Iraq: The ghost of Lebanon past

"What I saw from my perch in the Pentagon," wrote Colin Powell, a major general in 1982, in his memoirs about Washington's brief but disastrous sojourn in Lebanon 20 years ago, "was America sticking its hand into a thousand-year-old hornet's nest."

That memory undoubtedly fuels Powell's determination to fight off hardliners in the administration of President George W Bush who are equally determined to attack and occupy Iraq, even without United Nations or allied support, if necessary.

As pointed out recently by military analyst William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times, what happened in Lebanon 20 years ago may tell us a lot about the hopes, fears and delusions of US policymakers about what could happen in Iraq. Indeed, many of the people who applauded Israel's invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and deplored the Reagan administration's decision to withdraw US peacekeepers after a series of deadly terrorist attacks are now arguing for an invasion of Iraq, and for many of the same reasons.
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  thanks to Mother Jones

The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives

In their public pronouncements, President Bush and his associates have advanced three reasons for going to war with Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein: (1) to eliminate Saddam's WMD arsenals; (2) to diminish the threat of international terrorism; and (3) to promote democracy in Iraq and the surrounding areas.

These are, indeed, powerful motives for going to war. But are they genuine? Is this what is really driving the rush to war? To answer this, we need to examine each motive in turn. In doing so, moreover, it is necessary to keep in mind that the United States cannot do everything. If we commit hundreds of thousands of American troops and hundreds of billions of dollars to the conquest, occupation, and reconstruction of Iraq, we cannot easily do the same in other countries--we simply don't have the resources to invade and occupy every country that poses a hypothetical threat to the United States or is deserving of regime change. So a decision to attack Iraq means a decision to refrain from other actions that might also be important for U.S. security or the good of the world.
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  thanks to Mother Jones

France will not back U.S. attack

In unusually blunt terms aimed at pre-empting the United States, France said yesterday that it would not support any Security Council resolution for military action against Iraq in the coming weeks.
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Preventing war
Millions rally against war -- can Bush juggernaut be contained?
by Geov Parrish

Subject: Flawed Report; Iraqi Warheads Found
by William Rivers Pitt

First things first: The warheads.

Let's be clear. These were not 'chemical warheads.' In the Iraqi arsenal, a warhead is a warhead - an empty ordnance space strapped to a missile. What matters is the payload, be it explosive or chemical or nuclear. The item placed in the warhead denotes the designation. These warheads were stone-cold empty, so by definition they are not 'chemical warheads.' They are, in fact, nothing, because they were loaded with no payload. Furthermore, the word 'warhead' is in itself misleading, as these were artillery munitions.
[more]

  thanks to Progressive Review

My favorite peace march picture (from Progressive Review):