New Fisk

The ministry of mendacity strikes again - blasting Geoff Hoon for claiming in Parliament that the Iraqis were responsible for the marketplace deaths and had planted missile parts for western journalists to find.

Cowboys

In response to this story, Tacitus asks:

Since when did "cowboy" become a derisive term in the European lexicon? Did they all grow up with movies in which cowboys were loathesome, capricious killers? In the films I remember, the cowboy heroes were upstanding, silent, strong, and moral.

...and ultimately solved every problem with force. Even if the problem was as trivial as someone insulting him, cheating at cards, or just looking at him funny. Is it any wonder non-Americans (who aren't so keen on "frontier values") view cowboys as trigger-happy killers?

Though there's also some aspect of the second use of the word. Down here, a "cowboy" is a fly-by-night operator, someone who does a shitty job then rides (or flies) off into the sunset, never to be seen again. I suspect this usage is common in England as well.

America to ask G7 to pay for Iraq war

That's right - they piss all over the international comunity, ignore the wishes of the UN, and then expect countries which have explicitly opposed their actions - France, Germany, Canada - to pay for it.

Fuck them. They can pay for their own fucking war.

New Reports from Iraqwar.ru

April 1st - Iraqis are well equipped
April 1st- Coalition losses mount
April 2nd-Battle for An-Nasiriya pt 1
April 2nd -Battle for An-Nasiriya pt 2

Oderint dum metuant

"Let them hate, so long as they fear".

The US has surpassed itself in achieving the first part. They've given ammunition aplenty to those who have always hated them, and driven those who would normally be its friends - people and countries who share the goal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", albeit in various different ways - into opposing it. From the breadth and depth of antiwar protests, I think its fair to say that much of the world now hates the US.

The second bit is more tricky. Yes, in a sense, we're all afraid of the US, in the same way that we'd be afraid of a fat drunken bully in a bar. And our governments are afraid of them - no nation-state is going to take on the US in a stand-up fight. But that's not what they have to worry about. After all, it wasn't nation-states who levelled the twin towers...

No matter how many countries the US invades and how many people they kill, they'll never be safe from Osama bin-Laden. Sure, they can hunt him down and kill him - he may already be dead - but as long as the US is hated, there will be others to take his place. The only way America can be safe from them is not to piss people off in the first place.

But back to nation-states. Fear of US might may prevent a military attack, but that's not the only thing the US has to worry about. Americans tend to underestimate the degree to which their interests depend on the voluntary cooperation of the rest of the world - the war on terror and the WTO are just two examples. It doesn't take a Machiavellian genius to figure out that people who hate you are less likely to cooperate with you; I'm sure even Americans can figure out the long-term costs of being hated.

Tear gas and escalation

What might happen if the US actually uses tear gas on the battlefield? One possibility is escalation. According to the article I linked to earlier,

In four major uses of chemical weapons in the past — by combatants in World War I; by the Italians in Ethiopia; by the Egyptians in Yemen; and in the Iran-Iraq war — deployment was preceded by use of non-lethal agents

So it's entirely possible that the US using tear gas could provoke Saddam into letting fly with whatever stocks of VX and mustard gas he's managed to hide from the inspectors. Needless to say, this would be a Bad Thing. OTOH, provoking Saddam into using chemical weapons would prove that the US was right all along to be suspicious of inspections, and Rumsfeld and his NeoCon pals might consider it worth the price of a bad precedent and a few thousand coalition soldiers and civillians dead or maimed. And if we want to get really cynical, the US has threatened to use nuclear weapons in response to any chemical attack; provoking such an attack would allow the US to impress the world with its military power (getting the second half of oderint dum metuant) and avoid all that icky high-casualty street-fighting in Baghdad.

OK, so the latter is just cynical and possibly paranoid; OTOH do you really trust Rumsfeld and the Project for the New American Century not to think like that?

I guess the best we can hope for is that Saddam doesn't have anything - then we'll just have to deal with a marauding hegemon tearing up yet another global treaty... business as usual, I guess.

No Banks for us

Just when he was about to visit NZ for a writer's festival, Iain Banks has burned his passport. The story repeats all the good bits of his letter to the Guardian, but if you want to read the original, click here.

Bush Approves Use of Tear Gas in Battlefield

And they're claiming that this is in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention. I guess they're ignoring the bit which explicitly outlaws the use of riot control agents on the battlefield as a "method of warfare". But then, signing up to a treaty and then flat-out lying about what it says seems to be a standard American diplomatic tactic now.

The irony of using chemical weapons to fight a war against chemical weapons is probably completely lost on them.

New Fisk

Saddam's masters of concealment dig in, ready for battle
Wailing children, the wounded, the dead: victims of the day cluster bombs rained on Babylon
Final countdown for Baghdad
Children killed and maimed in bomb attack on town

Another blog landmark

Our first mention on another blog. Next goals: hate mail from rabid Americans, being linked on Atrios, and being denounced by Sullivan or on Free Republic.

Should he stay or should he go?

So, according to Three News last night, and the NZ Herald this morning, National is sharpening the knives for Bill English.

The problem is, who can they replace him with? The only two contenders mentioned are Don Brash and Gerry "Bruiser" Brownlee, and both are less than inspiring. The public hate Don Brash for his continued advocacy of the failed policies of the 80's and 90's, while Brownlee is a thug whose claims to fame are calling for an end to our nuclear-free policy and having to fork over $8500 after being privately prosecuted for throwing a protester down some stairs.

Brash claims to want the job of finance minister, which probably rules out leadership (too many bad memories of Muldoon), so really that only leaves Brownlee. And while he's likely to be a louder and more obnoxious leader of the opposition than Bill English, he's likely to be even less popular with the public.

New Fisk

Cows and armed guards on a college campus. Where is the truth amid all this subterfuge?.

It was the Americans

The Independent seems to have proved that the explosion which kiled over sixty Iraqi civillians in a marketplace on friday was caused by an American HARM missile. The missile was identified from serial numbers found on missile fragments by Robert Fisk.

Unfortunately the Americans are still refusing to own up to their mistake. According to The Independent, an "official Washington source" has already claimed that the missile fragments were planted by the Iraqis...

New Fisk

Iraq is littered with graves of Britons killed in another colonial war.

Casualties

Figures so far, from The Agonist:

	Coalition	Iraqi
Killed:	200	1,500
Wounded:	300	3500
Tanks:	32	87
Other armored vehicles:	33	52
Helicopters:	14	0
Artillery pieces:	0	172

New Fisk

The monster of Baghdad is now the hero of Arabia - This is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power.

Childish name-calling

NZPundit is back to childish name-calling again. Highlights of his current vocabulary include referring to Helen Clark as "Cupid Stunt", calling the NZ media "Fisk-wits", and referring to all New Zealanders who disagree with him as "shit-eating surrender Kiwis". Stunning rationality from the right...

Another arbitrary detention

Via TalkLeft, news that another US citizen has been detained without charge as part of the "war on terror". At least he has access to a lawyer...

New Fisk

A quiet Baghdad night of occasional air raid sirens and mysterious explosions.

Trigger happy

US soldiers killed seven women and children when a van refused to stop at a checkpoint. That'll make the post-war occupation so much easier...

Addendum: More information in this story syndicated from Times Online (where it has disappeared). Reading the actual article shows that this isn't the only civillian vehicle they've shot up:

Next morning, the men of Alpha company talked about the fighting over MREs (meals ready to eat). They were jittery now and reacted nervously to any movement around their dugouts. They suspected that civilian cars, including taxis, had helped resupply the enemy inside the city. When cars were spotted speeding along two roads, frantic calls were made over the radio to get permission to "kill the vehicles". Twenty-four hours earlier it would almost certainly have been denied: now it was granted.

Immediately, the level of force levelled at civilian vehicles was overwhelming. Tanks were placed on the road and AAVs lined along one side. Several taxis were destroyed by helicopter gunships as they drove down the road.

A lorry filled with sacks of wheat made the fatal mistake of driving through US lines. The order was given to fire. Several AAVs pounded it with a barrage of machinegun fire, riddling the windscreen with at least 20 holes. The driver was killed instantly. The lorry swerved off the road and into a ditch. Rumour spread that the driver had been armed and had fired at the marines. I walked up to the lorry, but could find no trace of a weapon.

This was the start of day that claimed many civilian casualties. After the lorry a truck came down the road. Again the marines fired. Inside, four men were killed. They had been travelling with some 10 other civilians, mainly women and children who were evacuated, crying, their clothes splattered in blood. Hours later a dog belonging to the dead driver was still by his side.

[...]

As night fell again there was great tension, the marines fearing an ambush. Two tanks and three AAVs were placed at the north end of the third bridge, their guns pointing down towards Nasiriya, and given orders to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards American positions.

Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy was to shoot anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified civilians drove at speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a threat and hit out. During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a dozen times as the AVVs' machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like paper.

Next morning I saw the result of this order - the dead civilians, the little girl in the orange and gold dress.

Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into Iraq with me reminded me now of their fathers' generation, the trigger-happy grunts of Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent storms, they were drained and dangerously aggressive.

Then there's this bit:

"I was shooting down a street when suddenly a woman came out and casually began to cross the street with a child no older than 10," said Gunnery Sergeant John Merriman, another Gulf war veteran. "At first I froze on seeing the civilian woman. She then crossed back again with the child and went behind a wall. Within less than a minute a guy with an RPG came out and fired at us from behind the same wall. This happened a second time so I thought, 'Okay, I get it. Let her come out again'.

She did and this time I took her out with my M-16."

But the worst bit is the attitude displayed by some of the US Marines to what they're doing:

Martin's distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy," said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."

They're not just trigger-happy, they're trigger happy thugs.