:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 4.21.2003 ::
:: War with Iraq ::
From The Guardian UK:
Jay Garner tours Baghdad
Jay Garner, the retired US former general faced with the job of restoring basic services to Iraq, arrived in Baghdad today.
General Garner landed at Baghdad airport after a short flight from Kuwait to take up the position of Iraq's postwar civil administrator in a city still largely without power, clean water or a clear direction toward a new political future.
Meanwhile...
Around 2,000 Shia muslims staged an anti-US demonstration today, the Reuters news agency has reported. The protesters shouted "no, no to colonialism," in the demonstration outside the Palestine hotel, where some US troops are based.
ALSO:
US 'to keep bases in Iraq'
The US is planning a long-term military presence in Iraq, in a move which will dramatically extend American power in the region and spread dismay and fear among its opponents across the Arab world.
According to reports, the Pentagon intends to retain four military bases in Iraq after the invasion force withdraws. It is already using the bases to support continuing operations against pockets of resistance. They are at the international airport near Baghdad, at Talil; close to the city of Nassiriya in the south; at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert; and at the Bashur airfield in the Kurdish north.
A senior administration official told the New York Times: "There will be some kind of a long term defence relationship with Iraq, similar to Afghanistan. The scope of that has yet to be defined - whether it will be full-up operational bases, smaller forward operating bases or just plain access."
The plans would be eyed nervously by neighbouring Syria and by Iran, a member of President George Bush's "axis of evil", now facing American-backed governments along two sides of its border. "This is a nightmare unfolding for both Syria and Iran," Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of Warwick, said.
How American power girds the globe with a ring of steel
Ba'athists slip quietly back into control
U.S. Won't Confirm Story on Iraq Weapons
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States has inspection teams inside Iraq searching for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday, adding that the government would ``obviously look with favor on'' Iraqis who provide information on hidden materials.
Rumsfeld declined to confirm a story that said a U.S. team had been told that Iraqis destroyed and buried chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment days before the March 20 beginning of the war.
posted by me
:: 2:55:00 PM [+] ::
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