…then how can we be so sure they’re hitting the right buildings? So far I’ve seen reports of a “stray” missle going into Iran and another one hitting a Syrian passenger bus. It’s disgusting to think about how many innocent people are going to die because Bush didn’t have enough patience to allow the weapons inspectors to finish their job.

That’s the message that the Republicans are sending :

By a vote along party lines, the majority members of the House Budget Committee passed and reported for a vote by the House a budget resolution that would cut $844 million from veterans? medical care next year and $9.7 billion over the next 10 years. In addition, the budget resolution would cut $15 billion from the disability compensation and other benefit programs over the next 10 years. The House leadership are pushing these cuts to offset the cost of the President?s $1.57 trillion tax reduction plan.

Jeez, that’s as bad as cutting funding to firefighters after 9/11. Oh wait, they did that too.

Just when I was starting to think “Shock and Awe” was just a bluff, the air assault on Iraq began. There’s a shocking article about the current attacks in the Sydney Morning Herald that includes this interesting tidbit (as well as the quote above) :

A legal expert at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva said the use of napalm or fuel air bombs was not illegal “per se” because the US was not a signatory to the 1980 weapons convention which prohibits and restricts certain weapons.

But napalm isn’t the only “frowned upon” weapon being used by U.S. Forces. The Australian governement went as far as issuing this statement :

Australian troops in Iraq will operate under stricter rules of engagement than their U.S. comrades and will avoid use of land mines and cluster bombs, a defense spokesman said Friday.

For more information about the use of landmies, you can check out the full text of the U.N. Anti-Landmine Treaty (which the U.S. refuses to sign) here and get some more information about one of the campaigns to ban mines here.

The Washington Post has a good article about the various lies that the Bush Administration have been repeating to justify the current slaughter in Baghdad.

In his appearance Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the vice president argued that “we believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” But Cheney contradicted that assertion moments later, saying it was “only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons.” Both assertions were contradicted earlier by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who reported that “there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities.”

Also, there’s an excellent post about the war here that sums up why this war is unjust a lot better than I could.

Bush seems pretty excited about this war for a guy who went AWOL.

Minutes before the speech, an internal television monitor showed the president pumping his fist. “Feels good,” he said.

Here’s a sobering blog from and Iraqi guy named Raed :

No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying ?come on bomb us? it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case.

…
What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging for days now: how could ?support democracy in Iraq? become to mean ?bomb the hell out of Iraq?? why did it end up that democracy won?t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-senate Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful.

Just in case the was any doubt about the illegality of the upcoming war, this is being reported by Reuters :

President Bush and his allies are unlikely to face trial for war crimes although many nations and legal experts say a strike on Iraq without an explicit U.N. mandate breaches international law.

Shouldn’t someone remind the Bush what he said 48 hours ago?

War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

In the ongoing quest to get a UN Resolution to use force against Iraq, the Bush administration has been offering billions of dollars in bribes (they prefer the term “aid”) to the undecided members of the Security Council. Aren’t there more important things to be spending that money on?