Friday, July 25, 2003
The Daily Mail, where Europe is a place which should only exist for the middle classes to go to on holiday, is on it's high horse about the photo's of Saddam's dead sons, complaining about whether it's necessary for them to be put out. Presumerably this is because the invasion of Iraq was all for the benefit of Britain's white middle-class middle-Englanders. Iraqis? Who they?
The photos are going round everywhere today, news agencies happy to have some new war pornography to share. Private Jessica Lynch returned home earlier in the week and appears to be a real example of the typical American soldier in Iraq, her equipment didn't work, her patrol were possibly caught in friendly fire and her first words on anyone finding her were "I'm an American!" (Get me out of here?) Meanwhile, Congress issues a report damning intelligence failures that led to the events of Sept. 11th. Combined with their intelligence failures about those errors that slipped into Bush's State of the Union address last January it looks like the decision has been made that if anyone is going to resign over this it isn't going to be any of Bush's cronies and they'll just point at the Director of the CIA and wait.
When you look at the amount of men and equipment used in the attack on Uday and Qusay it does seem a little bit like overkill, reminiscent of the Monty Python sketch where two hunters use bazookas to kill mosquitos, "There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito", but stung by their completely inability thus far to find any of the most evil people that these wars were launched to overthrow I suppose the US weren't taking any chances.
And on the subject of Bush's cronies, Dick Cheney has crawled out from under his stone to say war critics ignore proof, the proof being much the same as before. If the report is correct it shows that the US priority was never the humanitarian needs of the people that suffered under Bush, but instead the threat he posed to the US.
"[Baghdad] could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
Which is a bit like me admitting that I could make a nuclear weapon within a year if I acquired weapons-grade fissile material, that is rather the point. And it's extremely unlikely that Saddam would want a missile he could aim at the US, Israel would be the more likely target.
The photos are going round everywhere today, news agencies happy to have some new war pornography to share. Private Jessica Lynch returned home earlier in the week and appears to be a real example of the typical American soldier in Iraq, her equipment didn't work, her patrol were possibly caught in friendly fire and her first words on anyone finding her were "I'm an American!" (Get me out of here?) Meanwhile, Congress issues a report damning intelligence failures that led to the events of Sept. 11th. Combined with their intelligence failures about those errors that slipped into Bush's State of the Union address last January it looks like the decision has been made that if anyone is going to resign over this it isn't going to be any of Bush's cronies and they'll just point at the Director of the CIA and wait.
When you look at the amount of men and equipment used in the attack on Uday and Qusay it does seem a little bit like overkill, reminiscent of the Monty Python sketch where two hunters use bazookas to kill mosquitos, "There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded mosquito", but stung by their completely inability thus far to find any of the most evil people that these wars were launched to overthrow I suppose the US weren't taking any chances.
And on the subject of Bush's cronies, Dick Cheney has crawled out from under his stone to say war critics ignore proof, the proof being much the same as before. If the report is correct it shows that the US priority was never the humanitarian needs of the people that suffered under Bush, but instead the threat he posed to the US.
"[Baghdad] could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
Which is a bit like me admitting that I could make a nuclear weapon within a year if I acquired weapons-grade fissile material, that is rather the point. And it's extremely unlikely that Saddam would want a missile he could aim at the US, Israel would be the more likely target.
