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Strike on Iraq
According to CNN and various other news sources, Iraq is now under attack by
the US. Here is a link to the current story running at CNN right now, but there's really not much except that it has started. CT Cruise missiles launched against "Target of Opportunity". The full assault has not begun. CT The attack was specifically intended to take out Saddam. CT Saddam appeared on iraqi TV to condemn the US, and Iraqi missiles have been fired at Kuwait.
The talking heads are reporting that this may or may not have been a PsyOp, saying that it was likely targeted at Iraqi leadership or command and control.
The Iranian news agency is also reporting that there may be explosions on the peninsula near Basra. Tony Blair will be addressing the UK at 10:30 EST (3:30 AM GMT, I think).
Other than typical news sites...
-- Debka (Middle East News)
-- Official Iraqi News
-- Where is Read? - Iraqi Blog
-- Kuwait Blog
-- Back to Iraq Blog
-- Iraq today
-- Warblogs.cc
-- Kevin Sites
-- Sky.com
-- BCC News Live Feed
-- Agonist
CBSnews also has a beautiful high detail webcam without all the crap on the bottom of the screen.
God bless our soldiers.
Davak
...that the US inteligence found a "target of opportunity" in Baghdad...meaning that there was a senior or high-ranking official sighted that US intelligence thought they could hit. thats why the bombings came so unannounced.
why is it that when a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment, but when a woman talks dirty to a man, its $3.
Black Sabbath's War Pigs
------------------------
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.
Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.
Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The military neither wants nor needs a draft. The volunteer force is more than capable enough to handle any potential adversary.
"The United States is not going to implement a military draft, because there is no need for it, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Jan. 7."
hand waving by Charlie Rangle notwithstanding
Without all the commercials, etc..
NPR. Click up top, Real, Windows Media, or Quicktime. Gotta love NPR.
More stuff on NPR about Iraq over here.
CSPAN is slashdotted, er, wardotted? err.. nevermind, CSPAN is dead.
And chances are, live protests in your local metro.
CBSNews has a big "WAR" picture that looks like an ad for a RTS. Thanks to the media for desensitizing us to war(or making it into a fun, enjoyable experience kind of like a game or a "faces of death" tv channel(gotta love duckman!) without the seriousness).
I hope this ends quick. The last thing Slashdot needs is a war vs. anti-war flamewar. We've already got BSD vs. Linux, Perl vs. Python vs. Ruby vs. Java vs. Everything Else, KDE vs. Gnome, etc... So I think we're good.
As an interesting note, CBSNews calls George Bush "Mr. Bush" in this article.
She was fired by the Bush administration shortly thereafter.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Seen this quoted in a few places... Best to search around for other numbers. I can't find any US numbers, just Iraqi and 3rd party (i.e. UN) numbers.
Here's a link:
http://www.futurenet.org/iraq/morecostofwar.htm
And here's relevant text:
Approximately 3,500 civilians were killed during the U.S.-led air strike campaign in August 1990, and more than 9000 homes were destroyed. The civilian death toll rose to 110,000 after the bombing stopped, and of those 70,000 were children under the age of 15. Civilians in Iraq continue to suffer as a result of "Operation Desert Storm," despite the cessation of military attacks in 1991. Incidents with landmines and unexploded ordinance have added thousands of victims to the total. According to Unicef, the U.S.-led economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, in effect for more than a decade, have claimed over one million lives, the majority of whom are children and the elderly. In the wider "War on Terror" more civilians have now died in Afghanistan than did in the World Trade Tower and Pentagon attacks combined according to Professor Marc W. Herold at the Whittemore School of Business & Economics, in Durham, New Hampshire.
The only thing war has ever done is... defeat Nazism, Communism, and [hopefully] Terrorism.
One of these things is not like the other. Nazism and Communism are, respectively, political and economic ideologies. We didn't defeat these ideologies; we defeated countries that were governed by regimes who practiced these ideologies.
Terrorism is a methodology. You most certainly don't "defeat" a methodology. It's an abstraction.
Now... the West may... may be able to defeat specific militant Islamic groups. I hope so. However, please don't get wrapped up in this administration's linguistic antics.
I might argue here that Iraq doesn't fall into the category of "militant Islamic group", but I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time in this thread tonight, and want to survey the landscape of posts before proceeding.
Today I'm ashamed to call myself a Geek.
/. community today.
I'm disgusted at the sheer quantity of ignorant liberal drivel that's being spouted by the
This war is one of justice and necessity, and those who think otherwise are as blind as Saddam.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
>Most anti-war people I hear talk about all the
0 00918.h tm
>civilian casualties resulting from this war, but
>I'm somehow not sure I should take their word for
>it. Does anyone here know the read civilian death
>toll from the last Iraqi war?
I don't know the answer to your question, and for that I apologize, but I will offer this: In 1988 President Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of the Iraqi city of the Halabja. Chemical weapons were used to contaminate the city. It was over in 2 hours. 5000 civilians were killed in that attack.
The bleeding hearts on this blog are making me ill. Hussein did in 2 hours what the US/coalition avoided in an entire war. And this was just one chemical attack. If the war lasted an entire year it is unlikely that as many civilians would be killed as those ordered to death by Hussein. I don't care what reasons Bush has for killing Hussein, but I have my own and so I wish the American president well.
Go here:
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/09/iraq-
Read it. All of it.
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
On Slashnet (us.slashnet.org, for instance) join #newswire.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Sorry bad link, for some reason Slashcode filters an underscore from the link. You'll have to copy paste to get there manually. Here it is:
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Well, babies, if this ain't a test of the durabilty of Slashdot, I don't a 1 from a 0.
0 54 3-3049r
Anyway, check this out:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030319-04
Briefly, the Special Assistant on Terror for our National Security Council, Rand Beers, has resigned, saying he's "tried, just tried". He will not say anymore. It is believed that this war will increase unleash more terror than it will stop.
It has finally got too weird for me.
"Can this dream stop?"
"Wait! There's been a slaughter here!!!"
Our disarmament continues to this day. US biological programs were halted in, I believe, the early 70s, and all materials destroyed. Chemicals we don't have, as per the various laws of war banning them.
Nuclear stockpiles continue to be reduced. The Treaty of Moscow, signed by Bush and Putin last summer and ratified by Congress this month, promises that another 2/3 of each nuclear stockpile be dismantled - the logical conclusion of decades of nuclear cuts.
As long as hostile nations continue to possess (or seek) nuclear arms, the rest will have several hundred as a deterrant... but we've all come a LONG way. NATO, Russia, China... none are inclined to ever use a nuke ever again. I expect to live to see the day it's down to 200 warheads or less, here...maybe I'll be very very old, but I expect it in my lifetime.
What have we become in 200 short years?
We finally get to see a few good battles without the risk of being there.
People have been trying to watch people getting killed in battles since the Civil War when some people carried picnic lunches and alcohol to watch the Union fight the Rebels at the Battle of Bull Run (Sharpsburg).
I still cannot digest the fact america has started a bloody ruthless war against the interest of the World community. Certainly not a good sign for the president and the fellow americans.
Plese remember one cannot win a war without the support of the world community.
Time and again American presidents prove that they are just a bone-headed white collar thugs.
I not against the american people nor a supporter of Iraq, i live in india and iam very proud my country is against this bloody battle.
My only request to American president is, Pls inform your slave(read Tony blair) on the war decisions, he seems to be absolutely clueless. Prabhakar
But who put the bad guy in place? And who gave him the so called weapons of mass destruction? Yeah, the Bush administration still has the receipts and a copy of the invoices...
War indeed is BAD! The US is just cleaning up the mess THEY made in order to gain more control of the region.
Agreed. According to Human Rights Watch the numbers of civilian dead couldn't have exceeded 2500 to 3000. Probably much lower.
The allies admits to two strikes that killed civilians. One was a technical failure on a British RAF smart bomb that hit a market instead of a nearby bridge. Since it was a technical malfunction, and the target was legitimate no blame was assigned.
The other was an intelligence failure. An air attack on the Al-Firdus command and control bunker. It was thought to be a legitimate target. A military command and control bunker. But for reasons that as far as I know are still unknown today, there were civilians in it. Several hundred of them were killed. General Chuck Horner, the Allied Air Component Commander during the gulf war (in other words he ran the entire Air War) talks about the incident in the book he coauthored with Tom Clancy Every Man A Tiger. He goes on to say that they should have asked harder questions. It had a low enough priority that it wasn't hit until the Air War was nearly 4 weeks old. He argues that if it was that low a priority, then did they really need to hit it? He makes good arguments for *why* the mistake was made, and he admits that it was a combination of factors including an allied intel failure that led to the tragedy.
Look, nobody likes war. But sometimes it's necessary to end ongoing suffering. I hardly agree with Bush on anything. I question his motives. But I do think Hussein has had this coming. He's a tyrant, and there are more parallels between him and Hitler than most people realize. The Allies in the Gulf War took more precautions to prevent civilian casualties than any other force in any other war in history. And they were largely successful. The technology of smart bombs allows us to do that. This isn't WWII or Vietnam. There's no REASON to carpet bomb and endanger civilians. And it's just plain wrong. I hope that this war ends quickly and that casualties are kept to an absolute minimum. The Iraqi people have certain human rights. And they're not getting them living under the rule of Hussein.
I don't agree with Bush's motives. But the liberation of Iraqi people is just the right thing to do! How can we be against that?
They say the U.S. "can't be the world's police force". Maybe. But I'm not sure it's that cut and dry. It's like walking by someone who's drowning in a river and saying "I can't be the river's lifeguard". Are you responsible for saving the person? No. But I think that you're morally obligated to do everything in your power to help. I see no reason that this logic shouldn't scale up to nations. If there is suffering and one nation can help to end the suffering, they *should* take action. Using military force, economic aid, disaster relief personnel, whatever. But sort of like a Hippocratic oath, it's important that whatever actions are taken not cause more suffering than they eliminate.
General William Tecumseh Sherman said "War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace." (thanks to Wyatt Earp (1029) for the quote). It's true. That's the only legitimate reason to go to war. And hopefully that's what we'll get with as little loss of life as possible.
I only wish that our current President hadn't botched things so badly that we have virtually *no* international support. Other Presidents would have acted differently. G.H.W. Bush understood the importance of building a coalition. Clinton certainly had his finger on the pulse of the international scene and he was a competent diplomat. Reagan liked to act unilaterally, but he wasn't a bat-shit crazy cowboy when he did so. Carter would have found a diplomatic solution, or at least he would have put so much effort into finding one that nobody would ever be able to question the legitimacy of going to war. I just think that this is embarassing. Hussein definitely needs to go, but I wish there were someone else to do it other than a G.W. Bush.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
umm, perhaps we should mention an earlier Civil War spectator reference, people have been doing this for a bit longer. I refer to the Civil War battle involving Boudicca and the Romans in Britain , A.D.61 :-) (not called England in those days, the Angles weren't to invade for another few hundred years).
Tacitius reported that the rebels thought this was going to be another slaughter of Romans, so they assembled as many spectators as possible. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, babies, livestock, etc., and wagons loaded with the material gains so far plundered were amassed behind the British. Everyone waited to see the spectacle and revel in their impending victory.
Of course things went the wrong way but that's another story. People have been doing this for a longgggg time.
Ref: http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/his_boudiccan_ rebellion_final_battle.htm
The Guardian, Friday 7 March 2003
The Pentagon has asked the US Congress to lift a 10-year ban on developing small nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes", in one of the most overt steps President George Bush's administration has taken towards building a new atomic arsenal.
Buried in the defence department's 2004 budget proposals, sent to congressional committees this week, was a single-line statement that marks a sharp change in US nuclear policy.
It calls on the legislature to "rescind the prohibition on research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons".
If passed by Congress, the measure would represent an important victory for radicals in the administration, who believe the US arsenal needs to be made more "usable", and therefore a more meaningful deterrent, to "rogue states" that have weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
A Pentagon official said yesterday the research ban on smaller warheads "has negatively affected US government efforts to support the national strategy to counter WMD, and undercuts efforts that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats".
Democrats fought off earlier Republican attempts to lift the ban on researching and developing warheads under five kilotons (a third of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), fearing they would lead to an end to the US moratorium on nuclear testing, and to a new arms race.
Le Monde article If anyone has an english translation for this it would be good for non french readers.
Hey, you left a few out and you included some pretty spurious examples.
But if you want to play it that way, let's have the full, accurate list shall we? And let's just see where these countries are today...
France 1942-45 Republic
Germany 1942-45 Federal republic
Belgium 1942-45 Parliamentary democracy
Netherlands - 1944-45 Free
Italy 1943-45 Republic
Japan 1942-45 constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government
China 1945-46 Free from Japanese, conquered by communist dicatorship.
Korea 1950-53 Republic, see South Korea
China 1950-53 Communist tyranny
Guatemala 1954 Constitutional republic
Indonesia 1958 Republic
Cuba 1959-60 NO BOMBS community tyrants take over
Guatemala 1960 Constitutional republic
Congo 1964 Thank the Belgians
Peru 1965 Constitutional republic
Laos 1964-73 Communist tyrany
Vietnam 1961-73 Communist tyranny, and how about them French?
Cambodge 1969-70 Multi-party democracy
Guatemala 1967-69 Constitutional republic
Grenade 1983 Constitutional monarchy with Westminster-style parliament
Lybia 1986 - Dictatorship
El Salvador 1980s - Republic
Nicaragua 1980s -Republic
Panama 1989 - Republic
Iraq 1991-99 - Give us time
Sudan 1998 - Authoritarian regime
Afghanistan 1997-2002 - Republic
It's a pretty great list. In fact, it looks like getting bombed by the U.S. is a great way to end up with a free country.
Democracy is a culture which can only be learned by experience in a long time. You can't just put democratic institutions into a country and expect it to work without some democratic seeds in minds.
Sure you can. We did it in Japan.
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
You call Guatemala a republic? Probably a bit - er -"optimistic".
Same with Afghanistan. And when I look at Cambodge during the seventies (AFTER the bombing) - actually I wouldn't call this a republic.
If you look at the list carefully, I can't see real achievements in terms of democratic development.
No, you are wrong.
Resolution 678 says that "all necessary means" are allowed to enforce resolution 660.
Resolution 660:
Now, tell me how resolution 678 gives the US authorization to attack Iraq.
References:
678
660
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
is because US foreign policy is so inconsistent.
...
On the one hand Bush condems WMDs and says that Hussein has to go because he is in violation of UN resolutions calling for his disarmament
but on the other hand
Bush does nothing about the UN resolutions that Isreal is in violation of and they sell Isreal WMDs...
How would you feel as a citizen of this regions countries at the news today (on the day of the "war") that Bush is giving Isreal ANOTHER US$ 10 Billion to bolster up their failing economy (ie buy more military products) ???
I sometimes suspect that these things happen to deliberately provoke a reaction so that the US can 'justify' overwhelming retaliation.
When will the US taxpayers wake up and realise that their money is being spent proping up represive regimes and formenting hatred, death and terror for the sake of a few infulential industrialists who have a stake in one country in the region? And that their taxes are being used to promote the very thing they smilingly claim they're fighting?
Live by the sword, die by the sword
If anyone's still reading this thread, I finally found one...
Pick an Idlenet server (http://www.idlenet.org/servers/)
and go to channel #cnn-live
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
For God's sake, feed your mind:
k
http://www.guardian.co.uk
http://news.bbc.co.u
http://news.google.com
are just three options off the top of my head.
With regards to US media: ABC news has always seemed more open to "two-sided" reporting than CNN, in my experience.
CNN is the self-appointed propaganda mouthpiece of the US Government. That's fine and dandy, since someone's got to be, but you owe it to yourself to take everything they say with healty skeptisism.
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000