Could it be worse? Well, yes. BBC NEWS | Americas | Planning the US 'Long War' on terror (news.bbc.co.uk, 4/10/06):

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The 'Long War' is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

Now the US military is revealing details of how it is planning to fight this very different type of war.

It is also preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years.

I guess this means we all have time to reread 1984 a few more times.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq three years on: A bleak tale (news.bbc.co.uk, 3/17/06). This article quotes Prof. Cole, of the blog Informed Comment, with a particularly sad status report:

"Some 80 bodies have been found in Baghdad and environs since Monday. On Tuesday alone, police discovered 46 bodies around the capital. They appear mostly to have been Sunni Arabs targeted by enraged Shias attacked by the guerrillas during the past three weeks.

"Some were in the back of a minibus. Some were in a mass grave in Shia east Baghdad. The latter were discovered when passers-by saw blood oozing out of the earth. Blood oozing out of the earth is a good metaphor for Iraq nowadays."

There are also quotes from people who think things are going fine. Those people are also not Iraqis, and the sunny things they say are not compatible with news about mass graves.

How embarrassing for U.S. representatives to have a double standard about mass graves. As if they are only important if the maker of them is our political enemy. As if the people in them are less dead.

*

Having double standards about mass graves leads to some awkward questions about the attitude toward war in general. It may be a stretch, but I think it would be nice if we can all be appalled equally. I recall being vexed by reporting of mass graves in the past, when it turned out that graves discovered in Iraq contained evidence that they were actually from the Iran-Iraq war. I remember feeling a bit outraged over being... how can I say it. Used? Manipulated. Manipulated into thinking that the mass grave somehow justified the use of more violence by the U.S. there, when it was something else entirely. But STILL VERY SAD. I would have been sad even if the mass grave was filled with people from Iran from that war. Or people from Iran who were killed with illegal chemical weapons by Iraq, an action that the U.S. condoned. (gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/).

Because those people would still be dead. Dead for really unfortunate, unnecessary reasons.

One of the things that creeps me out about the current political situation, is that there are so many people who seem to believe that atrocities that result in mass graves are only horrid if they were committed by people we don't like. The way atrocities are reported, the descriptions are eerie reminders of horrors we read about in history, things that were NEVER supposed to happen again, and yet the justifications have begun anew.

'Same as it ever was.

A belief that humanity can really improve and become ethical should not be a casualty of this war. Yet...

Remembrance and protest in images. Rallies Mark Iraq Anniversary (washingtonpost.com, 3/19/06). That 12th image is especially lovely.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Press scathing at Iraq anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 3/20/06). Sample:

There is outrage at the conditions on the ground, with one paper asking "is the daily discovery of bodies the freedom President Bush says Iraqis are living in?"

What it costs us. One of the most powerful periodicals I read last year about the damage that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had done to the United States is The Nation | Issue | December 26, 2005 : The Torture Complex (thenation.com). It's a themed issue about what the U.S. is now known for around the world in the post-Abu-Ghraib era: immoral, illegal, physical and mental abuse. The damage isn't limited to our image, of course: it's also a sort of rot from within, and ordinarily upstanding people suddenly stand on their heads and twist their tongues trying to justify something which they have always claimed to abhor. It's ugly to see someone arguing that something was TERRIBLE when the Nazis or Saddam Hussein or [tyrant of the week] did it, but... well, it's peachy keen when the U.S. kills people the same way, "because we're, like, good."

Extra-notable: a reminder that the School of the Americas has been exporting torture for years, and that there has always been denial of the immorality of that on the part of the majority of Americans - and vehement protest by a vocal, moral, minority.

How bad is it, continued. From the ordinarily lighthearted Achenblog (washingtonpost.com, 2/23/06) comes a sobering summary of the status of US intervention:

But each news bulletin is more disturbing than the last. More than 100 bodies have been found in the past day, executed. The BBC reported that a busload of 47 factory workers was stopped at a checkpoint, and all the workers were summarily murdered on the spot. The perpetrators of this massacre and other atrocities remain mysterious. War between Sunnis and Shiites could be averted if the citizens find someone else to blame for the violence, and, according to the Post story, some folks are ready to point the finger at the Americans and 'Zionists.'

The not-quite-correct Colin Powell line, explaining "the Pottery Barn Rule" (which Pottern Barn insists isn't their policy) of 'you break it, you buy it' in which the US' removal of one government makes it responsible for the country they're occupying is just as evident as Powell's warning suggested.

How bad is it? Daytime Curfew in Four Iraqi Provinces Halts Violence (washingtonpost.com, 2/24/06) is actually titled on the front page as "Relative Calm in Iraq Today." Which doesn't mean much.

She has a point: From AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Candlelight vigils stop illegal wiretapping! by Rachel Neumann:

writing letters to an administration that already knows what I think since they've been monitoring my emails and phone calls seems ridiculous.

One of the early casualties of the attack on Iraq and the related ideological war was the current US administration's decision that they are absolutely above the law, and can spy on citizens at will.

It seemed at first that there was public sentiment in favor of legal surveillance of anyone who had independent thoughts of any kind in the early days of the war, especially surveillance of the peace movement, which had predicted that the war might be a very bad thing - an unpopular, widespread sentiment. But when the Bush Administration went beyond that, civil libertarians actually woke up and got mad, including some of those in Bush's own party. How novel.

Sad landmark for the British part of the Coalition: BBC NEWS | Scotland | Funeral for 100th conflict death (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/20/06).

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay inmates 'tortured' (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/13/06):

[From UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak.]

'We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,' Mr Nowak told the LA Times.

The Center for Justice and Accountability (cja.org) "works to deter torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world by helping survivors hold their persecutors accountable." It's a tricky time to be involved in an anti-torture project in the U.S., which makes this work all the more admirable. Be sure to see their resolutions in support of human rights with regard to the U.S..

Just in case you were wondering: Iraq Coalition Casualties Count (icasualties.org).

Unfortunate unilateral action of the week: It's one thing to pursue a dangerous criminal; it's another to simply bomb a village where the criminal may or may not be. BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | 'Zawahiri' strike sparks protest (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/14/06) has a grim, Keystone Cops sort of flavor that is completely discouraging. This approach is consistent with the US military approach to threats within Iraq, but that isn't helping, either.

A sad anniversary. BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Guantanamo Bay's unhappy anniversary (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/11/06). The 'war on terror (and international law) has meant that the US' lawless, foreign military gulag, Guantanamo Bay, has existed publicly for 4 years. The system that it is supporting has produced no successful convictions, just a long string of embarrassments as the men who were so hastily rounded up and deprived of their liberty are quietly dumped in or near their home countries.

Whoever thought the US would sink so low as this.

U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding: Documents Show Much of the Funding Diverted to Security, Justice System and Hussein Inquiry (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

An aside: the insurgency didn't actually get the money, despite the comment that the insurgency was eating money. It's just more polite to say that, rather than to point out the high overhead costs of an unpopular military occupation.

Photographs From Iraq: December 2005 : SF Indymedia (sf.indymedia.org)

The New Yorker: Fact: UP IN THE AIR - Where is the Iraq war headed next? by Seymour Hersh (12/5/05, newyorker.com).

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: "I said to the President, 'We are not winning the war.' And he asked, 'Are we losing?' I said, 'Not yet.' The President, he said, 'appeared displeased' with that answer.

Hersch has published a variety of very interesting articles about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here's something I haven't thought much about, because it isn't often mentioned in the corporate media:

The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004.... Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance.

(Bold emphasis mine.) There are several interesting items in this particular Hersch article - go give it a read.

A look at the big picture. EducationGuardian.co.uk | eG weekly | Paul Rogers: Peace studies in our time (education.guardian.co.uk):

He explains the thesis: 'The real long-term conflict in the world is between an elite and the marginalised majority.' In it he describes the spectacle of a World Bank conference on poverty cocooned in a five-star hotel amid the squalor of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and the grotesqueness of a gated community in South Africa surrounded by a 33,000-volt fence.

It seems obvious that the developed world is pushing the overall world into a variety of painfully unjust, inequitable situations, and that there is resistance to this. What's funny is how rarely this situation is acknowledged.

He doesn't read the newspapers. Or the editorials. Or the interviews. Or the blogs. President Gives Both Reassurance, Warnings on Iraq (washingtonpost.com, 12/18/05):

'I don't think I got it wrong,' Cheney said. 'I think the vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what the United States did. I think they believe overwhelmingly that they're better off today than they were when Saddam Hussein ruled.'

Like a bad penny, he's back! Iraqi Oil Minister Resigns to Protest Higher Fuel Prices (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

...over the weekend, the government named Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister.

No way! NO WAY!