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{ warblog } 30.03.03 national |
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news report
 Sunday March 30, 2003 16:50 by warblogger
 Feel free to add your own links and representative portions of news stories you find on the net.... Back Off, Syria and Iran! ''Why is all this a surprise again? I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn't they, like, read about it? "The U.S. was planning on walking in here like it was easy and all," a young marine named Jimmy Paiz told ABC News this weekend with a rueful smile. "It's not that easy to conquer a country, is it?" '' .... You can't pound the drums for war by saying Saddam is Hitler and then act surprised when he proves ruthless on the battlefield.''
NATO's New Front ''And while NATO is changing, it may just go all the way. NATO's chief, Lord Robertson, is retiring this year (a real loss). A favorite to succeed him is the Norwegian defense minister, Kristin Krohn Devold, a woman. So get ready for this CNN headline: "The NATO alliance, for the first time led by a woman and including a Russian platoon, took over peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan today, as a prelude to taking over peacekeeping in Iraq. France refused to participate." '' - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq "[Rumsfeld] thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. "This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn't want a heavy footprint on the ground."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush. Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called "A Christian's Duty," a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush. "I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God's peace be your guide," says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces. The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches. Sunday's is "Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding". Monday's reads "Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics". - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Evangelicals Plan to Minister to Iraqis' Needs—Physical and Spiritual ''Two leading evangelical Christian relief and missionary organizations say they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of its large Muslim population. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, and the Rev. Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse said Tuesday that workers are near the Iraq border in Jordan and are ready to go in as soon as it is safe. The relief and missionary work is certain to be closely watched because both Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention have been at the heart of controversial evangelical denunciations of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. .... Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, has been less diplomatic about Islam than his father has been. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" during an interview on NBC, the television network. In his book published last year, The Name, Graham wrote that "The God of Islam is not the God of the Christian faith." He went on to say that "the two are different as lightness and darkness." On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis last year, the Rev. Jerry Vines, a former denomination president, told several thousand delegates that Islam's Allah is not the same as the God worshipped by Christians. "And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist," Vines said.'' - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Chretien insists Canada is not anti-American Prime Minister Jean Chretien insisted Wednesday that his government is not anti-American even as some Liberal backbenchers called on him to censure or expel U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci for publicly denouncing Canada's refusal to participate in the war on Iraq. Mr. Chretien's assurances that Canada-U.S relations have not been damaged by the Iraq crisis were further undermined by American officials, who disclosed that the White House authorized Mr. Cellucci's unusually blunt remarks. Mr. Cellucci's expression of "disappointment" in Canada and his hints of economic retaliation were deemed warranted after Mr. Chretien last week failed to rebuke Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal for levelling personal criticisms at President George W. Bush. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied. .... Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel. Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons. Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks and armoured vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so they bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Now They Cite the Toll of Sanctions Tony Blair was the one who uttered it. To illustrate the brutality of Saddam's regime, Blair said, "Over the past five years, 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died of malnutrition and disease, preventively, but died because of the nature of the regime under which they are living." .... For years, human rights activists urged a lifting of these economic sanctions because of the terrible toll they exacted, a toll that only now Tony Blair seems concerned about, only now when he can use that toll as an excuse for war.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Amnesty: Iraq war cover for human rights abuses LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Human rights group Amnesty International warned on Sunday that war in Iraq was giving cover to other countries to trample on human rights. Amnesty said that since the U.S.-British onslaught was launched against Iraq 10 days ago, there had been a human rights backlash in 14 countries. It listed Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Norway, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Turkey, the United States and Yemen as transgressors. "Governments appear to be using the world's focus on the theater of war to violate human rights shielded from public scrutiny," the group said in a report. Since March 20, millions of people had taken to the streets in protest and faced excessive force from police in seven countries, it said. Deaths, beatings and torture had been reported. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - U.S. vows to prosecute Iraqi war crimes Officials said they have begun cataloging reports of the illegal actions and have asked U.S. military forces to include in their mission the preservation of evidence that could help prosecute the war crimes after the hostilities have ended. The officials said the United States intends to conduct the prosecutions for crimes against U.S. combatants, rather than turn the defendants over to an international court or tribunal. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Anti-War MP3s and Stencils http://www.protest-records.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - FBI agents interview Iraqis in USA More than 5,000 interviews [with Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans living in the USA] have occurred across the country and the FBI has said it plans to talk to about 11,000 Iraqis. News reports indicate about 30 people have been detained on immigration charges, although Mathews said no arrests were made in Oregon. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Soldiers build secret camp to intern thousands of Iraqi captives British and American soldiers are building an internment camp at a secret location inside Iraq to hold thousands of prisoners of war from Saddam Hussein's forces. So far they have not disclosed the location, even to the Red Cross which has a right under international law to visit prisoners. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CEO Bush Takes Over Management of Message He has been called a CEO in wartime, a chief executive content to delegate to his generals and to cheerlead from the Oval Office. But President Bush has played a somewhat different role in the war with Iraq, and like the planners at the Pentagon, he has been forced to adapt to the realities of the battlefield. .... People close to Bush said his aides initially emphasized a hands-off approach because they wanted to insulate him from bad news and because they did not want him to appear obsessed with or emotional about the war. These aides quickly realized they had overdone it, potentially making Bush look out of touch. But his advisers have concluded that scripted remarks, rather than off-the-cuff comments, may be required in assuring that the message of the day gets delivered forcefully. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
.... Those arrested included Nobel laureates Mairead Corrigan Maguire of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement and Jody Williams of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, as well as Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Detroit archdiocese; Bishop C. Joseph Sprague of the United Methodist Church in the Chicago area; Dave Robinson, national coordinator of Pax Christi USA, the Catholic peace movement, and Ellsberg. |
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