How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light
But congressional investigators were zooming ahead. By early 1994, they had learned that the American Type Culture Collection, a company in Rockville, Md., that sells microbes to scientists, had shipped up to 36 stains of 10 deadly pathogens to Iraq in the 1980s, doing so with government approval. Some had come from Fort Detrick, Md., the Army's main center for defensive germ research.

USS Clueless - Shrill and frustrated
The "3,000 deaths in Afghanistan are never referred to" because they didn't happen. This is a reference to the Herrold study, which has been very thoroughly debunked long since. But it's interesting that Pinter doesn't even use Herrold's number, and yet again the pure leftist position is showing through. He needs the number of American-caused civilian deaths in Afghanistan to at least equal the number of people we lost in NYC and Washington DC.
And in his claims of brushing evidence under the rug, he himself never refers to the fact that the people of Afghanistan are overwhelmingly glad that we went in and got rid of the Taliban. He ignores the girls who are again in school; the young women again in college. He ignores the fact that the Taliban themselves routinely killed thousands of Afghans per year, and tortured thousands more. He ignores the fact that by historical standards, our campaign in Afghanistan caused an extraordinarily small number of civilian casualties. (Far more civilians in France died in 1944, for instance.)

Hit & Run: Iraq is a complex place, and (the issues of war itself aside) any democratization efforts will probably run into sectarian problems. But that's not a premise for futility. Mideast conclusions drawn from futility reflect either political cynicism or cultural despair, and the Mideast has long been floundering in too much of both.

In Defense of the Slippery Slope by Eugene Volokh

People who took this view may have been adopting what one might call the "is-ought" heuristic, a rule of thumb that if something--the permissibility of pen registers--is the law, it probably ought to be the law.

Telegraph; We will gas you when US bombs fall, Kurds told

If war comes to Iraq, the Kurds of Kifri will be right in the line of fire. Iraqi officials have threatened that the moment the first American bomb lands, they will reply with a chemical assault on the town.

Bono: 'Blair sincerely wrong'; "Tony Blair is not going to war for oil. Tony Blair is sincere in his convictions about Iraq.

"In my opinion he (Blair) is sincerely wrong," U2's frontman, wearing trademark wraparound glasses and a black suit, said.

"We must not make a martyr of Saddam Hussein. He is good at working the cameras. We shouldn't make it easy for him," the singer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee said.

LILEKS (James) The Bleat: It would be just another speech, just another collection of euphonious platitudes - if it weren’t for the sword we’ve slowly unsheathed over the last six months. No one in the region could mistake the implications of that address. You have to be tone-deaf not to see how many different melodies are contained in those simple statements. It's not something that threatens to destablize the region. It's a promise.

LILEKS (James) The Bleat: The tyrants of the 20th century have become iconic, and as such they seem to exist divorced from human nature. Men that evil are so rare it's almost comforting to watch them - oh, we'd know their kind if they came again. But we don't. The lesson is lost. Hitlers and Stalins and Maos and Kim Il Jungs aren’t the anomalies, really; there are millions of people like them. They’re just the ones who had what it took.

Which is to say that we're not paralyzed by the "Mean Green Meme" which says that all cultures must be preserved even when they're vile and cruel. Which is to say that we Americans think that everyone benefits when everyone shares their culture with one another. We eagerly absorb culture from other nations; we don't think it's a problem. We also send our culture out to the world, where many eagerly absorb it and others react to it as an invasion.

"It's everywhere, all the time. Beatings, rapes, the lot. The worst is the names they call you, especially if you're dressed in a girly way which makes you a slut," says Amel, 21.

Home to many immigrants from the Maghreb, such suburbs have seen a rise in radical Islam that has turned attitudes toward women even harsher. Pressure is mounting for Muslim women to wear veils and forced marriages that snatch girls from college and a career are now commonplace.

Those that do not conform pay the price.

Morale is low in the Iraqi army and many soldiers are preparing white flags of surrender, we are told by someone in northern Iraq who recently interviewed two defectors from Saddam Hussein's army.

A message went out of the Pentagon on Feb. 20 from Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs chairman, telling the commands to stop using "commander in chief" or CINC, to describe four-star regional military commanders.
From now on, commanders such as Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, will be known as "commander." They will appear in acronyms as CDR. The deputy commander will appear as DCDR.
The message accomplishes Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's goal of ending any confusion between the president, who constitutionally is the commander in chief, and regional commanders.

But what is the government’s position on the American citizens who have travelled to Iraq to volunteer their services as human shields?

This may not be treason now, but it will be when the hostilities begin, and someone at the Department of Justice is undoubtedly thinking about seeking some indictments.

OpinionJournal: These are the two walls that hem the Iraqi ruler in, as he finds himself cornered now as never before. I believe that Saddam appreciates the seriousness of his situation, in a way that I did not feel on our first meeting, in 1990, when he openly doubted that the United States and the first President Bush would be willing to risk spilling American blood to repel his invasion of Kuwait. He knows that vast forces are arrayed against him. As he put it, "I understand. I hear and I see."

Asia Times CAIRO - All over the Arab world, regimes and the Arab street seem to know how Saddam Hussein could actually win this war - with no losses to Iraq's long-suffering people, oil wealth and infrastructure, not to mention Saddam's military forces. He could comply to each and any United Nations formality and offer total, unrestricted cooperation. He could thus convince the UN Security Council - and world public opinion - that war is not necessary. If Saddam really engaged in transparency, he might pull out a victory against the Bush administration.

...

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah openly regretted that in "the greatest Muslim demonstration, the reunion of 2 million Muslims in Mecca", there were no calls against war.

"War is an awful thing. But it isn't the most awful thing."

Bush Expresses Hope for Postwar Peace, Democracy (washingtonpost.com) The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected.

Barzan Ibrahim El Hasan al Tikriti, a former head of Iraq's intelligence agency and senior adviser to Saddam Hussein, hatched a plan to dispatch a mole to Indonesia; suicide bombers to Amman, Jordan; and a woman agent to help with planned attacks in the Philippines, according to an Iraqi defector interviewed by US intelligence.

The United States wants to partition Iraq, he argues in slow, deliberate tones, and covets the world's second-largest oil reserves. An invasion, he says, serves only Israel and a clique within the Bush administration "whose ignorance is matched only by their greed." A preemptive war, whose very premise he believes defies international law, signals the rebirth of colonialism and imperialism that seemed finished generations ago.

The Mother of All Debates? - On Point Commentary by Austin Bay  StrategyPage.com

The United States, in Saddam's view, was strong but weak, without staying power. (He ignored U.S. staying power during the Cold War.) The speech SEEMED to suggest that successfully tackling the United States entailed scraping the scar of Vietnam and threatening massive U.S. casualties. "Fatigue" and domestic self-recrimination would stall U.S. power.

military news about Iraq

Unfortunately, many of these guidelines are left behind at our military 'think-tanks' and 'school-houses' once the first round goes down range. We are reaching critical mass and can ill-afford to relearn lessons from such places as Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere. It is time to start winning wars vice battles - winning hearts and minds vice temporary respite. With that we will win the peace.
-- Dave Dilegge
Urban Operations Journal

The radical left is right about one thing. The oil companies have a nefarious agenda in the Middle East. They want to keep all the nasty dictators in place. It is good for business. That, folks, is blood for oil.

LT SMASH If Saddam actually saw, with his own eyes, the forces arrayed against him, he might be convinced to stipulate that we can (and will) kick his ass. There is simply no way that he can avoid the inevitable outcome, once the fighting starts. So why not skip the interim steps, and just accept his defeat graciously? He could retire to the French Riviera, like Baby Doc Duvallier of Haiti. This way, no one has to be permanently maimed, and there will be no new widows and orphans. Think of all the money that we'll all save!

Now, It's Business That Booms (washingtonpost.com)
Although countries around the world have promised more than $4 billion in aid to rebuild Afghanistan, there are today very few visible signs of the planned roads and schools and infrastructure projects. There are, however, signs throughout the capital, and in many provinces, of fast and dramatic change as Afghans and some intrepid foreigners open shops, businesses and even factories, quickly put up buildings to house them, and buy enough cars to create daily traffic jams.

If antiwar protesters succeed | csmonitor.com

It got me wondering: What if you antiwar protesters and politicians succeed in stopping a US-led war to change the regime in Baghdad? What then will you do?
Will you also demonstrate and demand "peaceful" actions to cure the abysmal human rights violations of the Iraqi people under the rule of Saddam Hussein?
Or, will you simply forget about us Iraqis once you discredit George W. Bush?

OpinionJournal - Featured Article

The nuclear balance, which through the Cold War alternately traumatized and reassured the world, has been replaced by the constant specter of weapons of mass destruction in the hands not only of more states but also terrorists operating without constraint in a borderless world. That is what is at stake in containing Iraq. The cost of doing nothing is infinitely greater than the cost of acting.

ParaPundit.com: James C. Bennett: Secessionism In Western Canada In his Anglosphere column James C. Bennett argues that the political culture of Canada threatens to reawaken secessionist desires in the West. As the executive branch at the federal level has arrogated increasing amounts of power to itself and pursued a policy aimed more at its own emotional needs than of the needs of the provinces the Western provices are left with nothing short of a threat to secede as a bargaining tool in dealings with the federal executive:

War for Peace? It Worked in My Country

History has shown that the use of force is often the necessary price of liberation. A respected Kosovar intellectual once told me how he felt when the world finally interceded in his country: "I am a pacifist. But I was happy, I felt liberated, when I saw NATO bombs falling."

In yesterday’s New York Times, Regis Debray offered this explanation of the difference between France’s official position on Iraq and those of the nations of the Vilnius 10: Not having any training as a satellite state, unlike the countries of Eastern Europe, France has assumed the right to judge for itself ....” No training as a satellite! An inch below this astoundingly offensive remark of Debray’s, a short squib identifies him as a former adviser to President Francois Mitterand – as in, former Vichy official Francois Mitterand. And to think that the French taunt Americans with their alleged disregard of history!

U.S. Warns France in Struggle Over Iraq (washingtonpost.com)
The White House had said the case for war had been strengthened by the comments which CBS television said had been made in a rare interview it had with Saddam.
"Iraq is allowed to prepare proper missiles and we are committed to that," Saddam was quoted as saying. "We do not have missiles that go beyond the proscribed range."

"Are they changing their mind?" Goli Afshar, a 23-year-old student, asked as she alternately tightened and loosened her grip on a mug at a cafe on Gandhi Street. "Can they hurry up with Iraq already, so they can get on with attacking us?"

"It's not going to be handed over to some junior Saddam Hussein," he told the group of about 300, predominantly adherents of the Shiite branch of Islam. "We're not interested in replacing one dictator with another dictator."

Like the terrorists we also face in these quietly desperate times, these people seek to attack us where we are the most vulnerable, and for the anti-American multitudes that means our confidence. They know as well as we do that if we were the cruel, bloodthirsty and vicious killers they claim us to be that they would all be dead in unmarked graves. Gandhi, after all, succeeded in freeing India because his non-violent strategy was aimed at the British – another fundamentally decent and humane people. Had he tried this against Hitler or Stalin we would never have heard of him, for he would be yet another of the nameless, faceless millions taken away in the night, never to be seen again.

Saddam's obsession with his WMD has deep roots at home as well as abroad. First, he sees the threat of such weapons as a means of internal control over the 60 per cent of Iraqis who are Shia. The use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1998 taught the Shia the dangers of revolt. In 1999 a Shia revolt in the town of Najaf was crushed by Saddam's security forces accompanied by troops in white uniforms wearing gas masks. People were terrified that Saddam was about to gas them - with the weapons that Saddam denies having and for which the UN is still vainly searching. The Shia have been mostly cowed since.