April 24, 2003

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I Ain't Marchin' Anymore

Or maybe I am: songs of war and confusion

Check out Melissa Maerz's five most incomprehensible war protest songs.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 10:10 PM

 

North Korea: Yes Nukes!

Pyongyang says it's got the bomb

The story's burbling out over the wire now. Here are the first dispatches from CNN and the WashPost.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 05:46 PM

 

The Galloway Affair

The allegations mount; why isn't the dog barking on this side of the Atlantic?

The Telegraph has posted another story that piles more charges on the head of anti-war British MP George Galloway. This one claims that

Saddam Hussein sought to protect George Galloway by severing the Iraqi intelligence service's contacts with the Labour backbencher, according to an official document found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.

This letter, found in the files of the Iraqi foreign ministry, explained that any disclosure of Mr Galloway's "relationship" with the Mukhabarat, which operated as both secret police and intelligence service, would do great harm to his political career.

Read the rest.

I'm a little surprised that the Bush administration doesn't already have its trained seals all over this story. It has manifest value for tarring anti-wars of all persuasions in the UK and US alike. But so far of the Big 7 US news outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and USA Today--and if there's an eighth, it's the Drudge Report), only Fox is featuring the story on its web front page. Roger Ailes can smell the potential in it; will anybody else?

The American press will take its cue from the White House, as usual, so the question is really how much the Bush administration wants to make of this. And I suspect that hinges on their reading of the perils involved in attacking Galloway for private attachments to foreign governments. That sword may cut both ways with respect to the Bushmen's own ties abroad.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 05:41 PM

 

Get 'Em While They're Soft

Typically I don't use this space to sell products, but readers everywhere would be the real losers if I neglected to point this out.

That's right. You can own a matched set of Shock and Awe teddy bears. $14.95 gets you the pair, and if you care to become a dealer you can obtain 100 pairs for the low, low price of $950. I'm only sorry I failed to pass this along in time for Easter.

Thanks to Jeff St. Clair, Counterpunch

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 04:03 PM

 

The Creature Walks Among Us

Rev. Pat, the American Taliban

A nice piece about Pat Robertson's latest crusade from John Grebe, posted at Counterpunch.

Robertson's CBN television network has roots in the "Holy Land." Feeding war stories to his Jewish audience, Robertson pulled off a stunt that only a calculating pol could nail. First in Israel in '67, he called the Six Days War "so brilliant." But it was '82 when he wanted to broadcast. He recounted his adventures in southern Lebanon, in the service of profit and prophet. Robertson saw a grand design in broadcasting Christian television to the Lebanese. He claims the Lebanese shot rockets to knock out his TV transmitter repeater link to Beirut.

Robertson says his competitor's TV station was showing worldwide wrestling competition to 1.1 million viewers in Lebanon. Then, "somebody sent us a tape of female mud wrestling" and "somehow" his Christian station broadcast it to the Lebanese. "They" loved it, the Reverend said, before more rockets knocked out the mud wrestling. Religious extremism aside, Robertson fancies himself a statesman. He left out 1982 in Lebanon, when Christian Phalangist militia massacred 700-3,500 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Ariel "The Bulldozer" Sharon's Israeli troops surrounded and condoned it. Robertson wanted his Middle East TV in Arabic to "send a message of love and hope to that region."

"Why not begin educating [the Arabs]? Take their TV, and cut down their propaganda," suggests Robertson.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 03:22 PM

 

Spin the Bottle

In the past Bush Wars has issued reader advisories regarding popular wartime drinking games such as "The Noose is Tightening" and "Jubilant Iraqis."  Down a shot every time one of these phrases is uttered on TV, we warned, and you'd soon be dead.

Now a word about a popular wartime parlor game, Who's Next?

Meaning, who's next on Wolfowitz's list of nations most in need of regime change. Chances are you've played this game; I did, until I was stricken with a bad case of vertigo from trying to hold all the variables in mind at the same time. We already know that Israel is lobbying hard for an incursion to Syria. Meanwhile the Bushies are split as to whether it's Syria, Iran, or North Korea that most needs some tough love. So who's it to be?

My advice: Don't play this game. It's pure folly to try and guess what happens now; the plans on paper don't matter much anymore. The US has gotten itself into a phase in Iraq that could remain--well, let's say militarily sensitive--for a long time to come. It's very clear they didn't reckon on anything like the magnitude of Shia resistance they've encountered. The Shia uprising, in turn, has sucked Iranian evangelicals into Iraq to help in the crusade. And no matter how hard the US leans on Iran to keep them out, there are limits on what the Iranian government can do to control the movement.

So there's one source of inevitable, ongoing friction that the US did not plan on dealing with, and there will be others. The tensions between Turkey and northern Iraq's Kurds may be out of the headlines for the moment, but matters there are hardly settled. There is also the question of what Russia, France, and the rest of Europe will do to gain a seat at the table during the post-war reinvention of Iraq. Some Russian websites have asserted that Putin may be prepared to send in "peacekeeping" troops of his own, very much against the US's wishes.

Now we are at the point where the Bush administration's actions will be dictated by contingency and circumstance much more than by their own aims.

Here, by the way, is yesterday's New York Times piece about Iranian agents crossing into Iraq.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 03:18 PM

 

Saddam Mystery Solved?

BW reader makes strong case he's on Mars

Bush Wars readers have been tracking the movements of Saddam ever since the first time he was killed in the war. Last weekend I asked you to unpack another possible clue: Whose face is that in the flag behind Elvis's backside?

From About's directory of Saddam/Iraq humor.

Some guy named Ted swore that it was La Giaconda herself.

From Doug Shaw's math page!

Come on, Ted--you can't be serious. The figure behind Elvis has a coarser bone structure and bigger, deeper-set eyes than the Mona Lisa; if it's a painting we're talking about, the face looks a lot more like one of Chagall's peasants. But to be perfectly blunt, why would either of them be materializing as an apparition in the vicinity of Elvis's ass? That's just silly, Ted. 

Other vote-getters included ET, Odo, and Georgia O'Keefe (no idea why I didn't think of that myself), but reader Jose Cabanillas provided the hands-down best unified field theory of the face and the whereabouts of Saddam:

It is obviously the face on Mars. That would give credence to the claim in Men In Black that Elvis was really a space alien, and might explain where Saddam is now.

 

You can't deny the resemblance.

 

 

From CSICOP

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 11:33 AM

 

Guantanamo: A Great Place for Kids, Too

From this morning's Guardian:

Children younger than 16 are being held as "enemy combatants" in the American detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, the US military admitted yesterday, a practice human rights groups condemned as repugnant and illegal.

Three boys aged between 13 and 15 are among about 660 inmates at the controversial camp, a US military official told the Guardian, on condition of anonymity. The official would not disclose their nationalities but said they had been brought from Afghanistan this year on suspicion of terrorism.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 08:56 AM

 

Question of the Day: New Bush Web Satire?

I've posted these links before--and hell, I may post 'em again--but a good laugh is always a worthwhile thing. What follows is a sampling of Bush & Co. satire from around the web. It's all old stuff by now, but some of it will be new to more casual surfers.

And that leads to the question of the day: Seen any good Bush-gang flash animations or manipulated-sound files lately? If so, send them to me at sperry@citypages.com and I'll post the best of them. One thing, though: Please don't bother sending satiric single-image photos or cartoons; there are plenty of good ones around, but I'm looking for more ambitious stuff.

Meantime, here's a list of links I presented once before:

First an utterly scurrilous, shocking, and funny remix of Bush's State of the Union Address. If you only visit one of these links, make this the one.

Second, the more recent clip of Bush and Blair declaiming their Endless Love.

Here's the Operation: Terrortubbies cartoon.

Ashcroft sings. Bush picks his nose. No joke.

Dancing Bush.

A Blair riff in the mode of Dancing Bush.

ModernTV.com has a great pastiche on war as TV sports.  

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 08:55 AM

 

You Can't Get Good Help Anymore

Updates on Iran, the Shias, and Gorgeous George Galloway

I'll be in meetings and doing other work for much of the day today; meantime a few updates on stories mentioned here in recent days.

Bush has told Iran's Shiites to keep their noses out of the 51st state, or else.

US occupation forces are still having trouble with self-appointed Iraqi leaders--imagine the nerve of those people--who are complicating plans for a US-chosen government.

And the Brit MP who's been accused of taking money from Saddam's government says maybe his sticky-fingered associates did it, but not he.

Posted by Steve Perry at April 24, 2003 08:55 AM

 

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