Axis of Weasels Get First Payback Installment

Axis of Weasels Get First Payback Installment
Vol: 18 Issue: 31 Monday, March 31, 2003

The diplomatic wrangling in the days leading up to the war in Iraq is expected to speed up an ambitious Pentagon plan for realigning U.S. bases and forces around the world. Quietly, and without too much fanfare, the United States plans to redeploy our huge military presence in Europe.

Germany currently hosts the bulk of America’s European forces. Those troops and their families represent a signficant part of Germany’s economy, which is already reeling.

The Germans are not complaining too much at the top levels, having already built their reputations on alienating the US, and the German economists raising the alarms are being drowned out by the roar of anti-Americanism.

Defense officials said the new strategy is based on a concept known as “lily pad” basing — putting smaller groups of forces in more places. The bases will make it easier for military forces to leapfrog more quickly to world hotspots.

The plans call for sharply reducing the 100,000 troops in Europe, most of them, as I point out with some satisfaction, are stationed in Germany. Instead, brigade-sized combined arms units of between 3,000 to 5,000 troops will be relocated. Two planned redeployments involve placing these combat brigades in Hungary and Poland.

Both Hungary and Poland backed the US in the recent diplomatic food-fight, with Poland even contributing combat forces they could scarcely afford.

Other realignments are being discussed for South Korea, whose increasingly vocal anti-American sentiments, particularly over the US handling of North Korea, has evidently pushed Washington a bridge too far.

The Pentagon plans to move Army units now stationed close to the demilitarized zone further south and out of range of North Korean artillery and missiles massed along the border.

To Seoul, the prospect of nothing standing between it and the DMZ with North Korea was like being dashed with a bucket of water. It’s said that nothing so wonderfully focuses the mind than the specter of certain annihilation and Seoul has become very focused on US – South Korean relations indeed.

The South Koreans have grown increasingly apologetic and supportive, but Washington’s impatience with fair-weather friendships is evidently being translated into action.

The French are attempting to portray their obstructionist policy as an inconsequential difference of opinion. The Pentagon redeployments don’t impact the French, but Paris knows that there will be a price to pay and Chirac is already looking for ways to minimize the damage.

Chirac and his team are already struggling, without much success so far, to figure out how to neutralize the fallout. Dominique de Villepin floated a trial balloon in London this week, saying, “Because they share common values, the United States and France will re-establish close cooperation in complete solidarity.”

The French confidence in continued common values was not shared with American officials who noted de Villepin’s ambigous answer to a reporter’s question about whether he hoped the coalition would win the war.

Last week Le Canard Ench in , the satirical weekly, portrayed Chirac as a gloating general telling his advisers: “They thought it would be a walk in the park, that they would be received as liberators and that the regime would fall like a castle made of cards. They would have been better off had they listened to us. We know, better than they do, the Arab psychology.”

That’s the thing about satirical cartoons — they aren’t funny if they aren’t true.

Incredibly, the French, who built Baghdad’s sewer and phone systems and sold military equipment to Iraq right up to the opening shots of this war, still expects to cash in after the war.

The Finance Ministry and the country’s largest business federation have joined forces to determine how French companies can win contracts to rebuild Iraq.

Just in case, a delegation of French senators is making a trip next week to Iraq’s fellow Axis of Evil member Iran. French companies have huge oil investments there already, as do the Russians, with whom Chirac hopes to form a political alliance to counter-balance US world interests.

Assessment:

What is of particular interest when you start connecting the dots is the way it all eventually points back to Jerusalem. To defend their position regarding Iraq, they immediately play the Jewish card.

Chirac and de Villepin have long defined the Israeli-Palestinian war, rather than Iraq or terrorism, as the most serious of all global crises a stance that plays well in the Arab world and among several million Arab Muslims in France.

“Because it is the mother of all crises, because it is fed by a profound feeling of injustice, we will only be able to build a durable peace that is built on justice,” de Villepin said in London last week.

Recent demonstrations in France have been as much about promoting the Palestinian cause and condemning Israel as they have been about protesting the Iraq war.

It is impossible to miss the anti-Semitic tone of the protests, which have included chants of “Vive Chirac! Stop the Jews!”

Chirac telephoned the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, last week to tell him it was imperative that efforts toward peace in the Middle East begin again. Chirac is reportedly eyeing a shot at getting his own Nobel Peace Prize.

When Chirac visited Algeria early this month (the first state visit by a French president since Algeria fought a war for independence from France four decades ago) Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced that his guest deserved the prize for opposing war with Iraq.

Leaks from the French press suggest the idea was not distasteful to the man who would be king.

The Rumor War

The Rumor War
Vol: 18 Issue: 30 Sunday, March 30, 2003

The Rumor War

Rumors of a four to six day operational pause are being denied at every level up and down the military chain of command. And while those denials continue to echo through the various briefing rooms, a new rumor says that the operational pause may be extended to four to six WEEKS.

Most news reports this morning aren’t even characterizing Pentagon denials AS denials, saying instead that officials are ‘playing down’ those reports, suggesting they believe the reports are still accurate, but that the coalition wants to keep it a secret.

It is difficult to determine whether or not the rumors have any basis in fact or if they are a concoction given legs by reporters like ABC’s Terry Moran or Helen Thomas, both of whom have proved themselves willing to repeat anything, true or not, that makes the White House look bad.

Rumors are always a part of war, although in this war, the most public war in history, they have a much shorter shelf life than in wars past.

But the fact is that the coalition has indeed called an operational pause — the only part that is still speculative is its duration.

The coalition has effectively halted its advance toward Baghdad, giving the bulk of the troops an opportunity to rest and regroup after an advance that saw major elements of the force going as long as sixty hours without sleep.

There is another rumor that also lends itself to an operational pause of indeterminate length. That rumor says that Secretary Rumsfeld, confident of a mass Iraqi surrender, overruled his generals on the size of the invasion force, currently numbering around 100,000 ground troops.

Pentagon generals wanted at least twice that many boots on the ground, according to reports to be published tomorrow in the New Yorker.

Seymour Hersh, (writing from the extreme left), said in the piece that Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way.

“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.”

I noted with interest that ABC News wasn’t content with Hersh’s characterization of his source as merely an ‘unidentified Pentagon planner’, referring to him in its own story as both a ‘former official’ and a ‘SENIOR planner.’

It should be stressed that Hersh quotes an ‘unidentified Pentagon planner.’ There is no way of knowing if that means someone who plans the conduct of the war in Iraq or the menu planner at the Pentagon cafeteria.

The April 7 New Yorker article also says Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.

Reading Hersh’s piece, one comes away with the distinct sense that the coalition is in big trouble, whereas the ABC News piece selectively quotes the now SENIOR planner as intimating the coalition’s situation is hopeless.

Condensing Hersh’s article to what ABC considers its salient points;

“Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, aircraft carriers were going to run out of precision guided bombs and there were serious maintenance problems with tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment. . . .The only hope is that they can hold out until reinforcements arrive,” ABC quotes this increasingly important ‘former official’ as saying.

Assessment:

You can learn a lot about how much credibility to assign to a rumor by considering the source. Sticking with ABC News for a minute, the war stories they thought were important this morning were headlines like, “No Smoking Gun” about the coalition’s failure (so far) to find WMD.

ABC’s coverage of the war is so pessimistic that when reporter Terry Moran asked Ari Fleischer if troops were prepared for a chemical attack that Fliescher paused and asked, “Is ABC news now saying Iraq might have chemical weapons after all?”

Another headline; “Iraqi VP Threatens More Suicide Bombings”; another – “Martyrdom Seekers Flock to Iraq”; do you see a pattern here?

You can find the same kind of pessimistic negative coverage of the war at CNN and CBS. MSNBC and Fox are the only two networks who aren’t presenting the war as an impending US defeat at worst, or a Pyhrric victory at best.

Few of the left-leaning news sites I checked this morning even mentioned the strike in Basrah in which the coalition took out 200 leaders of the Ba’ath party in a single strike. I found that odd, considering it was a major military success.

(One report suggested that taking out that many leaders would only enrage the Iraqis who would fight even harder and kill even more American troops).

What do we learn from this? Clearly, we aren’t learning much about how the war is actually going.

Instead, we can see what are the subtle, but discernible fingerprints of the propagandists who now openly slant their coverage to advance their own political agendas. Stay with me here.

Think of the power to shape and influence popular thinking that rests in the hands of ABC or CNN. It has been argued that Ted Turner had more to do with the collapse of the Berlin Wall than Ronald Reagan did.

There is some merit to that. Once CNN began broadcasting images of life in the West across the Iron Curtain, the pro-Soviet propagandist was defeated. And shortly afterward, the Soviet system collapsed. East met West to embrace our supermarkets, not our politics. Enbracing Western politics was a means to an end, not the objective. First food, then freedom.

The most important element to any successful campaign is control of public opinion. Don’t think so? If we could convince the Iraqi public not to fight for whatever reason, the war is over.

That’s why the Pentagon had such high hopes for the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign in combination with the psyche-ops (propaganda) operations. Convince them not to fight, and we win.

The liberals have a campaign as well. Destroy the Bush presidency and vindicate themselves after Election 2000 – by whatever means necessary. And, thanks to ABC, CNN, the New York Times and others, they have the means.

It is transparent enough if one looks hard enough, but it is an effective tactic; turn good news into bad, turn bad news into headlines, and in every case, put the blame squarely on the administration.

I hammer away at propaganda regularly for a reason, and the war provides plenty of evidences of its application.

It is the gateway through which the antichrist will make his entrance, the magic carpet upon which he will rise to power.

Your Omega Letter is dedicated to making you as propaganda-proof as possible as we move out to our own respective battlefields.

Proverbs always links ‘wisdom’ with ‘understanding’. Knowing HOW a car works (wisdom) means you can drive one. Knowing WHY a car works (understanding) means you can figure out what is wrong with one when you can’t.

It is our mission to show you WHY propaganda works, so you can figure out for yourself what is broken with the facts don’t add up. And to connect the dots to show that they draw the same picture portrayed by Scripture for the last days.

Knowledge is power, Scripture says. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” laments Hosea 4:6

Daniel and the Revelation tells us the antichrist will control a powerful army, but his power rests in public opinion, not military might.

“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” (Revelation 6:2)

Note the bow, but no arrows.

“And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.” (Daniel 8:25)

Note that his ‘policy’ (politics) prospers (politics is public opinion harnessed to acheive a political agenda), and that by “PEACE [the antichrist] shall destroy many.”

When asked of the signs of His coming, the FIRST thing Jesus said was, “Take heed that no man deceive you” [Matthew 24:4], and Paul warns in 2 Thessalonians 2:11 of a coming ‘strong delusion.’

The antichrist will, according to the Apostle John, exercise intimate control over the global economy, (the one that never existed until now) will launch a war against Israel, (that didn’t exist until now) using an ability to demonstrate his power to the whole world at once (a capability that didn’t exist until now) to engineer control over a global ‘new world order’ (that was a practical impossibility until this generation).

As we get closer to the end of the age, the propagandists will grow more bold with their successes. Don’t ever doubt their successes so far.

American propagandists successfully turned ‘anti-life’ into ‘pro-choice’ and turned ‘pro-life’ into ‘anti-choice’, convincing most Americans that the majority shares that worldview, in spite of polls that demonstrate the contrary.

They’ve turned the Bible into hate literature, homosexuality into an ‘acceptable alternative lifestyle’ and convinced the majority of Americans that guns are more dangerous than the people who use them.

It is in this generation, to the exclusion of all generations past, that the events of the last days are even possible.

And it is in this generation, the Bible says, that all these things will take place.

“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” [Matthew 24:34]

What’s Up with Canada?

What’s Up with Canada?
Vol: 18 Issue: 29 Saturday, March 29, 2003

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has decided not to visit Washington to receive an award next month, officials said. Bilateral relations have deteriorated badly since Ottawa decided not to send troops to Iraq and because of criticism of Washington by members of the ruling Liberal Party.

The U.S. National Parks Conservation Assn. had invited Chretien to a dinner to celebrate his decision to create 15 new national parks.

The snub was just the latest in a long string of actions on the part of the Canadian government designed to deliberately provoke the United States.

As a border resident, it astonishes me that Ottawa can detect a bullying, arrogant America somewhere out there that I’ve never been able to locate — and I’ve looked.

A little personal information is called for here. I was born in Canada, served in the US Marines, and lived about an equal amount of my life in each country. My wife is an American, born of American parents who lived their whole lives in Canada. My father was Canadian, but died and is buried in Buffalo, New York. Half my children are Canadian born, the other half are American born.

Either of my two American brothers who live in Buffalo could recite the same international family tree. Or my Canadian sister in Connecticut.

The point is, we are not unusual. That’s a typical family here along the border between Canada and the United States.

The distancing of the two governments is therefore, to us, inexplicable. Ottawa has taken the indefensible position of allowing a brutal, repressive dictator to remain in power, free to rape, pillage and murder his own countrymen, for no other reason but to stick a political thumb into George Bush’s eye.

What goes on here? That is what I am going to try and explain. And for the majority of our subscribers who are Americans, this is a ground level situation report from the scene.

Canada sort of lost its way back in the 60’s and 70’s under Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau injected a new kind of political thinking in the sense that Trudeau was to politics what Picasso was to art.

Ordinary people look at a Picasso, think it looks stupid, but speak of it admiringly for fear of appearing uncultured.

That is what the Canadian political scene does when attempting to justify Trudeau’s legacy. Political Picasso.

For example, Canada used to have a national identity. It used to be strongly rooted in Judeo-Christianity. In every public school I attended in Canada growing up, we began the day with the Lord’s Prayer before singing “God Save the Queen”. Both were mandatory, not that there was ever anyone I recall who objected.

Today, being a Canadian Christian is tantamount to being an enemy of the state while being gay means the government can’t do enough to make you comfortable. Even if it means arresting people who call homosexuality a sin. Everybody thinks its stupid, but speak of it in admiring tones for fear they’ll seem bigoted or unenlightened.

Trudeau doublespeak included a mad policy called ‘multiculturalism’ which, as a policy, put Canada on the fast track toward national disintegration.

The way Canada practices multiculturalism is to throw open the borders to all comers, then facilitate their collection into little expatriate ‘ghettos’.

As a consequence, there are little Russias, little Chinas, little Afghanistans, etc., etc., where those expatriate cultures are cultivated by Canada’s government.

The result is not a ‘melting pot’ of peoples into a single culture, like in America, but rather more like all the ingredients, like an unassembled stew, on the counter BESIDE the pot.

Struggling with the loss of its own national identity to the myth of Canadian multiculturalism, many Canadians now fear eventual absorption by the United States and tend over-compensate in their rhetoric.

Since almost everything Canada has comes from its proximity to the United States, Canadians are touchy about America the way a headstrong teenager gets about everything his parents do.

Trudeau created a kind of unsustainable socialism that is utterly dependent on the United States for its survival. But a generation of Canadians have grown up under the most comprehensive social safety net in the Western hemisphere.

They (we) like it. Canadian politicians owe their seats to it, and purchase re-election by augmenting it. Canadian socialism is programmed to automatically hate conservative Republicans like George Bush. Cretien’s undisguised animosity towards George Bush is part reflex, and part domestic politics.

Canadians pay for this social paradise through huge taxes, the state-owned lotteries and gambling casinos, and by enticing American tourists (and their dollars) to visit Canada. Plus the fact that Canada doesn’t have to pay for its own defense.

Assessment:

It is all really pretty difficult to explain to Americans — I am struggling with not sounding anti-this or pro-that. My intent is to provide some neutral background information explaining a bit of the whys behind the whats. Let me summarize the situation.

Though right-wing critics tend to focus on the collapse of the Canadian family and the burgeoning “culture of death,” and left-wing critics emphasize the harshness of American late capitalism, with its poverty and homelessness amidst great wealth, there are areas of overlap in the two critiques.

The main argument of both right- and left-leaning anti-Americanism is that it has failed in the far more important social and cultural realms.

But although some Canadians have comforted themselves with the notion that they are not like those grasping, vulgar Americans, they are wrong to believe that Canada has a stronger sense of real community, or that their country is avoiding many of the problems they detect in the United States.

The proximity of Canada to the United States has meant that Canada has absorbed many of the same aspects of America that they claim to deplore.

It is some comfort for the Canadian myth of national identity to fixate on anti-Americanism as a substitute for Canadian nationalism.

Canadians like to maintain illusions about Canada’s supposed manifold superiorities to the United States. Canadians find themselves in the midst of a long-term social and cultural decline and they’re a bit touchy about it.

But they aren’t fooling anybody. Not even themselves.

When Good is Evil and Evil Good

When Good is Evil and Evil Good
Vol: 18 Issue: 28 Friday, March 28, 2003

Iraqi officials accused the coalition forces of violating the rules of war by deliberately targeting civilians after a missile slammed into a market place and killed 15 civilians. Altogether, the Iraqis say that coalition forces are responsible for more than 4000 civilian casualties including more than 350 civilian deaths.

The United States says the missile was not fired by the coalition. The military tracks each missile it fires, including doing bomb damage assessment on every strike. The US said it had no assets in that area at that time, and said the weapon was most likely an Iraqi missile.

There is no way to verify or disprove these numbers, but the accuracy of the coalition weaponry can be tracked, and so far, there are reports of only three precision weapons going off course out of more than 5000. That is a 99.9% accuracy rate for the weapons, which logically means one of two things.

Either the coalition IS targeting civilians, or the regime of Saddam Hussein is lying.

The evidence tends to overwhelmingly favor the coalition. A week into the war, Baghdad’s civilian infrastructure remains untouched. The streetlights remain on, the water continues to run, the predicted humanitarian disasters exist only in places where Iraqi troops created them.

Logic would dictate that since only one side can be telling the truth, and given Iraq’s conduct of the war so far, that the most believable accounts would be coming from Centcom.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush and others have accused the Iraqis of essentially ripping up the Geneva Conventions on the Articles of War.

Among the violations so far include Iraq’s placing military weaponry near civilians, using civilians as human shields, disguising soldiers as civilians, feigning surrender and of violating the rules of prisoner of war status by televising American and British prisoners and casualties and killing prisoners.

Established in 1949 after World War II, the Geneva Conventions contain four primary governing laws. One protects wounded and sick soldiers, the second deals with shipwrecked sailors (not particularly relevant in this war), the third addresses how to handle prisoners of war and the fourth deals with protecting civilians in times of conflict.

Additional protocols established in 1977 go into greater detail to protect civilians from being exploited for military purposes.

The protocols ban the use of people as so-called human shields and disguising soldiers as civilians in wartime. They also forbid “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender.”

The Iraqis are using women and children as human shields behind which they engage coalition forces while wearing civilian clothes. One US Marine wounded in combat near Nasareih said that in four days of combat, he had not yet seen an Iraqi fighting in uniform.

Many Iraqi prisoners are taken wearing civilian clothes over their uniforms. Many of the coalition’s casualties so far came as a consequence of Iraqi forces surrendering, then opening fire on them when they dropped their guard to receive their surrender.

Marines in the field say they’ve seen children as young as seven carrying AK47’s ‘marching’ in the front ranks of Iraqi units.

In Basrah, Iraqi troops have rounded up women and children to hold hostage in order to ensure their fathers will fight for the regime. If they are captured or if they surrender, these fathers are told their families will be slaughtered. These fathers have no reason to doubt that the threats will be carried out.

Assessment:

While all this is going on in Iraq, about 190 anti-war protesters were arrested Thursday after they blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue — part of a daylong series of demonstrations throughout the city.

The anti-warriors staged a ‘die-in’ painting themselves red to represent all the Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by the coalition. While they continue to protest the war on ‘humanitarian’ grounds, the Iraqi forces themselves continue to kill off Iraqi civilians with abandon while coalition efforts to avoid civilian casualties put allied forces at increased risk.

Something like a collective madness has overcome a significant part of the global population. How could anyone in their right mind argue in favor of Saddam Hussein’s regime, especially on moral or legal grounds?

The ‘moral’ case against the coalition goes something like this. If the coalition had not begun its war against the Iraqi regime, then Iraqi troops wouldn’t be putting civilians in harm’s way. If we weren’t there, Saddam wouldn’t be firing missiles at its own civilians.

If there were no war, Saddam wouldn’t have cut off food and water to Basrah, creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq’s second-largest city. If there weren’t coalition troops on the ground, then Iraqi troops wouldn’t be forced to pretend to be civilians or pretend to surrender in order to ambush American and British forces.

On the other hand, if the anti-warriors had their way, then Iraq would remain an international outlaw suffering under UN sanctions that have been so far been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from malnutrition and disease.

Remember that the anti-warriors claim to oppose the war on ‘humanitarian’ grounds.

To accept that argument requires rewriting reality to make Saddam Hussein the victim of an expansionist American regime led by the despotic George W. Bush.

As transparent as this argument is, to most of the Arab world and a significant portion of Europe and Russia, that is precisely the situation as they see it.

The Bible paints a portrait of the world in the last days — a world in which evil is good, and good is evil — a world in which men will shake their fists at God and worship the antichrist.

The Apostle Paul describes it as ‘perilous times’.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:1-4)

The kind of upside-down moral code that can protest the removal of Saddam Hussein on humanitarian grounds.

I often get email from people asking me if I REALLY think these are the last days, and if so, how close are we to The End?

I wish I could say, but unfortunately, I have only one Source of information the subject, and the Bible says that no man can know the day or the hour.

But my information Source isn’t completely silent on the question.

How close are we? According to Jesus, “when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)

Lately, I’ve been looking up so often my neck hurts.

Secret Surrender Talks Ongoing?

Secret Surrender Talks Ongoing?
Vol: 18 Issue: 27 Thursday, March 27, 2003

There are credible reports emerging of ‘serious dialogue’ between Washington and elements of Saddam’s leadership eager to save themselves from rapidly advancing annihilation.

Those reports said a channel has been opened during the past four days and for the first time Washington is relaying messages on its terms for a surrender.

Officials said Washington assured senior members of the Iraqi regime that they would be spared if they cooperated with the United States. In a gesture to demonstrate its sincerity, the United States allowed Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri to leave the country and head for Cairo to discuss terms of surrender with Egyptian resident Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak, the Middle East’s answer to Jacques Chirac, has asked to play a major role in these contacts.

In exchange, say the source, the White House has demanded proof of the Iraqis that they control the situation on the ground. The first demand is that no nonconventional weapons or medium-range missiles be used in any attack. The second demand is that Iraqi forces end any sabotage operations against oil wells and civilian infrastructure, such as bridges.

So far, the Iraqi leaders appear to have fulfilled most of these demands.

But this does not mean that Iraq has stopped fighting. On the contrary, our information indicates that U.S. intelligence expects what remains of the Iraqi regime to put up stiff resistance until a surrender agreement has been reached. And Saddam has been removed.

Assessment:

Some days, connecting the dots means jumping all over the place in order to draw the Big Picture. Today is one of those days, so excuse me if I seem to ramble.

Most of the mainstream press coverage continues to focus on the negatives, but in point of fact, the war against Saddam has so far surpassed expectations, in military terms.

Whether or not that is a consequence of this allegedly ‘secret’ dialogue will eventually emerge as the fog of war clears. For now, all we can confirm is that the so-called ‘setbacks’ are only being reported by those not in theatre. The war correspondents embedded with the troops report cutting through the opposition like a hot knife through butter.

Meanwhile, America’s chief embarrassment told a South African newspaper that “America will leave Iraq with its tail between it’s legs.” That’s Scott Ritter’s assessment, and he is willing to share it with anyone who will listen.

Ritter told South Africa’s IOL that, “We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable,” he said.

“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,” Ritter added.

It is hard to say whether Ritter has completely lost his mind, but it occurs to me that while Ritter himself is totally discredited, the sentiments he expresses are reflected throughout the mainstream media.

It is mind-boggling when you think about it, but it provides tremendous insight into the power of the propagandist to shape thoughts.

The Iraq regime has proved itself to be exactly as advertised; reports of Iraqi atrocities are not propaganda, but are attested to by every single eyewitness account, including embedded journalists who have no particular love for the administration.

Iraqi troops are reportedly pressing children into service, herding civilians ahead of them as they fire on coalition forces from behind, shooting their own civilians, and hiding weapons in hospitals.

But today’s New York Times analysis was all about military setbacks and civilian casualties. The war is less than a week old and the Times argues that the administration’s strategy has failed.

As we discussed yesterday, the mainstream press immediately reported as fact that coalition missiles slammed into a marketplace killing some 15 Iraqi civilians.

In this morning’s briefing, Centcom said it wasn’t ours. General Brooks said that it was most probably an Iraqi missile, fired ballistically rather than using radar guidance. Centcom believes the attack was deliberate, and Iraq’s record so far leave little reason to doubt it.

But there are millions of people who do. Thanks to the public willingness to accept strong delusion as fact as long as it reinforces what they wanted to believe in the first place.

And despite the unquestioned evidence of Saddam’s brutality, there has been no change in the public position taken by the so-called ‘Axis of Weasels’ who continue to oppose efforts to destroy a regime the likes of which hasn’t scarred the planet since Hitler or Stalin.

France, Germany and Russia said the United States was taking ‘illegal action’ by attacking Iraq and seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

French President Jacques Chirac, in a televised speech, criticized the United States for launching the attack.

France regrets this action taken without the approval of the United Nations, Chirac said. No matter how long this conflict lasts, it will have serious consequences for the future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Iraq posed no threat or danger to the United States. He called the war a big political error that disregarded international law and world opinion.

So here is how Saddam Hussein fits into the Big Picture. By the time the smoke has cleared, he will have found out who Allah REALLY is, but not before reshaping global alliances precisely along the lines predicted by the prophets for the last days.

The Washington Post quoted an unnamed administration official concerning the future of the Atlantic alliance.

“Beyond the U.N., how do you put the transatlantic relationship back into shape?” asked one official. “How do you deal with the central powers, the French and the Germans? . . . What are you trying to accomplish?

“We’re thinking about all this stuff, thinking about what the agenda is for the 21st century,” the official said, noting that it is important that you “don’t let tactics lead you. That’s another way of saying, “Don’t let your anger lead you.’ ” But it is clear the Bush administration remains very angry at France.

“We have not attacked them,” the official said of the failed effort to win U.N. support for the war. “We have gone after Iraq for reasons that we’ve stated. They [the French] have gone after us; that’s the difference. They’ve made this about us, and that’s the real problem.”

It’s also the real story behind the war.

Daniel, Ezekiel, the Press Corps and Saddam

Daniel, Ezekiel, the Press Corps and Saddam
Vol: 18 Issue: 26 Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Watching the way the various news organizations report on the Iraq war was puzzling until I figured out that there are two wars in Iraq. There is the war that is being reported from the field and described in macro terms by Centcom.

Then there is the other war that seems like the war in Iraq except in that war, the Iraqis are winning, or seem to be.

The war that actually is being fought is not too dissimilar to what the military planners predicted all along. We were told to expect losses and setbacks, but that the outcome was not in doubt. We’ve endured losses, but so far, they are surprisingly light.

There are a quarter million troops in country and our losses so far are less than three a day. Buffalo, New York is a city of about a quarter million. There are more than three obituaries in the Buffalo News every day.

Statistically, at least, as many Americans die every day in Buffalo, New York as are dying as a consequence of fierce Iraqi resistance.

We were told to expect the sand storms. Thank the French for that, in the main, with a tip of the cap to the UN Security Council. The game plan all along from the opposition’s perspective was to delay the war until the weather favored the Iraqis.

In the other war, the one being described by the media outside the theater, any resistance is unexpectedly fierce, and our losses are approaching unacceptable limits.

Tactics like pretending to surrender and then opening fire when the coalition troops expose themselves to accept them are giving way to new reports of Iraqis dressing in American uniforms and capturing their own troops. Then the Iraqis in the US uniforms MASSACRE the surrendering Iraqis.

The mainstream press gleefully reports that Iraqi regulars ‘aren’t surrendering in droves as we were led to expect’ and that more Iraqis seem ready to fight to the death.

Most Iraqi soldiers have been told they will be executed if captured by the Americans anyway. Now these guys don’t know if they are surrendering to fake Americans who WILL massacre them, or real American troops who MIGHT massacre them.

But the mainstream press presents the Iraqi defense as evidence Iraqis are ‘surprisingly loyal’ to Saddam Hussein.

I have also noted with great interest the stories that get the most attention, and the ones that get relegated to the status of background information.

CNN’s lead stories were about how tough the Iraqis are “End of Week Brings Tough Battles” with an analysis piece from former NATO General Wesley Clark entitled “Quick Victory Not Going to Happen”.

MSNBC leads off with “Resistance Endures Amid Rubble” and “Casualties Grow As Troops Head North.”

TIME is focusing its attention on “Why Saddam’s Not Done Yet” and “Baghdad Prepares to Fight.” And EVERYBODY is talking about civilian casualties reported by the Iraqi press and shown outside an allegedly bombed apartment building near a market.

So far, the US has avoided civilian casualties to the extent they have placed their own troops at increased risk. And we know that Saddam’s end game is a ‘scorched earth’ policy. But the news media is reporting it as a US strike as if it were fact.

Assessment:

While the press continues to make its case that the war with Iraq was a grave mistake, the French continue to make the same case, often pointing to the media to support it, among those nations that will still listen to them.

Jacques Chirac did his best to keep us out of Iraq for fear we would upset the business deals (including prohibited military sales) it had cooking with Saddam Hussein, but now that the war has begun, has started a campaign to put Iraq’s reconstruction in the hands of the UN Security Council where France still wields a veto. That way, they can block any reconstruction efforts that cuts them out of the loop.

Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, notes that an Iraqi governing authority set up by the coalition after Saddam’s ouster will “will presumably want to see a lifting of the sanctions and the embargo. It can only be done if there is an affirmative vote by the Security Council.”

The threat is clear. France can block any lifting of UN sanctions by the application of its veto.

Such a cynical manipulation of France’s Security Council power would almost certainly be the death blow to the United Nations. It would also fracture the European Union, since only France, Germany and Belgium would support maintaining an economic embargo on a liberated Iraq as a method of punishing the United States.

Guillaume Parmentier directs the Center on the United States at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). He says that to prevent France from taking that route, the US may try to “isolate France — to go through mechanisms that do not include France — by bypassing the Security Council of the UN, to a degree [by] bypassing the European Union, trying to do things with a select number of partners.”

This would have almost the same effect of nullifying the UN and the European Union, not to mention fracturing the NATO alliance even more than it already is.

The war with Iraq has pushed the various states of the various global alliances closer to where the Bible said they would be politically during the approaching Tribulation Period.

Russia is seizing on the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East to build secret and not-so-secret alliances with rogue states like Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. All are part of Ezekiel’s Gog-Magog alliance.

And so is Turkey, who up until now has been the most pro-Israel and pro-Western Muslim country in the Middle East. Now Turkey seems to be cutting itself adrift from its traditional western alliances.

If we are as close to the Tribulation Period as I think we are, we can expect to see relations with Turkey deteriorate even further, until the Turks seek alliances with other Muslim states and probably with Moscow.

The original ten states of the European Alliance are also in danger of coming apart, with three of the original ten, France, Germany and Belgium, standing in defiant opposition to the majority position expressed by both the greater European Union and NATO.

Daniel’s ten heads had only seven horns because three of the original ten were ‘plucked up by the roots’.

“I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” Daniel 7:8

Then there is the United Nations. The UN has built a considerable infrastructure over its fifty-year history. There are global institutions like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, the World Court, etc., etc., that are necessary elements to what is the now-necessary global government.

If the UN does implode, something will have to take its place. The Bible says the global government of the last days will consist of the seven out of the original ten plus the eleventh little horn.

Things certainly seem to be moving that way, don’t they?

The ‘Pacifists’

The ‘Pacifists’
Vol: 18 Issue: 25 Tuesday, March 25, 2003

The United States formally raised the issue of the sale of sensitive equipment by Moscow to Iraq. Not just sensitive equipment, but sensitive MILITARY equipment, and not just over the last twelve years in violation of UN sanctions, but right up to the outbreak of the war. Weapons designed to serve as countermeasures to US weapons.

The information wasn’t leaked to a news reporter, but thundered from the podium by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

Washington has “credible evidence” that a Russian company has sold the Iraqis electronic equipment to jam the Global Positioning System signals used by U.S. precision-guided bombs and missiles, and this trade appears to be ongoing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

“There is evidence that Russian firms also have supplied Iraq with night-vision goggles and anti-tank missiles,” Fleischer said. All such trade violates sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations,” he said.

“President Putin assured President Bush that he would look into it, and President Bush said he looked forward to hearing the results,” Fleischer said.

The spokesman said the administration decided to take the issue to “the highest levels” after repeated complaints to other Russian officials in the past year failed to halt the sales.

“These issues have been raised repeatedly at various levels of the government, and now they have reached the highest levels today,” he said.

Before the two leaders spoke, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov publicly denied his country had traded in prohibited equipment with Iraq. “We did not send any goods, including military ones, that violated the sanctions,” Ivanov told reporters in Moscow. “No fact supporting the Americans’ anxiety has been found.”

That isn’t what the Russian papers are reporting. According to Pravda, the issue has been ‘good advertising’ for its military hardware, pointing to the allegedly ‘effective’ defense Iraq is putting up using Soviet equipment.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Ivanov had told him that “with enough information and the right information, they would do something about” the alleged sales. But he added that U.S. officials believed they have already given the Russians more than enough leads to crack down if they wish to. “I must say that so far I am disappointed at the response,” Powell said on Fox News.

U.S. officials are convinced the Iraqis have been using the jamming equipment, but have not determined what effect, if any, it has had.

Powell said the equipment had the potential to cause problems for U.S. forces. “It is the kind of equipment that puts our men and women in harm’s way,” he said in the Fox interview. “It gives an advantage to the enemy, an advantage we don’t want them to have, and that’s our concern.”

Assessment:

This is the first of several cats to be let out of the bag, as we discussed several weeks ago in a previous briefing.

The Russians have been making black-market sales in violation of UN sanctions for twelve years, and reaping huge profits from them.

It is all about profit, but not the ‘blood for oil’ profit motive being leveled against the United States.

When Saddam realized that we were going to use GPS-guided munitions against his regime, he turned to the Russians, who had GPS jammers that immediately became worth their weight in gold.

It isn’t like Saddam could get them anywhere else. The offense here is several levels deep.

First, there is the cynical way that Moscow used the sanctions to squeeze the already starving Iraqis for twelve years, taking the oil-for-food money in exchange for weapons from a country where 5,000 Iraqi babies die each month.

Then there is the fact that the sales of these weapons would be illegal even without sanctions.

Then there is the purpose of the GPS munitions. They are designed to cause precision guided bombs to veer off course from their military targets, causing them to hit Iraqi civilian targets instead.

And finally, that the Russians sold those weapons to Saddam right up to the outbreak of the war, weapons designed to be used against American forces.

As we told you some time back, there is a reason why the Russians opposed war in Iraq, and it wasn’t motivated by any higher moral perspective.

France has also been selling military equipment to Iraq, including spare parts for Saddam’s fleet of Mirage fighters. That’s why the French remain adamantly opposed to the US getting its hands on Iraq’s records.

And the Germans have been selling the precursors and the chemicals necessary to amass Saddam’s arsenal of chemical weapons for years. The Germans have been caught dozens of times over the last twelve years while we looked the other way.

Germany’s ‘pacifist’ objections to military action against Iraq are a smokescreen behind which Germany helped Saddam build an arsenal of silent death.

Some have objected to my use of the term ‘useful idiots’ to describe the global anti-war protestors that marched in support of the Russian, French and German stand against the war.

They thought they were marching to help the Iraqi people live in peace. But they were really just helping their governments sell Saddam Hussein more weapons.

The Fog of War

The Fog of War
Vol: 18 Issue: 24 Monday, March 24, 2003

There is a phrase that describes the mixed signals and confusion that emanates from the battlefields across Iraq. In military jargon, it is called the fog of war . War is an intense business; combat is loud, fast, and terrifying, and it takes place shrouded in smoke and fire and blood and horror.

Every man shrinks into his own universe, dealing with his particular assignment to the exclusion of all else, sensory input is tuned to the task at hand and anything taking place on the periphery that does not constitute a direct threat is filtered out.

It is for that reason that when a combat unit is debriefed after action, the entire unit is interviewed, and the sum total of what each man observed is collated into the overall action report.

It is through these unit debriefings that military commanders are able to blow back the fog of war and obtain the larger picture by putting together the individual slices.

What we are witnessing from the comfort of our living rooms are the slices, those still enshrouded by the fog of war. The embedded reporters see what the private sees in combat. And they report back to us the slice of war that they see, without the benefit of debriefing.

That is why what we hear from CentCom regarding the conduct and progress of the war bears little resemblance to some of the reports we receive from the fields.

For example, we hear from CentCom that most of the coalition troops are meeting little resistance, indeed, in some places, surrendering Iraqi soldiers are applauding the arrival of coalition tanks.

Then in live coverage from Iraq, a breathless reporter describes camera images of a fierce firefight with entrenched and determined Iraqi forces fighting to their deaths.

Is Centcom lying? After all, the camera doesn t lie, and we ve seen plenty of evidence with our own eyes of what seems to be lots more than sporadic resistance.

Centcom is reporting the overall operation of the entire battlefield, based on the information obtained by debriefing all the operational units individually, taking all the information together, and presenting the top down picture.

For every reporter that finds himself engaged in a firefight, there are dozens of other units that encounter no resistance or are embraced as liberators.

The reporter is telling the truth, because that is what took place in his slice of the action. But CentCom is also telling the truth, based on the overall picture gleaned by piecing together all the other slices.

Assessment:

Reading across the spectrum of war coverage, particularly the story of Iraq treatment of our POW s, one gets what appears to be contradictory assessments of how the war is really going. The assessments are all backed up by facts obtained from the observations of the various embedded reporters. Who would have a better idea of how the war is going than eyewitness reporters?

But then they take the observations of those reporters, fresh from the field, still clouded by the fog of war in his little slice of the action, and extrapolate from that what they determine is the real picture of how we are doing.

As a consequence, the news reports and the armchair analyses of the war s progress largely present a picture of American troops as foreign invaders being fiercely repelled by determined invaders loyal to their homeland and their government.

CentCom s reassurances don t ring true in the face of what the public has watched taking place on their television screens.

This perception lends itself to the propagandists who are already seizing on war dispatches, holding them up to the spotlight to prove their contention that George Bush is outclassed by Saddam Hussein and that the war to liberate Iraq is really a war to occupy Iraq and seize its wealth.

As I ve said many times, our mission at the Omega Letter is to keep you informed of what is really going on, AFTER the fog of war has been blown away to reveal the actual Big Picture view. To expose methods of deception and how those deceptions can seem real and convincing, and how they can be used to forward a particular agenda.

When asked what would be the signs of His coming, the first thing Jesus said was, Take heed that no man deceive you.

Your Omega Letter exists to ensure that you will be as deception proof as is humanly and spiritually possible.

To accomplish this, we use this same principle of debriefing the individual elements of a particular situation, rather than seizing on the fog of war reports to examine the overall situation.

What we report in your Omega Letter is the Big Picture that emerges after debriefing all the various dispatches from the political, economic or spiritual battlefields.

Once the Big Picture emerges, we run it through the truth detector of Bible prophecy. The end result is your Omega Letter. We pray you continue to find it useful and effective.

Mixed Messages From War News

Mixed Messages From War News
Vol: 18 Issue: 23 Sunday, March 23, 2003

The most recent war news is a complex mess of conflicting signals and mixed messages. While coalition forces are cutting through Iraqi defenses like a hot knife through butter, our leaders continue to caution that the war could be longer and more costly than originally anticipated.

This comes at the same time that other highly placed coalition officials say they are convinced that Saddam Hussein was either killed or seriously wounded in the initial strike on the first night of the war.

While the anti-war protests continue, and the liberal press continues its whispering campaign fanning the flames of protest on the grounds there is no evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD, recently captured Iraqi troops were discovered to be carrying new gas mask and respirators.

The global refusal to accept the evidence is stunning, almost inconceivable in its willfulness. They continue to cling to the fiction that the war is illegal and unjust and that continued inspections would have disarmed Saddam.

Yet Saddam had, at the minimum, 9 SCUD missiles that he managed to conceal from the various inspection regimes for twelve years? Where is the logic in assuming that inspections would disarm Saddam eventually? It was pie in the sky thinking, but reality SHOULD have sunk in about the time the first SCUD screamed toward Kuwait.

Led by the French, the antiwar coalition of nations ought to be able to figure this out, even if it escapes such mental giants as Alec Baldwin or George Clooney.

Surely among all his cabinet ministers, somebody should have tugged on Jacques Chirac s sleeve and whispered, Hey! by now. It is no longer possible to pretend that Saddam was NOT in material breach of every single order of the UN. Why were Iraqi troops carrying new gas masks? Does anybody seriously believe that it was to protect Iraqi forces from allied gas attacks?

Chemical weapons are a weapon of last resort. We don t need them. Like the last war, the single greatest threat presented to our troops is being killed in friendly fire incidents by our own forces, not the enemy.

Assessment:

The war itself appears to be running pretty much on schedule, or so say the military briefers at CentCom. But they continue to caution that US forces have yet to engage the Republican Guard.

The Iraqi defenses have been sporadic. In some cases, pockets of Iraqi troops have defended their positions to their deaths. In others, Iraq soldiers surrendered after putting up half-hearted defenses, and in one case, a unit murdered their officers in their bunker so that they could surrender to approaching coalition troops.

One entire unit of 700 men were shown in a military aerial photograph. They had abandoned their positions and lined up according to instructions contained in leaflets dropped before the war began.

While we continue to hear of the humanitarian disasters we are creating, consider this fact. Iraqi soldiers from individuals to entire divisions given the choice to NOT be engaged? Permission to simply go home without being captured? Iraqi citizens dancing in the streets at our approach?

While there is fighting and the price of victory remains uncertain at this hour, there is absolutely NO evidence of the predicted humanitarian disaster. So far, all the evidence coming from embedded reporters who are seeing what their units see indicate this is just about the most humane war ever conducted in world history.

The embedded reporters come from the global press corps. That means there are German reporters embedded with allied units. There are French reporters, Russian reporters, Chinese reporters, Canadians; none of whom are friendly to the war effort.

Not to mention the equally unfriendly networks. ABC, NBC and CBS have reporters observing from forward units, so does CNN.

The public is as informed of what is happening on the ground, when it is happening, as clearly as if we were privates attached to the units involved.

Not just the American public, but the whole world. Including the French. The Germans. They have their own reporters. The Russians. The Chinese.

It is absolutely clear that the opposition to war is NOT based on taking the higher moral ground. It is rather based on a combination of willful ignorance, political advantage, cynical self-interest and an incredible, white-hot hatred of George Bush that has been fanned by American liberals to the degree that for much of the world, Saddam wins the global popularity contest hands-down.

There are those who accuse me of being a partisan tool of George Bush because what I say could be interpreted as being pro-George Bush by NOT being anti-George Bush.

But, if you leaf through the archives, you ll find that the bulk of the material just separates rhetoric from reality. There are many more questions posed in the pages of the Omega Letter than there are answers, mainly because the questions themselves make the answers self-evident.

Why is that important? Because some things are just wrong. And if the bulk of the rhetoric about George Bush is both wrong and responsible for the white-hot global hatred and opposition to all things Bush, then it would become self-evident by posing the questions I regularly present in your Omega Letter.

If it seems pro-Bush, that is, at least to me, evidence that where there is smoke, there s fire.

The most relevant fact this war has exposed in terms of Bible prophecy is the power of the propagandist. People will believe what they want to believe.

One of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in understanding the unfolding of Bible prophecy is that aspect of deception. How could one man eventually deceive the whole world into accepting him as an object of worship? Why would anybody ever accept the Mark of the Beast, given that it is easily the most well-known prophecy in the whole Bible? Even people who ve never read the Bible understand the significance of 666 and the antichrist.

It s been part of movie lore for thirty years, from The Omen to Arnold Scwartzeneggar s The End of Days. Yet the Bible says that when the time comes, people will flock in droves to accept the Mark and offer worship to the beast.

It sounds medieval; surely the sophisticated population of the 21st century is too educated, too informed and too advanced to fall for such a superstition.

The antichrist is, to most of the 21st century world, a cartoon character. But people will believe what they want to believe.

Any objection can be overcome with the judicious application of the principles of propaganda.

Such a global propaganda machine has never existed at any time in history. Until this generation, it was not technically possible. Today, it is an accepted and expected element of the global information machine.

Because the antichrist s time is fast approaching. And when it comes, the infrastructure is ready and waiting.

Rewriting the Talking Points

Rewriting the Talking Points
Vol: 18 Issue: 22 Saturday, March 22, 2003

Saddam Hussein has stolen six US Marines away from their families. That is a debt he can never repay, but maybe he made a partial payment when forty thousand pounds of high explosives were delivered to his bunker on the outskirts of Baghdad. Intelligence officials are not sure if he paid with his own death, or made a partial payment with his eldest son, Uday. Make no mistake. This is a debt Saddam owes. This is not a war America wanted, it is a war forced on America by its principles and by our inability to allow evil to exist unchallenged.

One of the Marines killed in the conflict was Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Waters-Bey, 29, of Baltimore, Maryland. As he held a picture of his son, Waters-Bey’s father, Michael, said: “I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look here. This is the only son I had, only son.” THIS is what war is like.

Those who think that because we support the war effort means we are warmongers are fools. We weep for our losses, but it HAS to be done. God bless the troops, and comfort the families.

But as wars go, American losses have been surprisingly light with only two Marines killed in combat, four in a helicopter crash in the desert, and one American who died in a British helicopter crash over the Gulf.

While I say ‘only’ it is with the understanding that the death even one American soldier or Marine means the whole world to someone.

And that loss diminishes us all.

The war is doing some damage to the anti-Bush forces at home and abroad as well. The propagandists are keeping busy rewriting their talking points.

The war is about oil, for example. The United States is sponsoring a resolution at the Security Council that will give UN General Secretary Kofi Annan control of Iraq’s oil wealth. So if this is a war about oil, the US just surrendered to the UN. Scratch that talking point.

The war is a grudge match between Bush the Younger and Saddam — not hearing that one very much anymore, either.

“Saddam Hussein was offered a choice; give up your weapons of mass destruction, or lose power. He chose unwisely, and now he will lose both,” said Secretary of State Rumsfeld yesterday.

CNN seemed disappointed until the first phase of ‘shock and awe’ was launched yesterday. The US was unwilling to unleash the full fury of our air power until they were certain that Iraq wasn’t going to surrender following the strike that most probably incapacitated or killed Saddam Hussein.

His fate is still uncertain, but all the intelligence markers indicate we got him on the first night. Military intelligence says it is ‘virtually certain’ that Saddam was loaded onto a stretcher and whisked away in an ambulance shortly after the first strike. It is also believed that Uday was killed.

Saddam and both his sons are confirmed to have been inside the building when forty thousand pounds of high explosives slammed into the target with pinpoint precision.

The war will upset the global economy — scratch through that one, too.

All three market gauges rose for the week, with the Dow average up 8.36 percent, its best weekly gain since October 1982. The Dow rose for an eighth day, its longest streak of gains since December 1998. The Dow has gained 13 percent since the rally began last week.

You wouldn’t know it from CNN’s war coverage. They were too busy speculating about all the civilian casualties we were creating and how that would sour US relations with the Arab street to mention it.

The Washington press corps seemed furious that Bush wasn’t watching war coverage on TV. Whether or not he was watching television took up most of Ari Fleischer’s White House press briefing. During the first Gulf War, President Bush said he got most of his information from CNN.

The current President Bush is getting his information from his intelligence services. That may have upset the press corps, but I found it quite comforting.

Iraqis are surrendering in droves, dancing in the streets and cheering the Marines as liberators. Nobody is talking about it. It’s virtually impossible to find accounts of that in the global press or in the print media.

But TV reporters embedded with the military are beaming pictures back home of Iraqis lining their route, cheering their arrival and dancing with joy at their liberation.

Coverage from anti-Bush world is all about civilian casualties that nobody can find, children being wounded by bombs that were being dropped while they were outside playing or shopping with the parents (David Chater — Sky News) (at four in the morning??) and the humanitarian disaster the bombing is creating. No evidence of that, either.

So far, the bombs have only hit military targets. There are no civilians in military facilities that Saddam didn’t put there. Another talking point bites the dust.

Assessment:

The most amazing thing isn’t so much the way the war is being conducted as the way it is being reported. CNN’s coverage is flustered and confused as its anchors search the wire services for somthing negative to report. The best they could come up with was the ‘anti-war’ protests still ongoing around the world.

But even CNN had difficulty explaining why these alleged anti-war pacifists are so violent — hundreds of persons have been injured protesting the war. More than a dozen people have been killed, meaning more people have died protesting the war than the coalition troops fighting it.

The New York Times is reporting that the media is responsible for the war with Iraq because the media failed to ‘aggressively confront’ the Bush administration. (I’m not making this up)

Quoting author Eric Alterman (“What Liberal Media?”) to advance their agenda, the Times reported, “Support for this war is in part a reflection that the media has allowed the Bush administration to get away with misleading the American people.”

The Times did not see fit to explain just exactly how the Bush administration was misleading them, however. Instead, it reported, “But opponents of the war assert that if the news media had done a better job of highlighting flaws in the administration’s case, President Bush might have been forced to give weapons inspectors more time to work in Iraq.”

More time for the inspectors? US forces have captured WMD production facilities in the ‘Scud Box’ in western Iraq on the second day of the war. The UN inspectors didn’t find them in three months.

UNMOVIC was able to uncover exactly one proscribed missile system — the al-Samoud. But Kuwait came under attack — 9 times — by SCUD missiles that Iraq was prohibited from possessing, were not listed on Iraq’s December 7 weapons declaration and that Iraq swore it didn’t have. More time for inspectors?

And another talking point bites the dust.