War on Terrorism

Are They or Aren’t They?

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The Talking Dog read Pravda today and has wandered down an interesting conspiratorial path. You need to go there to read the good stuff. He raises interesting questions and I hope the Dog’s ending bark is the real one:

Let me just say that I hope American forces actually did get Q and U– if for no other reason, so that Iraqis need no longer live in fear of the Tikriti dynasty beyond the aging Saddam himself (even if supposedly 80% of Iraqis believe the photos are fake). Please, let’s not have fucked this one up too…

Great….but,

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From the Washington Post:

Uday and Qusay Hussein, the two sons of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, were killed today by U.S. troops in a firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez announced this afternoon in a news conference in Baghdad…….
The resistance was reportedly stiff when the U.S. troops arrived at the villa in Mosul this morning. Sanchez said the “suspects barricaded themselves in the house” and “died in a fierce gun battle.”
Four bodies were taken from the villa, but Sanchez said they have not yet confirmed the identities of the other two people. Four soldiers also were injured in the battle.
The dead did not include Saddam Hussein,

Hmmmmm….fierce gun battle and stiff resistance? Maybe these guys had 8 arms each or something. Wouldn’t it have been much more useful to have uday and qusay alive? You know, questions and answers??
Via Talkleft.

Foreign Policy Economics

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I have not seen any statistics on the impact of the many cries to boycot French products we heard during the buildup to the Iraq war and I wonder just how happy the bushies corporate funders will be if current foreign policy has a large negative impact on worldwide sales.

Echoing harvard Professor Business School Professor John Quelch’s April warning:

Selling the American dream has paid off handsomely. Eight of the ten most valuable brands in the world, according to the Interbrand consultancy, are American, and each derives more than half its sales from outside the United States. But now a deepening opposition to American foreign policy is threatening the long-term strength of these brands.

Newsweek reports:

Does the rising tide of anti-Americanism hurt American multinationals? The vocal antiwar protesters would like to think so, but there hasn�t been much evidence for a broader consumer turnoff, until now.

Reporting on the same study the Independent headlines:

Americans are used to resentment of their global dominance. Since the war on Iraq, however, this hostility has begun to hit them where it hurts: in corporate balance sheets.

Countering the gloomy reports Nike and Mcdonalds say that their European revenues are respectiviely either up or flat. It will be interesting to watch these figures over the next 6-12 months.
Via Alternet.

The Iraq Pitch and the Patriot Act

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William Rasberry doesn’t want us to be blinded by uraniumgate:

The flap over how the falsehood about uranium purchases from Niger made it into the president’s State of the Union message should not obscure what for me is the most troubling fact: Key members of the Bush administration, convinced in their hearts that America needed to destroy Saddam Hussein, thought it reasonable to exaggerate the threat and deliberately stretch the facts in order to sell the American people on that necessity.

Read his column to see why he thinks this is a pattern of behaviour.
Via Talkleft.

The Land of the Free

This entry was posted in Constitution Domestic Terrorism Libertarianism Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

Ken MacLeod did not want to risk his freedom:

Recently, on being asked if I intended to visit the United States some time soon, I indulged in the admittedly cheap crack that ‘I’m staying in the free world until America rejoins it.’ Trivial and theoretical though the risk may be, I just didn’t fancy being in a country where you can in theory be disappeared, interrogated and executed without any trial other than by a military tribunal. It wasn’t something I said lightly, because I really enjoyed all my past visits to America.

But now says:

On the bright side, however, I have no reason for not going to America.

Go read why he changed his mind.