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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (87114)	3/27/2003 9:43:07 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

.....Saddam's friends are crowing. South Africa's SA news agency quotes weapons inspector turned Saddam apologist Scott Ritter, speaking in Lisbon: "Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost." Yeah, and that girl is already 18...... ..... Reuters notes that 15 of the civilian dead, killed yesterday in a Baghdad market, may have been victims of the regime, not the U.S. "I think it's entirely possible that this may in fact have been an Iraqi missile that went up and came down, or given the behavior of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack," says Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks. Anti-American polemicist Robert "25 Rolls" Fisk visits the scene and denounces what he calls "an outrage, an obscenity," accepting at face value the Iraqi regime's claim that the damage was done by "two missiles from an American jet."......... ......Meanwhile, the pseudonymous battlefield blogger L.T. Smash recounts a hilarious conversation with some Kuwaitis, with whom he was watching a TV report: "Sir, is it true," they asked me, "is Umm Qasr secured?" "That's what he said." "Can we go there?" This puzzled me. "Why would you want to go there?" "Dancing girls! Beer!" Then it hit me--Umm Qasr is a border town. For these men, it holds memories of a different time, a time before war, when they could travel freely to Iraq, and do all the things not allowed in their own country. Umm Qasr is their Tijuana.......... .......... Consider the toll the war has taken: 3,000 people vaporized or crushed on Sept. 11; dozens of casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq--oh, and then there's poor Deborah Dashow Ruth of Kensington, Calif. The San Francisco Chronicle says she "has developed a case of shingles, her ulcer is acting up, and her head has been throbbing since the United States invaded Iraq a week ago": Ruth, a 62-year-old writer, doesn't watch television and has even stopped listening to National Public Radio, but that hasn't helped quell her anger over what she sees as an unjust war. "I find myself lashing out at my husband--and he agrees with me!" Ruth said. She ascribes her current health problems to the intense emotions the war has provoked. "Just as Iraq was invaded by the viral Republican administration, I have been invaded by these viral Republican conditions," she said. Lots of other Bay Area residents are "stressed out," the Chronicle reports, and some are even experiencing "chest pains" as a result. Not to mention logorrhea (for which Martin Sheen has a treatment) and paralysis, or at any rate acute lameness......... opinionjournal.com