For a continous war update see: The Agonist
For analysis see: dailyKOS and Talking Points Memo
For a blog of an unembedded journalist: Back to Iraq 2.0

Images of War

That's no bug
Capt. Kevin Jackson of the Engineer's Brigade, Army's 3rd Infantry Division, is seen guarding a convoy through the cracked windshield of the brigade's command vehicle on Thursday, somewhere south of Baghdad. The vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade earlier, but no one was injured.
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This is a must read.

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates
How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation
by Arundhati Roy

On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles.

On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11."

To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said.

According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess.

It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses.
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  thanks to BookNotes

Robert Fisk: Saddam's masters of concealment dig in, ready for battle

The road to the front in central Iraq is a place of fast-moving vehicles, blazing Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, tanks and trucks hidden in palm groves, a train of armoured vehicles bombed from the air and hundreds of artillery positions dug into revetments to defend the capital. That a Western journalist could see so much of Iraq's military preparedness says as much for the Iraqi government's self-confidence as it does for the need of Saddam Hussein's regime to make propaganda against its enemies.
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Robert Fisk: Wailing children, the wounded, the dead: victims of the day cluster bombs rained on Babylon

The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hillah teaching hospital are proof that something illegal – something quite outside the Geneva Conventions – occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon.
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The Six-Day War
By Geov Parrish

Historians won't call this The Six Days' War; that name belongs to another Middle Eastern military rout with far-reaching consequences.

But by last Wednesday, the outcome of George Bush's invasion of Iraq was decided. The only remaining unknowns are how many months or years it will take America and Britain to figure out that they have already lost, and how many people will die in the interim.
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At the gates of Baghdad  thanks to The Agonist

British Military Critical of US Troops' Heavy-Handed Style with Civilians

US draws up secret plan to impose regime on Iraq

Pentagon, State Spar On Team to Run Iraq
Rumsfeld Rejects State Dept. Choices   thanks to Talking Points Memo

It Will End in Disaster
The US and British governments have dragged us into a mess that will last for years
by George Monbiot

War backers misled us and themselves  thanks to Eschaton

The Hubris of the Neocons  thanks to Eschaton

The Siege of Basra
The Price of Indifference

Lebanon Redux?
Watching the war unfold from Jerusalem

CounterPunch War Diary
Medieval Sieges and the Politics of Casualties; Which Side Will Give Up First?; Prescient Counsel from Osama bin Laden; Hitchens in Huge Crystal Balls-Up; Embunkered Bush: Scary Glimpse of C-in-C

Iraqometer  thanks to BookNotes