"Oh, the irony and symbolic fecklessness of our foreign policy! The White House was so confident, the chickenhawks were so arrogant, the warhawks were so gung-ho to go in there and prove that the U.S. of A was going to assert its global hegemony after the humbling shock of 9/11 – and it all went up in smoke in an instant, as the North Korean monster rose from hidden depths and took the Bushies by surprise."

Justin Raimondo, editor of antiwar.com, has a great column up about how the announcement by North Korea that they've been working on nuclear weapons may totally torpedo the proposed war on Iraq. I don't agree with the idea that the North Koreans are likely to start firing nukes in the near future, but just the thought that they might means the President now needs to refocus his attention.

Or, of course, he may just downplay the problem and hope it goes away.

Read the article here, and a background story here.

posted by Michael Curry at 8:57 PM

Repeat it until it becomes the truth

"But the bizarre thing is this: the more people, politicians and experts question the idea that Iraq and al-Qaeda are linked, the more the Bush administration makes these claims central among its arguments for bombing Baghdad. Despite the dearth of evidence, Bush and co are going further and further down the Saddam/bin Laden route. Why?"

An excellent piece in Brendan O'Neill's blog, talking how the Bush adminstration seems to be determined to create a link between Iraq and al-Queda, despite the lack of evidence, simply by repeating over and over that there's a link. Fortunately for him, the mainstream media seem to be more than happy to help him do this.

Read the whole thing here (and ignore the bizarre comment someone else posted about White Knights and the Supreme Court).

posted by Michael Curry at 8:34 PM

Democracy in Iraq? Not likely.

"Listen to the American hawks after a few glasses of wine, and you might be seduced into thinking that after overthrowing Saddam Hussein we're going to turn Iraq into a flourishing democracy. But I'm afraid it's a pipe dream, a marketing ploy to sell a war."

A great piece about the fact that the U.S. is unlikely to be able to establish a post-invasion Iraqi democracy, and probably doesn't really even intend to try all the hard. The reason? Sixty percent of the Iraqi population is the oppressed Shiite majority, and neither the U.S. nor most of Iraq's neighbors want to see another Shiite state in the region.

Read the column here [registration required].

posted by Michael Curry at 8:20 PM

Dubious about the war

"President Bush continues to encounter war critics in the unlikeliest of places -- the United States military, for example. Last summer, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security advisor to Bush's father during the Gulf War, bluntly expressed his doubt about a unilateral war against Iraq. A few weeks later, a trio of four-star generals appeared before Congress to echo that concern.

One of them was Gen. Wesley Clark, a former NATO military commander. 'If we go in unilaterally, or without the full weight of international organizations behind us, if we go in with a very sparse number of allies, if we go in without an effective information operation ... we're liable to supercharge recruiting for al-Qaida,' Clark said.

Now comes retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East, who has worked recently as the State Department's envoy to the region with a mission to encourage talks between Palestinians and Israelis. Zinni, a Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam and helped command forces in the Gulf War and in Somalia, spoke last Thursday in Washington at the Middle East Institute's annual conference and laid out his own reservations about a potential war with Iraq."

A good interview where Zinni discusses the problems with any war against Iraq, demonstrating again that America's military leaders aren't as enthusiatic about the idea of this war as members of the current administration are.

Read the interview here.

posted by Michael Curry at 8:05 PM

Pay no attention to the CEOs behind the curtain

"Less than three months ago, President Bush signed with great fanfare sweeping corporate antifraud legislation that called for a huge increase in the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission to police corporate America and clean up Wall Street. Now the White House is backing off the budget provision and urging Congress to provide the agency with 27 percent less money than the new law authorized."

Apparently the President is once again counting on the possible war with Iraq to distract Americans from the corporate fraud that cost thousands of people their retirement savings (and cost thousands of others their jobs). In fact, it's the need to fight the war against Iraq and the "war on terror" that is the reason given for this proposed cut. Don't believe it. Once again the President is demonstrating that he cares only about his corporate cronies, and even the modest plan for the SEC laid out in the original bill is more than they want to have to deal with.

Read the full story here [registration required].

posted by Michael Curry at 7:53 PM

Divestment and Israel

"The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure — in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation."

An excellent piece by Archbishop Desmond Tutu about the parallels between the divestment movement that contributed to bringing an end to aparthied in South Africa, and the new movement that is hoping to bring justice to the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Read it here.

posted by Michael Curry at 8:51 PM

Democratically elected

Sunday's Boondocks comic was particularly cutting. Read it here.

posted by Michael Curry at 9:09 AM

Occupying Iraq?

"The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein, senior administration officials said today."

Yes, that's right, the U.S. is now developing a plan to occupy Iraq for an extended period of time, maybe even years. After this article appeared in the New York Times, government sources were quick to say that this was the least likely of the plans being considered, but, even if that's true, it still means that occupation is being looked at as an option. This is a terrible idea. As Henry Kissenger said during hearings in the Senate last month, "I am viscerally opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to re-educate that country."

Read the original article here [registration required], and some reaction here and here.

posted by Michael Curry at 9:06 AM