War / Not a good day for GWB
Mar. 26th, 2003 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrphSo, what have we had today?
A Baghdad marketplace gets bombed, and the first response from the USA is basically "don't look at us, we're not admitting any responsibility, we didn't drop any bombs there". The second, rather confused, response is "there were some missile launchers hidden next to civilian buildings". What they're pointedly not saying is "OK, we may have screwed up and killed innocent civilians". Unfortunately, their changing story just makes them look spin-driven and shifty...
Still no telegenic crowds of liberated Iraqis. But the military has now described the snipers "in civilian clothing" as "terrorist style attackers". Definitely not civilians who think they're defending their country, then?
The WTO ruled that GWB's steel tariffs are illegal.
We seem to have bombed a TV station. On purpose. The US and UK are telling different stories as to why - I'm tempted to think that it's not about "dual use" transmitters or secret coded messages, it's so that we don't see any more awkward pictures of coalition POWs.
Bush's massive tax cuts are meeting serious political opposition.
Very small print in a couple of newspapers acknowledges that the "scuds" fired at Kuwait weren't scuds, and were actually short range missiles, allowed under the UN resolutions.
The US and UK are still not seeing eye to eye on post-Saddam Iraq. This could be yet more political strife for Blair...
Political people are seriously talking about "re-evaluating" our relationship with the USA after this war. Given the political fall-out so far, following a war-hungry Bush administration into Iran or North Korea could be disastrous - I can see the British government trying to tactfully step away when they get a chance...
Finally, as ever, the US armed forces are still killing more UK troops than the Iraqi armed forces are. This is nothing new - it was the largest cause of UK casualties in the last Gulf war, too, and the UK has never forgotten that.
A Baghdad marketplace gets bombed, and the first response from the USA is basically "don't look at us, we're not admitting any responsibility, we didn't drop any bombs there". The second, rather confused, response is "there were some missile launchers hidden next to civilian buildings". What they're pointedly not saying is "OK, we may have screwed up and killed innocent civilians". Unfortunately, their changing story just makes them look spin-driven and shifty...
Still no telegenic crowds of liberated Iraqis. But the military has now described the snipers "in civilian clothing" as "terrorist style attackers". Definitely not civilians who think they're defending their country, then?
The WTO ruled that GWB's steel tariffs are illegal.
We seem to have bombed a TV station. On purpose. The US and UK are telling different stories as to why - I'm tempted to think that it's not about "dual use" transmitters or secret coded messages, it's so that we don't see any more awkward pictures of coalition POWs.
Bush's massive tax cuts are meeting serious political opposition.
Very small print in a couple of newspapers acknowledges that the "scuds" fired at Kuwait weren't scuds, and were actually short range missiles, allowed under the UN resolutions.
The US and UK are still not seeing eye to eye on post-Saddam Iraq. This could be yet more political strife for Blair...
Political people are seriously talking about "re-evaluating" our relationship with the USA after this war. Given the political fall-out so far, following a war-hungry Bush administration into Iran or North Korea could be disastrous - I can see the British government trying to tactfully step away when they get a chance...
Finally, as ever, the US armed forces are still killing more UK troops than the Iraqi armed forces are. This is nothing new - it was the largest cause of UK casualties in the last Gulf war, too, and the UK has never forgotten that.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-26 11:56 pm (UTC)The UK Military may not have forgotten that. I can only assume that Blair has. I think that the old adage "Never get involved in a ground war in Asia" has been shunted down by "Never get involved in a war anywhere near the
americanUS miliary".I for one will be delighted if the UK moves away from the appaling GWB regime and closer to europe. If this involves opposing US use of Iraq as a combination piggy-bank / captive market, in favour of UN management, so much the better.
The US definition of "Precision weaponry" is an interesting one, too. The precision is apparently determined as the radius within which 50% of munitions strike. Anyone familiar with gaussian distribution will know just how appropriate a measure that isn't.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-27 12:31 am (UTC)In the briefing a couple days ago, there were images of barracks that were levelled. I feel sorry for the poor buggers caught inside. The US doesn't seem to have the word 'give quarter' in it's vocabulary. They did a similar thing on the Basra road last time around, where they bulldozed live Iraqi troops in their trenches, no option to surrender was given - they just drove in with armoured bulldozers or ploughs mounted on tanks and levelled the place. A reporter (Patrick Sloyan) who followed the group, but had been held back from witnessing the battle itself, wanted to know where the bodies of the opposition were...and was told 'there were no bodies...'!!
no subject
Date: 2003-03-27 02:49 am (UTC)That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.