quoted:
===

Easy to blame the war on those who love war; I blame it also on those who opposed it. They should have done a better job – produced arguments that smacked less of ancient ideology, found subtler people to express them, put language to better use than sloganising, sought the support of less obviously biased or hysterical groups, kept one issue separate from another, not turned the cause of peace into a ragbag of associated or not-at-all associated grievances, jeered less, cheered less, put their minds, every inch of the way, to the fears no less than the ambitions that fuelled the war, and why others, who were not all Bush's poodles, did not always think as they did.

...

Any decent peace movement could have picked me up and made me theirs in seconds.

As it was, they put a wall up, forbidding if you weren't already camped on the other side of it, if you didn't take it as a given that Americans were hyenas, or that the world's stockpiles of poisons would go away by wishing them away, or if you believe that only those capable of listening are capable of answering. And thus they left me out there, where I didn't want to be.

...

But if they couldn't address the concerns of a man in my condition – a nobody loitering by the banks of the River Indecision with his finger fluttering to his lips – how were they ever going to get through to the hard men, to Blair or Bush or Saddam Hussein, or to those who could get through to Blair or Bush or Saddam Hussein, or to those who could get through to those who could get through? The slow drip drip drip of mind-changing. And don't tell me that those who organised for peace never entertained such grandiose ambitions, because in that case who were they trying to reach?

I know the answer to that – one another.

If you want peace, preach to the unconverted - Howard Jacobson - from Argument

This is a complete Super-DMCA page with the text of the laws in various states and detailed information. Who can fight this in Tennessee??

Freedom to Tinker: Status of State Super-DMCA Bills

] AOL Time Warner has submitted a petition asking to be
] excused from the instant messaging interoperability
] requirements imposed by the Federal Communications
] Commission.

AOL asks FCC to lift IM restriction | CNET News.com

] An UFO-related incident that occurred four years ago
] poses a troubling question whether any kind of
] cooperation is possible between Iraqi dictator Saddam
] Hussein and extraterrestrials,” UFOlogist Joseph Trainor
] declared in his review UFO Roundup (issue 51 of December
] 17, 2002). “On December 16, 1998, during Operation Desert
] Fox against Iraq, a video clip aired on CNN showed a UFO
] hovering over Baghdad; it moved away to avoid a stream of
] tracer anti-aircraft fire. At that time we all thought it
] was another UFO sighting, although captured on videotape.
] But now, ufologists think it was much more than a mere
] incident.

Al Queda connection? Phbttt.. No, worse then that. ALIENS!!

] The aliens took ordinary desert scorpions and used their
] bio-engineering to grow the scorpions to giant size.
] Scorpions of a cow-size! They are wonderful watchdogs:
] they blend in with the desert, swiftly and silently move
] on their warm-blooded prey for a decisive attack.
] Luckless intruders hear just some strange sound from
] behind stones, then a pincer crushes their necks,
] another pincer crushes their legs; then the victims is
] slammed to the ground and beaten with a barbed tail six
] or seven times. Death comes almost immediately.

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd wargamed against."

Pravda.RU | Is Hussein Owner of Crashed UFO?

] Three Iraqis who aided the CIA in the March 20 attempt by
] the United States to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
] were executed this week by Iraqi counterintelligence,
] former and serving U.S. officials told United Press
] International.

] Sources told UPI that Iraqi counterintelligence killed
] the three, shooting two and cutting out the tongue of a
] third, who bled to death. They said U.S. intelligence
] had learned this from their forces on the ground in Iraq.

] One former long-time CIA operative said it was the
] Delta men, already in country, who made the breakthrough
] for the U.S. attack by infiltrating a key Baghdad
] telecommunications center and tapping a fiber optic
] telephone line.

] Iraqi assets, recruited by the agency, played a key
] part in the operation by providing "priceless"
] information, relating to the phone system and details
] of Dora Farm, according to one former senior CIA official.

] A senior administration official told UPI that Saddam
] had suffered two burst eardrums in the attack, and "was
] bleeding from the nose and mouth." This source added
] that Saddam was so disoriented by concussion damage that
] he was in "a vegetative state" for hours after the strike.

] Another administration official said that Saddam was
] "definitely alive" after the strike and appeared on
] Friday, March 21, wearing glasses because of concussive
] damage to the capillaries of his retinas.

UPI Exclusive: 3 CIA assets killed in Baghdad

] A federal judge yesterday openly questioned the
] government's ability to prosecute Zacarias Moussaoui at a
] public trial, chastising the "shroud of secrecy" under
] which U.S. intelligence officials have classified a raft
] of pleadings and briefs in the case.

U.S. Secrecy Criticized By Moussaoui Judge (washingtonpost.com)

] Are Weblogs one more tool in the arsenal used by online
] journalists to report the news? Or does a blog%u2019s
] typically individualistic voice and unfiltered attitude
] place it outside the journalist's palette? These
] rhetorical questions have exploded into a raging debate
] among online journalism watchers following CNN's
] decision to force war correspondent Kevin Sites to stop
] posting items to the popular blog he created while on
] assignment in northern Iraq.

] Some big media companies -- notably MSNBC, Fox News,
] Knight-Ridder and Advance Publications -- believe that
] blogs are a new and exciting form of journalism. These
] companies are actively bringing new blogs by reporters
] and columnists onto their Web sites.
]
] "Weblogs are journalism," says Joan Connell,
] executive producer for Opinions and Communities at
] MSNBC.com. "They can be used to great effect in
] reporting an unfolding story and keeping readers
] informed."
]
] Some of them are strongly against it. At CNN.com,
] for example, a spokesperson says that its news
] executives do not believe in blogs. “CNN.com prefers
] to take a more structured approach to presenting
] the news,” the spokesperson said. “We do not blog.
] CNN.com will continue to provide photo galleries,
] video clips, breaking stories and interactive
] modules as ways to involve readers in learning about
] the war.”

OJR article: Kevin Sites and the Blogging Controversy

Christopher Hitchens is a liberal and a dedicated critic of Henry Kissinger and US foreign policy in general..

quoted:
===

Now hear this. Ever since [September 11th], the United States has been at war with the forces of reaction. May I please entreat you to reread the preceding sentence? Or perhaps you will let me restate it for emphasis. The government and people of these United States are now at war with the forces of reaction.

This outcome was clearly not willed, at least on the American side. And everybody with half an education seems to know how to glibly dilute the statement. Isn't Saudi Arabia reactionary? What about Pakistani nukes? Do we bomb Sharon for his negation of Palestinian rights? Weren't we on Saddam's side when he was at his worst? (I am exempting the frantic and discredited few who think or suggest that George W. Bush fixed up the attacks to inflate the military budget and abolish the Constitution.) But however compromised and shameful the American starting point was--and I believe I could make this point stick with greater venom and better evidence than most people can muster--the above point remains untouched. The United States finds itself at war with the forces of reaction.

Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban's annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women? The massacre of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan? Or what about the latest boast of al Qaeda--that the bomb in Bali, massacring so many Australian holidaymakers, was a deliberate revenge for Australia's belated help in securing independence for East Timor? (Never forget that the Muslim fundamentalists are not against "empire." They fight proudly for the restoration of their own lost caliphate.) To these people, the concept of a civilian casualty is meaningless if the civilian is an unbeliever or a heretic.

Confronted with such a foe--which gladly murders Algerians and Egyptians and Palestinians if they have any doubts about the true faith, or if they happen to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if they happen to be female--exactly what role does a "peace movement" have to play? A year or so ago, the "peace movement" was saying that Afghanistan could not even be approached without risking the undying enmity of the Muslim world; that the Taliban could not be bombed during Ramadan; that a humanitarian disaster would occur if the Islamic ultra- fanatics were confronted in their own lairs. Now we have an imperfect but recovering Afghanistan, with its population increased by almost two million returned refugees. Have you ever seen or heard any of those smart-ass critics and cynics make a self-criticism? Or recant?

Chew on This : Saddam's crimes, al Qaeda massacres, Kurdish freedom, oil worth fighting for... and a few other things Seattle's potlucking peaceniks might want to think about this weekend., by Christopher Hitchens

] Reminiscent of the Hitler Youth of World War II, Saddam
] Hussein has trained an 8,000-strong army of children to
] face coalition forces in Baghdad.
]
] In a report by the New York Daily News, Peter Singer of
] the Brookings Institution explains the children are
] considered a junior Fedayeen Saddam %u2013 the
] paramilitary forces Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
] has dubbed "death squads" for the atrocities they commit.
]
] The child army is called Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion
] Cubs, according to the report.

Geez, could Saddam be more deplorable? Sending kids into battle?

WorldNetDaily: Saddam trains kids to kill

] The recording industry is suing students at Michigan
] Technological and two other universities, saying they ran
] Napster-like file sharing systems on the schools'
] high-speed Internet networks.
]
] The lawsuit says Michigan Tech student Joseph Nievelt and
] three others ran systems offering more than 1 million
] copies of songs for illegal downloading.

Michigan Tech student sued by music industry over file sharing