75, 30, 28, 23, 23, 22, 6, 5, 5, 3, 3.

This made me feel sick.
These are the ages of the family members executed last week by American soldiers, according to the Iraqi police report. The report reads

At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles, and killed their animals...

Here is the AP story describing this massacre. Not quite as bad as MyLai, I guess, but the attitude is the same -- American military so paranoid and out of control that pre-schoolers are the enemy.
James Wolcott describes some of the chaos going on now in Iraq, quoting from Patrick Cockburn on the Iraq death squads and Robert Dreyfuss on the civil war. Then Wolcott has a suggestion for next year's invasion anniversary:

Perhaps next year on the anniversary of this glorious mission, the US could fly a transport plane crammed with the creme de la creme of warbloggers, hawkish pundits, neoconservative thinkers, and cable news and talk radio hosts, and deposit them on the site of Saddam Hussein's fallen statue--the newly christened Krauthammer Square--and let them behold the joy and splendor they have bestowed upon a grateful Iraqi people. Who, in turn, will brave the heat, dust, and danger and leave their homes to demonstrate their gratitude to their noble guests by attempting to shoot their lying asses to pieces.
No, that probably won't make for an appropriate holiday. Scratch that idea.
To earn its rightful date on the calendar, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq should be a day of remembrance on which conscientious Americans wear mourning colors and beg the world's forgiveness, and Iraqis' forgiveness most of all.

Scary, isn't it?

What kind of dream world is George Bush living in?
During Bush's press conference today he said in response to Helen Thomas's question about why he started the Iraq war:

. . . the world said, 'Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences.' And therefore, we worked with the world. We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did. And the world is safer for it.

Emphasis mine. Could it be that this is really the way Bush remembers it? Saddam did let the inspectors back in, to inspect. It was BUSH who told them to leave, in March 2003, so that the war could start. And Saddam sent the UN a report, a thousand pages, describing what had happened to the weapons. It was BUSH who said this report wasn't good enough. And it was BUSH who ignored millions of anti-war protestors around the world, and who couldn't get a Security Council vote to support the war.
Does he really think it was Saddam who was ignoring the "message of the world"?

Why Canadian soldiers may have problems in Afghanistan

Dave at the The Galloping Beaver provides a useful summary of recent events in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which may affect the Canadian mission there:

Frustrated at the failure of Pakistan to neutralize or capture al Qaeda and the Taliban in Waziristan, Rumsfeld has resorted to a tactic which has served to do nothing if not antagonize an otherwise benign population. He's bombing them. Never one to use the right number of troops on the ground, Rumsfeld defaults to techno-war and air strikes. Results have been less than spectacular. While few al Qaeda terrorists have been killed, tribesmen, angered by US strikes and Pakistani army disregard for their safety, have started to accept Taliban rule and an alliance with al Qaeda.
NATO troops, including Canadian, British, Dutch, Danes, Estonians and an attached Australian force, in Helmand and Kandahar provinces are now under increased risk of attack. The four Provincial Reconstruction Team bases are on a direct line out of Tora Bora. Instead of being able to expand Afghan government control, which is their role, to areas outside Kabul, they will end up having to defend against the rebuilt forces of both the Taliban and al Qaeda. All thanks to Rumsfeld's interference resulting in a botched initial attack on al Qaeda and a subsequent reliance on a wholly untrustworthy ally in Pakistan.

This doesn't bode well for ultimate success in the Afghanistan campaign, does it? Maybe NATO should just ask the Americans to leave, so that the remaining troops can implement a strategy to win the peace in Afghanistan which will actually be successful.
And this is why I think the Canadian mission in Afghanistan does need frequent reassessment, to ensure that we are not being sabatoged by American bluster and blundering,

The apocalypse turkey

Two sidenotes to the Bush speech in Cleveland today.
The AP story says "The White House made no attempt to screen either the audience or the questions, said spokesman Scott McClellan." Yeah, I'll bet -- just another plastic turkey. The very first question was about whether Bush thinks that terrorism is a sign of the biblical Apocalypse -- a question which would naturally occur to just about anybody, I guess...
And check out Olbermann's take on Bush denying he promoted the Iraq war by making a connection between Saddam and 9-ll -- "Who does the President think he's effing kidding?"

Great line of the day

At Daily Kos, in Who are the Crazy Ones?, DarkSyde writes:

Daily Kos and other progressive venues have been attacked by right-wing ideologues who describe us as 'crazy or 'extremist'. Yet, the progressives base believes the rule of law applies to everyone, that science trumps wishful thinking, that our Constitution matters, and that the War in Iraq was based on lies and has been run by incompetent civilian leaders at the highest level.
Much of the conservative base makes a habit of denying scientific reality and arguing that the Constitution is meaningless when applied to George Bush or Dick Cheney. Millions of them fervently hope and sincerely believe that any day now, they and a few selected animated corpses straight from the grave will be sucked up right out of their clothes, and plopped onto heavenly ringsides seats to gleefully watch the eternal torture of every man, women, and child left behind. Tell me again, who are the crazy ones?

The future of Iraq? Here's what Juan Cole thinks

Juan Cole draws a scenario for Iraq -- oil at $500 a barrel, Iraq split in three, the Kurds at war with Turkey and Iran, the Shiites and AlQuaeda at war on several borders and with Israel, and major conflicts at the Straits of Hormuz and in Saudi Arabia.
In the Comments to his post, Cole says "It is exaggerated for effect, and intended to show the worst-case end point of current policies."

Save this and lets see what happens.
What concerns me now is this -- what could STOP this scenario from happening? The United Nations? The Arab League?

Snakes on a Plane

This is priceless.
It's why I love blogs and I love the internet.
There's a Samuel Jackson movie coming out called "Snakes on a Plane" -- which is a pretty great title for a film, isn't it? Euuuu - think about it! Here is the film trailer.
Anyway, there's nothing that someone won't blog about -- here is the Snakes on a Blog website by Hollywood writer Josh Friedman who is trying to promote some tickets to the premiere. He has t-shirts, fake trailers, posters, etc. In his other blog, he describes being asked at one point to work on the script for the movie. Apparently he didn't end up working on it, but this was his reaction to the initial offer: "...ask Agent the name of the project, what it's about, etc. He says: Snakes on a Plane. Holy shit, I'm thinking. It's a title. It's a concept. It's a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It's perfect. Perfect. It's the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles." And he is right.
Not to mention all the other "Snakes on a ...." lines we can think of. Here are some of the parody posters.

What a stupid idea

So someone in the Department of Transport thinks Canada should join in the fun and have our very own no-fly list? Yeah, its worked so well in the States -- mainly to harass peace activists.
What a dumb idea for Canada to consider. These types of things are just bureaucracy run amok, and government gone mad, while making us all afraid of each other.
The only real reason to stop someone from flying is because they are suicide bombers who might blow up the plan -- in which case, screen them out before they can get on the plane, then charge them and put them in jail. Otherwise, lets just leave everyone alone.

The first three weeks of the war with Iran

So what would happen during the first weeks of a war between the US and Iran?
Paul William Roberts provides a scenario in today's Globe & Mail. The essay is behind their subscription wall, so here's the summary of what Roberts says:
The US scenario of an attack on Iran is that their nuclear facilities would be bombed and that Iran will grimace and take its medicine.
The Iran scenario plays out differently - "the one most likely playing to thunderous applause in the corridors of theocratic poser on Qom and Tehran" -- is that Iran has already promised to retaliate and there are nearly 1000 missiles in place that could be fired at targets around the Persian Gulf such as ships, airbases, refineries and oil terminals.
Supertanker traffic through the Gulf would halt for weeks, thus stopping 25 percent of the world's oil supply.
China and Japan would be miffed, and could vent their displeasure by dumping a few billion dollars from their foreign currency reserves to offset dolar-based oil prices by forcing a week dollar even lower.
In Iraq, the resistance would increase their attacks because US planes will be busy over Iran "which may explain why US forces there have been consolidating their bases recently." Iran would have "little compunction" about sending to Iraq "killing machines much more advanced than what they currently provide...thus far they have been cautious not to send anything easily traceable...once the bombs fall, though, the gloves will come off, and we can expect to see in Iraq such weapons as .50-calibre rifles able to punch through body armour, multiple rocket launchers, and newer kinds of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles..."
Iran might blockade the Straights of Hormuz with sea mines and attack boats, and by sinking ships. "Around 40 per cent of the world's crude passes through this two-mile-wide channel, where Iranian forces are already situated, ashore at the head and on heafily fortified islands...in 1999, Iran deployed its new Russian-supplied Kilo-class submarines as part of a plan to block the Straits in times of crisis. The subs were to be used to lay mines and fire advanced torpedoes at ships attemtping to enter or leave the southern Gulf." And nearly all US military supplies to Iraq are shipped through the Persian Gulf. So if the US tried to secure the Straits by a major US amphibious landing, such an effort would need somewhere around 30,000 US troops and would involve weeks of combat.
In conclusion, Roberts speculates,

What would happen though if the invasion stalled and the straits were not reopened swiftly? The emergency oil stocks utterly vital to the economy of the industrial world would begin to run out, along with supplies to some 150,000 US troops stranded in Iraq and Kuwait. It is then not at all far-fetched to contemplate history's most ignoble and empire-quashing retret through the deserts of Iraq and Jordan and into Israel, particularly if thousands of Iranian soldiers pour into Iraq to assist in the attacks on US military camps.
These, then, are the chilling facts that have made Iranians so cocky of late...and it is hard to say why they should not feel so self-assured. It truly is a MAD scenario, son of the Cold War, thus one only a lunatic would contemplate. The risks are too grave, the benefits not at all clear.

Roberts ends the essay by noting that it should be expected that defusing the tense situation with Iran could be done through diplomacy.

This will be wearyingly obvious to most world leaders -- except those in Washington, where it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between arrogance and ignorance.

The "Stick It!" Speech

I haven't been watching much Boston Legal lately, but I'm sure glad I watched this episode and saw James Spader's "Stick It!" speech.
Why is it, though, that a television character is speaking out more for American democracy than the American media is? Oh, well, at least somebody is doing it.

NOW I get it

I couldn't understand what was going on at the Moussaous death penalty trial. But now I do.
First, you need to know that there are still some lawsuits going on between the airlines and the families of the 911 victims killed in the plane crashes.
So I guess the airlines were worried that the Moussaoui trial testimony would affect these lawsuits.
So the airline lawyers allegedly got some help from the Transportation Security Administration lawyer to try to make sure the airplane people testifying at the Moussaoui trial didn't say anything which would jeopardize the airline defense in these lawsuits -- for example, to criticize airline security screenings.
The almighty buck rules!

To kill a mockingbird

The Washington Post has a section-C front page story on Marc Emery today -- High Crimes, or A Tokin' Figure? Emery is quoted as saying:

"I'm interested in whatever would legalize pot fastest. Part of me believes that going to jail will accelerate that process. And part of me believes that if I die in jail it will accelerate it even faster.
"I'm very interested to see what happens to me, because I think I am a person of destiny. I haven't been fearful since the moment I was arrested. I just felt my time has finally come. . . .
"I've already got this grand-scale epic going in my head. I am out to destroy the DEA and defeat them. And they are out to destroy me."

Don't they know that its a sin to kill a mockingbird? This is what Canada would be doing if we let Marc Emery go to jail in the US for the rest of his life.

Great lines of the day

Helen Thomas writes in the March 27 edition of The Nation about the great wimp-out of the press during the buildup to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars:

... I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore. I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives. It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.

Emphasis mine.

Censure woes

Shorter New York Times Editorial on the Feingold censure resolution: Feingold shouldn't be promoting censure but instead should be asking for a congressional investigation of the warrentless wiretapping even though the committees which are supposed to do such an investigation have already wimped out and did we mention that all the Democrats look cowardly too?

Accident update

Here's another accident update -- they found another broken bone, this time in the knee area -- a "non-displaced facture of the lateral tibial plateau". No wonder my knee wasn't feeling much better. I'm not sure yet what they are going to do about it -- I see the orthopod on Tuesday. Its already been five weeks since the accident, so I hope they don't want to cast it NOW!
I've gone back to work part-time but I guess its just as well I'm not trying to stagger around Britain -- I wouldn't have got very far, I don't think. But damnit, today was the day we were supposed to be watching the
St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin -- our hotel was right on the main parade route. So, my brother is there, hoisting a pint in our honour.
And even though I know how difficult it is to see fractures on x-rays at times, I feel like phoning up the City Hospital Emergency Department and asking them WTF? Should I be taking bets on a pool of how many fracures they missed? Its now up to five -- four breaks in the ribs, one in the tibia ...