Antiwar.com Blog

I’m watching Senator George Voinovich lambasting John Bolton, the admnistration’s nominee for U.S. representative to the United Nations: one almost feels sorry for Bolton.

Almost, but not quite.

“A poster child for what a diplomat should not be” is among the least of the zingers Voinovich sent Bolton’s way. “Arrogant,” an “ideologue,” one who “does not listen” to the judgement of his subordinates — he “lords it over” people “even when he has won.”

Wham! Bam! Pow!

What struck me, however, was Voinovich’s exasperation at the pro-Bolton arguments advanced by Condoleezza Rice: she assured him that she would be in constant communication with Bolton, and that he would be under her “supervision” 24/7. But what, Voinovich thought to himself, are we doing sending someone who needs constant supervision to the UN?

Go here for Voinovich’s full statement.

So much for the public relations campaign by the White House which tried to portray the momentum as being in favor of Bolton. “A turning tide for Bolton” my a*s!

The nomination will now go to the Senate floor, where the inability to get it out of committee with a favorable recommendation — even with a solid Republican majority — will weigh heavily against Bolton.

This battle has rightly been characterized as a struggle over the nature and direction of U.S. foreign policy. The combative arrogance embodied by the nominee is a metaphor for the neoconservative mindset — and it is being sunk by a Republican senator who simply cannot stomach it, and who rightly sees that Bolton will fuel anti-Americanism worldwide.

This is a major defeat for the War Party. It shows that not only has their policy failed, but that they are beginning to reap the political consequences of that failure. Bolton was and is part of the cabal that lied us into war — and is bound and determined to get us into another one. His rejection is a great setback for them.

As the Financial Times points out:

“A moderate Republican representing the nation’s smallest state could decide the outcome. Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is under intense pressure from both sides on the Senate foreign relations committee. With the panel split 10-8 in favour of Republicans, just one defection would give the Democrats enough votes to block the nomination from reaching the full floor.”

Now, let’s keep up the pressure. Call your Senator and let them know that a vote for Bolton is a vote for perpetual war — and that you’ll be noting how your represenatives in Congress vote on this vital issue.

The momentum is with us — the Force is with us: let’s keep it going.

Thanks for the memories, chump. Condolences to David Horowitz.

Hospitals in Iraq are in terrible shape, as Eric Umansky reminds us. If Baghdad’s biggest hospital actually runs out of sutures, what is the likely state of hospitals in more isolated areas?

At least one Iraqi blogger is doing something to address the situation. Raed Jarrar and his friends have already delivered several batches of medical supplies to the hospital in Fallujah, so bypass the corruption and waste of the American military occupation and the Iraqi bureaucrats, hit Raed’s Paypal button (upper right sidebar) and help supply Iraq’s doctors and hospitals with desperately needed basic medical supplies.

Although Raed and Niki along with family and friends are doing an admirable, necessary job with this project, you won’t see them mentioned by the usual blog triumphalists because they only jarvis about bloggers who cheer the war and love the occupation. Those types have to pretend everything is swell in Iraq or their American audience might get upset.

Iraqi resistance wipes out entire squad of Marines

The Washington Post reports:

The explosion enveloped the armored vehicle in flames, sending orange balls of fire bubbling above the trees along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border.

Marines in surrounding vehicles threw open their hatches and took off running across the plowed fields, toward the already blackening metal of the destroyed vehicle. Shouting, they pulled to safety those they could, as the flames ignited the bullets, mortar rounds, flares and grenades inside, rocketing them into the sky and across pastures.

Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley emerged from the smoke and turmoil around the vehicle, circling toward the spot where helicopters would later land to pick up casualties. As he passed one group of Marines, he uttered just one sentence: “That was the same squad.”

Among the four Marines killed and 10 wounded when an explosive device erupted under their amtrac on Wednesday were the last battle-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Ubaydi. In that fight, two squad members were killed and five wounded.

In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had ceased to be.

Every member of the squad–one of three that make up the 1st Platoon of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment–had been killed or wounded, Marines here said. All told, the 1st Platoon, which Hurley commands, had sustained 60 percent casualties, demolishing it as a fighting force.

“They used to call it Lucky Lima,” said Maj. Steve Lawson, commander of the company. “That turned around and bit us.”

Attacks kill 69 in Iraq, Iraqi General assassinated

In other news from Iraq:

A car bomb exploded near a market in eastern Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 13, said police 1st Lt. Mazin Saeed. The blast also set some shops on fire in the New Baghdad area of the capital and destroyed 10 cars parked nearby, he said.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, suspected insurgents shot and killed Brig. Gen. Iyad Imad Mahdi as he drove to work at the Ministry of Defense. Col. Fadhil Muhammed Mobarak was shot and killed as he traveled to the Interior Ministry, where he led its police control room, police said.

Two car bombs also exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police said. One blast occurred near a Shiite mosque, killing two people and wounding two, said police Capt. Sarhad Talabani.

The other exploded at a site where explosives experts were dismantling a roadside bomb that residents had found, said police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qader. Two of the experts were wounded by the blast, which also destroyed nearby vehicles, Qader said.

In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded in a small market near a police station, killing at least 33 people and injuring 92, police and hospital officials said. The attacker swerved into a crowd of day laborers waiting to be picked up for work at construction sites after heavy security prevented the vehicle from reaching the station, police said.

About 90 minutes later, in Hawija, a town 150 miles north of Baghdad, a man with hidden explosives slipped past security guards at a police and army recruitment center and blew himself up outside the building where applicants were lined up. At least 30 people were killed and 35 injured, police said.
In western Baghdad, gunmen clashed with a police patrol on a highway, killing one officer and wounding another.

Another bomb exploded at Iraq’s largest fertilizer plant in the southern city of Basra, killing one person and wounding 23, police and employees said. The blast set fire to a gas pipeline and destroyed about 60 percent of the plant.

Iraqi government in action

Meanwhile, the US military and the New Iraqi Parliament^tm are squabbling over who gets a building in Baghdad.

National assembly members have long requested a meeting hall protected by Iraqis, but the campaign picked up speed after a tearful legislator appeared before the body last month to recount how U.S. soldiers had manhandled him at a checkpoint leading into the Green Zone. Spurred on by outraged legislators, the speaker of the assembly threatened to suspend meetings until they found an alternative venue.

Around the same time, a committee led by Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial politician who’s now deputy prime minister, was searching for a suitable site outside the Green Zone. They spotted the rose-colored building next door. Chalabi and other committee members took a tour of the grounds, praised the renovations and announced their findings to their fellow lawmakers:

“All the building needs now is furniture, and we can install that within a week,” a confident Chalabi told the assembly.

Legislators voted in favor of the move, infuriating U.S. and Iraqi defense officials. They weren’t about to let go of the building without a fight, said one senior Iraqi defense official who was present when Chalabi took his tour. He didn’t want his name published for fear of inflaming sensitivities surrounding the issue.

“If Chalabi comes back, we’ll shoot him,” the angry official said in jest.

Gordon Prather saw my previous blog entry and forwarded this column on the same subject. Prather notes that while “The scare-monger battle cry is that terrorists are planning to use various weapons of mass destruction on each and everyone of you.” this is a fraud, because

Contrary to what the scare-mongers have told you, an RDD (radiological dispersal device) is in no sense a weapon of mass destruction. A few people – including the terrorist – might be killed by the high explosive. But essentially no one would be killed on the spot – or die later – from radiation.

An RDD is not a nuke. It does not contain a critical mass of fissile material – such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. Hence, no uncontrolled chain reaction – no nuclear explosion – is possible.

Prather notes that the spread of radiation is of little significance due to its inability to cause instantaneous death, and the fact the it can be detected and cleaned. This is very similar to Easterbrook’s explanation of the inefficiency of biological weapons (see previous entry). In other words, difficult to spread in dangerous concentrations, relatively easy to quarantine and clean up afterwards. Really, conventional explosives are much more efficient killers and spreaders of what terrorists like – Shock and Awe.

In Arnaud de Borchgrave’s spotlight piece today, he mentions the need for the United States and Russia to work together on the Nuclear question;

Russia and America need each other today on several critical fronts, from transnational terrorism to the security of Russia’s 8,000 nuclear weapons and thousands of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. A small amount of these nuclear materials would be sufficient to make a radiological (“dirty”) bomb that would render Wall Street or downtown Washington around the White House uninhabitable for years.

Actually, the threat of a ‘Dirty bomb’ has been greatly exaggerated. I first became interested in the subject of what constitutes a legitimate ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ when I read Gregg Easterbrook’s article in the New Republic entitled “Term Limits: The meaninglessness of “WMD””(Issue date 10.07.02). Easterbrook debunks the myth of chemical/biological weapons as being any more destructive or dangerous than conventional explosives. In fact, Chemical weapons tend to immolate on detonation, and biological weapons (anthrax, for instance) tend to be very difficult to spread, except under what could be considered impossibly perfect weather conditions. The Anthrax scare following the 9/11 attacks was, at the time, blamed on Iraq by Rush Limbaugh, utterly absent any evidence of course, but the only thing close to a suspect ever named in the investigation is a former USAMRIID employee. Continue reading “Dirty Bomb?”