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From Nathan Newman:

The US is a rogue nation; conservatives may justify it as being a good international lawbreaker and benevolent global dictator, but it is emerging as a global dictator nonetheless. There is no other word than empire to describe the US acting unilaterally and then ignoring the weapons inspections rules it based its own justification for invasion upon.

The embarassment of the US is that they have found no weapons of mass destruction, obliterating any “self-defense” justification upon which unilateral invasion shakily was based. To bar inspections is a recipe for global suspicion of what the US is hiding.

Terrorism is justified on the idea that those with less power must violate norms of just war as the only weapon at their disposal. When the country with the most power in the world says that it is not constrained by such norms or international rules, the last thread of social restraint and global opposition to terrorists is being removed.

Bush endangers our lives every day with these actions. Not that he cares, as his disregard for those suffering the after-effects of 911 shows, but I feel like printing a map to Lubbock Texas for terrorists worldwide as a self-defense mechanism against the danger Bush places cities like New York in with his reckless actions.

Ethel the Blog wonders whether the plundering of the Iraq National Museum was a favour to some of the bush regime’s backers:

Let’s see: the ACCP – almost certainly made up of very rich people who donated large amounts of money to the Cabal – got a meeting with Pentagon officials before the war where they supposedly expressed their “concern” about Iraqi antiquities, while other groups – whose concerns about the antiquities were based on considerations other than their profit margin should the antiquities be “liberated” from the evil “retentionists” – communicated warnings to the Cabal but were basically ignored. That is, the Cabal knew about the museum and the looting possibilities as certainly as they knew the locations of the the oil wells and the oil ministry, and chose to spend huge amounts of time and resouces protecting the latter and basically nothing for the former. One might even say they deliberately didn’t protect the antiquities in the museum, the direct result of which was the theft of extremely valuable antiquities, many of which had been on order by art dealers well in advance of the invasion, i.e. art dealers undoubtedly connected to the same ACCP that had a private audience with the Pentagon before the invasion. Did the Pentagon issue identity badges to the ACCP “agents” so they wouldn’t get arrested or shot in the “uncontrollable chaos” (well, uncontrollable everywhere except at the oil ministry) or did they establish a special “Kelly’s Heroes” division so the non- taxpayers in the ACCP would get their fair share of government services?

Digby on the lessons of Iraq:

The lesson of Iraq is that the United States is going to do what it wants to do without regard to international law or any nation’s good faith effort to cooperate. If they have decided to take military action against you it is a fait accompli. “Aggressive engagement” looks suspiciously like the “Decade of Defiance and Deception” public relations package that sold the war to the American public. No world leader is now under the misapprehension that complying with American demands necessarily guarantees that he will not be invaded and deposed anyway. There is no value in face saving or compromise because the US has proved that it will change its goals and create new rationales at will. So, the only question for any leader in this situation is whether to surrender without bloodshed or go down fighting. All moral authority is vested in America’s willingness to deploy its military.

American foreign policy is now entirely unpredictable and is based upon nothing more than an elastic self-serving notion of American security. It requires no international consensus regardless of whether it directly impacts US national security and does not follow any international law or norms. It interprets treaties as it wishes without regard to precedent and holds other nations to standards to which it does not hold itself. It does not speak with one voice so its impossible to judge its real position and act accordingly. The American public are overwhelmingly supportive of the administration’s new policy regardless of whether the government lies blatently about its reasons so there is little hope of any internal pressure to moderate. The world must now base its relationship with America on nothing more than blind hope or fear of one man’s unknown intentions.

Nathan Newman on budgets of mass destruction:

In what Mayor Bloomberg himself described as a “doomsday budget”, the budget includes laying off 10,000 city employees, touching almost every city agency including the fire department, which could see up to 40 firehouses shut down.

Yep– even as firehouses are recovering from devastating losses from 911, they will see even more cuts in employee numbers.

Is there any sanity in a “war on terrorism” where those needed in any future terrorist attack are being laid off because the federal government thinks tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than funding the basic infrastructure of response?

Rafe Colburn writes in defence of Robert Fisk. All I can say is: hear, hear!

I’m always disarmed by what a good writer Robert Fisk is. I’d go so far as to say that the best writer of any journalist I’ve ever read, at least among those who operate under the deadlines that he does. His erudition, ability to weave the fabric of history into his pieces, and descriptive powers amaze. For that reason alone, Fisk is impossible to dismiss.

Equally impressive to me, though, is the fact that Robert Fisk has been working the Middle East beat since before Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. If Fisk is cynical about the prospects for peace in the Middle East and seems world weary, it’s because he’s earned it. He’s been showing up on the scenes of human tragedy for almost as long as I’ve been alive, and telling the story as he sees it. It shocks me to see people assume that Fisk is a liar when his reporting is limited almost exclusively to first hand accounts. If you read nothing but weblogs, you might be shocked to learn that Fisk is probably the UK’s best regarded foreign correspondent. Nearly all of the arguments against the facts he reports are based on the fact that the arguer is in disbelief.

One of the best things about the coverage of the Gulf War (Cont.) has been the dispatches from embedded journalists. Even though they operate under (reasonable) constraints, most of the important stories to emerge during the conflict have been reported by people on the front lines alongside US troops. That’s been a refreshing change considering that most newspapers tend to report on things that were said at press conferences or provided on a not for attribution basis by people looking to advance their agenda. Fisk is operating on his own in Baghdad during this war (and doesn’t seem to be sucking up to the Saddamites a la Peter Arnett), and that’s hardly a surprise. The guy seems to have no fear in going wherever the story is and telling what he sees.