March 31, 2003
A Reasonable Request
"Excuse me sir, Donald H. Rumsfeld's calling again and he's hopping mad!" This scene (or something like it) was played out in Syrian and Iranian war rooms last week, as Rumsfeld took the two to task for supplying Iraq with night-vision goggles -- though a U.S. General is "not aware of any that have been encountered."
Rumsfeld's beef is that the alleged goggles "pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces." But did anybody notice Rumsfeld ordering a recall of the "coalition"'s goggles -- which, one can only presume, "pose a direct threat to the lives" of Iraqi forces?
The inscrutable charge comes hot-on-the-heels of the Pentagon's recent hypocritical cry-baby antics regarding POWs and the Geneva Conventions.
More ominously, George Bush last week renewed his threat to nuke Iraq should "coalition forces" come under a chemical or biological weapons attack. The Superbrain didn't say what he would by that logic consider an appropriate response to the United States' use of Depleted Uranium munitions, Natural Uranium munitions, tear gas, napalm (both The Sydney Morning Herald -- citing U.S. Marine officers -- and an off-hand eyewitness account from a CNN reporter have noted its use by the United States, though the State Department denies the claim), cluster bombs, land mines, or "E-bombs".
Further, the infantile, legalistic arguments coming out of Washington and London to the effect that recent Baghdad market massacres were the result not of "coalition" armaments, but of Iraqi anti-aircraft fire are belied by the recovered fragments' serial numbers. But Tony Blair's abysmal whinging that Iraqi surface-to-air missiles "have been malfunctioning and many of them have failed to hit targets and fallen back to Baghdad," completely fails to take into account what the missiles were firing at -- namely, U.S. aircraft on bombing runs over populated areas. Does he really expect us to believe that Iraq would be firing off missiles over Baghdad even were it not under attack?!
No doubt the U.S. is soon going to cry foul at the suicide bombers having now "arrived" in Iraq intending to blow up "coalition" troops -- notwithstanding that it's perfectly acceptable for the "coalition" to "hammer away", "soften up", "pound", "significantly degrade", "batter", "rock", "severely weaken", "clobber", "pummel", and "destroy" Iraqi military personnel and civilians with "barrages of bombs and missiles" in a "round-the-clock" "relentless onslaught". Perfectly acceptable, even though grossly illegal and wretchedly immoral.
How long, one wonders, before the Pentagon requests Iraqi soldiers to fight in their pyjamas, and to wipe the "coalition" forces' asses once they've finished shitting all over them?
Posted by Eddie Tews at March 31, 2003 05:01 PM
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