(Taken from williamgibsonbooks.com)

HEARD ON SKY NEWS

"Umm Qasr is a town similar to Southampton", UK Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons yesterday.

"He's either never been to Southampton, or he's never been to Umm Qasr", said one British soldier, informed of this while on patrol in Umm Qasr.

Another added: "There's no beer, no prostitutes, and people are shooting at us. It's more like Portsmouth."

Channel 4 guy: "Isn't it the case that the cowboys and Indians mentality of George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld is too simplistic for a region like the Middle East?"

Pause...

Pause...

American Government Spokesman: "That's... that's nonsense... that's nonsense... And very snobbish of you."

Oh, and last night, Dickhead Rumsfeld threatened Syria and Iran if they didn't stop helping Iraq. Is it just me, or is this guy almost as retarded as his boss?

War update:

- An Iraqi suicide car bomb has killed four American soldiers near Najaf. Saddam says that suicide attacks are now going to become part of the standard Iraqi military strategy.

- According to Downing Street, Saddam has sacked his air defence commander (aka his cousin) because AA missiles are killing his own people. That market place, perhaps?

An Iraqi civilian says he doesn't believe it was a mistake (an American one, that is) because, in his words, there were no targets nearby. Sounds to me like it could have been an Iraqi friendly fire incident.

The death toll has reached 62, with 49 wounded.

Weird. I've been having flashes of deja vu all morning.

Weird. I've been having flashes of deja vu all morning.

There's been another 'stray shot' in another Baghdad market place.

Two market places hit in two days, after a week virtually devoid of major civilian deaths.

A specialist on the news suggested what everyone was thinking (dare I say, hoping?): that lightning striking twice in as many days is a bit suspicious. He went on to say that he wouldn't put it past a regime like Saddam's to murder its own civilians for the propaganda coup of dead children. Baghdad's a big city, and two market places being hit within 48 hours?

It's notable that the coalition still hasn't said either way as to whether it was a cruise missile that caused the blast. Either they're dithering over admitting responsibility, or they're trying to work out if it could have been either a stray Iraqi anti-aircraft missile falling back to earth (which shouldn't happen, apparently) or a deliberate targeting/bombing by the Iraqis.

Let's see what happens in future.

A thought-provoking issue's been raised by the bombing of a Baghdad market the other day.

Al-Jazeera showed full coverage of the carnage - including a young boy (about 11-12 yrs old, I think) with half his head missing.

Meanwhile, the BBC only showed just up to the sheet covering him being lifted, then froze the picture and said, 'Viewers were shown a blood-spattered skull.'

Al-Jazeera has also shown pictures of dead (allegedly executed) British and American soldiers. The US and UK governments have denounced this as being 'obscene'.

I've never seen Al-Jazeera, but the western media seems to agree that it is neutral, at least in comparison to the blatantly anti-western media that otherwise serves the Middle East. What our media hasn't been telling us is: Does Al Jazeera also show pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers? We haven't been told they have, we haven't been told they haven't.

And besides all of that, is there anything wrong with showing a child with half his head blown away?

We're fighting a war, yet our 'impartial' media is incredibly reluctant to show us the truth about what our bombs are doing. 'Look, here's a burnt out car, a broken window, oh and there were a few dead civilians over there, but those images were too distressing to see.'

TOO FUCKING DISTRESSING???

It's like in Apocalypse Now, where Colonel Kurtz says that USAF pilots weren't allowed to write the word 'fuck' on the side of their bombs, because it was obscene. Then they went out and dropped those bombs on Vietnamese villages.

We're too sheltered in this country. We need to be exposed to the realities of war - show us the shattered skulls, the spilt brain tissue.

For a free press, they seem pretty cagey about showing us the truth.

An interesting and original vote-rigging strategy from Zimbabwe, taken from the BBC website:

Mugabe's party 'to rig polls'

Zimbabwe's opposition has accused the ruling Zanu-PF party of planning to rig two key by-elections in Harare this weekend.
The Movement for Democratic Change says up to 19,000 extra voters have been registered, while food stained with indelible ink would be distributed to prevent the locals from voting.

Tension is rising in Zimbabwe following last week's anti-government strike and ahead of an end-of-the-month MDC deadline for President Robert Mugabe to stop harassing the opposition.

Earlier this week, the MDC said hundreds of its supporters had been arrested and tortured around the country for organising last week's anti-government strike.

'Sugar stained'

"The government wants to inflate the voters' roll," said MDC elections director Remus Makuwaza.

He said up to 8,000 non-residents had been registered in Kuwadzana and 11,000 in Highfield, which both voted overwhelmingly for the MDC in the June 2000 parliamentary poll.


Mr Makuwaza accused the authorities of trying to prevent the area's genuine residents from voting by distributing rare commodities such as sugar, maize meal and cooking oil stained with indelible ink.

In order to prevent people voting more than once, voters dip their finger in indelible ink when they cast their ballots.

Anyone with indelible ink already on their hands would not be allowed to vote.

"We are aware that state agents plan to taint doors and water taps with the indelible ink in those areas which are known MDC strongholds in order to disqualify our voters," Mr Makuwaza said.

Notorious war veteran leader Joseph Chinotimba is contesting the Highfield seat.

He was one of those who led the violent occupation of white-owned farms since 2000.

The Kuwadzana seat became vacant following the death in police custody of MDC MP Learnmore Jongwe, while the MDC Highfield MP was expelled from the party for indiscipline.

Ye gods, I'm pathetic sometimes.

Just watched the first episode of Walking With Cavemen.

Had tears in my eyes by the end of it. You'd have to watch it to understand. Perhaps.

The Americans are being childish now.

'No, the UN can't run Iraq, because they were crap in the Balkans and Rwanda. And anyway, the French don't deserve any say in things, because they're horrid.'

Of course, the United States was integral in allowing the genocide in Rwanda to go ahead. They were the ones who 'accidentally' sent their APCs to the wrong country, so the UN peacekeepers weren't able to enter Rwanda until after the Hutu government had fallen and the genocide had stopped. So I think they're talking out of their arses on that one.

I seriously can't understand how the Bush administration can be so angry at the French. They didn't want to go through the UN in the first place. And are they really so fucking arrogant that they can't understand (even if they don't agree with) the French position?

D'oh, stupid question.

Ah, Students Unzipped is back up.

Hey, guess who's got the contract to put out some of the oil fires in southern Iraq?

Yes, it's a division of Halliburton.

You know, the company that Dick Cheney used to work for?

Meanwhile, Bush wants to set up a solely American governor after Iraq is conquered, rather than a UN administration. Why's that, I wonder?

Blair's talking to him today to try and persuade him to bring the UN into it. Maybe he'll use the obvious argument: 'Because otherwise the war will go down in history as an American invasion to steal oil, not a liberation for the sake of democracy. That makes you little more than a robber, Bush, are you really that much of a fucking moron?'

Oops, stupid question.

The Iraqis have attacked the US 7th Cavalry and damaged several vehicles and bits of equipment. No reports of US casualties as yet.

Iraqi casualties are estimated to be in the region of 150-300.

Even allowing for exaggeration, Jesus Fucking Christ...

Last night, Channel 4's Jon Snow slaughtered the American ambassador by confronting him with the disparity between the US condemning Iraq for not adhering to the Geneva Convention and the US bending the Geneva Convention over and shoving something sharp and pointy up its arse at Guantanamo Bay.

The twat's only response was, 'Of course, you're an attorney, aren't you?'

Reports of a civilian uprising in Basra.

Serbian police have arrested the guy they think was the sniper who shot Zoran Djindjic, the Serb PM. One of the Special Police units who served in the wars of the 1990s. They've also recovered a weapon, a Heckler and Koch G3 sniper rifle.

Michael Moore made an interesting Oscar acceptance speech.

He started off nicely, with a comment about the Oscars being about a fictitious world, and then leapt into a tirade about a fictitious president taking America into a war for fictitious reasons, whether it was 'the fiction of duct tapes, or the fiction of orange alert'.

A mixture of boos and cheers from the floor, and the Oscars people tried drowning him out by playing music in the background.


The guy who won Best Actor, for The Pianist, made a less controversial speech, yet still went on about peace, and managed to ask the orchestra to stop playing so that he could say his piece. Of course, he had Best Actor, while Moore only had Best Documentary.

Still, it's disgraceful that the Academy deliberately cut acceptance speeches down to 45 seconds, to prevent anyone from making speeches, and then tried to drown out the anti-government voice when he spoke up.

The current climate in the United States is pretty fucking sinister for 'the world's greatest democracy'.

Something else I've just noticed - not once have I seen any kind of map showing which parts of Iraq are under coalition control.

I know this war's supposedly about driving on Baghdad, Basra et al, but the only way to fight a war safely is to take and hold land behind your initial strike wedge, so there should be regions utterly free of Saddam's influence. If we're striking so deep into Iraq that there's fighting less than a hundred miles from Baghdad, we should have conquered the entire southern region, to secure the supply lines necessary to maintain a siege.

Yet we're hearing that convoys behind our lines are under attack daily, prisoners being taken, soldiers being killed. Even though thousands of Iraqi regular soldiers have surrendered, there's still fighting with irregular guerilla Saddam loyalists in virtually every major town.

There's just been a comparison made by a BBC reporter, quoting a British commander, saying that the situation could become another Northern Ireland, with paramilitary snipers hitting soldiers wherever they want to.

Thought For The Day: Goddammit, the frontal silhouette of a helicopter gunship is fucking scary... Was it deliberate to make it look like some kind of insect? Or is the fear just a result of its well-deserved reputation for being one of the most fucking lethal engines of war ever invented?

Thought I'd add this as well - the other link from Helena's blog. It'd the D&D interpretation of the current situation, by Scott_Lynch on rpg.net.

Saddam Hussein Calls Bush a "Killer" DM

SOMEWHERE NEAR BAGHDAD-- Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein expressed intense dissatisfaction Friday with what he called President Bush's "killer" DM-ing style. A visibly frustrated Saddam was seen fidgeting with his dice and character sheet as Bush attempted to adjudicate an involved combat sequence.

"I need party order, everyone," Bush said. "Where are you at, Saddam?"

"Why should I tell you? So you can just send another Save vs. Cruise Missile my way, you fucker?"

Australia's John Howard and Britain's Tony Blair, the other player's in Bush's group, rolled their eyes.

"Saddam, you didn't explicitly state that you were checking that house for cruise missiles. You got what you deserved," responded Blair.

Saddam then accused Howard of planning a sneak attack on his character's share of the loot. "He always plays a fucking halfling rogue, always. He's going to pick my pockets or some shit. He's just that lame."

"I'm just playing in-character," Howard replied, "don't get pissy with me if you can't handle it."

"Yeah, well, I'm sleeping in my armor and keeping my sword out," Saddam said. "Good thing I'm not a sheep, or I'd have to be sure to keep my ass firmly planted against the ground, too."

Howard responded by cajoling Saddam to just "go along" with what Bush was doing.

Saddam had previously complained that he didn't get full XP value for helicopters that crashed in Kuwait, and that the CR of the U.S. 7th Cavalry was "way the fuck beyond" what a 6th-level party should reasonably expect to face.

Blair, speaking confidentially to CNN while Saddam was in the bathroom, expressed intense disdain for Saddam's playing habits. "We're always asking him to give us a hand with his wand of Magic Missiles, right? And he's always like, "Dude, I don't fucking have it. I used it up a long time ago." And then the moment he gets in the shit, bam! Out comes a wand of Magic Missiles. Big fucking surprise, the little tosser."

Blair and Howard share the suspicion that Saddam has a scroll of Cloudkill in reserve for a real emergency, which Bush will neither confirm nor deny.

"Well, maybe if he'd quit bogarting more than his share of the pizza and the Dew, I wouldn't ride his ass so much. We've all put up with his shit for so long, what else does he expect?" said Bush. "I mean, sure, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is a CR 18 wandering monster. No way he can take it. But what does he try to do every time? He stands and fights. He's like, "I give my hirelings rocks and sticks. They're loyal, right?" And the rest of us are rolling our eyes and trying not to laugh. It's kinda sad, really."

"I'm not out to kill Saddam's character," Bush said in conclusion. "Saddam's out to get his character killed."

"He's been like this for, like, twelve years," Blair added.

"He's still pissed because Israel bitch-slapped him that one time," said Howard.

"Yeah, no shit. Saddam's played with Israel, and now he thinks I'm a killer DM? Bitch, please," Bush responded.

On the way back to the dining room to rejoin the game, Saddam exchanged greetings with France in the den. France sold Saddam his old Magic card collection some time in the late 90s, but has refused to get involved in the ongoing d20 game. "I keep trying to interest them in a game of Amber or Theatrix, but all they want to do is dungeon crawls," France complained. "Typical fucking assholes."

NEXT WEEK: Accusations of player favoritism rock Bush's new LARP to its foundations. Bush claims "thirty, maybe forty" new players. France and other players on the Primogen Council express disbelief.

There was ~nothing~ on the one o'clock news today about the 'chemical weapons factory'.

Starting to feel more sceptical than I was. Sounds as if it could be that the Pentagon said, 'Fuck, we're taking casualties left, right and centre, and we've nothing to show for it.'



Serves Bush right for not claiming a moral right to war, and instead pissing about with 'threats to security'. A morally-driven war might have got more allies than just Tony Blair, and the Spanish and Bulgarian governments.

I reckon that's why Blair's on board - judging from his past record (Sierra Leone and Kosovo), he's fully willing to go to war from a moral standpoint, fuck the legality and immediate threats (or lack thereof), whereas what Bush seems to have been concentrating on is getting the American people behind him by manufacturing (or exagerrating) the threat posed by Saddam.

And they failed at that as well.

'Look! Terrorists in Iraq!'

'Where?'

'Don't question the president, that's seditious and unpatriotic, you filthy traitor!'

Pretty telling, really, of the danger of having an administration that is utterly contemptuous of anyone not born within the borders of the USA. They honestly believe that winning over their own people is more important than convincing the governments of the rest of the world.



Also realised that I haven't heard a single concrete number regarding the deaths of Iraqi soldiers. Fair enough, most of the civilian death figures are going to be inflated because they're almost all behind Iraqi lines, but surely we should know how many soldiers we've killed? We're the ones who are picking up most of the bodies.

Why is our media not giving a number of how many they've seen?

The closest we got was the fighting in [damn these Arabic placenames, I can never remember them - where the Royal Marines were besieging the local police station/Ba'ath headquarters yesterday - Um Qasr, or is that a type of soft drink?]. The BBC said 120 Saddam loyalists were in the building.

The Americans (who only seemed to have a small presence in the battle, judging by the camera shots) called in an A-10 Warthog, and then the British launched a night time attack (pictured dramatically through night vision BBC cameras) in which three soldiers were burned, one seriously, and the assault team 'shot the men inside'.

From that, we can only infer 120 dead, unless prisoners were taken, for no friendly casualties. The building was on fire, so I suppose most of the casualties could have been from that. Only a few, if any, Iraqis would have escaped - night vision equipment makes 'under cover of darkness' a bit obsolete, even with the glare from a burning building, and no doubt the building was surrounded.

But still, no numbers on enemy dead.



Oh well, the only option's to keep going.

'Stop the war now!'

'How?'

'Pull out our troops! Stop the war now!'

'And let Saddam launch reprisals against the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who welcomed coalition troops? Make the deaths of the hundreds/thousands of Iraqi and dozens of coalition troops worthless? Make the deaths of all those civilians utterly pointless? And don't forget that we'll be legally bound to release all our POWs, and they've now got to go home and face charges of desertion if they're lucky.'

'Er... Stop the war now?'

It's fine to be a pacifist, just don't get so wrapped up in idealism that you go even further from reality than George W Bush and live in a fantasy world where Saddam won't kill tens of thousands of people in retaliation for their treason and in order to eliminate threats to his regime. Some people, the world is better without.

Yes, Bush might be one of them. But so is Saddam, and I think Saddam's the worst threat (maybe not to us, but to his own people, and therefore his little slice of the world and humanity). At least Bush can get voted out of office. Saddam eventually dies of old age, and you get Qusay Hussein or maybe a bloody transition with one of several other candidates (Uday's the eldest son, for a start).

Just found this via a link on Helena's blog:

The Very Secret Diaries Of George W Bush

Day 1: Am bored. Nothing to do in White House.

Day 2: Cheney says we can't find Osama whoeverthehell he is. He says we need a new enemy to fight to show everyone that we kick ass. John Ashcroft suggests the Democratic party. Colon says that's unconstitutional.

Fuck the Constitution.

Day 3: New Enemy will be either Iran, Iraq, or North Korea. Dick says they're an 'Axis of Evil'.

What's an axis?

Day 5: Iraq's easiest to invade, so it's them. Condi's taken the map, so I don't know where Iraq is. I hope there isn't a press conference soon!

Cheney says he's still the prettiest. Am inclined to agree.

Day 8: We need an excuse for war. I said why the hell do we need one, we've just gotta show everyone who's boss! Colon said we won't get any allies that way, but no-one else thought that was a problem.

Someone said that we could invade because Saddam's a racist dictator who allows no civil liberties or freedom of speech, but John Ashcroft glared at him.

Day 13: Have invented excuse. Saddam is a threat to our security. Colon says no-one will believe us, but Dick said that doesn't matter, no-one does anyway except the core voters.

Day 18: Have found Iraq on map! Go me!

Day 23: Some idiot said that Saddam doesn't have any missiles that can reach us, so how is he a threat? He's a threat because Rummy says he is. Have delivered smackdown.

Day 28: Still not king.

Day 31: Weapons inspectors are in Iraq. Cheney says that dude with a stupid name had better find the weapons we gave Iraq back in the '80s.

Day 37: Have beaten personal hi-score on golf CD-ROM game! Didn't have time to read Dr Blix's report though. Oh well.

Day 42: Chirac is such a fucker. We saved France's butt back way back when, what right does he have to take a moral stand?

Day 44: Losing allies. Colon wibbling. I don't see why we need allies anyway, everyone knows we're great, so what's the problem?

Day 46: Protests everywhere. WTF? Cheney says they're commie tree-hugging baby-killing damn liberals. Better take no notice then.

Day 50: Overheard Rummy telling Dick he was the prettiest.

Day 55: Saddam destroying weapons. This means we can't have war. Wah!

Day 56: Rummy says we can have war anyway. Whee! All we need to do is discredit Blix, demonise Saddam, wave our nukes around, undermine the UN, bad-mouth the French and Germans, and get Tony to help us so we can have diplomatic cover.

Wait...let me remember...we discredit Tony, undermine the Germans, get diplomatic cover from Rummy, wave Blix around, demonise the French (yay!), and bad-mouth the UN. Works for me!

Dick says I should take an early night.

Day 63: Saddam still disarming, but Colon trumped him on a technicality. Looks like war, at last!

Rummy already looking at maps of North Korea. I told him to calm down. Real go-getter, that one.

Day 66: Phone call from Tony. I suspect he may be prettier than Dick.

Dick wibbling.

Did I just say that?

Day 69: :makes schoolboy jokes:

Day 70: UN won't do what we want, so we're ignoring them. Off to war!

Kate (have I linked to her yet?) suggested that I run for Scan editor next year, when she runs for LUSU President.

I have to say, I'm tempted.

All I need to do is make myself known in Scan over the next year or so. Time to get my rants column going.

Interesting article about the media and the invasion of Iraq: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2879477.stm

Fucking hell...

You get all these stories from Iraq, and think, oh shit...

But this is just horrifying: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2877039.stm

Okay, we've got an RAF jet shot down by the Americans, coalition troops blowing the shit out of an ITN vehicle, killing the reporter who reported the Halabja gas attack, and the civilian death toll in Baghdad is brushing close to 300 (according to the Iraqis).

Lots of celebrities are refusing to go to the Oscars, and acceptance speeches are being cut to 45 seconds, to prevent those who do go speaking out against the war.

Damn ugly, but I still support what's going on in Iraq.

Oh, and the Pentagon's just reported they've found a large chemical weapons factory about 150 miles south of Baghdad. No confirmation yet.