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A Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk from Ukraine, has been killed and three Reuters colleagues injured after a shell from a U.S. tank hit the media hotel where they were working. A Spanish journalist for a seperate news organisation was also hurt, Reuters reports.
The rollcall of good and experienced reporters for organisations like ITN, Channel Four, Reuters, the Atlantic Monthly and others is long and depressing. Yes, I know these folk had a choice to work in dangerous places, but it doesn’t make their deaths any less sad. May these fine news gatherers rest in peace.
Allied claims of the fall of Basra and reports of American tanks in the centre of Baghdad were robustly denied this evening by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf.
Attending a press conference before by a rapidly dwindling troupe of Western journalists, Minister al-Sahhaf took the podium to address his audience beneath a solitary, naked lightbulb. In the distance, the crump of tanks shells could be heard.
Despite the gloom, the Minister could be seen standing in front of a map of the world carefully arranging a sheaf of papers that he claimed were messages being relayed from the front lines by Iraq soldiers.
“The so-called Coalition forces have been completely routed by the Iraqi Armed Forces. There is not a single British or American soldier on Iraqi soil”
Pausing only to wipe away the plasterdust that was settling on his head from the cracked ceiling above, the Minister continued:
“In accordance with the brilliant strategy devised by our beloved leader Saddam Hussein, our glorious soldiers have launched their successful counterattack which is destined to end in a great victory for our side. Already the cities of London and Sydney have been laid waste by the bold actions of our heroic and fearless fedayeen”.
Just at that moment, the building was shaken by a heavy rumble coming from outside.
“It is nothing, it is nothing”.said the Minister “Just a thunderstorm”.
Unphased by the interruption, the Minister continued with his address:
“Advance units of our elite Republican Guard have also surrounded the American capital city of Washington and, in the next few hours, they will begin their final push to capture the Whitehouse.”
As he finished his final sentence, a nearby explosion shattered the windows and blew out the single overhead lightbulb, plunging the room into darkness. There was a pregnant silence suddenly broken by the clatter of a chair as the BBC Correspondent leapt to his feet to applaud enthusiastically and shout “Bravo, bravo. More. Bravo!!”.
Nigel Meek has been doing some digging around in the archives.
Having flicked through a digest of British politician’s speeches about the war, and looking at just the contributions from some members of the Labour Party, four themes seem to stand out.
- Devotion to the United Nations as the only real legitimising agency before, during, and after the war.
- That because of the various dealings that we may indeed have had with the regime in the past, it is therefore unacceptably hypocritical of us to tackle them now.
- Pessimism about the eventual outcome.
- Irrespective of the outcome, a belief that it will be extremely costly not least to our own side.
Iraq in 2003? No, the Falkland Islands in 1982.
For reasons that I won’t bore anyone with, earlier today I was puttering around the Latin American section of the University of London’s library at Senate House. My eyes fell on a dusty tome entitled “The Falkland’s Campaign: A Digest of Debates in the House of Commons, 2 April to 15 June 1982” published by HMSO, London.
By a remarkable coincidence, the book fell open at a speech by none other than that master of decisiveness, Robin Cook. Randomly dipping further into the book, it was eerie to read the ‘usual suspects’ such as Cook and Tony Benn making the same speeches then as they’ve been doing two decades later. It’s as if they’ve had their secretaries scan in their old speeches from Hansard, convert them into Microsoft Word documents, and then use Word’s find and replace facility to swap ‘Argentina’ and ‘Iraq’.
There was even dear old Tam Dalyell using the words ‘South Atlantic’, ‘mire’, and ‘Vietnam’ in one speech!
Breaking news – Kuwait.
Iraq has launched a new type of Scud missile at the coalition forces deployed in Kuwait. Details are sketchy at this time, but it appears to be a new and improved Scud type missile. The CIA is investigating just how and from whom Saddam acquired this new technology.
‘Chemical Ali’ is dead at the age of 64, killed in a true ‘coalition’ attack: blown apart by an American bomb called in by a British forward air controller. He has now gone to join the unquiet ghosts of the 200,000+ Kurdish and Iraqi people whose murder he was personally responsible for supervising. Two hundred thousand people… that would be as if Janet Reno had ordered about 2,600 Waco massacres.
There are several intellectually viable reasons for opposing this war but I assume that the anti-war protestors who marched against it on the grounds that the cost to Iraq’s people would be intolerable will be distraught to learn of his death, as this fine specimen of humanity would still be alive today if they had gotten their way, continuing to ply his dark trade across that unhappy land called Iraq.
I would spit in a million of their faces if I could because the perpetuation in power of ‘Chemical Ali’ and his evil brethren was the reality of what they were marching for.
Ode to British Armed Forces:
Yesterday, in Basra, we were reminded. Our soldiers conducted themselves with courage, patience, discipline and, when necessary, appropriately directed violence. They were splendid.
[…]
…as they advanced through Basra’s suburbs, our Servicemen had to rely on older attributes: unit cohesiveness, steadiness under fire, controlled aggression, trust in each other. Strip away all the artefacts of modern war and we are left with an undeniable truth: man for man, our soldiers are better, braver and deadlier than theirs.
By yesterday afternoon, American commentators were hailing the pacification of Basra as a model for what should happen in Baghdad. To have occupied a city of 1.2 million people with negligible casualties to the attacker is extraordinary; to have done so without incurring the hatred of the inhabitants is little short of providential.
Britain’s standing in the United States is as high as it has ever been, and with good reason.
As a former prime minister once put it: “Rejoice – just rejoice!”
British forces have overrun Basra, with 16 Air Assault Brigade taking the north of the city, 7 Armoured Brigade taking Central Basra and 3 (Royal Marine) Commando Brigade taking Southern Basra.
Although the British military authorities are studiously avoiding actually saying that ‘Basra has fallen’, it seems clear from all the reports I have seen from the journalists inside the city itself that this is indeed the case, bar the inevitable mopping up of isolated die-hard elements. Fedayeen Saddam resistance is being described as sporadic and uncoordinated and at one point a reporter with SkyNews said several thousand jubilant people mobbed the British as they pushed deep into the city.
Although fighting is continuing, it seems clear that Ba’athist Socialism is dying with a frightened whimper rather than a defiant roar. The Fedayeen are discovering that two decades of murdering civilians has not prepared them for fighting some of the most fierce and professional troops in the world.
‘Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.’
– O’Brien speaking to Winston, Chapter 20, 1984 by George Orwell
As three British mechanized battlegroups smash their way into central Basra and the Americans are showing they can intrude into the capital city Baghdad itself regardless of Iraqi resistance, the reports coming out of the Iraqi Information Ministry are starting to sound more and more like the articles which appeared in ‘Der Panzerbar’ (The Armoured Bear) in 1945.
Der Panzerbar was ‘The news journal of the defenders of Greater Berlin’ in the last few weeks of World War II. Right to the end it was filled with increasingly fantastical claims that victory was being snatched from the jaws of defeat, even as Soviet infantry were remorselessly inching their way ever deeper into the Third Reich’s capital city.
That we should hear echoes of Nazi Germany’s dying days from the mouths of Ba’athist Socialism’s doomed spokesmen is interesting but hardly surprising. Iraq has long been Orwell’s ‘Room 101’ writ large, but reality itself is not a matter of opinion, only our understanding of it. Objective reality is coming to Iraq and it is coming at bayonet point no matter how much ‘Ba’athist truth’ and its apologists around the world try to pretend otherwise or wish it out of existence.
Bags and coffins piled deep bursting with skulls and bundles of human bones; catalogues of photos of corpses, burned and swollen and mutilated; a shooting gallery complete with bullet-hole-riddled wall and custom-made drainage ditch…
Those Ba’athists were nice people, alright.
But these days we are no longer forced to brood over each new tragedy, “How awful, Christ, what a world.” Instead, we can think, “Someone is doing something about this shit at last. Thank God.”
Thank God and thank the British and American soldiers and their leaders. The world is changing.
Mark Steyn is in good form in today’s Telegraph. Reading the opening paragraph of his opinion piece whilst having afternoon coffee, I had to struggle to contain its flow…
This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon’s Failed War Plan and while The Independent’s Saddamite buffoon Robert Fisk is still panting his orgasmic paeans to the impenetrability of Baghdad’s defences and huffily insisting there are no Americans at the airport even as the Saddam International signs are being torn down and replaced with Rumsfeld International.
And another dig at the blogosphere’s favourite punchbag:
As I wrote back then, apropos Robert Fisk’s massive bulk loo-paper purchase in the run-up to war, “I can’t say this strikes me as a 25-roll war”. By the time you read this, Tariq Aziz and the last five Ba’athists in Baghdad may be holed up in Fisk’s Ba’athroom, and he’ll be hailing the genius of their plan to lure the Americans to their doom by leaving his loo rolls on the stairwell for the Marines to slip on.
Or in this case, the Shatt Al Arab waterway. The ever flexible and innovative Royal Marines have taken to small fast boats to show it dominates even the waterways right around Basra, at one point helping out an astonished local fishermen who was having engine troubles.
This and other tactics show a couple centuries of colonial experience are serving the British military well, illustrating the way to ‘hearts and minds’ is a mixture of well armed ferocity when challenged and common helpfulness otherwise. Keeping the focus on the fact this is an anti-Ba’athist war, not a war against Iraq, UK forces in Basra are reacting cleverly to propaganda targets of opportunity, as reported in the Washington Times:
In another incident, when an Iraqi colonel was fatally shot in his vehicle, British troops found a thick wad of local currency. Instead of handing it in to officers, the troops decided to dole the cash out to wide-eyed local youngsters, a monetary variant of candy handouts.
Nice one!
Update: British mechanised forces are now reported as fighting Fedayeen irregulars 7 km inside Basra!
Reports coming in on the wires that about 2,500 Republican Guards have surrendered to American forces, while other US forces are closing in on Baghdad. Interesting to see that gold and oil prices are skidding down while stock markets are chugging higher.
Amazingly volatile state of the financial markets. My prediction – if this war really looks to be won, expect the Dow to hit 9,000 by Labor Day.
Meanwhile, shares in Robert Fisk plc are suspended, pending Chapter 11.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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