One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Monday, 16 June 2003

.< 11:24:04 PM >
Iraqi resistance to occupation is growing

The US and Britain said they came to liberate Iraq and protect its people. The failure to understand how Iraqis would respond may be rooted in arrogance. It is also a colossal failure in intelligence which may prove to be at least as important as the inability to find any of Iraq's banned weapons. The commander of British forces in the war, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, admitted as much in remarkably frank evidence to MPs this week. Asked about the problems of "policing" Iraq, and the number of forces needed to do the job, he replied: "I'm not sure we understand yet." (link)

It boggles the mind to think that we invaded another country with this little thought about it. Why? Arrogance? Blind faith in ideology? Incompetence? Dear God.

< 11:22:01 PM >

Five days before the war began in Iraq, as President Bush prepared to raise the terrorism threat level to orange, a top White House counterterrorism adviser unlocked the steel door to his office, an intelligence vault secured by an electronic keypad, a combination lock and an alarm. He sat down and turned to his inbox.
"Things were dicey," said Rand Beers, recalling the stack of classified reports about plots to shoot, bomb, burn and poison Americans. He stared at the color-coded threats for five minutes. Then he called his wife: I'm quitting.
Beers's resignation surprised Washington, but what he did next was even more astounding. Eight weeks after leaving the Bush White House, he volunteered as national security adviser for Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), a Democratic candidate for president, in a campaign to oust his former boss. All of which points to a question: What does this intelligence insider know? (link)

A must-read.

< 11:05:49 PM >

< 5:55:27 PM >

Majorities in many countries take a dim view of the Bush administration, a poll for the BBC suggests. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

Now why would that be?

< 5:50:58 PM >

The author of Animal Farm would have plenty to say about the post-9/11 world, writes Margaret Atwood . [Guardian Unlimited] 'But with 9/11, all that changed. Now it appears we face the prospect of two contradictory dystopias at once - open markets, closed minds - because state surveillance is back again with a vengeance. [...] Democracies have traditionally defined themselves by, among other things - openness and the rule of law. But now it seems that we in the west are tacitly legitimising the methods of the darker human past, upgraded technologically and sanctified to our own uses, of course. For the sake of freedom, freedom must be renounced. To move us towards the improved world - the utopia we're promised - dystopia must first hold sway.'

< 5:40:20 PM >

World: More than 250 Iranian intellectuals call on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to abandon the principle of being God's representative on Earth. [Guardian Unlimited]

< 5:38:35 PM >

Sydney dispatch: The Australian government's deception over the war in Iraq may yet jolt voters out of their apathy, writes David Fickling. [Guardian Unlimited]

< 5:36:02 PM >