[S]ince the end of World War II, the United States has at least formally agreed to international constraints on the right of any nation, including itself, to start a war. These constraints were often evaded, but rarely just ignored. And evasion has its limits, enforced by the sanction of embarrassment. This gave these international rules at least some real bite.But George W. Bush defied embarrassment and slew it with a series of Orwellian flourishes. If the United Nations wants to be "relevant," he said, it must do exactly as I say. In other words, in order to be relevant, it must become irrelevant. When that didn't work, he said: I am ignoring the wishes of the Security Council and violating the U.N. Charter in order to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution. No, no, don't thank me! My pleasure!!
By Monday night, though, in his 48-hour-warning speech, the references to international law and the United Nations had become vestigial. Bush's defense of his decision to make war on Iraq was basic: "The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security." He did not claim that Iraq is a present threat to America's own national security but suggested that "in one year or five years" it could be such a threat. In the 20th century, threats from murderous dictators were foolishly ignored until it was too late. In this century, "terrorists and terrorist states" do not play the game of war by the traditional rules. They "do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations." Therefore, "Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide."
What is wrong with Bush's case? Sovereign nations do have the right to act in their own self defense, and they will use that right no matter what the U.N. Charter says or how the Security Council votes. Waiting for an enemy to strike first can indeed be suicidal. So? [...]
[B]ush is asserting the right of the United States to attack any country that may be a threat to it in five years. And the right of the United States to evaluate that risk and respond in its sole discretion. And the right of the president to make that decision on behalf of the United States in his sole discretion. In short, the president can start a war against anyone at any time, and no one has the right to stop him. And presumably other nations and future presidents have that same right. All formal constraints on war-making are officially defunct.
Well, so what? Isn't this the way the world works anyway? Isn't it naive and ultimately dangerous to deny that might makes right? Actually, no. Might is important, probably most important, but there are good, practical reasons for even might and right together to defer sometimes to procedure, law, and the judgment of others. Uncertainty is one. If we knew which babies would turn out to be murderous dictators, we could smother them in their cribs. If we knew which babies would turn out to be wise and judicious leaders, we could crown them dictator. In terms of the power he now claims, without significant challenge, George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world. He claims to see the future as clearly as the past. Let's hope he's right.
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Saddam's son beats 12-year-olds who say no to sex: defectors (Sydney Morning Herald, March 22 2003)
Saddam Hussein's eldest son mercilessly beats girls as young as 12 on the soles of their feet if they refuse to sleep with him, Iraqi defectors said today.Uday Hussein forces head teachers of schools in Baghdad's poorest districts to send pupils to his palace where he arranges dates with those he likes.
If the chosen girls annoy him in anyway they are dangled over a wooden beam held by his bodyguards and repeatedly hit with a wooden club, according to two former members of his inner circle who recently fled Iraq.
"He does it to a girl if she says she doesn't want to go out with him, or if she finds another boyfriend, or is late or reluctant," one defector told Vanity Fair magazine.
The 38-year-old warns victims not to flinch while the beating is administered or they will have their legs broken. He often hits them up to 50 times, the report claimed.
Afterwards, when they can barely walk, he orders them to dance. [...]
Intelligence officials believe Uday may have been in the bunker hit by a cruise missile in the "decapitation strike" on Baghdad in the first hours of the war.
His younger brother, Qusay, is Saddam's heir after Uday fell out of favour when he murdered a close friend of his father in 1988.
In escalating the aerial bombardment of Iraq on Friday, U.S. commanders crossed a threshold in a psychological campaign meant to unravel the Iraqi government.They hoped that the promise of hundreds more airstrikes throughout the country, plus the advance of thousands of American ground troops toward the gates of Baghdad, would compel key people in President Saddam Hussein's inner circle to turn on him, U.S. officials said.
"They're beginning to realize, I suspect, that the regime is history," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. "And as that realization sets in, their behavior is likely to begin to tip and to change. Those close to Saddam Hussein will likely begin searching for a way to save themselves."
But the time for capitulation was rapidly expiring. Pentagon officials speaking on condition of anonymity said as many as 1,500 Air Force and Navy bombs and missiles would hammer targets throughout Iraq in the 24 hours after the accelerated air campaign began Friday.
One senior official said Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the war from a command post in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, would calibrate the intensity of the air war to build maximum pressure on Saddam's lieutenants.
By early next week, however, U.S. ground forces led by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division are likely to be at the outskirts of Baghdad.
"The intention is to convince the regime that it is time to leave, and if they don't we will try to take them out by force," Rear Adm. Matthew G. Moffit, commander of
A substantial majority of Americans support the war with Iraq, but the public is divided over whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must be killed, captured or merely removed from power for the United States and its allies to be successful, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.More than seven in 10 endorsed the decision of President Bush to wage war on Iraq. A similar proportion expressed confidence that the United States and its allies are right to use military force to topple Hussein and rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. And two out of three said they believe Bush had worked hard enough to try to find a diplomatic solution before ordering the attack.
"I didn't vote for George Bush, but I strongly support him, and if anything I think he should have acted sooner," said Rick Jackson, 31, a manager at an engineering company in Bradenton, Fla. "I think he exhausted all channels to appease those who don't agree with us."
In interviews with 804 registered voters conducted March 18-20, 2003, the Ipsos Public Affairs/Cook Political Report Poll registers a dramatic swing in favor of President George W. Bush and the whole Republican Party.* A majority (53%) of all adults say the country is on the right track, 40% wrong track; that represents a reversal from 37% right track-54% wrong track in interviews conducted February 18-March 6, 2003.
* In the most recent poll, 46% of registered voters would definitely vote to re-elect Bush, the highest re-elect number he has seen since the second quarter (April-May-June) 2002.
* In the most recent poll, 44% of registered voters would like to see Republicans win control of Congress and 41% would like Democrats to win control.
The Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, reacted strongly Friday to a new draft resolution at the UN Security Council that would transfer authority for a UN humanitarian program from the Iraqi government to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, accusing the chief of international body of doing the bidding of the U.S. and Britain.The new plan will also re-assign funds raised through the sale of Iraqi oil to sponsor rehabilitation for Iraqis who fled their homes because of the war.
"Our government is there, controlling the country, and this move is a very unfortunate move," he said.
The envoy said Annan was doing the bidding of the United States and Britain in violation of the UN Charter by withdrawing international staff and suggesting alternative ways to get humanitarian relief to Iraqis through the use of oil revenues.
The council spent more than three hours discussing Annan's draft resolution that would adjust the UN oil-for-food program to allow the UN to run the program not just in Iraq's north but throughout the country and for refugees fleeing the U.S.-led war.
The "Oil-for-Food" program was initiaited in as "a temporary measure to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people."
The first oil under the program was exported in December 1996 and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1997. So far, almost $26 billion worth of supplies and equipment have arrived in Iraq through the scheme.
U.S. air power ... kept a potential flood of Iraqi refugees away from the Jordanian border Friday....U.S. fighter bombers took out the only gas station between Baghdad and the border, a distance of 600 kilometers. The one-camel village of Ramadi was also the only phone booth on the desert road and a Jordanian was killed by the explosion of the gas station while making a call to his parents in Amman to let them know he was on his way home.
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."
Jordanians see a good omen in the daily arrival of almost 1,000 white storks. They alight near the Safeway on one of Amman's seven hills, a pit stop on their way from Africa to their east European breeding grounds. About 100,000 storks are expected at the Safeway for the next month, numbers not seen in 10 years, and a sign of ample rain and a good harvest.
A British Member of Parliament has asked military leaders in Iraq to think about some of the forgotten casualties of war -- animals.Tony Banks, a former minister in Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Labour government, welcomed promises from London and Washington that troops would do their best to avoid hitting ordinary Iraqis in bombing raids, but said they also needed to think about the creatures in Baghdad's El-Zawra Zoo.
"In war, countless numbers of animals are killed and injured," the former sports minister, who voted against war on Iraq, said in an statement put before parliament on Friday.
He appealed to military leaders "to ensure that Baghdad's El-Zawra zoo is safeguarded and that when hostilities are over military vets will provide urgent assistance to the zoo and other organizations involved with animal welfare in Iraq."
The zoo, which is reported to be shut and under renovation, escaped bomb damage during the 1991 allied blitz on Baghdad but keepers said the animals had been disturbed by the noise of bombs hitting nearby targets....
In 2001, [Banks] championed the cause of Marjan, a lame one-eyed lion in Kabul Zoo when the U.S. carried out bombing raids in Afghanistan ...
Within weeks of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the president and his most influential advisers set a goal of toppling Saddam -- if possible by coup or exile, more likely by force. Bush began to make the case to the world with his speech to the United Nations a year and a day after the attacks.With Wednesday's decision, Bush finally pulled the trigger. But the gun was cocked for a long time, since the Sept. 12, 2002, speech. The six months since then have been a time of diplomatic maneuvers, military deployments, rhetorical shifts and single-minded determination.
Bush refused to let anything deter him:
* He minimized a nuclear showdown with North Korea that even some administration officials believed posed a more immediate threat. The divisions within the president's inner circle over North Korea were severe. When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told Secretary of State Colin Powell that he had gotten a call from North Korean diplomats, Powell said Richardson should go ahead and meet with them -- but told him to avoid talking about it to Powell's rivals in the administration.
* He dismissed the complaints of then-Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla., and others that in targeting Iraq as the second front in the war on terrorism, the administration was shortchanging the first battleground, in Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda. A senior Defense Department official worried that combat operations in Afghanistan last spring were poorly planned because the Central Command was preoccupied with the next war.
* He was defiant when the U.N. Security Council refused to endorse the resolution he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair had sought to pave the way for the attack. The president had fought hard behind the scenes for the U.N. imprimatur. After a private White House dinner with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he included an initiative to fight AIDS in Africa in the State of the Union address. Annan had mentioned the issue as a personal priority.
Administration officials even found themselves addressing other worldly matters as they lobbied the president of Guinea, one of the Security Council's 15 members. He was desperately ill with kidney disease. His concern: Which vote was more likely to get him into heaven?
In the end, it was Bush's unyielding determination that undermined the diplomatic campaign. Skeptical foreign leaders complained that the administration's earlier willingness to go to the United Nations and agree to renewed weapons inspections in Iraq was only for show. The president had his mind made up, they said, no matter what.
Some top administration officials agree.
''He was not going to be easily deterred or distracted,'' a senior adviser says. ''It would have taken nothing less than an Iraqi capitulation. Either Saddam and his inner circle would have had to leave or they would have had to really, truly, completely, verifiably disarm. Bottom line: Bush was not looking for a way out.''
Aides and outsiders interviewed for this article cite a mix of motives behind the president's focus -- some call it an obsession -- on Iraq: His view of Saddam as a brutal despot who threatened Israel and unsettled the Middle East. An almost Shakespearean impulse to finish the job his father had started. The prospect of more-stable oil supplies.
Bush himself says he is thinking about the verdict of history.
H. D. Miller predicts Baghdad will fall by Monday and says why. Persoonally, I think that whoever's "in charge" will surrender by some time tomorrow but I don't know if we can get the level of troops there to take control that one assumes we'd require. So Baghdad may fall without being taken.
Indeed. it seems likely that in retrospect we'll come to see that the war was effectively won by the time we announced it had begun. Also--and I don't mean this cynically, because I think it was strategically necessary--we'll realize that the Pentagon has known that the decapitation worked (whether Saddam is actually dead or not) but has pursued the war in order to genuinely disarm Iraq, lest weapons end up in the hands of Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurds who might turn them on each other.
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Baghdad by Monday (Patrick Sawer, 3/21/03, Evening Standard)
Senior British and US commanders today predicted that allied forces could be in Baghdad by Monday. The claim came after US marines captured a key section of the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. [...]There was growing speculation this afternoon that Saddam and one of his sons were killed or injured in the first bombing raids on Baghdad, despite Iraqi denials. One US official said: "The preponderance of the evidence is he [Saddam] was there when the building blew up."
After being pinned down in a two-hour firefight US troops this afternoon moved into the new port area of Umm Qasr. They had to call in British artillery fire to clear their path, and a dozen helicopters brought reinforcements.
Marines raised the US flag over the new port but later removed it. No reason was given but Washington has consistently stressed invading US forces want to liberate Iraq, not occupy it. [...]
In a further sign of French anger at the US-led attack, its foreign ministry rejected US demands to expel Iraqi diplomats from Paris.
REMEMBER when Mayor Martin O'Malley used all those colorful cuss words a few years back in speaking about Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia Jessamy?Remember the uproar? Remember how all those black folks gathered out in front of City Hall with signs and accused O'Malley of insulting all black women? How dare the mayor use such language about a black female government official, they fumed.
On Saturday, at one of the state's public colleges, another man said something even worse about another black female government official.
In front of an overwhelmingly black audience of about 100 at Coppin State College, Amiri Baraka, New Jersey's Lunatic Laureate, called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a "skeeza."
For those of you not in the know, a "skeeza" is a derogatory street term used in reference to a woman and as offensive as calling her a prostitute. It's a noxious, bilious, disgustingly sexist term and one of the worst things you could call a woman.
It is something Rice certainly is not. Baraka knows she's not. Those blacks who laughed, giggled, tittered and applauded when Baraka said it know she's not. But what was the reaction of these black folks when Baraka finished his invective masquerading as poetry that he called "Somebody Blew Up America"?
They gave him thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
Gregory Kane is a fine columnist who is not afraid to speak truth to power in the black community. In challenging the intimidators, he is helping to heal America's racial divide.
To climb into today's M-1 tank with Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Miller, 36, a decorated tanker from the first Persian Gulf War, is to understand why Saddam Hussein will be hopelessly outgunned."Look through this sight," Miller said to his visitor. The sight magnifies the armored vehicles in the distance to 10 times their size, making them seem close enough to swat. At the same time, a laser beam shoots out to tell the tank commander the target's exact distance. Miller had no such instrument on his M-60 tank in the first Gulf War, when he nevertheless won the Bronze Star for destroying three Iraqi tanks and two armored personnel carriers.
Although 2,500 meters (about a mile and a half) is considered a "comfortable" range for the M-1's main 120-mm gun, Miller said that his upgraded tank could destroy an Iraqi armored vehicle more than two miles away. A computerized system in the tank calculates the effects of the wind and the air temperature for the gunner, helping him to hit the very heart of the enemy vehicle from long distances.
And the big gun is only part of the hell that the M-1 can make. A chain gun can fire 11,000 7.62-mm bullets per minute while that old reliable, the .50-caliber machine gun, can spit out 1,000 rounds of lethal fire. And if Iraq should dare to fly a helicopter over his M-1, Miller can use the big gun to explode a round right in the aircraft's path, thanks to another new high-tech aiming system.
"We're a big armored pillbox," said Miller. "And we have had 12 years of studying the lessons of the last Gulf War." He feels sure that none of the Iraqis who faced U.S. tanks back then will have any stomach for a rematch.
Miller said he felt no pleasure in 1991 destroying Iraqi tanks with men like him inside. "I just felt numb as I was going through it. I just lined up the sights and pressed the trigger," he recalled. Later, when he drove through the Iraqi wreckage and saw the death and destruction he had caused in pressing that trigger, it bothered him, he said. "I did keep seeing some of the faces. I had a difficult time sleeping afterward." And he said that after the war, when he was back home, "I was hypervigilant. My senses were extremely sharp. I was difficult to be around, especially if I saw lots of light, like Fourth of July fireworks."
Miller said he could have left the tank corps after Gulf War I in hopes of relieving some of the postwar stress. "But I thought I should come back and teach young marines what I learned." Miller was to be in one of the first tanks to bump over the big sand berm that marks the dividing line between Kuwait and Iraq. "I'll go without hesitation, because that's the choice I've made in my life. I'm sure if the president says this is important, he knows more than I do. So I'll say, 'Aye, aye,' and go."
Jacques Chirac said Friday that France would not go along with a new United Nations resolution allowing the United States and Britain to administer postwar Iraq.The French president said at a European Union summit he would "not accept" a resolution that "would legitimize the military intervention (and) would give the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq."
European Union (EU) divisions over Iraq have widened after Britain stood by charges that France prevented a peaceful solution to the crisis, while three anti-war states called a separate summit on defence integration.As EU leaders held a second day of tense talks, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt announced plans for France, Germany and Belgium to meet next month to discuss integrating their armed forces.
The moves plunged the EU back into crisis hours after the 15 leaders had papered over their splits with a statement pledging support for UN humanitarian relief efforts and urging Iraq's neighbours not to make mischief. [...]
The defence initiative apparently is designed to isolate Britain, Europe's biggest military power. [...]
Mr Verhofstadt told the Belgian news agency, Belga: "In April Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, President Jacques Chirac and I will meet in Brussels to discuss a stronger integration of our respective forces."
His Foreign Minister, Louis Michel, said closer defence integration is the only way for Europe to be taken seriously as an entity by the US.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker applauded the initiative, telling reporters: "This is not a closed shop. I expect others would join. It's the logical consequence of the differences of recent weeks."
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Drudge is reporting that S & A may be scaled back anyway because whoever's running Iraq at this point is negotiating its surrender.
[T]hunderous silence does not mean that all's quiet on the Iraqi western front. "The surprise is not the attack on Baghdad or the advance from Kuwait. The surprise will come from Jordan," a top Jordanian source who requested anonymity told Asia Times Online. The source says that well over 400 American tanks and more than 7,000 American troops may well be on their way to Baghdad from a remote launching pad in eastern Jordan.So far, the tanks and heavy military equipment have arrived by ship at the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba and have been deployed to the east shrouded in utmost secrecy. Secrecy is paramount, according to the source.
Exiled Iraqis may be praying for the end of Saddam's brutal secular regime, but at the same time they are now caught in a very serious religious conflict. The most eminent scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo - which is the highest religious authority in Sunni Islam - have declared that a jihad against the "new crusade" targeting Islam is absolutely legitimate. According to al-Azhar's academy for Islamic research, "If an enemy descends upon Muslim land, then it is the duty of all Muslim men and women to perform jihad." The scholars are unanimous that 1.3 billion Muslims all over the world "must be ready to defend themselves, their faith and their honor".Egyptian and Saudi scholars have agreed these past few days that even if this war does not explicitly pit Christians against Muslims, the only possible reaction to the Anglo-American invasion is jihad: "Hitting American interests is an act of martyrdom."
I am an eager consumer of war news. I'm spending my time listening to the news, watching the news and downloading the news, sometimes all at the same time. As a result, I know that 8 B-52 bombers took off from Fairford Airforce Base, England, this morning. I know the approximate flight time to Iraq, although I also know that, with refueling, a B-52 can stay in the air over a target for hours. I know that each B-52 can carry up to 30 metric tons of ordinance. So I suspect that, sometime in the next two to six hours, a couple of hundred thousand pounds of high explosive are going to rain down upon Iraq.
Now, I like knowing this. My eagerness to know it, along with your eagerness and our neighbor's eagerness, is responsible for it being available. I even can understand that letting the Iraqis know this is part of our shock and awe campaign. Still, I can't help but be a little nervous that all this information is so easily available.
Although the parliament approved motion on sending Turkish troops to northern Iraq and opening Turkish airspace to U.S. planes, the Turkish and the U.S. sides failed to reach an agreement on text deal. The United States could not use Turkish airspace last night while Turkish troops were prevented from entering northern Iraq.... While agreement was reached on rules of implementation of opening air corridors, the U.S. overflights which were foreseen to start at midnight were delayed upon Turkey's request....The United States had informed Turkey of the first bombardment of the Gulf War in 1991, but this time, it did not do it. The United States informed Israel before the attack while Ankara learnt it on CNN International. Replying questions of reporters who asked whether the United States had informed Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "no"....
Former Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis referred to the financial aid shock and said, "we thought that the United States needed our assistance and made a serious mistake. It was revealed that the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government made a strategic mistake during the negotiations with the United States." Yakis, who played an active role at negotiations with the United States, noted, "we did not believe that the United States had had the Plan B. We thought that the United States needed Turkey to open the northern front."
The Turkish troops in northern Iraq has begun spreading its military units to the region. Zakhu-Begowa-Batufa Highway was taken under control by Turkish soldiers. Earlier, Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) peshmerga fighters raised their objection to Turkish soldiers' control over the highway.
Now there's a new deal on the table: overfly rights during the war, in exchange for influence upon post-war Iraq. The overfly rights are rapidly losing value, because Iraq is surrendering and the war will be over in three or four days. If Turkey continues dithering and being too greedy, the second deal will leave the table also, and Turkey will have obtained nothing at all.
There's obviously still much that could go wrong in the Second Iraq War and we'll surely lose more men, even if just through mechanical malfunctions or friendly fire, so I don't wish to minimize the task ahead or the risks these brave souls continue to face, but we're rapidly approaching a rather profound moment in American history. The great--and I believe mistaken--lesson of the the first two world wars was that war was too terrible an enterprise--too lethal with modern weaponry, particularly for "non-combatants"--to be contemplated anymore. Thus we got the Cold War for fifty years, with only a very few low grade conflicts between the main parties, as we decided that we'd rather tolerate the most anti-human ideology man's ever come up with, and mass murders from Nicaragua to China to Russia to Ethiopia and beyond, than fight briefly, though brutally, to put a stop to it. The argument--though ultimately specious--that we could not risk killing millions, including our own, in the late 40s to depose the Marxist regime in Russia at least had the advantage that it was likely that many would die. The war would in fact have been terrible and we must therefore have some regard for the moral case against it.
However, at least since the early 80s--and arguably since 1945--it has been obvious that the West's technological, cultural, political, and military superiority over the various "isms" that it finds itself arrayed against from time to time is so great that when we choose to do so we can replace the most brutal and tyrannous regimes with a rather minimal loss of human life. Moreover, where it was initially the case that such warfare merely imposed less suffering on non-combatants than did the dictatorships themselves, it is increasingly the case that our methods of combat inflict almost no direct suffering on civilians. The list continues to grow--Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, soon Iraq--of countries where we deposed despicable rulers at minimal human cost.
So here's the profound question: if it is the case that we can rid peoples of such regimes and manifestly improve their lives, even save their lives, with such minimal impact, has the moral obligation now clearly shifted (assuming the case the anti-war folks made had prevailed) from one where we must try to avoid war because of the suffering it might cause to one where we must embrace war because of the suffering and death it so clearly relieves? In what sense is the moral position that demanded we contain Saddam from 1991 until Wednesday, at the expense of 1.5 million dead Iraqis, superior to that which requires us to liberate Iraq, at a cost of several hundred or several thousand lives? Isn't the hard question that confronts us all today, but the peace party in particular, whether we behaved decently and responsibly towards fellow human beings when we left the Iraqis to Saddam's mercies in 1991? And, going forward, mustn't we reckon with a far different moral calculus than that which has been commonly accepted as we begin to consider what course of action is right and just with regard to N. Korea, Cuba, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, etc.? May we not be in the midst of an unusual and as yet unrecognized epoch in our affairs where war is not the worst but the best option available to us and to captive peoples? Which do we place a higher value on, as a society, our peace or human freedom? And can we love our society if we choose the former?
The late Herb Denton, the Washington Post's reporter here, had a different take: "The day Canada finally stands up to the U.S. is the day the U.S. will finally respect it." He was talking about the free-trade deal, but this war would serve as well. I'd add, from my observations, that it may not happen instantly, but if you stick to it till they know you're serious, then eventually, grudgingly, respect will come.And if not now, when? All previous postwar U.S. military eruptions, however you judged them, were one-offs: Vietnam, the 1991 gulf war, Kosovo etc. This one is avowedly the first in a limitless chain of assertions of U.S. power. It means destruction of the frail system of global order that the UN represents. Even scarier: In earlier conflicts, only Westerners in the military were at direct risk; now we all are, and our families, not from Iraq, but from small, crazed, outlaw groups that learned on Sept. 11 how much damage they can do, with little or no state support -- and that are being consciously provoked by U.S. policies.
So I'd call this Jean Chrétien's finest hour.
The reality is that Canada's persistent unwillingness to help us has led to U.S. indifference toward Canada. Were Canada to become militantly and stubbornly hostile, that indifference would turn to contempt.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former United Nations secretary-general, yesterday condemned the U.S.-led war on Iraq as a violation of the UN charter and said George W. Bush's policy of pre-emptive strikes is in "basic contradiction" with international law.Mr. Boutros-Ghali, the secretary-general of La Francophonie, an organization of francophone states, also said he fears the war will provoke civil conflict among competing ethnic factions in Iraq and destabilize the entire Middle East.
"I believe that this intervention is a violation of the charter of the United Nations," Mr. Boutros-Ghali told reporters in Ottawa after meeting with Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, to commemorate International Francophonie Day.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday said Iraq violated its agreement with the United Nations if the missiles it fired at American troops were Scuds."I'm very interested to know whether they used Scuds," Blix said in an interview with the Fox News Channel. "If they're firing [Scuds], of course that shows that there's a violation," he said.
Blix told the U.N. Security Council this month that it was "questionable" whether the Iraqis had destroyed all of their Scuds and that about 50 Scud warheads were still unaccounted for.
Even though he wanted more time for inspections, Blix said yesterday that he didn't know if he could ever be sure that Iraq wasn't hiding the illegal missiles.
"I could not guarantee that we would come to clear conclusions even after some months more," he said.
Tom Jelton, on NPR's Morning Edition, just said that as far as the Pentagon can tell there is no one in charge of Iraq at this point.
The Democratic National Committee is asking party members to defend Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's criticism of the way President Bush has handled the Iraq crisis even as U.S.-led forces invade the country....[T]he DNC sent e-mails to its grass-roots activists that said "Democratic leaders are standing up to Bush; Make sure you stand up for them!"...
Mr. Daschle and his Democratic counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, have vowed to continue to speak out on the war...
"I am saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country." [Daschle comments to AFSCME, 3/17/03]
European leaders today expressed personal condolences to Tony Blair over last night's helicopter crash in Kuwait - but the French president, Jaques Chirac, was not among them.
A U.S. Marine has been killed in Iraq, becoming the first reported combat death of the war, defense officials said Friday.The slain soldier, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was moving in the ground assault in southern Iraq, said Lt. Col. Neal Peckham, a British military spokesman in Kuwait.
Peckham said he had no further details. MSNBC cable network reported that the soldier was felled by Iraqi gunfire during the advance on the Rumeila oil field.
MONTREAL (AP) Fans booed during the playing of the U.S. national anthem before the New York Islanders' 6-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night.The sellout crowd of 21,273 at Bell Centre was asked to "show your support and respect for two great nations" before the singing of the American and Canadian national anthems.
But a significant portion of the crowd booed throughout "The Star-Spangled Banner" in an apparent display of their displeasure with the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
"On Tuesday night I gave the order for British forces to take part in military action in Iraq."Tonight, British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea. Their mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.
"I know this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country. But I know also the British people will now be united in sending our armed forces our thoughts and prayers. They are the finest in the world and their families and all of Britain can have great pride in them.
"The threat to Britain today is not that of my father's generation. War between the big powers is unlikely. Europe is at peace. The cold war already a memory.
"But this new world faces a new threat: of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq, armed with weapons of mass destruction; or of extreme terrorist groups. Both hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy.
"My fear, deeply held, based in part on the intelligence that I see, is that these threats come together and deliver catastrophe to our country and world. These tyrannical states do not care for the sanctity of human life. The terrorists delight in destroying it.
"Some say if we act, we become a target. The truth is, all nations are targets. Bali was never in the frontline of action against terrorism. America didn't attack al Qaida. They attacked America.
"Britain has never been a nation to hide at the back. But even if we were, it wouldn't avail us.
"Should terrorists obtain these weapons now being manufactured and traded round the world, the carnage they could inflict to our economies, our security, to world peace, would be beyond our most vivid imagination.
"My judgment, as prime minister, is that this threat is real, growing and of an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our security that Britain has faced before.
"For 12 years, the world tried to disarm Saddam; after his wars in which hundreds of thousands died. UN weapons inspectors say vast amounts of chemical and biological poisons, such as anthrax, VX nerve agent, and mustard gas remain unaccounted for in Iraq.
"So our choice is clear: back down and leave Saddam hugely strengthened; or proceed to disarm him by force. Retreat might give us a moment of respite but years of repentance at our weakness would, I believe, follow.
"It is true Saddam is not the only threat. But it is true also - as we British know - that the best way to deal with future threats peacefully, is to deal with present threats with results.
"Removing Saddam will be a blessing to the Iraqi people. Four million Iraqis are in exile. Sixty per cent of the population are dependent on food aid. Thousands of children die every year through malnutrition and disease. Hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes or murdered.
"I hope the Iraqi people hear this message. We are with you. Our enemy is not you, but your barbarous rulers.
"Our commitment to the post-Saddam humanitarian effort will be total. We shall help Iraq move towards democracy. And put the money from Iraqi oil in a UN trust fund so that it benefits Iraq and no one else.
"Neither should Iraq be our only concern. President Bush and I have committed ourselves to peace in the Middle East based on a secure state of Israel and a viable Palestinian state. We will strive to see it done.
"But these challenges and others that confront us - poverty, the environment, the ravages of disease - require a world of order and stability. Dictators like Saddam, terrorist groups like al-Qaida, threaten the very existence of such a world.
"That is why I have asked our troops to go into action tonight. As so often before, on the courage and determination of British men and women, serving our country, the fate of many nations rests.
"Thank you."