:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Friday, April 04, 2003 ::

Arab Media Portray War as Killing Field pril 4, 2003

Arab Media Portray War as Killing Field
By SUSAN SACHS

AIRO, April 3 ? It was a picture of Arab grief and rage. A teenage boy glared from the rubble of a bombed building as a veiled woman wept over the body of a relative.

In fact, it was two pictures: one from the American-led war in Iraq and the other from the Palestinian territories, blended into one image this week on the Web site of the popular Saudi daily newspaper Al Watan.

The meaning would be clear to any Arab reader: what is happening in Iraq is part of one continuous brutal assault by America and its allies on defenseless Arabs, wherever they are.

As the Iraq war moved into its third week, the media in the region have increasingly fused images and enemies from this and other conflicts into a single bloodstained tableau.

The Israeli flag is superimposed on the American flag. The Crusades and the 13th-century Mongul sack of Baghdad, recalled as barbarian attacks on Arab civilization, are used as synonyms for the American-led invasion of Iraq.

Horrific vignettes of the helpless ? armless children, crushed babies, stunned mothers ? cascade into Arab living rooms from the front pages of newspapers and television screens.

For Arab leaders and Arab moderates, supported by Washington, the war has become a political crisis of street protests, militant calls for holy war and bitter public criticism of their ties to the United States.

They had hoped for a short war with a minimum of inflammatory pictures of Iraqi civilian casualties. Instead, the daily message to the public from much of the media is that American troops are callous killers, that only resistance to the United States can redeem Arab pride and that the Iraqis are fighting a pan-Arab battle for self-respect.

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:11 AM [+] ::
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If were lucky he will commit sewercide.

USATODAY.com - Strain of Iraq war showing on Bush, those who know him say
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 3:54 PM [+] ::
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Havent won the first one yet, it seems.

Los Angeles Times: Remember Afghanistan
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-afghan2apr02,1,2194886.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Doped%2Dmanual

EDITORIAL

Remember Afghanistan

April 2, 2003
Afghan President Hamid Karzai did not have much luck several weeks ago in urging the U.S. to remember Afghanistan as it entered a new war. Karzai's message should be echoing around Washington now, however, after the weekend killings of two U.S. soldiers in battles in Afghanistan and the targeted slaying of an engineer with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The United States cannot be seen as abandoning its commitment to the nation where Al Qaeda flourished and the Taliban still has support.
In February, a statement supposedly from fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar urged war against Karzai's administration. Last week, a Taliban military commander promised continued fighting until U.S. forces were expelled.
Those threats, and the lethal attacks on Westerners, should prompt U.S. military leaders to consider bringing in a few thousand more troops to prevent a creeping new war in Afghanistan, sponsored by warlords hostile to Karzai and with close ties to the Taliban.
The two servicemen were on a reconnaissance patrol when they were ambushed Saturday not far from Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold. They were the first Americans killed in action since late December, although U.S. troops still come under attack regularly.
International aid organizations had warned recently that some areas were too unsafe for them to work, jeopardizing delivery of urgently needed food and medicine. In Thursday's shooting of the Red Cross member, a citizen of El Salvador and Switzerland, Afghan Red Cross workers in the two-car convoy were spared. The killing heightened fear among the international groups. The Red Cross, which has more than 1,600 workers in Afghanistan, said it was suspending field work indefinitely.
On Sunday, the multinational peacekeeping force in Kabul weathered attacks on its headquarters and main troop base, being hit by rockets with greater accuracy and distance than previously seen. The nearly 5,000 peacekeepers from 22 nations have made the Afghan capital relatively peaceful. The force should have been dispatched to other cities more than a year ago; doing so now would increase security in areas outside Kabul and make it easier for aid groups to help the Afghans, even as U.S. forces fight Taliban remnants.
Afghanistan has progressed enormously since the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban and Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. But the vast expanses of the country need more attention so rebuilding can take place. Iraq too will need rebuilding at war's end; doing a better job in Afghanistan would offer hope to Iraqis that the United States will not forget the nation after it ends the bombing.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
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Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 6:41 AM [+] ::
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Iraq Is Planning Protracted War April 2, 2003

Iraq Is Planning Protracted War
By PATRICK E. TYLER

UWAIT, April 1 ? The Iraqi defense minister suggested tonight that Iraq was now pursuing a protracted war with stepped-up guerrilla tactics that would carry into the summer, when soaring temperatures would sap the American will to fight.

As a steady bombardment threw up plume after plume over Baghdad today and shook the capital's southern environs, senior members of Saddam Hussein's government denounced Iraq's enemies and warned an advancing American army that it would face destruction.

Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed spoke at a news conference tonight, while Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, told an Arab satellite channel earlier in the day that given the air superiority of the allies, "it's best not to fight them in the desert, but to lure them into the cities and towns and to populated areas, the areas where planes can't work with great competence."

"They will be killed," he said. "That is what is happening now."

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 9:19 PM [+] ::
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Scores of Iraqis Die As Action Moves East
2 hours, 25 minutes ago

Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writer

NEAR DIWANIYAH, Central Iraq - Battlefield action shifted eastward Tuesday across the fabled Euphrates River, with U.S. Marines killing at least 80 Iraqi soldiers and taking more than 40 prisoners in an eight-hour battle that saw Iraqis firing "from everything" ? from buildings, from dugouts, from holes, from behind buses.


:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 4:15 PM [+] ::
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"W"ar Criminal just doesnt know how to tell the truth.

Fleeing Civilians Caught in the Middle March 31, 2003

Fleeing Civilians Caught in the Middle
By MARC SANTORA and CRAIG S. SMITH

N THE BRIDGE TO BASRA, Iraq, March 30 ? They crossed the bridge wearing tattered shoes if any at all. Their arms were filled with bags packed for exodus and children too young to walk. The city behind them, Basra, presented an apocalyptic landscape, jet black smoke from burning oil fires spilling over the flat desert horizon.

They were afraid.

Afraid of Saddam Hussein's troops inside the city who they said were executing people freely; afraid of the forces outside the city whose intentions they did not yet know; and afraid of what would come as their supplies of food and water continued to dwindle.

"We have nothing," said Saeed, a young man from the nearby town of Zubayr. He was trying to salvage scrap from a car that was little more that a charred skeleton. "No water, no food, no electricity, nothing."

This morning, Iraqi soldiers positioned in a factory complex about 500 yards beyond this bridge let loose a barrage of machine-gun and mortar fire toward the civilians walking out of Basra, sending them diving for cover in ditches, ponds and the bombed-out remains of vehicles, witnesses said.

One British soldier was killed in fighting nearer to the city, and several others were wounded, according to the British Defense Ministry in London.

Eleven days into the American-led war here, the narrow, once fertile crescent of territory that gives Iraq its only outlet to the sea remains a land of insecurity and ambivalence, devoid of the euphoria that American and British soldiers hoped to encounter in southern Iraq.

Basra, a city of 1.5 million people encircled now by British troops, remains a place of uncertainty. What exactly is happening there is unclear, but the reports from those fleeing are troubling.

While older people carry dirty water from fetid puddles and wait for help to come, the predominant emotions here on the city's outskirts seem to be apprehension, confusion or outright mistrust. Barefoot children run through the dust of passing military vehicles with outstretched hands shouting the only English word they know: "Give!"

Basra lies close to Zubayr, a town captured by allied forces early in the war but still not fully secured. Saeed, the man from there, was still too scared to give his full name. He said fedayeen loyal to Mr. Hussein were killing those they saw talking to allied troops.

Saeed said he did not like the life he was handed in Iraq but was equally distrustful of the allied forces.

"When the Americans came and said they took Zubayr, they left the next day," he said. "The fedayeen came in then, and we had to flee."

While many people give accounts of fanatical Iraqi loyalists suppressing any hint of revolt, others paint a different picture.

A tall, sharp-featured man with a black mustache and close-cropped hair, his clothes gray with the dust of the road, began shouting at a man who said he had walked and hitched rides for three days to escape the terror of Baghdad.

"Why do you tell them these things?" he shouted, turning to insist to a reporter that Basra was still under the full control of Iraqi forces and that its people did not need "liberation" by allied forces. "There is plenty of food and water," he said.

The man, 35, claimed that on Saturday he had seen a British tank fire on Iraqi government trucks that were trying to deliver food in the Kuzaizi section of Basra. "I was there, I saw it with my own eyes," he said. "Rice, tomato paste, oil, it was all destroyed."

He complained that the Americans and British forces were treating people like animals. "We suffered in 1991 when they came and liberated Kuwait and then just left," he said. "Now all they are doing is destroying pictures of our president."

:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:11 AM [+] ::
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Bush's Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion
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March 30, 2003

Bush's Peril: Shifting Sand and Fickle Opinion
By R. W. APPLE Jr.

ASHINGTON, March 29 ? Though the scion of a family steeped in politics and public service, George W. Bush remains a young president who came to the White House with relatively limited knowledge of the world and its ills. Yet for two years he has ridden high in public esteem, thanks to confident leadership after Sept. 11 and a surer political touch than his detractors give him credit for.

Is his luck about to turn in the winds and sands of Iraq?

It is quite true, as administration officials say with metronomic regularity, that coalition forces have scored singular successes in the early days of the war, and it is too early to rule out a speedy conclusion. But there have been military surprises and diplomatic shortfalls.

With every passing day, it is more evident that the failure to obtain permission from Turkey for American troops to cross its territory and open a northern front constituted a diplomatic debacle. With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made two gross military misjudgments in concluding that coalition forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein.

Already, the commander of American ground forces in the war zone has conceded that the war that they are fighting is not the one they and their officers had foreseen. "Shock and awe" neither shocked nor awed.

Other potential perils lie ahead. Among senior Washington political figures of both parties, four are mentioned most, as follows:

The war could last so long that the American public loses patience, having been conditioned by predictions from American officials (to quote one of them, Vice President Dick Cheney) that Mr. Hussein's government would prove to be "a house of cards." This has not happened yet; the polls indicate that nearly three of four Americans remain unshaken in their support of Mr. Bush's war policies, despite surprises on the battlefield. The White House believes that public patience, often fickle in recent years, was fortified by 9/11.

Street-by-street fighting in the rubble of Baghdad and other cities ? an eventuality that American strategists have long sought to avoid ? now looks more likely. Mr. Hussein's aides have promised savage resistance. If it materializes, it could produce large coalition casualties, challenging American resolve, and equally large Iraqi civilian casualties, with dire consequences for the coalition's attempt to picture itself as the liberator of Iraq. A heart-rending picture of a wounded 2-year-old was widely published today after a Baghdad market was ripped apart by an explosion Iraqi officials attributed to a coalition bomb.

Saddam Hussein could escape, denying the war effort a definitive totem of victory. It sounds improbable, given the terrifying array of force available to the coalition, but other notorious figures remain at large despite intensive manhunts, including the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and the Qaeda mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction could prove futile ? a development that would make the war look like a wild-goose chase.

Of course, all that is a worst case prognosis. As the war in Afghanistan showed, hard military slogging can give way suddenly to victory. But will victory in Iraq take the shape the United States so badly needs?

Mr. Hussein seems to have decided that he can turn this war into Vietnam Redux. He appears willing to take casualties and to give away territory to gain time. Over time, his strategy implies, he thinks he can isolate the United States and build a coalition of third world nations. Already he is seen as less of an ogre and more of a defender of Islamic honor across the Arab world.

Most Republicans radiate confidence in not only military but also political and diplomatic success.

The longtime Republican pollster Robert Teeter said recently, "If we've gotten rid of Saddam and stabilized Iraq, then things will look pretty good." Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, steadfast in his argument that that is precisely what will happen, told the naysayers on Friday that "it's a bit early for history to be written."

Democrats are more dubious.

"Saddam won't win," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former United States representative at the United Nations. "Unlike L.B.J. in Vietnam, Bush won't quit. He's a different kind of Texan. He'll escalate and keep escalating. In the end his military strategy will probably succeed in destroying Saddam.

"But it may result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends. Achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it's no victory at all. Our ultimate goal, which is promoting stability in the Middle East, may well prove elusive."

Mr. Bush came to office determined, by his own account, not to swagger and not to overreach. "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us," he said in the second presidential debate against Al Gore in 2000. "If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us." That was a promise to check hubris at the door, an effort to guard against the temptation to believe that because he had such awesome power at his fingertips, he could and should use it to achieve grandiose objectives.

Like remaking a chaotic region in our own democratic image.

The very term "shock and awe" has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now, and there are other signs of overconfidence. A reserve officer was told some time ago, for example, that he would be needed as part of a provisional government in Baghdad, on March 28.

For the moment, Mr. Bush seems secure. People like him. None of his possible Democratic opponents loom as a major threat, not so far.

Still, for presidents, especially for wartime leaders, political capital can drain quickly from the White House account. After the guns fall silent, voters' eyes turn elsewhere, often to social and economic needs. It happened to Winston Churchill late in World War II, and as this president remembers better than most, it happened to his father, too.

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:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 6:09 AM [+] ::
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