U.S., Britain regrouping, plan new tests of Iraq

The Bush administration plans a set of final, specific tests of Saddam Hussein's willingness to disarm, administration officials said yesterday.
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The Venus Trap

Henry Kissinger summed up the logic of conservatives: "If the United States marches 200,000 troops into the region and then marches them back out . . . the credibility of American power . . . will be gravely, perhaps irreparably impaired."

The painful parts of Washington history have often been about men trying harder to save face than lives.

With or without the fussy Frenchies, we're going to war. For this White House, pulling back when all our forces are poised for battle would be, to use the Bush family's least favorite word, wimpy.
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One million. And still they came
Euan Ferguson reports on a historic peace march whose massive turnout surpassed the organisers' wildest expectations and Tony Blair's worst fears

'Are there any more coming, then?'

There have been dafter questions, but not many. At 1.10 yesterday afternoon, Mike Wiseman from Newcastle upon Tyne placed his accordion carefully on the ground below Hyde Park's gates and rubbed cold hands together. Two elderly women, hand in hand in furs, passed through, still humming the dying notes from his 'Give Peace A Chance'. They were, had he known it, early, part of a tiny crowd straggling into Hyde Park before the march proper.

Half a mile away, round the corner in Piccadilly, the ground shook. An ocean, a perfect storm of people. Banners, a bobbing cherry-blossom of banners, covered every inch back to the Circus - and for miles beyond, south to the river, north to Euston.
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  thanks to plep

Craig has many links to the protests.

Robert Fisk: The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America

In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as "intelligence". We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage.
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Obliteration
WG Sebald, who died two years ago, was a wartime baby in rural Bavaria and grew up haunted by an unspoken sense of collective shame. His account of the RAF's devastating bombardment of Germany's cities - and the horrors that followed - has been translated into English for the first time

  thanks to consumptive.org

Iraq: Going in is the Easy Part

  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog

One US rule for Israel, another for Saddam
For 30 years, America has acted hypocritically in wielding its UN veto

  thanks to thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse

Mike Golby posts a long rant. Go read: The United Colors of War.