If you missed it, scathing criticisms from British weapons experts about the infamous WMD dossier are coming out, and they're not pretty. (Washington Post) I like the British understatement so often implied:

But Jones said his staff's concerns were by and large ignored and not reflected in the final draft of the document, in a process he called "very unusual."

I don't think folks here would just limit themselves to "very unusual."

It's a scathing good read.

An average of 10 U.S. troops a day are getting wounded (Washington Post) in the don't-call-it-a-quagmire Iraq occupation. 1,124 soldiers have been wounded since the attack on Iraq began. More than half of those were after 'hostilities' ended May 1st, a triggering of reduced benefits for the soldiers by the Bush Administration. Sadly, there are some disturbing comments about the need for amputations caused by the shrapnel injuries the soldiers are enduring.

The Washington Post also has a feature called Faces of the Fallen, a multimedia feature of U.S. troops who died in Iraq. Just when you're trying to adjust to the large number of tiny faces on the screen, I realized that I was only look at one of three pages of tiny faces. Oh...

*

In the face of this kind of suffering of U.S. troops, shouldn't all the folks that were pro-war being DOING something for them? Our government is already doing something -- that is, cutting benefits. But perhaps something more supportive would be, oh say, signing up to relieve all those National Guards soldiers who are stationed in Iraq, so they can return to their families?

Oooh, too good not to quote: an excerpt from Stan's blog:

Slogan of the day: seen outside Little America during Ashcroft's visit - "We're one moustache away from Hitler." Displayed beneath picture of Pres. Shrub.

After circulating an enthusiastic endorsement of a great locally made protest documentary among the folks on my activist mailing list, I received a message that I didn't expect.

The attack on San Francisco's financial district puzzled me. Why target a city many of whose people opposed the war? I imagined Mr. Bush enjoying a hearty chuckle at our expense -- if he paid any attention to it at all. I felt at the time -- and still feel -- that anyone who came into SF that day for the express purpose of making life difficult for San Franciscans ought to put in some time cleaning Muni trains, picking up trash on public streets and planting flowers & trees in low income neighborhoods. I wonder if they had bothered to vote in the last election? Not as much fun as kicking up a rumpus in the streets, of course, but in the long run, probably more useful.

I was rather mystified: attack? What attack? Sure, there were protesters blocking traffic in downtown San Francisco the day after the bombing of Iraq started, and massive demonstrations against the government's attack on Iraq and its people, but the only complaint I heard from anyone I knew personally was from an attorney who was held up in traffic half an hour. Half an hour! That's ordinary traffic delays for around here. (SF is too dense for sensible folks to drive to, for the most part.) There was some property damage, but not much, and only at a few buildings of either government offices or war profiteers. "Attack" is really a strong word for traffic disruption, considering that our country was bombing another country at the cost of thousands of civilian lives. But I've heard these kinds of complaints before. So I responded:

My protest on Day X was to stay home, so I can't really speak for the protesters who came downtown. However, the folks who participated in the major civil rights protests of the 1960s faced exactly the same criticisms: that they were alienating their allies, and failing to inconvenience only those who had done them wrong. But the civil rights protests both generated publicity for a good cause, and raised the consciousness of those who were consenting to the status quo. I think that both of those purposes are legitimate. I think those same methods and purposes were also legitimate for the anti-war protests.

Also, the only real disturbance they caused was traffic disruption. Which should have been a completely reasonable price to pay in exchange for an end to the war. Protesters all over the world used the same tactics, and their governments listened. The fact that protesters here weren't successful, while the folks in Barcelona, Sydney, Berlin, and other places were, doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.

In a day when you literally can't buy advertising on television for anti-war messages (as MoveOn tried to do, and was refused by every major network), I'm not sure what other options were available to show that there was dissent in this country. After the initial Day X protests in downtown SF, protesters did focus their efforts on the HQs of the war profiteers, so there were others who shared your concern about the protests not sending a message to the right people. They changed their approach. (Though you may not have read about that, because protests that don't disrupt traffic aren't newsworthy! United we stand!)

The peace movement is looking for ways to stop both the doctrine of might-makes-right and the war profiteering. They're open to suggestion. (Voting alone isn't enough - too many of our elected officials surrendered their war powers to Bush, and then signed the Patriot Act!) If you know a way to stop the killing and war-profiteering, speak up!

I think that protesting, voting, and writing to government representatives are all part of a package to get change. But we need more. We especially need media reform, so people can make informed choices and have an outlet for their opinions.

Meanwhile, the war profiteers are taking money from the Iraqi people's accounts for their work in Iraq, which the Iraqi people have had little say in. Only the politicians in the Bush Administration who received fat donations from the profiteers and granted them no-bid contracts are able to decide what the future democracy of Iraq needs. Which isn't the best start.

And every day, as the war profiteers rake in Iraqi oil money, we... go to work. Eat meals. Live our lives. Silently accept the status quo. Really, stopping traffic now and then to express the injustice of the situation doesn't seem very contemptible.

Remember when U.S. forces opened tank fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, the designated hotel for all non-embedded journalists? The Pentagon, though unable to keep its stories straight about how the hotel came under fire, has investigated itself and found itself not at fault for the deaths of two journalists and injuries to many others.

Act surprised.

A factual summary by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ.org) notes the many inconsistencies in the Pentagon's story, and observes (without the sort of rude tone I would be tempted to use) that the Pentagon and just about everyone else knew that hotel was filled with journalists, some of whom were filming from their balconies immediately before the attack, providing evidence that the gun battle the military claimed to be participating in was occurring at the time the tank fired, and that no gunfire was coming from the hotel.

In a tribute to award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was killed this week in broad daylight by U.S. troops (Washington Post), the US government's self-serving conclusion is discussed:

Mazen's death came just days after a U.S. military inquiry exonerated a tank crew for firing on a Baghdad hotel housing journalists on April 8, killing a Ukrainian-born Reuters cameraman and a Spanish cameraman. The investigation concluded the tank crew had reason to believe hostile forces were using the building to direct fire on the Americans.

That is little comfort to the families of those killed. They don't believe the Pentagon's version. Many of the 100 journalists in the hotel that day deny the tank crew came under any fire.

(Additional links to articles, including a short compilation of stories on Dana's death can be found at Urbana-Champain Indymedia.)