Wednesday, March 05, 2003

I haven't been posting, because I have been sleeping instead. Sleeping lavishly, for HOURS. It's GREAT!

Let's see. Random link: Bush Speaks: The Top Pro-America Anti-Bush Web Site consists of various altered photographs and captions. Some are pretty good. Some are just so-so.

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1984, the sequel: I never cite to Fox News, because it's far right wing, screaming tripe. (Note: I don't like tripe. Not just because I'm a vegetarian.) But a friend sent a link to this Fox item: Man Arrested After Refusing to Remove Anti-War Shirt in Mall. No, really. He'd even BOUGHT THE SHIRT AT THAT SAME MALL.

By this evening, the mall had been embarrassed enough to drop the trespassing charges. The mall received some assistance in making this decision.
Earlier Wednesday, about 100 anti-war demonstrators marched through the mall to protest the arrest. They told a mall manager they would stop only when charges against the shopper were dropped and when the mall outlined its policy.

``We just want to know what the policy is and why it's being randomly enforced,'' said Erin O'Brien, an organizer of the noontime rally. ``It's only the people in the recent months who have anti-war or peace T-shirts that are being asked to leave the mall.''

A mall spokeswoman did not return repeated calls for comment.
Of course.

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I'm so thrilled I received a link to the photograph of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand. I'd heard that this photograph existed, and feared it would be suppressed. But no. It's featured in this fabulous National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book on US Policy toward Iraq. It discusses the great lengths the US went to in support of Iraq against Iran, including removing Iraq from a list of nations supporting terrorism, intervening to get credit for Iraq to buy more arms and US grain, and providing intelligence to use against Iran.

And as for all the US' current insistence that the use of chemical weapons is an evil that we must avenge? Well, the US didn't mind before.
When asked whether the U.S.'s conclusion that Iraq had used chemical weapons would have "any effect on U.S. recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with Iraq across a broad range, and also a willingness to open diplomatic relations," the department's spokesperson said "No. I'm not aware of any change in our position. We're interested in being involved in a closer dialogue with Iraq"
Links to documents from the National Archive are provided. This is one of those few absolute must-read sites out there, full of great stuff. The rest of George Washington University's National Security Archive is also well worth a visit. It's highly, highly, highly informative.