Another socialist blog

The latest issue of Mother Jones reports on the growing opposition to the Iraq war among soldiers and veterans, organized in part by the Iraq Veterans Against the War. A poll last August in Pennsylvania showed 54% of households with a member in the military said the war was “the wrong thing to do.” Only 48% of the population as a whole felt that way. A 2003 Gallup poll showed that nearly a fifth of soldiers returning from Iraq felt the situation in that country had not been worth going to war over.

As you know, we invaded Iraq to make America safer because Saddam was a threat and had lots of weapons of mass destruction. So how embarrassing that 350 tons of high explosives have gone missing from al-Qaqaa, an Iraqi military facility near Baghdad.

You might think that securing the explosives would have been central to the military’s mission in Iraq, or at least that it would be close to the top of the invasion to-do list. But you’d be wrong. Apparently keeping track of 350 tons of stuff that blows up took a lower priority than protecting the Oil Ministry building from looters.

The New York Times reports that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has served subpoenas in an investigation of payola, the illegal practice of bribing radio stations to play particular songs. “According to several people involved, investigators in Mr. Spitzer’s office have served subpoenas on the four major record corporations - the Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the EMI Group and the Warner Music Group - seeking copies of contracts, billing records and other information detailing their ties to independent middlemen who pitch new songs to radio programmers in New York State.”

Everybody who feels sorry for the record companies, raise your hand.

In their continuing effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, the U.S. military has been raiding Ramadi mosques in an effort to root out opponents of the occupation. Local residents accused US forces of breaking down doors and disrespecting the sanctity of Ramadi’s mosques. “This cowboy behaviour cannot be accepted,” said cleric Abdullah Abu Omar of the Ramadi Mosque, quoted by Associated Press. “The Americans seem to have lost their senses and have gone out of control.”

A new article in the New York times gives details on how the Bush administration lied about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program in order to sell the war to the public.

Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America’s leading nuclear scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.

The Times article is valuable because of its detail, and because it makes clear that administration officials weren’t just misinformed, but deliberately lying, about the prewar intelligence.