Garner: Americans Should Beat Chests with Pride
We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: 'Damn, we're Americans!'," Jay Garner told reporters, saying that Iraq's oil fields and other infrastructure survived the war almost intact.

UPI: Four anti-war states to create EU army
BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 29 (UPI) -- Four European states that opposed the war on Iraq agreed Tuesday to pool their armed forces and set up a military headquarters independent of NATO in a move dismissed as unnecessary by Britain.

Meeting in Brussels, the leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg signed up to a raft of measures that could lead to a fully fledged European Security and Defense Union by the end of next year.

The new alliance would commit members to create a rapid-reaction force capable of preventing conflicts and managing crises anywhere in the world, to set up a European security and defense college and arms procurement agency, and to come to each other's aid in the event of an attack by another country

New York Peace-Budget March/Rally

I had just returned from what I thought would be a very small event. It felt throughout the week
that I was the only one putting stickers and giving out leaflets. The crowd in Washington Square
started to look impressive. I managed to give an interview to NY1: "My kid will not go to the pool
this summer - the city pool are closing because we have to fix the rest of the world. I am not
with anyone (because the previous interviewees said they were with the Green party). I am just
a mother angry as hell because our lives are going down the drain in the name of war" (My kid
was in the stroller, holding a big sign).
The Broadway march was good - I can only tell we were stretching over 2 blocks - so,
thousands. A guy in a bush mask with an Earth beach ball was doing a Great Dictator impression.
We were supposed to get to City Hall but we were stopped and penned in Federal Plaza - many
blocks away from City Hall. I used the stroller benefit to get through the barriers, closer to City
Hall and then I saw it: MILLIONS! An ocean of green and blue T-shirts - a huge union rally. The
United for peace people that marched with me have no idea of this. Herding people into pens
serves the goal of obscuring our numbers...I was as angry as I was energized by the sight. So,
spread the word: it was a HUGE rally!

SF Gate:Republicans say Democrats' support of gay rights could backfire
LAST EDITED ON Apr-25-03 AT 11:12 AM (ET)

"... many Republicans say strong support for gays will backfire in the general election and help President Bush win more conservative and southern states.

Richard White, a Republican state senator from Mississippi, said any candidate talking about gay rights might as well not even visit his state. "The people down here, they are not going to put up with that kind of stuff," White said. "We're not prepared for all that in Mississippi or anywhere else in the southern states."

Nya nya nya!

- US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) said that French President Jacques Chirac won't soon be welcome to his Texas ranch even if bilateral tensions over Iraq (news - web sites) eventually melt away.

"I doubt he'll be coming to the ranch any time soon," Bush told NBC television, a reference to his beloved "Prairie Chapel" property, a coveted invitation extended only to a handful of world leaders.

Don't Go Up Against U.S., UK's Straw Tells France
OH SO NOW THE WAR IS FRANCE'S FAULT?!!!!!!!!!!

LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned France on Thursday against
trying to rival the United States and said he understood anger in Washington at French
opposition to the war in Iraq (news - web sites).


Straw repeated his belief that war could have been avoided if a pre-war consensus had been
reached at the United Nations (news - web sites).
"I do believe that if we had been able to come together... in January and February and had a really
tough ultimatum to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), if we'd got France and Russia on board
then I think the war may well have been avoided," he said.

Catitude on DU - How the Maher show may go:Bill: Okay, welcome to "Politically Incorrect." Now... the administration seems to be making aggressive overtures towards Syria. How about that? Ann?

Ann: They're a bunch of filthy fucking arab scum- just like the fucking Iraqis- sick bastards. We should kill as many as possible and force the remainder to become Christians. That's what I say.

Dennis: Hey- saying Assad doesn't need an American invasion is like saying a Hepatic Encephalopathy patient doesn't need psychometric testing! I mean really, this guy makes Darth Vader look like Miss Piggy!


Ann: I don't understand that at all but I love your sarcastic tone.

Dennis: Hey babe- you're not bad yourself! Saying Ann Coulter is skinny is like saying the East-West Schism of 1054 A.D. was a little rude!

And so on... and so on. Pbbt.

Media Whores Online
Whore Watch
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thousands March for Peace, Autonomy in Iraq
Why Don't Iraqis Trust their 'Liberators'?



Eric Alterman on Bush's Homeland Neglect
'Librul Media' Complicit in Regime's Terror Shell Game
 

Bush Goes AWOL
Eric Alterman


But as with Vietnam, "W" is AWOL and Cheney has "other priorities." They have not merely ignored "homeland" protection, they have sabotaged it. Shocking, yes. But don't take my word for it. A January Brookings Institution report explains, "President Bush vetoed several specific (and relatively cost-effective) measures proposed by Congress that would have addressed critical national vulnerabilities. As a result, the country remains more vulnerable than it should be today." A Council on Foreign Relations task force chaired by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman concurs: "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on U.S. soil," it warns...

WMD? What WMD?

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military's search for chemical and biological weapons is unlikely to succeed until Iraqis lead American forces to them, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

"I don't think we'll discover anything, myself," Rumsfeld said at a town hall-style meeting with Pentagon employees.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Former US President Bill
Clinton (news - web sites) blasted US foreign
policy adopted in the wake of the September
11 attacks, arguing the United States cannot kill,
jail or occupy all of its adversaries.

"Our paradigm now
seems to be: something terrible
happened to us on
September 11, and that gives us the
right to
interpret all future events in a way that everyone
else in the world
must agree with us," said Clinton, who
spoke at a
seminar of governance organized by
Conference Board


"And if they
don't, they can go straight to hell."

Saving Pvt. Lynch--a new version (and not pretty)"
 

        


Hell, this doesn't sound like movie of the week material--REWRITE!!!
"THE rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, which inspired America during one of the most difficult
periods of the war, was not the heroic Hollywood story told by the US military, but a staged
operation that terrified patients and victimised the doctors who had struggled to save her life,
according to Iraqi witnesses.
Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and
was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city.
Four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralysed and on an intravenous drip, were
bound and handcuffed as American soldiers rampaged through the wards, searching for departed
members of the Saddam regime.
An ambulance driver who tried to carry Private Lynch to the American forces close to the city
was shot at by US troops the day before their mission. Far from winning hearts and minds, the
US operation has angered and hurt doctors who risked their lives treating both Private Lynch and
Iraqi victims of the war. “What the Americans say is like the story of Sinbad the Sailor — it’s a
myth,” said Harith al-Houssona, who saved Private Lynch’s life after she was brought to the
hospital by Iraqi military intelligence."
More at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-648517,00.html

  

"US TROOPS KILL PROTESTERS IN MOSUL"


via Buzzflash.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-15apr2003-71.htm
At least 10 people have been killed and scores wounded in shooting in Mosul in northern Iraq, a
hospital doctor said, as other witnesses alleged United States troops had opened fire.
"There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead" following the shooting near the local
government offices in a central square, Dr Ayad al-Ramadhani said at the emergency
department of the city hospital.
Three witnesses questioned by AFP and casualties who spoke to hospital staff said US troops
had fired on the crowd which was becoming increasingly hostile towards the city's new governor,
Mashaan al-Juburi, as he was making a pro-US speech.

--

Americans defend two untouchable ministries from the hordes of looters
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
14 April 2003

Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans - and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the US intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological Museum and in the museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting three hospitals.

The Americans have, though, put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries that remain untouched - and untouchable - because tanks and armoured personnel carriers and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions. And which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the Ministry of Interior, of course - with its vast wealth of intelligence information on Iraq - and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and files of Iraq's most valuable asset - its oilfields and, even more important, its massive reserves - are safe and sound, sealed off from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as Washington almost certainly intends, with American oil companies.

DU post:Additional info on the museum looting - deliberate destruction
Heard the following on German radio ("NDR Info" - sorry, no link to the report):

An interview with a museum official:
When the looters arrived in the street, the museum staff sent somebody to the US forces to ask for urgent assistance. 5 US soldiers arrived and the looters stopped. But after a short while, all 5 soldiers left the place again and didn't return. The looting continued.
People didn't simply steal everything, they also destroyed what they couldn't take away or what didn't look valuable to them. Large reliefs were pulverized, and worst of all, the complete documentation was destroyed as well: photos, maps, files, transcripts of clay tablets, the complete archives were burnt and all computer harddisks stolen or destroyed. There is absolutely nothing left of the heritage. All we have now are pictures in books. What hasn't been published yet has gone forever.
The safe where they had kept the most valuable material hadn't been cut open, but had been opened with a key. Someone from the museum staff or someone else with the knowledge obviously had removed the content before the "official" looting started.
This means that if things from the safe begin to turn up on the market, it might be possible to track them back to the real perpetrators...

Btw., the staff also said that the most important pieces from other museums in Iraq had been taken to the National Museum in Baghdad in order to protect them in the vault. Their vault had survived all the former wars and lootings. But not this time. So the best pieces from all of Iraq have gone as well.

And finally, after the looting of the museum, the National Library of Iraq was burned and all its content destroyed yesterday. The US forces didn't protect the library either, though they had promised to do so after the catastrophe at the museum!

But they are still holding out heroically at the oil ministry.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/breaking_news/5620358.htm

Baghdad Seethes With Anger Toward U.S.

"The army of America is like Genghis Khan," Fouad Abdullah Ahmed, 49,
snapped
as U.S. tanks rumbled by without stopping. "America is not good and
Saddam
is not good. My people refused Saddam Hussein, and they will refuse
the Americans."

(Eye-Witness) "US forces told people to commence looting"
During the morning everybody that tried to cross the streets had
been fired upon. But during this strange silence people eventually
became curious. After three-quarters of an hour the first Baghdad
citizens dared to come forward. At that moment the US solders shot
two Sudanese guards, who were posted in front of a local
administrative building, on the other side of the Haifa Avenue.

- I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered. Then
they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic
translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the
building. Rumors spread rapidly and the house was cleaned out.
Moments later tanks broke down the doors to the Justice Department,
residing in the neighboring building, and looting was carried on to

Bush: Syria has chemical weapons
13-04-2003, 20:10

"US President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Syria has chemical weapons, and warned Damascus that it "must cooperate" with Washington as it continues its effort to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

"I give a propaganda reason for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The
victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging war it
is not right that matters, but victory."

Adolph Hitler

Pataki: Melt Down Saddam Statue for Ground Zero
"New York Gov. George Pataki told a support-the-troops rally at Manhattan's Ground Zero Thursday that the massive statue of Saddam Hussein that was toppled by liberated Iraqis in Baghdad the day before should be melted down and included in the steel used to rebuild the World Trade Center."

Restoring chaos
The statue went down on Wednesday, and the headlines start to read
'disorder,'" Bush said. "Well, no kidding!" He blamed the mayhem on conditions created by
Saddam.
"It'll take a while to restore the chaos, but we will," Bush said

NYT:Abdul Malik, a 36-year-old antiques merchant who is cousin of the dead brothers, drew murmurs of assent from the crowd when he said that America had come to Iraq not to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, but for oil.

"The cause is not Saddam, the cause is oil," he said. To press home his point, he contended that American troops who have taken control of much of the city have made no attempt to protect any government building from looters except the Ministry of Oil. "They won't let the looters go anywhere near it."

Posted on DU: "We fought for your fukking freedom, now back off!"
Those were the words of a US Marine confronted by a crowd of Iraqis who were chanting "Go home!"

Just saw it on CNN. Why aren't those Iraqi bastards happy to be liberated by the mighty

Looters Swarm Into New Areas as Key Bridges Are Opened; Iraqis Disappointed With U.S. Response
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAMJ9GIFED.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces reopened two strategic bridges Saturday in the heart of Baghdad and crowds of looters surged across - taking advantage of access to new territory that had not already been plundered. U.S. forces did nothing to stop them.

Iraqis expressed increasing frustration over the lawlessness that has gripped the capital since the arrival of U.S. troops and the fall of Saddam Hussein. Looters ransacked government buildings, hospitals and schools, and trashed the National Museum, taking or destroying many of the country's archaeological treasures. snip

"The Americans have disappointed us all. This country will never be operational for at least a year or two," said Abbas Reta, 51, an engineer and father of five.

"I've seen nothing new since Saddam's fall," he said. "All that we have seen is looting. The Americans are responsible. One round from their guns and all the looting would have stopped."

US troops' anguish: Killing outmatched foes
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0411/p03s01-woiq.html

Coalition forces wonder why more Iraqis didn't surrender to survive. Trauma may linger as
soldiers return.



Yet even as US commanders cite dramatic success in the three-week-old war, many look upon
the wholesale destruction of Iraq's military and the killing of thousands of Iraqi fighters with a
sense of regret. They voice frustration at the number of Iraqis who stood their ground against
overwhelming US firepower, wasting their lives and equipment rather than capitulating as
expected.

Ah, war!


"They stand, they fight, sometimes they run when we engage them. But often they run into our machine guns
  and we shoot them down like the morons they are. They appear willing to die.  We are trying our best to
  help them out in that endeavour. Any rational military command would have surrendered by now."
     -- Brigadier-General John Kelly

Harkin: Saddam was paper tiger

"What we were told and what you saw in the press last fall and earlier this year is that he had a massive war machine," said Harkin, the most outspoken critic of the war in Iraq among members of the Iowa congressional delegation.
"It looks now like this was just a Third World country - there were people fighting with tennis shoes on, on the Iraqi side," Harkin told reporters. "I don't know what else we're going to find, but they didn't fly even one airplane in the air. They had almost nothing.
"So if they were that weak, where we could just roll over them like that, tell me again how he was such a big threat in the past?" the senator added

New Chapter in the W vs carpets saga
There was a bit of unfinished business left over in Baghdad from the 1991 Gulf War. The U.S. Army has taken care of it.

At the Al-Rashid Hotel, President Bush the elder - father of the current American chief executive who ordered this year's invasion of Iraq - is a doormat no more.

U.S. soldiers visited the battered Al-Rashid on Thursday night wielding hammers and chisels, and dug out the intricate tile mosaic of the former president that was used for years as a state-sponsored insult.

In its place, they laid a portrait of Saddam Hussein.

"Everybody walked over it and wiped their feet on it," Lt. Col. Rick Schwartz, the battalion commander said. He left the Saddam portrait behind, on the ground for future

"No plan to invade Iraq on my Desk"


"The United States does not have some plan or some list with nations on the list that we're going to go attack one after another," Powell told Pakistan Television. The State Department released a transcript of the interview.

"Former Iraqi general Nizar Al-Khazaraji and Islamic scholar Majid Al-Khoi’i have both been executed by Iraqi residents of Najaf, according to five independent Iraqi witnesses to the incident who spoke to Arab News. The two potential Iraqi leaders of the city, who were supported by the US, “were chopped into pieces with swords and knives inside the Ali Mosque this morning by Iraqis who accused them of being American stooges,” one of the witnesses said. Another said that a US Special Forces Soldier, who had been acting as their body guard, was also killed in the incident. "

9.11 Pentagon flag on Saddam Statue:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2934651.stm
Baghdad :: Paul Wood :: 0521GMT
We've just learned from the US
marines that the US flag that was put
on the face of Saddam yesterday - it
was replaced by an Iraqi flag when the
people shouted for that - was the flag
that was flying over the Pentagon on
September 11.
For a lot of the American marines, they
think this war is all about defeating
terrorism, they will tell you that over
and over again. There is also a
connection in the minds of the
American public between the regime of
Saddam and what happened on
September 11, and apparently the flag
that was draped over this face was
flying over the pentagon when the
plane crashed into it.

The Toppling od the statue Set-up - BCC Fiorum - Samela:
I watched the footage carefully and dispassionately today, fully willing to believe many Iraqis would be happy to end the reign of Saddam.
But I saw no such evidence. As Brian remarked, the crowd was small--despite the (unsuccessful) attempt of the news cameras to remain in tight shot to suggest density. The supervision of the U.S. troops and use of our equipment was frightening. I missed the American flag part, but am mortified. The "dancers" were playing it for the cameras as if they had fresh twenty-dollar bills in their pockets, just distributed for the occasion.
I can contrast it only to the televised spectacle of the crowds in Belgrade storming the Parliament building to bring down Milosevic's regime, which was absent any evident outside instigation and was passionately heartfelt. This smacked of small-time hired hands.
Every credible report I have heard has described the average Iraqi's response as highly skeptical of the Americans and staunchly advocating they leave the country in Iraqi hands...and then leave.

US forces deliberately attacked convoy: Russian ambassador
The Russian ambassador to Iraq on Monday accused US forces of deliberately shooting at his convoy as it was fleeing Iraq for Syria.

The RIA Novosti news agency report, filed from the Iraqi-Syrian border, said ambassador Vladimir Titorenko was lightly injured, with his arm hurt in the attack.

"The Russian ambassador to Iraq Vladimir Titorenko thinks that the column of Russian cars, filled with diplomats and journalists, was deliberately attacked by the Americans," RIA Novosti reported.

Russian news reports had earlier said that the convoy was carrying Russian flags as it was leaving Baghdad.

Babs' Beautiful Mind

The following is from an immensely interesting transcript of Barbara Bush on an ABC-TV morning show. She was asked if she and her husband, the former president, watch television...

"[W]hy should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Carlyle protest - VERBOTTEN!
Legal protest on the sidewalk across Carlyle - surrounded by police - prevented from leaving and ARRESTED ALL!
The organizer reported on Democracy Now: Never in 20 years of protesting did I see that - we are now officially in a police state.

ISLAMABAD, April 5 (News Agencies) - A Pakistani newspaper Saturday, April 5, published what
could be described as the Americans’ way of “liberating the Iraqis”.
Under the title “Top Ten”, the Friday Times, published the 10 ways - supposedly adopted by
Washington - to “win the hearts of the Iraqi people”, written by a female writer referred to as
“Ayeda”.
The ways were put down from 10 to 1. 
10. Bomb them… 
9. Bomb them and tell them that you didn’t do it… 
8. Bomb them and tell them that they did it to themselves… 
7. Bomb them and tell them that you are really sorry… 
6. Bomb them and blame it on their leaders…
5. Bomb them and then throw food at them… 
4. Starve them… 
3. Cut off their water… 
2. Bomb them and then go on their radio and tell them you have come to ‘liberate’ them… 
1. Bomb them and then call them terrorists

AP Defines "Patriotism":

Patriotic ''Rally for America'' held in Florida; anti-war protests in several cities

By Mitch Stacy, Associated Press, 4/6/2003 01:31
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) Hailing U.S. troops in Iraq as ''the next greatest generation,'' Gov. Jeb Bush led more than 15,000 people in a patriotic rally, while protesters in Harlem, Chicago and elsewhere assailed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Brittain admits there may be no WMD in Iraq



http://english.aljazeera.net/topics/article.asp?cu_no=1&item_no=1858&version=1&template_id=263&parent_id=258
Well into the war that was supposed to rid Iraq of its alleged stockpile of weapons of mass
destruction, a senior British official admitted on Saturday that no chemical, biological or nuclear
weapons of mass destruction may after all be found.
Making the startling confession in a radio interview, British Home Secretary, David Blunkett,
added in the same breath that he would in any case rejoice the “fall” of Saddam Hussein and his
regime —regardless of whether any weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq or not.
The British home secretary’s confession reconfirms the worst fears of the opponents of the
war that the bogey of “weapons of mass destruction” was only a ruse for the US and the British
to go to war against Iraq.

Reuters:
The religious overtones in President Bush's speeches increasingly grate on many ears in Europe, where leaders invoking God in times of war are widely suspect of misusing faith for political purposes.

No less than the German president, French prime minister and Belgian foreign minister have joined religious leaders in expressing concern about Bush's beliefs and the place of religion in U.S. politics.

Media commentators, especially in northern European countries with Protestant heritages, have branded Bush's evangelical views as Christian fundamentalism, with some even comparing them to the Islamic fundamentalism of Osama bin Laden. ---

Water? Get baptised!

"CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.
It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.
''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.
And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/5554317.htm

The dueling reports:
LANDSTUHL, Germany (CNN) -- Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued this week from an Iraqi hospital where she was being held prisoner, was not shot or stabbed as previously reported, her doctors said Friday.
and
Family member Dan Little last evening told reporters and photographers gathered at the end of the family's dirt and gravel driveway in this tiny town that the Lynches "finally" heard from their daughter's doctor yesterday. The doctor told them that, in addition to a back injury, two broken legs and a broken right arm that had previously been diagnosed, Lynch had been shot with a small-caliber weapon, hit once each in her right arm and left leg.

On the reappearing bullet wounds - DU's Journeyman:

I read the news today oh boy . . .

Two thousands-caliber holes in Jessi, PFC
And though the holes were rather small
They couldn't count them all
Now they're clueless on the holes it takes to make Jessi hero.
I love to twist the truth.

Polls: Who cares about Saddam, WMD?

U.S. Says Finding Saddam Not Needed for Victory
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it would consider military action in Iraq (news - web sites) a success even if U.S. forces failed to find President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), whose appearance on Iraqi television could prove he survived a U.S. bombing raid on the first night of the war.
and:


The poll also found that a growing majority of the public believes it is unnecessary for U.S. and allied forces to discover chemical or biological weapons in order to justify the decision to go to war.

More than two-thirds of those interviewed-69 percent-now say that the war was justified even if the United States fails to turn up biological or chemical weapons, up from 53 percent in a survey taken the day after the war started.

KNOWING THEIR ENEMY
Big Dog Recommends David Brock's "Blinded by the Right"
Daschle, Dems Studying Cult of Soulless Manual


The likes of James Carville, Sidney Blumenthal, Paul Begala and Pat Schroeder clapped and cheered. "I really admire David Brock," said Daschle, who befriended Brock months ago after taking him to lunch. "His book was given to me by President Clinton. He gave me his own copy -- which was underlined, circled, and dog-eared -- and told me 'You have to read this book!' And it was the best advice he's given me in at least a couple of years. We thank David for his contribution and hope to see more from him."

Heatlighting story: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced his unconditional surrender today, arriving in Kuwait City to face war crimes charges.
Saddam announces unconditional surrender; Bush discounts move as another 'delaying tactic'

Kuwait City -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced Monday that he was surrendering unconditionally to coalition forces. A convoy from Baghdad arrived at Kuwait City carrying the Iraqi dictator and his two sons.

US President George Bush immediately discounted the events as a 'delaying tactic designed to put off the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein and the removal of his two sons from Iraq.'

Coalition forces continued the air and ground campaign against Basra, several tactical bridges, as well as the sweeping desert to the south of Baghdad.

"Wherever they go, they cannot hide," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We will bomb Baghdad into submission and thereby bring peace and prosperity to the rest of the world."

Halliburton Favors
WASHINGTON, DC—With last week's announcement that it will award Halliburton a lucrative contract to put out Iraqi oil-well fires after the war, the U.S. government has officially stopped trying to hide its favoritism toward the Houston-based company. "When we first started cutting Halliburton sweetheart deals, we'd worry about how it would look, with Dick Cheney being their former CEO and all," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "Somewhere along the line, though, we just kind of said, 'Ah, fuck it.'" Fleischer added that Halliburton has something "real juicy" coming its way when the U.S. invades Iran in July 2004.

Propaganda in the supermarket (disguised as music)

As I was doing my shpping this morning some insipid crooner came on the PA system interlaced with bush quotes, soldier's quotes and an all together sickly "war is great" - or a paid announcement for "Chimp as God" motif. I dropped my bread and milk and ran for the exit, not before telling the manager: "I am going to Gristides - you'll have to watch what you pipe in the store or your customers will leave" One cashier nodded and smiled. before I left, I heard: "This is 106FM - a song for the times: "A Soldier's heart"

Lies, lies and more lies:

"The father of rescued prisoner of war Jessica Lynch today said she suffered no gunshot or knife wounds at the hands of her Iraqi assailants, contrary to reports quoting a US official. In a televised press conference from his home in Palestine, West Virginia, Gregory Lynch said he and his wife had spoken to her."

"The Washington Post, citing a US official, reported that Jessica Lynch had "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting (on) March 23".

Al Gore: I wouldn't have never started this war

Bulgarian News.com: I would never start this war if I were President, Former US Vice President Al Gore said via videoconferencing at the Economist Conference "Seventh Roundtable with the Government of Greece", which takes place April 2-4 in Athens.

Al Gore, whose participation in the conference has been prevented by secret services ban on travelling, underlined that he would have tried to deal with Saddam Hussein with all other means available.

US prepared for very high casualties: command official
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/01/1048962762234.html

The United States is prepared to pay a "very high price" in terms of casualties to
capture Baghdad and oust President Saddam Hussein, a US central command
official has said.

"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything
other than ensure that this regime goes away," the official said, adding that US
casualties in the war had been "fairly" light.

"If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of
casualties," said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named.

U.S. strikes hit Baghdad maternity hospital/B]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. aircraft have hit a Red Crescent maternity hospital in
Baghdad, killing several people and wounding at least 25, hospital sources and a
Reuters witness say.