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.

Comments

Waiting

[ELCarlsson]

I'm in the US Air Force stationed Germany at work right now and we've been watching CNN non-stop all night. There is definatly a nervous tension in the air right now. But we're ready. I may not totally agree with Bush but I'll do the job I was trained to do.

Re:PsyOps

[The Tyro]

The psyops have been ongoing for a while... leaflets, Email, etc.

By contrast, this is an actual combat operation, with real ordinance being launched.

Let's hope this conflict is short and effective... hooah!

didnt stalin call churchill a warmongerer too?

[frankm_slashdot]

yeah, and in the post wwII days joseph stalin called winston churchill a war monger. churchill warned for years about hitler and what he was slyly trying to do... and knew that action had to be taken before he actually succeeded. look what happened. hitler rose to amass great power and it wasnt until japan struck us (as the history books say) that we actually realized that something had to be done.

lets look at this as hitler = sadam, churchill = bush.

now granted.. bush is no churchill... (america needs another churchill) but at least hes trying.

not a flame (as some have taken my previous posts.)

just my $0.02.

frank mattia

I was going to be a karma whore and

[t0qer]

Post a bunch of links to high tech weapons like the ABL, and the new mobile artillery we have, then I thought, is this appropriate?

Some geek in Iraq, who just doesn't want to be involved in the fighting is sitting on his pc same as me, reading slashdot (if they're a fan) and probably see's thousands of people fleeing the streets, heading for the hills. Maybe he's just some student hoping to come here someday, but now has to face the horror of war.

Iraq is no stranger to war, the middle east has had ongoing wars as long as the bible has been written. Before USA intervention, who was the country trying to break up fights between middle eastern neighbors? Was it the british? the french?

I just heard a jet fly overhead, and it scares me, but that poor shmuck, who probably isn't too different than you or me, is hearing gunshots, sonic booms, and people running and screaming for cover.

On top of all that, his leader, wouldn't hesitate to turn the world into one giant jonestown. Rumors of anthrax, smallpox are everywhere.

If anyone is out there going through this shit right now, could you be brave please? Stay where you are and let the rest of us on slashdot know how you're doing?

Good luck if you're out there Iraqi slashdoter. May whoever you worship watch over you and keep you safe.

Same goes for the US troops too.

Re:Doublespeak

[PD]

They didn't nearly bury us economically. They drove the US television manufacturers out of business and severely reduced auto companies' market share. Not to mention the fact that they sold us a lot of sushi and made the ninja mythos more important than the cowboy mythos. Other than that, they didn't do much to us.

blogging from baghdad

[circletimessquare]

i don't know how appropriate it is to slashdot this, but this guy's ability to blog is probably already somewhat sketchy due to oh, about 25 different reasons you or i can think of right now, so here it is: blogging from baghdad.

who knows? maybe we'll catch a first hand account. cross your fingers for him. please post updates if you notice a glimmer of activity.

i found it through an msnbc.com story.

he updated the site at 5:46 AM... which is 9:46 PM EST here in the US i believe. about an hour ago at the time of this post, half an hour before president bush made his 4 minute speech.

if you can't get to his blog, here is the top most few paragraphs right now... :: Thursday, March 20, 2003 ::

air raid sirens in baghdad but the only sounds you can here are the anti-aircraft machine guns. will go now. :: salam 5:46 AM [+] :: ...
It is even too late for last minute things to buy, there are too few shops open. We went again for a drive thru Baghdad's main streets. Too depressing. I have never seen Baghdad like this. Today the Ba'ath party people started taking their places in the trenches and main squares and intersections, fully armed and freshly shaven. They looked too clean and well groomed to defend anything. And the most shocking thing was the number of kids. They couldn't be older than 20, sitting in trenches sipping Miranda fizzy drinks and eating chocolate (that was at the end of our street) other places you would see them sitting bored in the sun. more cars with guns and loads of Kalashnikovs everywhere.
The worst is seeing and feeling the city come to a halt. Nothing. No buying, no selling, no people running after buses. We drove home quickly. At least inside it did not feel so sad.
The ultimatum ends at 4 in the morning her in Baghdad, and the big question is will the attack be at the same night or not. Stories about the first gulf war are being told for the 100th time.
The Syrian border is now closed to Iraqis. They are being turned back. What is worse is that people wanting to go to Deyala which is in Iraq are being told to drive back to baghdad, there was a runor going around that baghdad will be "closed" no one goes in or out [check the map go from Baghdad in a N/E direction until you reach Baqubah, this is the center of Deyala governerate] people are being turned back at the borders of Baghdad city. There is a checkpoint and they will not let you pass it. there are rumors that many people have taken the path thru Deyala to go to the Iranian border. Maybe, maybe not.
If you remember I told you a while ago that you can get 14 satellite channels sanctioned by the state, retransmitted and decoded by receivers you have to buy from a state company. This service has been suspended. Internet will follow I am sure.

Arrogence

[matman]

Wow, at ~800 comments, I doubt that anyone will read this, but, what the hell :)

I think that most people will acknowledge that the removal of Saddam (and other unstable leaders/organizations) is something to be strived for. The decision to take military action towards that goal is not what concerns me. My concern lays in the fact that the current US administration has shown contempt and arrogence when dealing with other nations and has not exhausted oportunities for a non-lethal solution to their problems. Diplomacy was attempted only as a PR mechanism - not as a genuine attempt to involve the rest of the population of the world in important decisions. In this war, the United States is choosing to sacrifice Iraqis towards the goal of liberation/stability; the noble thing to do would be to sacrifice Americans or willing allies, including some Iraqis (lets look at Iraqis killed VS Americans killed).

The United States, being a proponent of democracy, should promote democracy for the world - not just for nations. The United States is a citizen of the world; money and power shouldn't give it a stronger voice than anyone else. The actions of the United States reminds me of the recent elections in Iraq - a ballot with only one option. The rest of the world shouldn't be ignored; the rest of the world wants to be involved and respected as citizens of the world. Refusing to acknowledge the value offered by the rest of the world is insulting and alienating. Please, hear us, United States.

Re:WRONG!

[jsgf]

No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying "come on bomb us" it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.

That sounds like someone who's got the freedom to speak his mind. Wonder where lives... Hm, Baghdad perhaps?

Face it: Bush has engineered the situation to justify a war.

* * *: Evidence of crippled comms infrastructure?

[dsandler]

It seems likely (based on accounts of weapons and aircraft used) that this strike was not so much an attack of opportunity (implying very short preparation time) as a carefully-planned prologue (prepared over the last 48-72 hours, say). Further speculation along these lines supports the notion that if in fact this was a "decapitation" action, planned in advance, that it was carefully designed to cripple communications in Baghdad (rather than take out leadership).

And now I'm having a lot of trouble getting through to well-known Iraqi hosts. (viz., uruk.uruklink.net returns very, very few packets. Star, star, star, says traceroute. Spin, spin, spin, says Safari.)

Maybe there was an EMP bomb among the ord dropped in southern Baghdad, or perhaps conventional damage was done to the telecom system, and local network health is evidence?

After all, the internet "routes around damage", but that doesn't help much if endpoint hosts have been fried (or disintegrated).

Even MORE vehement positions

[fv]

> What amazes me about the political discussions on Slashdot is how many
> people hold vehement positions even though they don't follow the news

Scarier is that this Slashdot discussion is refreshingly civil compared to what I've encountered the last few days! Last Sunday I released a version of Nmap and included a very short peace plea at the top of the announcement. I received well over 50 replies. While a few people such as Ilan Meller of Israel and Amir Safayan from Iran for presenting reasoned cases for preemptive action against Iraq, most of the replies were the worst flamage I've seen in years!

For suggesting that perhaps Bush could have been a little more patient with the UN & weapons inspectors, one person said I am "obviously a terrorist". Another concluded that Nmap "is spyware to spy on the american people." Chet from Hotmail explained that we must attack because "the religion of Islam seeks to destroy the USA". Jason from CMITexas said "Stick it up your ass! .... You are another resentful European loser. I demand an answer now asshole!!!!" Another crazy Texan said "Iraq will bow to the most powerful nation in the world and you will stand by and observe. Your representatives are powerless against gods chosen nation. No country has the power or the intellect to do anything about it." Guys: I am a proud US Citizen residing in California -- please tailor your invective appropriately.

Fortunately I sent out a second mail yesterday which noted the flames above and also clarified my points. I was quite gratified that this one already has elicited more than 220 replies, with 95% being civil! Many still disagree with me, but at least they respected my right to have and express my beliefs. It restored some of my faith in humanity (or at least in Nmap users). I can appreciate alternative views too. What frustrates me are the people who believe Saddam is linked with Al Qaeda or a bigger threat to the US than North Korea only because Bush says so.

I wish I had time right now to go through the hundreds of mails and piece together some of the very best arguments on each side. But I guess /. has no dearth of comments already :). So I'll just leave you with a few links I found interesting or funny ;).

• A very relevant and insightful quote from Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials.
• One of the few web site defacements I find amusing ;)

And on a completely different (and much happier) note, I am pleased to announce just-released version 3.20 of the Nmap Security Scanner. It is the first "stable" release since last July and contains hundreds of improvements (release notes))

--Fyodor

Rebuilding? Like we rebuilt Guatemala? Iran?

[enkidu]

Rebuilding: Let's see, how about some examples of "rebuilding" we've directly involved outselves in more recently (40 years):

• Guatemala: urged by the United Fruit Company (outraged that the democratically elected socialist government was going to take their land, paying them exactly what they originally paid for it), we engineer a coup d'etat, installing a repressive dictatorship who proceed to kill and torture political opponents for the next 30 years. The U.S. continues to pour millions of dollars of support to the dictatorships. Only recently has Gautemala emerged from the long shadow of this brutal regime which was supported almost exclusively by the U.S. government.
• Chile: After a socialist government is democratically elected (and mismanages for a couple of years), we support Pinochet and his military junta in a coup d'etat. The military dictatorship, under guise of fighting communism, establish a brutal police state, torturing and "disappearing" political opponents (labeled Marxists and including American citizens) for the next two decades. The U.S., again pours millions of dollars of support into the dictatorship. You know the rest.
• Vietnam: The American backed South Vietnamese government reneges on a promise to hold national elections (fearful that Ho Chih Mihn might actually win a fair election) and civil war breaks out. The U.S. attempts to prop up the repressive South Vietnamese government with money and advisors, eventually, sending American troops into battle against the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese rebels) and the N.V.A. The U.S. is supported by many troops from Canada, ANZAC and the R.O.K. Millions of people are killed in the conflict before the U.S. withdraws its troops. You know the rest.
• Iran: After the democratically elected government takes steps to nationalize the oil industry, the CIA engineers a coup, where the Shah of Iran replaces a Constitutional Monarchy. The Shah, while stealing billions of dollars from the country, represses political freedom so fiercely that it political dissent squirts into the only haven it has, extremist religion. The formerly unpopular religious extremists gain thousands of converts, they overthrow the Shah and kidnap the American Embassy. You know the rest.
• Iraq: Pissed off at the betrayal of Iran (and unable to muster the balls to outright declare war on Iran after the specter of Vietnam), we support Saddam Hussein with materiel and money, as long as he continues his war against Iran. We turn a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons as long as he continues this war. You know the rest.
• Afghanistan:... nevermind, look it up for yourself, how we trained, armed and supported the extremists who created the core of Al Qaeda. The chickens coming home to roost indeed.

All of this is well documented and easily verifiable by reading some modern history books or googling around on the web. I would say that our record of "rebuilding" countries into democracies (especially when large corporate interests area involved) is about as shitty as it gets. The cynic in me wants to say that the only reason that Japan and Germany succeeded in becoming democracies was because they had no natural resources for post-war American companies to exploit. Hence there was no need for the U.S. to go in and "intervene". BTW, those same democracies appose our unilateral attack on Iraq.

The Former British Foreign Secretary's resignation

[Ed_Moyse]

This is largely for the benefit of non-Brits, and in particular Americans. Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Secretary resigned on Tuesday saying that he could not support the war. The speech is relevant because some (including me) initially assumed that there must be something awful that they couldn't reveal, some imminent danger from Saddam that made continuing with 12 years of containment futile, that we wouldn't be going to war for the shaky, rapidly -changing reasons given to us.

Robin Cook saw this secret intel, was not convinced, and his resignation speech is (for me) an extremely eloquent explanation of why this war is *NOT* justified, and why it has done severe and possibly irreparable damage to western relations.

The speech is here:here but I've cut and pasted it below:

This is the first time for 20 years that I have addressed the House from the back benches.

I must confess that I had forgotten how much better the view is from here.

None of those 20 years were more enjoyable or more rewarding than the past two, in which I have had the immense privilege of serving this House as Leader of the House, which were made all the more enjoyable, Mr Speaker, by the opportunity of working closely with you.

It was frequently the necessity for me as Leader of the House to talk my way out of accusations that a statement had been preceded by a press interview.

On this occasion I can say with complete confidence that no press interview has been given before this statement.

I have chosen to address the House first on why I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support.

The present Prime Minister is the most successful leader of the Labour party in my lifetime.

I hope that he will continue to be the leader of our party, and I hope that he will continue to be successful. I have no sympathy with, and I will give no comfort to, those who want to use this crisis to displace him.

I applaud the heroic efforts that the prime minister has made in trying to secure a second resolution.

I do not think that anybody could have done better than the foreign secretary in working to get support for a second resolution within the Security Council.

But the very intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed.

Now that those attempts have failed, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.

France has been at the receiving end of bucket loads of commentary in recent days.

It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution.

We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac.

The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner - not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.

To end up in such diplomatic weakness is a serious reverse.

Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible.

History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.

The US can afford to go it alone, but Britain is not a superpower.

Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules.

Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided; the Security Council is in stalemate.

Those are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired.

Karma Burn

[SubtleNuance]

American Bombing campaigns since WWII:

Korea 1950-53

China 1950-53

Guatemala 1954

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-60

Guatemala 1960

Congo 1964

Peru 1965

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Guatemala 1967-69

Libya 1986

El Salvador 1980s

Nicaragua 1980s

Panama 1989

Iraq 1991-99

Sudan 1998

Afghanistan 1998

Yugoslavia 1999

Iraq 2003-????

Does anyone have any omissions? Does anyone have a similar list that dates to the Founding of The USA? Any "non-bombing" missions?

One further note, to Non-Americans: Im Canadian, I live on the border, I can tell you without a doubt that Americans* are COMPLETELY out of control. They are myopic and ignorant. Watching CNN is about 1% of what its like in the street. These people *REALLY* believe that it is their RIGHT to do this, that they are special in the world, that opposition is manafest 'jealousy' - they BELIEVE this tripe about "terrorists hating their Freedom"... its like a bad, surreal movie.

Like Nazi Germnay before the invasion of Poland, Americans* are completely and absolutely drunk with Nationalism, Jingoism and Arrogance (its amazing) to the point that Im scared (literally) for the future of Canada and the world. This Iraq effort is the natural progression of American Empire, of 250 years of American history.

If Iraq manages a retalitory strike on American Soil, they are going to start WWIII (nuke Iraq off the planet - the citizens will be all for it).

An interesting Notice to Americans: Listen to this PLEASE and THINK ABOUT IT.

*That I work with, that my wife works with and that Ive spoken to. Im not generalizing - i live in Windsor - this is the most busy border in NorthAmerica, the two cities literally live together.