Nelson

Ben Wikler provides us with a choice excerpt from the Nelson report, a long running insider tipsheet generally considered to be quite reliable: There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news." Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse." Our sources are firm in that they conclude this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

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New Year and Elections...
by Riverbend

We spent New Year at home (like last year). It was a very small family gathering and E. and I tried to make it as festive as possible, under the circumstances. We agreed, amongst ourselves in the area, to have the generator turned on from 10 pm until 2 am so we could ride out 2004 on a wave of electricity. The good part of the evening consisted of food. Food is such a central issue for an Iraqi occasion- be it happy or sad. We end up discussing the food before anything else. For us, it was just some traditional Iraqi food and some junk food like pop-corn, corn chips, and lots of candy. We sat watching celebrations from different parts of the world. Seeing the fireworks, lights, droves of laughing and singing people really emphasizes our current situation. It feels like we are kind of standing still while the world is passing us by. It really is difficult to believe that come April, two years will have passed on the war and occupation. On most days, an hour feels like ten and yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a good sense of passing time. I guess that is because we measure time with development and since things seem to be deteriorating in many ways, it feels almost as if we're going backwards, not forwards.

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Iraqi insurgents now outnumber coalition forces

IRAQ’S rapidly swelling insurgency numbers 200,000 fighters and active supporters and outnumbers the United States-led coalition forces, the head of the country’s intelligence service said yesterday. The number is far higher than the US military has so far admitted and paints a much grimmer picture of the challenge facing the Iraqi authorities and their British and American backers as elections loom in four weeks.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

The Jungle in the Desert
We Never Learned Why We Lost the Vietnam War, and Now We're Losing Another Asian War

The U.S. war planners underestimated the Iraqis’ will to resist and they underestimated the insurgents’ ability to develop a wartime strategy. After “shock and awe,” the resistance would surely be reduced to a “rag-tag resistance,” right? The planners overestimated the U.S. military’s technology and firepower, which they always do. Twenty-one months into this war, the world’s most powerful military is stymied, unable to halt the expanding Iraqis insurgency and the rising number of American dead. Those who planned this war knew as much about Iraq as those who planned the Vietnam War knew about Vietnam, which is why Iraq will end as Vietnam ended. In America's defeat. For those of us who fought in Vietnam and reflected on that disastrous war, we knew America could not win in Iraq. Many Americans came to that conclusion without having served in Vietnam. But not the Bush Administration and the Neocons, and not most Americans, who went along with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For these Americans, the Vietnam War never happened and Iraq would be “fast and easy.” The Canadian asked, in reference to the Vietnam War, “What was that war all about anyway?” Major Wilson said, the Iraq War planners had “stunted learning.” And now retired Army General Donald Shepperd, speaking on CNN, says: “It doesn’t look like there is light at the end of the tunnel.” Yes, the Iraq tunnel is dark. Very dark. As dark as the Vietnam tunnel was dark.

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A Vietnam Grunt Looks at Iraq

It is as if I am in a nightmare that never ends. The nightmare is about Vietnam, but it is also about Iraq and Afghanistan. I seem to be in a time warp, and over and over every day and night I see not Iraq, but Vietnam. I see the same kids dying the same way all over again. I see the distance between the reality of the war and the American people. I hear the same lies. I see the same callous disregard for the troops in the midst of the battles. It is not a nightmare I experience; it is terribly real.

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You called my mother a bitch? Ok. Now you die.

How bad is it that the US has shitty intelligence in Iraq? Well, until 2003, informing was an industry. People sold out others for money like it was a job, and many cases it was. Well, it seems informers have standards and they won't do the same for the Americans. If Zarqawi is alive, he's got a trail like a snail. He's got bodyguards and trucks. He should be easy to spot. He isn't. Why? Because they would rather tolerate his nutjobness than the Americans. The guerrillas blew up a house which killed 28 people. Normally, people who do that would be hunted down like dogs for playing with their lives like that. Or someone would have warned the police. Neither happened. Why? Because they hate the Americans just that much.

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"The supreme international crime"

Excerpt from the Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal relating to "Count Two", the Crime of Aggression, as brought against Goering, Ribbentrop, and 14 other defendants: The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. Nicholas J. S. Davies, a Contributing Writer over at Online Journal posted a generally well-argued piece there on December 31, in which he reviewed the history in international jurisprudence of the crime of initiating an aggressive war, and concluded that the US and British governments were guilty of such a crime in initiating the war against Iraq.

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