspoll figures (pdf file).

Drapetomania

Being the pathological desire to seek freedom. See here. Drapetomania was coined as an explanation as to why plantation slaves kept trying to escape from the comfortable and stable environment provided to them by those better suited to run their lives. The condition was first diagnosed by Dr Samuel W. Cartwright in the 1850s.

In Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith satirically created the concept of "pathoheterodoxy", the mental illness that characterised Soviet dissidents and their failure to obey and conform. Anyone who has ever taken the ADHD checklist might wonder if Cruz Smith's idea is only satirical. (A mate of mine used to receive the Heritage Foundation newsletter Policy Review on a "Know Your Enemy" basis, in case you're wondering how I knew about that article. The checklist is at the end.)

So I'm wondering what they'll come up with to describe the Iraqis' pathological inability to lay down their arms before their liberators, their irrational insistence on resisting invasion and defending their country and their delusion that civilian deaths are the fault of the people actually dropping the bombs. "Patriophrenia", perhaps. Liberatiphobia. Local Sovereignty Disorder. Whatever it is, it appears to be widespread.

Fog

The Guardian Media section has a break-down on the litany of non-facts that have characterised reporting of the war up to this point. So far that's all the coverage has been about: discovering that what was said two days ago isn't actually true. So much for the value of "embedding".

Unlike Gulf War I, this time it's much easier to get a more comprehensive selection of viewpoints on what's happening - if you can be bothered. Apart from the "unilaterals" in Baghdad, there's Al Jazeera (if you can log on - what's that Hacker credo again? "Information wants to be Free"?), and, in any case, the Internet provides the opportunity to survey a wide range of news outlets not otherwise available in your own part of the world. This last is of particular importance in a country where most major cities have one Murdoch-owned "newspaper", pro-war because Rupert is, don't you know. Naturally also the great division in public opinion about the war (and the ludicrous imbalance in military strength between the combatants) gives space to journalists to report - it's hard to imagine Fisky datelining from the middle of an enemy country during a war all Britons supported, where there was some chance Britain would lose. Still, all this multiplicity of sources really adds up to in the end is one huge mass of grey, which leads everyone to simply pick and choose what's out there on the grounds of how much it helps them buttress their current opinion. No-one is better informed; merely better armoured against opposing views. Even I'm starting not to care what I think.

Bless Our Little Cotton Socks

This today from the Central Command Briefing transcript:

Q: (Off mike) -- Channel 9, Australia. Australia has a relatively small contingent here taking part in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Have you been impressed by their capability? (Laughter.)

GEN. RENUART: Absolutely! (Laughter.) No, actually it -- my good friend General Maurie McNairn, their senior commander here, is -- we chat daily. And I have said to him on a number of occasions how absolutely impressed -- and that really, truly, honestly I mentioned the Polish, I mentioned the U.K., and certainly the Australians and other nations who are contributing in many ways. No nation has given us a second team. We have the first team of every nation in the coalition participating and aggressively accomplishing their missions, the Australians contributing both in the air, on the ground and at sea. And I think one of the great coalition stories as we conducted operations in the gulf oil platforms in the Al Faw Peninsula was a task force that began commanded by an Australian officer afloat, transitioned to U.S. and Australian divers ashore, transitioned to U.S. military on the ground, transitioned to U.K. forces as they float in. So each nation in a fashion was involved in a very well integrated coalition effort. It's seamless. It truly is.

See - they do care.

In Case of Doubt...

Australia has two Ann Coulter wanna-bes, Miranda Devine of the Herald and Janet Albrechtsen of the Australian. Neither is as entertainingly loopy as Little Miss Get-Clinton, but if ever I find myself doubting the political philosophy I've chosen, I know I can just turn to Miranda's or Janet's latest offering and they will remind me of why I hold the Right in contempt. Today, Ms Albrechtsen surpassed herself:

LAST week a small Iraqi girl holding a basket approached coalition soldiers in a southern Iraqi village. The basket was detonated.

The young girl and five soldiers died. Some days later another small child with another basket approached a group of soldiers in the same village. Do the soldiers shoot the young child?

That is a hypothetical scenario. But real-life moral dilemmas like these arise in war. They arose in Afghanistan. They will arise in Iraq. They require spilt-second, do-or-die decisions from soldiers.

I suppose this is a cut above "Sex! - Now I've got your attention..." but - well, words fail me. If reports are true, coalition troops have been ambushed by Iraqi soldiers dressed as civilians or pretending to surrender. Naturally, the likelihood of nervous GIs taking out civvies and bona fide surrendering soldiers is increased by such underhand tactics (let's leave aside the question as to whether the Iraqis are overmuch obligated to obey the rules of war, given it's their country being illegally invaded). So here's a real-life, as-events-unfold, example of the slippery nature of combat morality that Janet could have made reference to. Instead we get this shite about boobytrapped little girls. From now on, if trigger-happy soldiers were to blow away a smiling flower-child, I hope for Janet's sake they hadn't just been reading The Australian.

The Big Man Comes Through

Thank God for Michael Moore. Yes, occasionally he can be a self-promoting tosser, but one act like last night's Oscar acceptance speech is worth a thousand missteps. He showed those effete, disinterested, Hollywood time-servers how it's done, as did the other nominees who joined him. Kudos, gentlemen and ladies, kudos.


I see that Suharto-lovin' skank-boy, Greg Sheridan of the The Australian, has attempted to use the suicide bombing that killed ABC cameraman Paul Moran as evidence of a link between Saddam and Al-Qaida. Yeah, Greg, a radical Wahhabi-Islamic Kurdish organisation receiving assistance from Iran, deep within the Northern no-fly zone and surrounded by the Kurdish autonomous region, is working with a secular dictator despised by Kurds and Iranians alike. Nice try. The Murdoch press is stepping up its "Support the war, you Saddam-appeasing commo scum!" campaign, and with only two papers (the Herald and the Canberra Times) against the war and one (the West Australian) taking a wait-and-see approach, that leaves every other print outlet in Australia talking up Operation Iraq Liberty. Well, goody, it's back to business as usual.

These People are Beyond Parody

Yesterday, I watched reams of footage of Iraqi POWs, including a roving commentary from some cretin on NBC (?) wandering about in the desert bugging some of them while they huddled on the ground under a blanket each trying to get some kip. "Look, at this guy, he's got no shoes. These rations are ours, we gave him those." They're in all the news reports, on the front pages of newspapers, their faces shown again and again on the pointlessly repetitive continuous-coverage stations, not once have I seen their features disguised.

And then we get this farce:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers saw the footage [of US POWs] and reacted with "steely anger" over the treatment of the captured soldiers, saying that videotaping prisoners was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, ABCNEWS' McWethy reported.

We'll see if Rummy bothers to pass that information along to his "embedded" media drones.

Monday Monday

Stepping out for lunch some minutes ago, I came across some children of our clientele here for an assessment interview. The kids were rough-housing in the lift area. One twelve-year old was hauling up his laughing younger brother and hanging him upside down, and I realised again how long it has been since I've been in that position, head to the ground, feet above. As you grow older the opportunities to be upside down decrease alarmingly. I will definitely set time apart tonight to catch up on being inverted, although if I had courage of my convictions I should hang upside down right now, knees bent over the top of the office partition, waving to my colleagues as my head engorges with blood.

When I was a kid, I used to spin around very fast and then flop on to the ground and watch the floor seem to rise over me in a wave - recreational mind-altering, entirely drug-free. Adults have no idea how to have fun. Down in the food court, people were hunched over their lunches, watching green-tinged combat footage on the television monitors dotted about the area. Why green? Why not red, or aqua, or plain old black and white? It's a false colour image, anyway, why not amuse yourselves?

(Incidentally, when did television broadcasts become an acceptable form of muzak? Isn't muzak supposed to be anodyne and buyer-friendly? Or is that next? "We now return you to our coverage of the war in Iraq, as performed by Sergio Mendes.")


That's my segue into the war-talk. So - we're only on day three and already the friendly fire and fragging have begun. The Herald claims in its headline that the US now fears a "hard, bloody war". That's bad news - I am now resigned to the fact that the only way this war will end soon is if the coalition forces achieve a speedy victory; and the only way the US will withdraw without victory is if the war turns into a god-awful blood-midden. Recent polls, if they're to be believed, show a decline in opposition to the war here in Australia (we peaceniks still have a plurality - 47% anti, 45% pro last I heard); while, in Britain, Tony Blair's approval ratings are also up in relation to his handling of the Iraq "crisis". And if the Greens wanted Saturday's state election to be a referendum on the war, it was a referendum they lost, to my mind. Sure, the Greens' vote tripled and the anti-war voters could have just as easily chosen Labor, technically also against the war, and they won comfortably - but it wasn't quite the conflagration I'd been banking on.

Sunday's anti-war rally wasn't a patch on February's - thirty thousand according to the ABC. I was there but even while marching I was finding it harder and harder to see the point. We know the Yanks won't withdraw unless the situation starts to fall apart; and if it falls apart Iraqi non-combatants will suffer worst. I guess this doesn't quite translate into an endorsement of continuing the war; but I grow tired of calling for the troops to come home when I know that won't happen unless things go very well, or very, very badly. The latter might put Bush & co and their lickspittle deputies back in the box, but is that worth the carnage? Maintaining opposition to the war while hoping we win quickly is as tiring on my feeble uni-directional brain as opposing the war while supporting the troops, as the more mainstream critics of the government fatuously exhort.

I can therefore partly understand the swing of opinion. Polls are bludgeon-like methods of discerning opinion, after all, requiring an off-the-rack selection of positions from the limited options presented by the pollster. "Support the war" could mean anything from "Let's get it over with before we kill more civilians" to "Americaaa, the beeauuutiful blah blah blah blah blah BLAH". And it's enervating to stand with majority opinion only to be ignored by a man who at any other time is the most craven of push-button populists. If Howard rides it out, as he undoubtedly imagines he will, and the majority end up pro-this-war-now-it's-safely-over, the natural order will have been restored, and those with Howard can pat themselves on the back for being the "silent majority" while we in the "vocal minority" can get on with the job of giving a damn when no-one else will. Everybody's happy, no danger of impact or change.

But I'll keep marching, if only for the exercise. Howard and his ilk need to be reminded that - if the war ends soon - just because he muddled through and there was no catastrophe, yet, that we know about, does not mean that he was right when he chose to take us into this madness, excused with infantile reasoning and shonky evidence, backed with flag-waving cant and fear-mongering lies. He's thrown too much away for us ever to forget we told him not to take us here.

Behold, Your Liberator!

All this bombing for freedom puts me in mind of this World War 2 poster. It depicts a skull-faced Statue of Liberty (now, apparently, a nasty French icon) spewing fire onto a city with the caption "Ecco i Liberatore!" The language of the slogan should provide a clue as to why this arresting image isn't really appropriate for use by the anti-war movement - it's from Fascist Italy. Ah well, such is life.

Here's something about the Kurds.

And the story about that flag raising:

Americans raise hackles by flying Stars and Stripes in Iraq

Nicholas Watt
Saturday March 22, 2003
The Guardian

American marines swept aside Iraqi sensibilities yesterday to raise the Stars and Stripes at the entrance to Iraq's main port of Umm Qasr.

In a move condemned by MPs as crass, the marines replaced the Iraqi flag in an attempt to recreate the iconic image of the US flag being raised over the Pacific island of Iwo Jima in the second world war.

Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, promised to pass on British concerns about the raising of the flag, which undermined allied claims that they were liberating, not conquering, Iraq.

His remarks came after Crispin Blunt, a Tory MP who served in the first Gulf war, said: "It would be singularly unfortunate if the Stars and Stripes was, for example, planted over the parliament building in Baghdad at a future stage."

Promising to raise the matter with the US authorities, Mr Hoon attempted to calm waters by saying: "It is necessary to understand how, at the end of what was a vigorous confrontation, any soldiers are likely to feel the need to demonstrate their success, which I suspect is what happened overnight."

Britain underlined its determination to respect Iraqi sovereignty by warning its troops not to wave the union flag. Addressing 1 Battalion the Irish Guards this week, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins said: "We go to liberate, not to conquer."

The Americans later replaced the Iraqi flag in Umm Qasr.

They must be worried someone might get the right idea.

PS: The US told us on Friday, Umm Qasr was totally under their control. It's now Monday, and they are still getting shot at there.

Murdoch's Militants

Front page Daily Telegraph today, headline above an Iraqi POW getting a drink from a water canteen held by a US soldier (presumably because our Iraqi friend had his hands restrained):

Capture and Compassion.

In relation to News Limited staff is the word "journalist" really accurate? Would "stenographer" not be closer to the mark?

A British expect featured on BBC World today pointed out that one of the things the third Geneva Convention says you're not supposed to do to POWs is make them the subject of "public curiosity". Well, technically the Geneva Convention also prevents you bombing water-treatment plants, so let's not get too indignant.

The story was about the US holding off on "shock and awe" so a matter of hours has showed how dumb that news-hook was. Here's the redoubtable Alan Ramsay ripping into Howard, and the Murdoch war-spruikers.

Sausage for Breakfast, with Liberals* on Toast

Did my civic duty, voted early. Lots of idiots in the queue who didn't know what electorate they were in. The polling station was shared between Coogee and Vaucluse electorates - Vaucluse is blue-ribbon Liberal* whereas Coogee is Labor-leaning but not with certainty. So only those of us in Coogee will actually cast a vote that counts. Odd to think that living on the south side of Bondi Road rather than the north makes all the difference between being someone who counts and a safe seat loser - isn't regionally-based representative democracy wonderful?

You haven't voted properly in this country until you've picked up your barbecued sausage from the school fundraisers, so I did although I'd only just had breakfast. Given that education funding was a big issue in this election (this election that nobody gives a rat's arse about, what with the war and all), I wonder what Bob Carr thinks about all the polling stations at schools including a hands-on illustration of how our educators need to scrounge for cash. Not that it would make the slightest difference - the Coalition† are toast.

* non-Aussies, FYI, the Liberal Party of Australia are the local equivalent of the British Conservatives, or the US Republicans (well, actually nobody in this country is as right-wing as the Republicans, but near enough)
† Liberals plus the National Party (rural conservatives)

War - How Very, Very Tedious

And so the betrayals start - Turkey gives the US the right to overfly their territory and a matter of minutes later Turkey sends fifteen hundred troops into Kurdish Iraq. The US says there's no quid pro quo involved; in fact, they would rather the Turks hadn't done it. Still, I won't be holding my breath waiting for the US to kick Turkey out. After decades of US military aid for Turkey's attacks on the Kurds - including incursions into northern Iraq - it would be churlish, to say the least, to start complaining now.

The Turkish government excuses the incursion as a humanitarian intervention and a defensive measure: that's called learning from the best.



Silly old me - last night I actually found myself believing that the US had decided to avoid "shock and awe" in preference for a careful land advance designed to encourage surrender of ground forces, and allow elements in the Iraqi administration to remove Saddam themselves, thus bringing the war to a speedy conclusion without significant destruction. Then I wake this morning to hear them blasting Baghdad to pieces on the breakfast radio news. That'll learn me.

Tom Brokaw was interviewing some idiot this morning (Sydney Time) who was explaining that the campaign was designed to let the Iraqi people know that they were not the enemy, nor was Iraq; the US was after Saddam. Quite how this message is conveyed by hitting Iraq's most populous city with 320 cruise missiles in one night, he failed to make clear.

Meanwhile, in Umm Qasr a US marine hauls down the Iraqi flag and sends up a Stars and Stripes in its place. No war on Iraq here, folks, and no space on that replacement flag for the forty five countries that have bravely volunteered stationery supplies and whatnot to the grand project of liberation. You'd think they'd have come up with a "Coalition of the Willing" logo by now.

I might note in passing that the Iraqi flag has, since Gulf War I, incorporated the phrase "Allahu Akbar (God is Great)" in its design (Saddam's little attempt to get some co-religionists on side, rather like Eisenhower adding "In God We Trust" to the design for the greenback), so hopefully our flag-substituting jarhead friend folded his souvenir neatly and made sure to keep it somewhere clean. I remember during one of the last few Soccer World Cups when sponsor McDonalds decided to wrap their fat-in-a-bun in a design incorporating the flags of the World Cup nations. One of them was Saudi Arabia, the flag of which incorporates a quote from the Koran. Naturally, Muslims in general and the Saudis in particular objected, so the Saudi flag was removed from the wrapping. If that sounds precious, think for a moment of how the average Christian fundy would react if paper covered with the phrase "I am the way, the truth and the light*" was used to package greasy burgers and then tossed into the trash. So let's keep the flag-desecration to a minimum, boys.



At the ADF Press briefing General Peter Cosgrove was asked by a Channel Nine reporter if a CBS report that Australian SAS dudes had discovered WMD was true. "I'm not usually going to confirm or deny those kind of reports but I will this time - No. It's a furphy." That's our Peter - it's not his job to stop American journos looking like idiots.


* Extremely belated correction: Or "life", if you prefer. Ahem.

Immiserators Love Company

We're now being told we're part of a "growing" coalition of forty nations: Poland's sending 200 soldiers, Denmark and the Netherlands are sending a frigate/submarine matched set each, and the other thirty-four have their fingers crossed or something. I feel so validated.

Crowd Me

Apparently I don't own anything purple, so there's that act of anti-war solidarity torn.

I don't know who the police think they're kidding with their "eight thousand" figure for the anti-war rally and march yesterday evening. There was no rallying point for the end of the march, just the organisers' plaintive request (plaintive even with the megaphone) that we all didn't stay in the Quay, nor use the nearest train station to get home, so Ernesto, Lardy and I decided to retrace our path along the march route on the way to a well-deserved ale. We were at least two city blocks-worth from the head of the march when we turned; moving past those still coming into the Quay, and walking at the same pace, we didn't reach the end until Chifley Square. In other words, when the head of the march had reached the middle of Alfred Street at CQ the end would have been at the corner of King and George, give or take a block. Feel free to calculate from that - my estimate: "Fuck me dead, there's a lot of people here!" The organisers said twenty thousand; the police, possibly annoyed by the splinter march that had jostled Premier Carr's car, said eight thousand; newspapers take the average and round up, if they're a pwog broadsheet, to fifteen thousand, or round down, if they're a Murdoch tabloid, to ten thousand. And they say crowd counting isn't an exact science.

The eight thousand figure and its effect on the resulting calculations meant that the Sydney rally was reported as smaller than Melbourne's. This is certainly possible, Melbournians being the serious-minded bruisers they are, god love 'em. The Melbourne police estimates were for twenty thousand; the organisers said seventy thousand. But then nobody in Melbourne did anything to annoy the police.

I suspect the best contribution the New South Welsh can make to conveying our feelings to Honest John on this issue, will be when we leave the NSW Liberal Party a broken, tattered thing in tomorrow's election. State issues be damned.

Deja Vu

This time last war, I wandered down to Pitt Street Mall. In front of the large multiscreen TV installation there (now extant*) scores of people were standing, neatly in rows, all facing the giant screen, like extras in a DEVO video, while CNN's best and brightest created news out of rumour and speculation. Earlier that day, before the bombing started, we'd been working at our desks with a transistor radio on, so we could hear the war start. A security guard from the foyer would come in every ten minutes to check for updates. When the air raid started, he rang his wife. I heard the conversation: "Hi darlin'. Yeah, love, they've commenced bombing. Yeah. No, I should be home by six."

I was reminded of this guy while watching the developing carnage of the 9/11 atrocity. We seem to have acquired this touching belief that because we can get round-the-clock video footage of history "as it happens" this somehow puts us in the loop. I don't think so - I think it just underlines our impotence.

A timely reminder of the vacuity of TV reportage, particularly in the early stages of war, can be found in Douglas Kellner's comprehensive media critique The Persian Gulf TV War. This book is out of print but the full text is accessible online, for free, here.

* Here I use extant in its "complete opposite of what the word actually means" sense. Perhaps I was trying to type "extinct".

Harmony Day

Once again reality out-satirises satire:

Gary Hardgrave MP
Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs
Media Release H27/2003 - 18 March 2003
Domestic Security Begins with National Unity

The Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Gary Hardgrave says that there has never been a more important time to promote unity and harmony within Australia.

'National security begins with domestic harmony,' Mr Hardgrave said.

'With the 5th Harmony Day coming up on Friday, I encourage all Australians to recommit to respect, goodwill and understanding among our community and say "no" to racism.

'Australians of Middle Eastern and Muslim background may have mixed feelings about events unfolding overseas and concern for the safety and welfare of family members. I urge all Australians to be understanding and offer the hand of friendship to their fellow residents, no matter what their background. It is time especially to support Muslim and Middle Eastern members of our local communities.'

As the Prime Minister said in his speech of 4 February, 2003:

'Australia is home to several hundred thousand people of Middle Eastern background. We welcomed them, some of them refugees from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, and we appreciate their contribution to our nation. Many of them could be torn between seeing Saddam brought to account and the possible dangers facing their families back in Iraq. During this time, they will need our compassion and our support. All Australians should ensure that this is offered.'

Mr Hardgrave said he believed that the majority of Australians felt sickened by attacks on mosques and synagogues in the days following September 11 and that the public did not want conflict inside our borders.

'Australia is a vibrant democracy - we each are entitled to our views and should express them through debate not by unlawful means involving vilification, violence or vandalism.

'The Muslim community over this challenging period has done much to engage the respect and understanding of the wider community and has embraced and defended the common values and freedoms of all Australians.'

Mr Hardgrave said that this Harmony Day had grown to a record 474 community events (304 last year) involving 2,700 community organisations around Australia. Last week's launch of the first national dialogue of Muslims, Jews and Christians in Sydney, and upcoming events such as the AFL Carlton-Swans Harmony Match, Drums of the World event in Melbourne, and local community events, including mosque open days, show Australians do work well at getting to know each other.

'What is most encouraging is the increasing interest by schools and young people in Harmony Day with an increase in the product orders this year to 2,696 around half of these are from schools around the country. Australians are pulling together and do respect the cultural diversity in our community.'

Mr Hardgrave encouraged all Australians to show their commitment to each other by wearing something orange on Friday.

I'll be wearing purple.

Legal Opinions

Yesterday, Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian has followed the example of some "international lawyers" and tried to claim this war is legal. Tosh, apparently, if today's letters are any guide:

WHAT a desperate search it must have been to put together the ragbag collection of signatories to make a "legal" case for the aggression against Iraq (Opinion, 18/3). Washington fee-on-brief Republicans, superannuated politicians of a certain view, eminent professors mostly not specialised in international law, apologists for Israel, associate professors from far-flung provincial universities. Scarcely an eminent international law specialist among them.

A ragbag as threadbare as its argument. Progressive and creative development of charter-based law of armed conflict is permissible and desirable but the quantum leap argued for from self-defence against actual or imminent attack to pre-emptive attack because of an inchoate and insufficiently evidenced threat in a country a hemisphere away, is taking the world order into long-term dangerous arbitrariness.

UN Resolution 1441 itself was negotiated and approved on the expressed basis that it carried no automaticity of subsequent use of force; it was supported as a political deal that a further resolution to authorise use of armed force should follow. Grasping at 12-year-old resolutions, specific to past self-defence of Kuwait, attempting to give some colour of legitimacy to the current circumstances, is really scraping the barrel.
Lawry Herron
(Former legal adviser, Foreign Affairs Dept; legal adviser, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna)
O'Connor ACT

THE legal case for war as expressed in these pages by a group of international lawyers is deeply flawed in a number of respects.

Contrary to the lawyers' argument, Resolution 1441 was quite clearly not drafted in such a way as to legitimise the use of force, a fact admitted to the council by the US and British ambassadors to the UN and publicly endorsed by 11 of the 13 other Security Council members.

US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, told the council, at the time 1441 was passed, that "this resolution contains no hidden triggers or automaticity with respect to the use of force".

It is misleading, therefore, to claim that the resolution was "framed in terms that could be read to permit the use of force".

On November 8, the council was united in saying the resolution did not permit the use of force. This leaves us with resolutions 678 and 687. The lawyers were right to point out that 678 permitted states to use force to restore regional peace and security. Their interpretation of 687 is half-baked, however.

First, the resolution only demanded that Hussein formally accept the terms, which he did. Second, it explicitly stated that it is for the Security Council alone to decide whether Iraq was in breach and, crucially, what action should be taken if it was.

It is for the council to decide, not the US, British and Australian governments; 687 is perfectly clear on that point.

I agree with the lawyers that Security Council resolutions are carefully crafted. That is why it is important to look behind the headlines to the text of the resolution and the way that text was interpreted by the states that passed it. On November 8, the members of the council agreed that nothing in Resolution 1441 authorised force; 13 of the 15 members (including all five permanent members) stated as much in the council.

When 687 was passed, the council agreed that upon acceptance it would constitute a "definitive end to hostilities" (the words of Britain's then ambassador to the UN) and pointedly included a paragraph that insisted unambiguously that the Security Council alone had the right to decide on any measures necessary to implement 687. There is no resolution that permits the use of force to implement 687.
Dr Alex Bellamy
Political Science & International Studies,
University of Qld

A GROUP of lawyers writes that UN Security Council Resolution 1441 threatens Iraq with "serious consequences" if it fails to comply. May I humbly suggest they have misread the text.

Resolution 1441 recalls that the council has previously threatened Iraq with "serious consequences". In other words, Resolution 1441 threatens nothing new. So how does 1441 deal with non-compliance by Iraq? It is quite clear. In the event of non-compliance, "[the Security Council will] convene . . . in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance . . . in order to secure international peace and security". It is in this context that it then recalls the previous threats of "serious consequences".

In other words, in Resolution 1441, the Security Council threatens to reconvene and declare war on Iraq. Which the council has not done. Draw your own conclusions.
Peter Ballard
South Plympton, SA

ALTHOUGH there has been much discussion on the legality of military action by the "coalition of the willing", and the extent to which it is justified by previous UN Security Council resolutions, there has been no attempt to link those resolutions and George Bush's ultimatum. The reason is clear: there is no relationship.

The resolutions require Iraq to rid itself of WMD. The ultimatum requires Iraq to rid itself of Hussein.

The US-led coalition agenda can only be identified as regime change rather than compliance with disarmament conditions. Military action in such circumstances cannot be justified under international law.

There is no correspondence between the international wrong identified in the Security Council resolutions and the remedy sought by the ultimatum.
Clifton Baker
Senior Lecturer in Law
University of Ballarat

I HAVE read a copy of the legal advice to the PM from public servants in the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It does not read like any legal advice I have ever written - which clearly articulates the material on which it is based, the assumed facts upon which it has proceeded and then weighs up the legal arguments for and against, before giving a considered view.

This advice reads like one side of the argument, the argument in favour of the legality of war. The arguments against have been canvassed elsewhere, and I won't repeat them here. I find them compelling.

I ask the PM, has he obtained legal advice from any member of the independent Bar? If he hasn't, why not? If he has, why has he not released it?
Cameron Jackson
Kirribilli, NSW

Nevertheless, Murdoch's myrmidons will do what they can.

Mess Distraction

I was going to e-mail this to the man responsilble for "freedom fries", but the pin-head doesn't appear to have an e-mail address.


Congressman Bob Ney
Chairman, Committee on House Administration
U.S. Congress

Dear Congressman Ney

Far be it from me to prevent - even at this late stage - the United States Congress making itself a laughing stock in the eyes of the world, but I felt I should drop you a line about your recent attempt to rename an item of American cuisine (excuse the contradiction-in-terms) to bring it in line with the requirements of American diplomacy (if you have a dictionary handy, you'll find this odd word under "D".)

Undoubtedly the French are already thanking you for distancing their centuries-old culture from the over-salted potato-flavoured fat-sticks Americans previously named after them, so I won't dispute the urgent need to stop calling these crimes against nutrition "French". But what of this vacuous "freedom" appellation? Is there some reason you couldn't just call them "chips", like the rest of the English-speaking world? In Britain, confusion between packaged pre-fried potato slices and the hot rectangular variety is avoided by calling the former "crisps". Alternatively, here in Australia, we call the latter "hot chips" although usually we distinguish between the two varieties by context - not a significant intellectual exercise.

If you intend to continue with this bizarre neologism rather than with the more convenient usage mentioned above, I can only wish you luck with future renamings of non-standard poodles, open-mouthed kissing, and certain kinds of letters.

Yours faithfully
Robert Weaver

Some Pointless Invective

Dobedobedoo. You know, it wouldn't be a proper modern high-tech massacre from the sky if we didn't allow a suitable period for thumb-twiddling beforehand. Robert Fisk says the Iraqi defenders have been playing soccer. Perhaps they looked closely at what Dubya has been saying and decided the last two months were just surreal performance art.

Of course, practically speaking, the two days notice gives non-combatants (other than the 20 million or so unfortunate enough to be locals) time to "get out of the area where the bombs will be dropping", as Peter Cook so helpfully advised all those years ago. Another practical effect, however, is to demonstrate that the US don't seriously believe Iraq has WMDs. If they do so believe, two days does seem like an uncomfortably long window of opportunity to provide for Saddam to use them, thereby pre-empting the pre-emption.

Time enough to get the inspectors out, as well - don't want them hanging around when the US forces stumble across that previously elusive smoking gun. "I don't remember that being there when we searched this place on Tuesday!" As Paul F. deLespinasse recently argued, just because the US has delivered some crackpot ultimatum is no reason to break off the inspections. Kofi Annan could have said, "Well, George, these inspectors are present in Iraq under the instruction and authority of the Security Council, so it's up to the Security Council to withdraw them, so why don't you get your good self down to the Council and rustle up the numbers to bring them back, me old flow'r?" But he didn't. Safety first, I suppose.

DeLespinasse argued:

[I]t is unlikely that President Bush and his advisors would proceed with an attack, which would be a public relations nightmare as long as the inspectors are still in Iraq.

Ye-es, but given that one of the first "military targets" hit in the 2002 attack on Afghanistan (oh, sorry, "counter-attack") was a United Nations building, thus occasioning the deaths of four local UN workers engaged in mine-clearance, Kofi may have chosen wisely on the side of caution.


Been spending a lot of time on a news chat-forum arguing the toss with local war-buffs. After a while, people got bored with the tiresome facts-based arguments that talk of WMDs, UN resolutions and terrorism links necessitated and the "debate" degenerated into a ping-pong of judgement calls masquerading as moral absolutes - "Bombing people is evil." "No, Saddam is evil." "Saddam is evil but not as evil as bombing people." "No, he's more evil." "No, bombing is more evil than Saddam." "No, Saddam is more evil than bombing." "NO - bombing is more evil." "Evil is more Saddam than bombing." - well, you can see how much headway we were making.

So, let me say it - I'm prepared to accept that my position is a judgement call: whatever Saddam is doing to dissidents and other victims these days is not as bad as what's going to happen to Iraq as a whole when this war starts. Yes, the man was a genocidal loon - when he had US military and diplomatic support. The last mass killing Saddam engaged in was putting down the rebellion Bush I encouraged and then abandoned when someone in the State Department suddenly remembered why they'd been supporting Saddam in the first place - better a recrudescent dictator and a decade of sanctions than two Former Republic of Iraqs, one Kurdish, one Shi-ite and leaning towards Iran. (Although, given that Turkey went democratic to please the EU, then elected a government that doesn't know how to say "How high?" at the appropriate prompt, perhaps we'll be seeing an independent Kurdistan after all.)

Without his patrons Saddam is denuded and contained and not significantly more unpleasant than most of the other thugs we in the "West" happily tolerate, do business with and prop up. Does that mean he should stay? No. But in deciding to take him out I think it fair to weigh in the balance the cost of this "shock and awe" invasion against how much of a bastard this man is and what he might do. I think the former will be much worse and, yes, that's a judgement call. I may be wrong; I hope you're right.

That said, the "Bomb for Freedom" crowd's talk of Iraqi children throwing rose petals before the feet of grinning GIs advancing through the cheering citizenry of a liberated Baghdad does tend to give the impression that our pro-war colleagues are some kinds of empty-eyed, fudge-brained, infantile golems newly spawned from petri-dishes, fresh to the world and innocent as tadpoles, such is the vacuity that seemingly resides in them where the rest of us have some recall of events so recently occurred you would be stretching the lexicon to call them history. Not that I mean that in a bad way.

So I've taken the pledge: no more chat-forums. If I want to be patronised by functional illiterates who think it somehow courageous and tough-minded to support a war somebody else will be fighting, I can talk to my MP. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the large percentage of my posts disallowed by the moderator.

It's On

Looking at real post #1 I realised it was way too poignant. This no time for poignancy.

Noon Aussie-time that sick-joke, draft-dodging, born-with-a-silver-spoon-up-his-nose, Oh-Dad-won't-you-buy-me-my-own-baseball-team, dead-eyed automaton the American people didn't elect President gave Saddam Hussein "and his sons" ("This man tried to kill m'pa!" What is this? A Sicilian feud?) forty-eight hours to get out of Iraq, or every other Iraqi's gonna pay. And I always thought Reagan was the one who couldn't tell the difference between real life and a Hollywood movie. For this result, the world's most powerful dumbass has happily pissed away international law and the diplomatic structures that kept the second half of the Twentieth Century from looking like the first half (well, if you were European). No more pretense, we're an Empire, we do what we bloody like.

And apart from everything else, he's left the rest of us in the invidious position of hoping everything we know about what's likely to happen next is wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm going to have to spend the next month praying I'll end up looking like an idiot. Sure, it's worth it: better to be taunted by I-told-you-so's from gloating war-mongering pinheads than to watch thousands die, and the world go all to Hell. That doesn't mean I have to like it. Of course, whatever happens they'll tell us how right they were - look at the way these wingnuts extol the miracle of Afghanistan, now the Sweden of Central Asia, because we cared so much.

But George Senior's little sapling is the Seppos' leader (insert bus-sized qualifiers here) and they can hate him. I have other fish to fry. Our glorious leader John Howard has just announced that, yes, those Australian soldiers in the Gulf for the last three months aren't just there for a tan, we will be going to war. What a relief - the tension was killing me. This despite massive opposition (and, my American friends, I mean three-quarters of the population against war without UN sanction, 40% against war under any circumstances) illustrated with street protests dwarfing anything seen since the Sixties. Dubya has the support of most of his people (so CNN says, at any rate, and why would we doubt them?). Howard does not - so the coffin into which he has happily driven the last nail contains not only international law, but Australian democracy and the idea that peacefully petitioning your government has any kind of point. When the NON-peaceful protests start, I hope he remembers that.

Learning Curve

Well, I did have a sizeable post but when I tried to post it I got an Error 401 message and, of course, everything I'd typed disappeared. Simple lesson: compose on something else first.

I posted this tiresome note instead of my original post so that you could share the pain.

Hurts worse for me.

Monomania

This is a hell of a time to start a weblog. One issue, one obsession, everywhere I look. We're going to war, like it or not. So what's my opinion on that? On what - going to war or that my opinion about going to war is irrelevant? Is there a possibility of meta-anger here? "I'm angry because no-one cares that I'm angry." There's a T-shirt slogan for you.

It's like the dreams you get when you fall asleep with the radio on. You can still hear the broadcast so it becomes part of the dream. Sometimes, there's a radio in the dream, chattering away. You turn down the volume, flick the off switch, nothing happens. You pull out the plug, you tear the set apart, and the chatter doesn't stop. Nothing you do makes any difference. The sound is coming from a different world and you only think it's real. That's what this is like, except that it's our leaders who are living in a dream.

"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?... You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!... I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?"

Gosh. Only the second post and I'm already quoting children's literature. Hopefully things will improve with time.

Hello to me

A billion logorrheists cluttering up the datasphere - why should not I be among them? If my opinions count for nothing, they can at least take up server space. Or so we'll see.

Links (updated)
	Print Media
	Electronic Media
	The Hub
	The Hub Mirror
	Photos
	Other Media/Politics Links