Antiwar.com Blog

Sydney Morning Herald reports:

It said the action was in revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

“This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheik Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists,” said in the statement from the “Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin”.

“We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq,” said the statement obtained by AFP.

The statement, entitled “Fallujah, the graveyard of the Americans”, claimed the group’s fighters killed “members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Zionist Mossad”, referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.

It said the “blind violence” of Fallujah residents resulted from an increasing hatred of the Americans and was also in response to the “US aggression, raids on mosques and homes, the arrests, the torture of clerics and the terrorising of women and children.”

The US needs more “allies” like Ariel Sharon. Hey, how about Islam Karimov?

An intelligent reader calls BS on John Derbyshire over at The Corner. In other news, the Derb and Glenn Reynolds retain joint custody of their brain cell, while Rick Brookhiser just tries to be one of the boys.

There’s one liberventionist argument that practically every Iraq war supporter uses– that by establishing a democratic, pluralistic society in Iraq, we plant the germ for the entire Arab/Muslim/oppressed/backwards world. With the current mayhem in Iraq and its disintegration into a pluralistic hell of warring ethnic, religious, and political factions, even some of the most cement-skulled warbots are sniffing reality. The logical next step for them is to invert the original formula as follows: How can a democratic, pluralistic Iraq develop while surrounded by tyrants and fanatics on all sides? I’d file that under Things They Should Have Thought About Before Invading, but you can bet they won’t. Their plan to solve all the world’s problems by fixing Iraq will quietly morph into the plan to fix Iraq by solving all the world’s problems.

Granted, the vanguard of the War Party has been calling for such a full-on clash of civilizations all along. Now watch as the mainstream liberventionists join in.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at a briefing in Baghdad that it was not known what the coalition contractors were doing in Fallujah — apparently without a military escort — when the attack occurred.

U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that all four contractors were Americans who worked for Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C. The officials did not confirm reports from the scene that a woman was among the dead.

Blackwater USA supplies security guards to the Coalition Provisional Authority and has provided protection for Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, among other coalition officials.

That would explain why some Iraqis reported that dog tags were removed from some of the corpses. These people were not “civilians” or “contractors.” They were private troops hired by the CPA – mercenaries.

The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace
its soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has
begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen,
paying them up to US$4000 a month to guard oil wells. Last month
Blackwater USA flew about 60 former commandos from Santiago to a
training camp in North Carolina. Many of them had trained under
the military government of Augusto Pinochet.

The Guardian March 24, 2004

Crossposted at UnFairWitness

Courtesy of NY Press. The list is screechy and absurd, as all such things are, but several of the honorees truly deserve unceasing contempt and ridicule. I second the following choices with every cell in my body:

37. ADL director Abe Foxman (I’d go a little higher)
34. Senator Chuck Schumer (and they even picked him for the right reason–his execrable performance at the sham Waco hearings)
31. NYT fraud Judith Miller (should be deported to Iraq immediately)
4. Rupert Murdoch and son Lachlan
1. Rudy Giuliani (wait ’til he’s in the Senate or the White House)

(Hat tip to Hit & Run)

Iraqis Drag Four Corpses Through Streets

Picture – WARNING: Graphic