Invasion of Iraq
week two

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Last update: 1 April 2003, 20:28 GMT

It’s not such a push-over is it?

Well, here we are a week after the invasion began and it’s now clear that it’s not going to be the push-over we were all assured it was going to be beforehand. Of course, They are telling us that they never said it would be. We all remember differently don’t we? In other words They are talking utter bullshit.

Dead Iraqi child

Glad to be liberated?

Just why is it that the Iraqi forces are not surrendering in droves? Just why is it that the civilian population is not welcoming us with open arms and rising up to overthrow their masters?

They would have us believe that the Iraqis are being coerced by nasty hit squads into not rising up: if you try overthrowing us we’ll rape your grandmother. According to Rumsfeld there are 20 thousand thugs in these hit squads. Where does he get his figures from? Does he just make them up?

The rest of us, I suspect, are at least beginning to think (if we ever really doubted it) that the real reason the population is not revolting against the regime is that they don’t want to be fucking invaded. Sure, they may not like Saddam very much (he is a pretty nasty sort of guy according to people I trust like Amnesty) but he’s their bad guy and theirs to overthrow by themselves. If they want our help they’ll ask for it, thank you very much.

Given that the Iraqis, other than a few who see an opportunity to get rich by licking US backsides, don’t want us in their country why don’t we just fuck off out of there and go home?

Apologies for swearing. Sometimes it’s necessary.

Fog of war

There have been many news reports in the past week which have later proved to be either grossly exagerated or completely untrue. Examples include:

These sorts of thing are often attributed to the fog of war. It’s a funny fog this. It seems to be rather partisan. All the stories made front page news in UK newspapers. The actual facts were reported in later editions well away from the front page.

Result? Most of the readers of the original stories still think they’re true. This is of course the intention. Encourage a story, get it on the front pages to get people to believe it then later tone it right down as being a mistake due to the strange weather.

More dead people

Not much to write today. More dead people. Seven of them women and kids travelling in a mini-bus who didn’t stop at a US checkpoint. Why the hell should they other than the fact that they’d probably be alive if they had? It’s their country. What right had the US to stop them travelling on a road in their own country?

In a way, I feel sorry for the soldiers who killed these people. They’re probably shit scared having been put into a situation they’d been assured they wouldn’t be in (whatever Rumsfeld says now).

One thing has been striking me over the past day or so. That’s just how bad at fighting the US army is. All those helicopters, all those cruise missiles, all that other hi-tech equipment and they still can’t get anywhere significant against a people almost fighting on its knees. Perhaps they rely just too much on all that stuff.

More garbage coming from the mouth of Rumsfeld. You know, the usual stuff about it all going well and how the Iraqis are fighting back because there’s all these bad guys threatening them if they don’t. Blah, blah. Makes me sick.

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
Masters of War
(Bob Dylan, 1963)

Some links