'13 dead' in huge blast at UN HQ

Made in America

What we have here is a classic demonstration of asymmetrical warfare -- except in this case, the assymetry is all in favor of the resistance, and all against the coalition. Making a country an ungovernable hell is clearly a lot easier than turning into a stable, functioning democracy.

It's starting to look like even the American military juggernaut may not be able to cope with the problem that has plagued colonial "pacification" programs since the end of World War II. Access to even basic modern weaponary -- AK-47s, RPGs, high explosives -- has become a powerful "force multiplier" for the natives, proportionately more powerful, perhaps, than the high-tech revolution has been for Western militaries.
[more]

Inside the resistance
The United States likes to think that all it confronts in Iraq are a few die-hard Saddamists. But Paul McGeough meets a new guerilla movement with growing popular support.

There's a knock on the door. Standing in the first-floor corridor of the Al Safeer Hotel are two men - Ahmed, a weapons dealer and group commander in the Iraqi resistance, and Haqi, one of his foot soldiers. They enter and take a seat on the sofa, edgy but full of bravado after what they claim was a successful strike against a US convoy in a rural area north of Baghdad.

They had agreed, after weeks of negotiation through a go-between, to talk about the resistance. Now they are here to recount the detail of their most recent offensive against the US occupation forces in Iraq.

Ahmed begins: "Yesterday we were told about the new movement of convoys, so we used a special car to take our RPG [rocket-propelled grenades] and guns up there. We struck at sunset, in an area surrounded by farms.
[more]

  thanks to BookNotes

In Search of WM(S)D
Are Bush’s Weapons of Mass Self-Destruction plutonium-grade? Will they turn up in Condi Rice’s office? And will they detonate by next November?

Exactly what kind of trouble is the president in?

The White House, the Democrats, and the media—all puzzled—are trying to make this calculation. You sense the precision instruments at work, measuring opinion and Zeitgeist air quality. Writers of all biases have been sent back to further develop the plot—we’ve gotten to the cliff-hanger without being sure of the outcome.

Or it’s like an interactive narrative—we can pick from opposite scenarios:

This postwar (or post-postwar) querulousness is just a blip for the president, and, as so often before, the Bush political and communications experts will make the necessary adjustments (or do the requisite bullying) and, with relative media quiescence, charge on.

The war and its aftermath—which is unfolding pretty much exactly as the antiwar forces said it would—have created a situation of great vulnerability for the president, which the media, goaded by the Democrats, will poke and prod with mounting pleasure. The president and his men will become more and more defensive and, as the bullying becomes more brazen, prone to greater and greater mistakes. Hence the stage is set for political calamity.

  thanks to Liberal Arts Mafia

Blair's case for the war is falling apart under scrutiny...

The e-mails, the rewritten dossier and how No 10 made its case for war

Smells like ... victory

Before the war begun, chickenhawk boosters claimed that nation's occupation and reconstruction would cost the US nothing -- it would be paid by Iraq oil revenues. Heck, even thoughtful war supporters like Tacitus assumed oil revenues would do the trick.

But the anti-war camp has been proven right -- under the best case scenario, Iraq oil revenues would not be sufficient to pay for reconstruction.
[more]

Bush Defies Oil Companies! (and other fake headlines)

What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
The View of an Aussie Vietnam Veteran