One-party rule, or at least a facsimile of it, has been with Canadians ever since the election of 1993. Since that time, the Liberals -- no matter what they do -- have maintained an extraordinary 20- to 35-percentage-point lead in the polls. And there is no sign of a letup. The system is almost locked shut against change. One-party rule could be the rule for a generation to come.

[ . . . ]

Westerners had broad representation in a national party, the Conservatives. They traded in that for a big regional rump. Under Brian Mulroney, the West didn't get what it wanted, but it fared better than it has under the Liberals. Mr. Mulroney dismantled the national energy program and the Foreign Investment Review Agency. He championed deregulation and privatization, brought in free trade that Westerners welcomed and, in constitutional negotiations, put many of their demands on the table.

It wasn't enough for Mr. Manning, who launched his rear-guard rebellion, dividing the right, then had the chutzpah -- complaining that the right could never win while split -- to launch a drive to reunite it. Small wonder most Tories don't want any part of a reunification plan.

1. The governments in both Canada and California are controlled by parties that tilt toward the left end of the political spectrum. The Canadian Liberal Party and California Democratic Party seem to share similar core values, when one disregards differences caused by regional peculiarities.

2. The heads of both governments are politicians widely distrusted by the people they represent. A cursory reading of Canadian newspaper Web sites seems to indicate that Chretien is hardly admired, or even liked, in vast swaths of western Canada, and his following seems mostly confined to Ontario and Quebec, at least from my outsider perspective. Here in California, it’s pretty darned difficult to find people that actually like Governor Gray Davis. Many people, regardless of political orientation, dislike him. He has attempted to gain support among the wider populace by referring to his service in Vietnam and allegedly promoting a “no parole” policy. However, rather than gaining conservative support, he’s succeeded in only irritating his supporters in the Democratic Party. Co-option of the other side worked for Clinton; Davis’s attempt to do the same isn’t working quite as well.

3. The opposition in both regions have managed to pretty much implode. Lawrence Martin summarizes the history on the Canadian side in his Globe and Mail piece, excerpted above. In California, to my regret, the California Republican Party appears to have sacrificed electability for ideological purity. The Republican machine appears to be dominated by those emphasizing a certain agenda, which for the sake of brevity, might be referred to as “family values.” The last gubernatorial election is a case in point. During the primaries, we Republicans were able to choose between Bill Simon and Dick Riordan as our candidate. Simon was very much a product of the “family values” wing of the party; in contrast, Riordan was considered much more of a moderate, and unlike Simon, had significant political experience as the mayor of Los Angeles. However, given the ability of the “family values” wing to mobilize the intraparty vote, Simon became the torchbearer of Republican hopes. Personally, I was unsurprised that Davis won, given the alternative.

The surprise was the relatively thin margin of victory. The California GOP may have interpreted this as a sign of Simon's appeal as a "family values" candidate. I think the more accurate conclusion is that the results do not reflect Simon's popularity, but rather Davis' unpopularity.

As a result of ongoing assessments as to the nature of outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing and Shanxi Province, China, and in Toronto, Canada, WHO is now recommending, as a measure of precaution, that persons planning to travel to these destinations consider postponing all but essential travel. This temporary advice, which is an extension of travel advice previously issued for Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China will be reassessed in three weeks time.

Canada’s desire to have the World Health Organization rescind a travel advisory warning people not to come to Toronto may have hit a roadblock.

Sergio Marchi, a Canadian diplomat based in Geneva, is meeting Thursday with WHO experts to ask them to remove the SARS advisory, but a spokeswoman for the organization insisted that it will remain in place for three weeks and perhaps even longer.

[ . . . ]

Toronto’s mayor, Mel Lastman, was livid Wednesday after the warning was issued and scores of countries including Germany, France and Britain told their citizens not to travel to the city unless it was “essential.”

"I’ve never been so angry in my life,” Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman said.

Funny how Canadians love squishy institutions of global governance until one of them acts the least bit peremptory towards them.

In March 2003, Al-Azhar University's Institute for Islamic Research issued a recommendation not to describe contemporary Jews as "apes and pigs." The meeting during which the recommendation was drafted was headed by Sunni Islam's highest-ranking cleric, the sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi.

Calling Jews "apes and pigs" is very common in the antisemitic discourse of the Arab world, particularly in Islamist circles. For the most part, the term is used as a synonym for Jews, or in strings of epithets originating in the Koran and Muslim tradition regarding Jews. Sheikh Tantawi himself, in an April 2002 sermon, called Jews "the enemies of Allah, the sons of apes and pigs."

According to reports on Al-Bawaba and in Al-Watan, Al-Azhar's discussion on calling Jews "apes and pigs" followed a request to the Islamic Research Institute from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to examine the matter. This request came after the Egyptian Embassy in Washington D.C. reported that there was anger in American society over Muslim preachers and clerics calling Jews these names.

Also, as noted above, three months before, Osama Al-Baz criticized calling Jews "apes and pigs" in his series of articles in Al-Ahram.

Companies, insurers, unions and Democratic and Republican senators are nearing an agreement in principle to end all asbestos lawsuits and instead pay people with asbestos-related diseases from a national privately financed trust, according to people from all sides who have participated in the talks.

The trust, which would be subject to approval by Congress and President Bush, would pay more than $100 billion to hundreds of thousands of asbestos victims over the next 30 years. It would stop the flood of asbestos lawsuits, 200,000 in the last two years alone, that have strained businesses and the court system.

Already, lawsuits have forced into bankruptcy almost 70 companies, some of which were only peripherally connected to asbestos. Most American companies stopped using asbestos decades ago, but the number of lawsuits continues to rise. About 700,000 claims have been filed, including 200,000 in the last two years.

[ . . . ]

Under the current system of lawsuits, some people who are sick or dying from asbestos exposure receive little money if their exposure happens to have come from companies that are already in bankruptcy. Others, including some who are not sick, get millions of dollars from sympathetic juries. [emphasis added - Tony]

[ . . . ]

While more than half the money paid in the current system goes to plaintiff and defense lawyers, the trust under discussion would pay nearly all its money to victims if they are new claimants. But lawyers who represent people who have already filed claims would receive their standard fees of up to 40 percent of any settlement, meaning those claimants would cost the fund more.

Another potential complication is that one of the biggest beneficiaries of any such settlement could be Halliburton, the oil services company, which faces asbestos suits that have depressed its stock price. Because Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, any settlement that benefits Halliburton may be criticized by Democrats.

A planning and engineering firm co-owned by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband has been awarded a five-year Pentagon contract that could be worth up to $600 million.

[ . . . ]

Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of its stock.

The new contract is the latest lucrative defense job to be won by URS, which also works with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration among other federal departments. The firm was awarded an Army engineering and logistics contract in February that could be worth $3.1 billion over the next eight years. [emphasis added - Tony]

Public television's Jim Lehrer hasn't been able to get a straight answer out of anyone in the State Department in years, so my vote for a one-night replacement is Tom Arnold from Fox Sports Network's "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period." Always ready to say the first thing that comes into his head, and not afraid to approach the limits of good taste, Tom's in-your-face approach might finally intimidate Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joe Biden or Tom Ridge into telling us something we don't already know. How Mr. Lehrer fares with the likes of Charles Barkley and David Wells on Mr. Arnold's show is anybody's guess; these guys both claim to have been misquoted in their own autobiographies. On the other hand, Mr. Lehrer did spend eight years talking to people in the Clinton administration, so it's not like he's a complete stranger to mind-boggling deceit.
[emphasis added - Tony]

The Court held, in essence, that Oregon could not make an official habit of antagonizing the communist world, since, if the U.S.S.R. were to attack, that would have very bad consequences for the other 49 states.

"I think it might be wise for them to get independent verification because it has high credibility," [UN weapons inspector Hans Blix] said when asked about the reported discovery by U.S. teams of ingredients and equipment in Iraq that could be used to make a chemical weapon.

Liberal MP Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Ont.) said he learned about the situation during a recent trip to Washington, D.C., as part of the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group when one of his American counterparts, Republican Congressman Don Manzullo, showed him the documents.

Mr. Assadourian said the incident cast a pall over the meetings, which took place during the war, and that he was stuck doing damage control.

"When I was there I was shown letters and speeches and newspaper articles that Liberal Party Members of the House of Commons had spoken up against the Americans regarding the war in Iraq," he said.

"It doesn't help the situation. It doesn't help trade. It doesn't help the border issue. The best thing is for people to show leadership and look forward."

"The point I'm making is that no Member of Parliament should travel outside our country and knock down our own country," he said, adding that he also wasn't impressed when Alliance Leader Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his party's foreign affairs critic, Stockwell Day (Okanagan-Coquihalla, B.C.) co-wrote an article in The Washington Post which was critical of the federal government's war stance.

During the meeting, on January 29, 2002, Lt Gen Haboosh says that the Iraqis are keen to have a relationship with Germany's intelligence agency "under diplomatic cover", adding that he hopes to develop that relationship through Mr Hoffner.

The German replies: "My organisation wants to develop its relationship with your organisation."

In return, the Iraqis offered to give lucrative contracts to German companies if the Berlin government helped prevent an American invasion of the country.

The revelations come a week after The Telegraph reported that Russia had spied for the Iraqis, passing them intelligence about a meeting between Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister. Both the British and Italian governments have launched investigations.

The meeting between the Iraqi and German agents took place some six months before Chancellor Schröder's Social Democrat-led government began its policy of direct opposition to the idea of an American/British-led war against Iraq. The policy was adopted in the heat of last year's German general election campaign, at a time when the Social Democrats were widely predicted to lose the contest. Mr Schröder was re-elected as Chancellor last September, largely because of the popularity of his government's outspoken opposition to the war against Iraq. The apparently verbatim account of the meeting between Lt Gen Haboosh and Mr Hoffner was among documents recovered by The Telegraph in the rubble of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, which was heavily bombed.

A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.

They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.

The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.

The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein's government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990's, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq's giant weapons plants.

An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties.

MET Alpha is one of several teams created earlier this year to hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq. Supported by the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a field artillery brigade based in Fort Sill, Okla., the teams were charged with visiting some 150 top sites that intelligence agencies have identified as suspect.

Audi-Oh™ is a revolution in stimulation technology for men or women. Sound is converted into infinitely variable pulses of pleasure.

The Top 10 Signs Your Resistance to US Invasion Isn't Going Well

The capture of Barzan al-Tikriti--the name indicates he comes from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's former stronghold north of Baghdad--could be an intelligence bonanza for U.S. investigators seeking to unearth the former government's secrets.

In the early 1980s, he was Saddam Hussein's chief of intelligence. He was forced out of the government after a dispute with his half brother, but he returned to public life in 1988 as Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. In that position was responsible for the Iraqi government's finances abroad, and thus he could be expected to know where the country's rulers stashed funds that they might have kept outside Iraq.

He has held no public office since another internal family dispute in the late 1990s. By some accounts he has been under virtual house arrest for more than a year. Brooks, however, described him as "an adviser to the former regime leader with extensive knowledge of the regime's inner working."

Barzan al-Tikriti was the five of clubs in the deck of playing cards depicting the former regime's 55 most-wanted officials that U.S. military authorities distributed last week. He is the third person on the list known to be in U.S. custody, following the capture earlier this week of another of Saddam Hussein's half-brothers, Watban, and the surrender of Hussein's senior scientific adviser, Amer Saadi. The whereabouts and condition of Saddam Hussein himself are unknown.

Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti
from Iraqi Most Wanted Playing Cards,distributed by U.S. Central Command
(entire set as PDF here)

QUOTATION:
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one,
and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

ATTRIBUTION:
Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 6:24.
From the Sermon on the Mount.

I was once a medieval historian. I studied Christian doctrine. This quote was one of the original explanations why Christians could not be soldiers. As another theologian explained, "you cannot serve God and Caesar."

Also, war goes against the doctrine of Christian love - love thy neighbor, love thine enemy. It seems deeply contradictory to say, love thy neighbor, even as you slaughter him. I'm sorry, that just isn't possible.

In your quote from the conference of military chaplains, it seems to me the pope is saying, "Work for peace and pray for peace." He says nothing about a just war.

[following just war doctrine discussion deleted]

If someone decides that it's better to die, or be enslaved, raped, or tortured than to have someone else kill on his behalf -- well, that's certainly not my approach, but if that's his own personal decision, then that's fine. But deciding that it's better for one's son or daughter to be killed, enslaved, raped, or tortured than to have someone else kill on the child's behalf is a deeply immoral form of pacifism.

The 53-nation Human Rights Commission postponed a vote on the resolution for one day following two hours of politically charged debate over Cuba’s latest crackdown on dissidents.

[...]

The commission regularly criticizes Cuba, but this year’s proposal, put forward by Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, had been weaker than previous versions, simply calling on Cuba to accept a visit by a UN human rights monitor.

On Wednesday, however, Costa Rica proposed an amendment, saying it was responding to the conviction and sentencing of a large number of political dissidents in Cuba in the past week.

The amendment urged the government of Cuba to “release immediately all these persons.”

Cuba said the resolution was sponsored by the "vile lackeys of the Empire, in this case, by the governments of Peru, Uruguay and Costa Rica."

[emphasis added]

Corporal Edward Chin, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, from New York
(from NY Times/AP)

One obvious question: During live coverage, viewers saw a US soldier drape over the face of Hussein a US flag, which was quickly removed and replaced with an Iraqi flag.

Commanders know that the displaying the US flag suggests occupation and domination, not liberation. NBC's Tom Brokaw reported that the Arab network Al Jazeera was "making a big deal" out of the incident with the American flag, implying that US television would -- and should -- downplay that part of the scene. Which choice tells the more complete truth?

It was, by any measure, an astonishing coincidence. As the biggest statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down "spontaneously" in front of the world's media, the Stars and Stripes which flew on the Pentagon on 11 September was at hand to be draped over its face.

The US army denied that the toppling of the 20ft edifice by a tank tower was stage-managed. It was a coincidence, they said, that Lt Tim McLaughlin, the keeper of that flag, happened to be present.

And, it has to be noted, the commander of the US marines who completed the capture of Baghdad did express concern at the time that the use of the Stars and Stripes smacked of triumphalism. It was later changed to an Iraqi flag. But not before acres of TV footage had been shot.

Yesterday, the US army banned any display of the flag on vehicles, buildings, statues and command posts, halting its display almost everywhere but the US embassy in Baghdad.

Samantha Sheppard, British 2d Light Tank Regiment, Basra, April 8, 2003
(via Reuters/Yahoo)

"No, no, no," yelled Shaaban Mohamad, watching television at a Cairo bookstore. "If the U.S. really wanted democracy, they would have taken out just about every Arab leader we have. This is very suspect. The U.S. just wants to protect Israel and wants the riches in the region."
[emphasis added]

For the most part, the Marines [entering Baghdad's center] were treated as conquering heroes. Young Iraqis put flowers in the pockets of their body armor. Kids begged for money.

There was a lot of smiling and laughing. One Iraqi gave out high-fives to passing Marines and reporters.

There were some American and European "human shields'' at the rally, people who had come to put themselves in harm's way in hopes of stopping the shooting. They chastised the Marines for attacking Iraq and promoting war.

That angered some of the men. "I didn't bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers,'' said one Marine, angry and teary, referring to an Iraqi artillery attack that killed two of his colleagues on Monday. "They died for this country.''

Meanwhile, two Iraqis held up a sheet bearing the message: "Go home Human Shields, you U.S. Wankers.'' [emphasis added]

From Kuwait, which was occupied by Saddam's forces before the 1991 Gulf War, came one of the few statements of unadulterated support. Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, Kuwait's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said, "Joy fills our hearts as we see our Iraqi brothers ... express their jubilation at victory."

[...]

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, looking upset at a news conference, called for a quick end to Iraq's "occupation." In a rare departure from diplomacy, Saud responded to a question about Arab anger toward the United States with: "I don't want to talk about anger if you don't mind today."

When one of the few remaining "human shields" in Baghdad, Uzma Bashir, from Rickmansworth, baited the troops with shouts of "Yankee murderers", Cpl Ibrahim Rahim exploded: "I scooped up the brains of two young marines ... They died fighting to liberate Iraq. And you stand here insulting them with this shit." He added: "I am a Muslim ... and I know this region. That woman is seriously abusing her right of speech."

Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad's main square just before being torn down
(photo NY Times/AP, Laurent Rebours)

In one of many small-scale engagements in and around Baghdad on Tuesday, two Marine snipers on a rooftop and others in tanks and Humvees topped with machine guns killed approaching Iraqis one by one throughout the morning, often from hundreds of yards away.

[...]

At one point, a man in a black ski mask with a rifle in the bed of a truck pulled up behind a group of civilians. The snipers said they aimed high to scatter the civilians, then shot him.

As Hamblin and Cpl. Owen Mulder, 21, of Wilmont, Minn., continued to scan under the elevated highway, Marines in Humvees kept watch for suicide bombers.

About 7 a.m., a truck with a machine gun mount -- but no machine gun attached to it -- raced down the highway, and the Marines started firing, using machine guns, grenade launchers and their rifles.

The truck flew into reverse, racing back about 100 yards before stopping. One man opened the a door and fell out. Then another, apparently missing an arm, ran down the highway. Some Marines prepared to shoot, but their commanders stopped them.

"He's wounded, he's no threat to us. Why do you want to kill someone who's wounded?" Kelley asked.

A few minutes later, ambulances arrived to tend to the injured.

[W]hat distinguishes warriors from murderers is that warriors accept a set of rules governing when and how they kill. They must learn to take only certain lives in certain ways, at certain times and for certain reasons. Otherwise, they become indistinguishable from murderers. Individuals can fight for an objectively bad cause or a corrupt regime and still be warriors. But there can be no honor in any conflict for those who believe they have no moral obligation to restrain their behavior in any way.

One and a half weeks ahead of the EU poll the Hungarian police removed posters portraying a swastika, a red star and the EU emblem. Leaders of the Hungarian EU-critical movement who are believed to have disseminated the placards left their headquarter detained by police.

Hungarian Police Remove Symbols Of Tyranny

101st Airborne Division soldiers, Kuwait
(taken March 20, 2003, source ?)

By now, it should be clear to all that the use of war as a means of resolving disputes between States was rejected, even before the UN Charter, by the consciences of the majority of humanity, except in the case of legitimate defence against an aggressor. The vast contemporary movement in favour of peace - which, according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, is more than "the simple absence of war" (Gaudium et spes, n. 78) - demonstrates this conviction of people of every continent and culture.

There is another point I wish to make. Peace is a precious and fragile gift which God entrusts to man, to his conscience and to his reason. For you, two equally necessary duties derive from this. The first is the duty to work through the formation of consciences in order to foster an authentic desire for peace. The second duty is to pray constantly for peace, that God will grant this gift to the people of our times. On innumerable occasions I have prayed publicly for peace and appealed for prayers for peace, most recently during the Gulf War and the conflict in Yugoslavia. "With God nothing will be impossible". When human efforts seem doomed to failure, the power of God's Spirit can work deep within people's hearts, to quench hatred and kindle love.

Last Thursday, chief spokespersons from all government branches convened and decided to introduce a new media policy, requiring that reporters appeal to relevant authorities for authorization to interview government officials.

The president focused his criticism on certain newspaper companies and their incessant attacks on his predecessor, former President Kim Dae-jung, which have since been redirected at him.

In response to Roh's speech, Rep. Rhee Q-taek, floor leader of the Grand National Party (GNP) denounced the President's view of the media.

"I personally get the impression he is trying to intimidate the press," Rhee said. "That's why the president's remarks triggered boos from the lawmakers with the GNP."

The GNP earlier criticized Roh's administration for putting a gag on the press by curbing reporters' meetings with government officials and only releasing information with a pro-government bias.

After finishing his official speech, Roh revealed that he intends to withdraw his appointment of former aide Seo Dong-ku as the new president of the state-run Korea Broadcasting System (KBS).

Seo's appointment ignited anger from the opposition parties and labor unions. They said the president is attempting to undermine fair broadcasting and impose his views on the press. Seo is reported to have tendered his resignation yesterday.

The main opposition Grand National Party said Monday that it would take active measures against a new civic group set up to campaign against the major newspapers. The Grand Nationals said the group, People's Power, which plans a movement to discourage people from marrying people who write for the Chosun Ilbo or their relatives, was engaging in action that endangers democracy.

1. the campaign, in which he suggested that the South might remain neutral in any dispute between the US and the North,
2. the troop dispatch bill, which I've mentioned before, and
3. this.

An Iraqi Baath militia officer giving guns to his children.
(from NY Times/Agence France-Presse, Patrick Baz)

No estimates are available on the number of children who participated in the Iran-Iraq war, but Hojjatoleslam Hashemi Rafsanjani, later president, stated in 1982 that Iran's armed forces had been supplemented by 400,000 volunteers. An exiled source claims that since military service was compulsory from the age of 18, most of these "volunteers" were likely to be younger. Gulf war statistics about prisoners, casualties and their ages are unreliable, but according to the International Committee of the Red Cross at least 10 per cent of Iranian prisoners were under 18. Iranian officers captured by the Iraqis claimed that nine out of ten Iranian child soldiers were killed. According to one journalist, most recruits had between one and three months of military training before being sent to the front, but some had no training at all. Boys as young as nine were reportedly used in human wave attacks and to serve as mine sweepers in the war with Iraq. Many child soldiers were captured by the Iraqis and transferred to a special Prisoner of War camp for children. Some 300, most believed to be 15 or younger were held by Iraq in a special, separated compound at Al-Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, where they were exploited by the Iraqi authorities for propaganda purposes.
[footnotes deleted, emphasis added - Tony]

During Gulf War One people called the conflict a “video game war,” and this always made me grind my teeth, because the sort of person most likely to use the term was least likely to have played a video game. When you saw that nosecone footage of a cruise missile dropping down, homing in and entering a dryer vent - someone said “it’s just like a video game!” you recalled the herkyjerky pixel-jumble on your PC and thought, I wish.

Fast forward ten years. I’ve played three games in the last ten months, each a first person shooter with all the usual flaws and uncomfortable moral dilemmas. I had no moral qualms with Return to Castle Wolfenstein - frankly, Nazis who are attempting to build an army of cyberzombies are just asking for some of that sweet, sweet lovin’ you only get from a Tesla-coil powered energy weapon. With Wolfenstein, Dark Forces 3 and Soldier of Fortune, there’s the same curious insta-decomp feature: clear out a room, leave your foes heaped in a pile, leave the room, return -

. . . and the bodies are gone.

Every day I watch the news, hours and hours of news, and I’ve yet to see one dead Iraqi soldier.

Now it’s a video game war.

Last night I saw some footage from a bunker some Marines had discovered - ammo, rockets, mines, all sorts of goodies. A secret area!

Now it’s a video game war.

3rd Infantry Division captain holding an AK-47 retrieved from a bunker in Baghdad
(from CNN/AP)

3rd Infantry Division soldiers at one of Saddam's palaces, Baghdad
(from CNN/AP)

Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed this semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining hall with antiwar signs. One student confronted a protesting professor and shoved him.

Some students here accuse professors of behaving inappropriately, of not knowing their place.

"It seems the professors are more vehement than the students," Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. "There comes a point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are you promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or even parrot?"

Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.

Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison, the protests have been more town than gown. At Berkeley, where Vietnam protesters shouted, "Shut it down!" under clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features mostly solo operators who hand out black armbands. The shutdown was in San Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for the first time called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in a speech to parliament on Thursday, dropping his objection to regime change as a goal of war.
[...]
Schroeder has condemned regime change as a war aim -- but Germany avoided the French predicament of having to declare that it hoped the U.S.-led coalition would win the war after remarks interpreted as rallying for an American loss.

(from StrategyPage)

A car exploded at a special operations checkpoint in western Iraq, killing three coalition soldiers, a pregnant woman and the car's driver, the U.S. Central Command said Friday.
[...]
"A pregnant female stepped out of the vehicle and began screaming in fear," a Central Command statement said. "At this point the civilian vehicle exploded, killing three coalition force members who were approaching the vehicle and wounding two others." The statement said the woman and the driver also were killed.
[...]
The Iraqi government has said suicide bombings will be a "routine military policy" and has promised more attacks.

On the contested bridge in Hindiya, the captured town south of Baghdad, an American company commander, Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Ga., dashed to a wounded Iraqi woman in a black chador lying exposed to fire in the center of the span. Captain Carter crouched with his M-16 rifle to cover her position until medics could evacuate her by stretcher, according to journalists traveling with the unit.

Third Infantry Division, near Hindiyah, Iraq, March 31, 2003
(photo NY Times/AP)

Funk turned himself in to the Marines on Tuesday after being absent without leave since mid-February, when his support battalion was sent to Camp Pendleton near San Diego. He has been assigned desk duty in San Jose while his case proceeds.

(a) Any member of the armed forces who--
(1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently;
(2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service; or
(3) without being regularly separated from one of the armed forces enlists or accepts an appointment in the same or another on of the armed forces without fully disclosing the fact that he has not been regularly separated, or enters any foreign armed service except when authorized by the United States;
is guilty of desertion.
[...]
(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.

Completed or attempted desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty (emphasis added) or to shirk important service: dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 5 years.
Other cases of completed or attempted desertion: only difference is length of confinement
In time of war: death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.

Any member of the armed forces who, without authority--
(1) fails to go to his appointed place of duty at the time prescribed;
(2) goes from that place; or
(3) absents himself or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty at which he is required to be at the time prescribed;
shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Absence from unit, organization, or other place of duty; for more than 30 days: dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 1 year.

Any person subject to this chapter who through neglect or design misses the movement of a ship, aircraft, or unit with which he is required in the course of duty to move shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

By design: dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years.
By neglect: bad-conduct dischrage, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 1 year.

* Used their own people as human shields in countless instances.
* Engaged in acts of genocide against Shi'a Muslims in the south of Iraq.
* Forced Iraqi civilians to take up arms at gunpoint.
* Executed Iraqi civilians on the spot for any suspicion of disloyalty or even indifference.
* Cut off food and water to Shi'a Muslim urban populations.
* Used the most sacred shrines of Iraq's Shi'as as military strongpoints and arms caches. [on the news this morning, there was a report of snipers firing at US forces from a mosque in Najaf. - Tony]
* Used hospitals as military staging areas, fighting positions and arms storage depots.
* Took Iraqi family members, including children, hostage.
* Executed allied POWs in cold blood, while abusing others.
* Prevented the International Red Cross or Red Crescent from visiting allied soldiers taken as POWs.
* Fought in civilian clothes, in violation of the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War.
* Employed false surrenders to lure allied troops into ambushes, in violation of the same.
* Committed multiple acts of terrorism against Iraqi civilians and coalition forces.
* Forced unwilling soldiers to attack allied forces by executing some and driving the others forward at machine-gun point - far from patriotic resistance, this is the mass murder of Iraqis by Iraqis.
* Attempted to create an ecological and economic catastrophe in Iraq's Shi'a and Kurdish regions by rigging oil fields for demolition.
* Attempted to prevent relief supplies from reaching Iraqi civilians.
* Welcomed and harbored terrorists from abroad.
* Took practical steps to prepare Iraqi troops for the use of chemical weapons against allied forces.

Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for U.S. commander General Tommy Franks in Qatar, said: "America doesn't leave its heroes behind. It never has, it never will."

Revolutionary War: 1,426
War of 1812: 695
Mexican War: 238
Civil War: >400,000 total POW/MIA
Spanish-American War: 72
WWI: 7470 total POW/MIA
WWII: 30,314
misc. Cold War: 343
Grenada: 4
USS Stark: 1
Gulf War: 52 total POW/MIA
Somalia: 2

Polish GROM commandos pictured together with U.S. Navy SEALs, Iraq
(photo Desmond Boylan/Reuters, via Poprostu)

"As you have seen in the case of Iraq, the United States will not make its decision on the North's nuclear issue on a moral basis," [President Roh] said. "Accordingly, for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue, the strong alliance between South Korea and the United States is very crucial."

Funk is one of several service members in today's volunteer military who are seeking conscientious objector status.

The recruits say their idealistic expectations of military service -- travel, tuition and adventure -- jarred against the harsh realities of killing another human and ran afoul of deeply held religious, ethical or moral views.

"They don't really advertise that they kill people," Funk said. "I didn't really realize the full implications of what I was doing and what it really meant to be in the service as a reservist."

Lance Corporal Stephen Funk, USMC Reserve
(photo from SF Chronicle)