Upstaging the debate entirely for us is news that 35 children were killed in Bagdad today.

Grief-stricken mothers wailed over their children's bloodied corpses, as relatives collected body parts from the street for burial and a boy picked up the damaged bicycle of his dead brother.

The wounded were rushed to Yarmouk Hospital, where angry relatives screamed for attention from the overwhelmed doctors, many of whom wore uniforms covered in blood. One woman tore at her hair before pulling back the sheet covering her dead brother and kissing his body.

It happened while American soldiers were celebrating the inauguration of a new sewage plant. (I'm not making this up.)

Some of the children, who are near the end of a nationwide school vacation, said they were attracted to the neighborhood celebration by American soldiers handing out candy. "The Americans called us. They told us: 'Come here, come here,' asking us if we wanted sweets. We went beside them, then a car exploded," said 12-year-old Abdel Rahman Dawoud, lying naked in a hospital bed with shrapnel embedded all over his body.

Who's doing the killing?

The students on Colorado college campuses are taking the threat of a reinstatement of the draft seriously. They should. Many people think that if they or their kids get drafted, they will go to Canada. But as of 2001, Canada is not an option. In 2001, the U.S. and Canada signed the Smart Border Declaration. A news article on the agreement is here.

Project Uncensored said at the time:

Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from the Vietnam era remember. College and Canada will no longer be options. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a “Smart Border Declaration,” which could be used to contain would-be draft dodgers. The declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a “pre-clearance agreement” of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminate higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of their current semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.

A new video was released today in which British hostage Ken Bigley, chained and behind bars, pleaded for his life:

In the footage, a sobbing Bigley - his legs and hands chained - was seen talking from behind the bars of what appeared to be a prison cell. He was dressed in a orange jump suit and kneeling on the floor, and at one point he cradled his head in one of his hands.

"He doesn't care about me, I'm just one person," he was heard saying, referring to Blair. "Please, please, help me. I'm begging you (Blair), I'm begging you to speak, to push." The announcer, translating Bigley's comments into Arabic in a voiceover, said Bigley asserted that Blair was lying when he said there were negotations being carried out to save his life.

Great news--the two female Italian aid workers kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq have been released. Last week's report that they had been killed was false.

The abducted CNN reporter also has been released.

Congresswoman Diana DeGette(D-Colo.)is warning that the Administration is pushing towards the return of the draft:

"The American people are going to have to realize that if the Bush administration is going to push 'pre-emption,' we're going to have to reinstate the draft," Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said at a news conference in Denver. "I'm just trying to be realistic. We're already stretched with our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq."

DeGette has called for a Congressional investigation into the Administration's "stop loss" orders, which tell a soldier about to be done with his duty that if he doesn't reinlist, he will be sent to Iraq to finish out his service.

"Soldiers who served honorably, fought in Iraq and are near the end of their service should not be threatened with impressment," DeGette said. "How widespread is this? How high does this go in the Pentagon?"

A few days ago we reported on murder charges brought against two U.S. soldiers over the deaths of three Iraqis. Today, two soldiers were charged with murder of an Iraqi civilian in an unrelated case.

A military statement identified the soldiers as Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. and Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban, both from Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment from Fort Riley, Kansas. The military declined to provide details about the case, saying an investigation is ongoing.

That makes three sets of U.S. soldiers charged with murder in the past two weeks. Here's the first case, which did not involve the murder of Iraqis:

On Sept. 15, prosecutors charged Sgts. Eric J. Colvin, 23, of Pappilion, Nebraska, and Aaron R. Stanley, 22, of Bismarck, North Dakota, with the shooting death of Staff Sgt. Matthew H. Werner, 30, of Oxnard, California, at a home in rural Clay County, about 48 kilometers (30 miles) from Fort Riley. A second soldier, Spec. Christopher D. Hymer, 23, of Nevada, Missouri, was wounded in the incident and died Saturday in a Wichita, Kansas, hospital. Prosecutors had charged Colvin and Stanley with attempted first-degree murder in his shooting and expect to upgrade the charges.

Bump and Update: It's official. The army has announced that PFC Lynndie England will be tried January 17. If convicted on all 19 counts, she could receive up to 38 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and loss of pay and pension benefits.

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Original Post Sunday, 9/26, 8am

PFC Lynndie England will face a courts martial on 17 counts of abuse and indecent acts arising from the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

It appears her defense may be shifting from one of acting on orders of higher-ups to being "led astray by some of the male reservists charged in the case."

You can read her statements of her despicable conduct here and here, and judge for yourselves if this sounds like someone who was "led astray."

More of the specific acts by England and her merry band of perverts are here. Among the images we shouldn't forget:

Very moving op-ed in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle on why Vietnam still matters, by Michael Blecker, a former Vietnam infantryman who now is executive director of Swords to Plowshares, a Veteran's help agency in San Francisco.

The shorter version: People get tired of comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. It may be 35 years later, but many are still feeling the devastation of Vietnam--the Vets. The U.S. has done little to help them. And all indications are the soldiers who return from Iraq will face the same problems and receive even less help from the Government.

Here are some snippets, but you should read the whole thing.

Excellent letter to the editor in the New York Times on these opeds:

Both Bob Herbert ("Bush Upbeat as Iraq Burns," column, Sept. 24) and Paul Krugman ("Let's Get Real," column, Sept. 24) refuse to join their fellow journalists as President Bush leads them through the looking glass.

In defiance of evidence and logic, Mr. Bush sticks with the declaration that we are safer because we went to war with Iraq. Who is safer? The more than 1,000 Americans who are dead? The 150,000 troops who are now in harm's way?

Mr. Bush implies that Saddam Hussein might have killed and threatened more Americans than those now dead and now threatened because of this war. This from a country on its knees from 10 years of harsh sanctions, with neither weapons of mass destruction nor the means to deliver them; a country antagonistic to Al Qaeda and overrun with United Nations inspectors, overflown by British and American fighters and overseen by countless spy planes and military satellites.

I can't decide whether it is scarier that Mr. Bush believes this, or that he doesn't.

Richard M. Hendrick
Orford, N.H., Sept. 24, 2004

Considering the source is Newsweek, Plans: Next, War on Syria? is pretty frightening:

Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says.

While some Bush advisors say it's only routine updating in case another Iraq occurs, others say differently:

More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries. (Syria is regarded as a major route for jihadis entering Iraq, and Iran appears to be actively pursuing nuclear weapons.)

Apparently, Bush's advisors agree that a preemptive attack is not on the horizon because we've expended our military wad in Iraq. Doesn't that just make a draft more likely? Not to Bush advisors, who say "covert action of some kind is the favored route for Washington hard-liners who want regime change in Damascus and Tehran."

One thing is pretty clear. With Bush, there's no end in sight to war and destruction. If it's not Iraq, it will be somewhere else. As he lies, our soldiers die. Boot Bush.

Baghdad Year Zero - Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia--by Naomi Klein in the new Harper's. Go read.

The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves.

These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself.

A great line to remember:

When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder.

In the previous post I wrote that conservative bloggers Tom MacGuire and Powerline were right to be skeptical of Drudge and The Washington Times claim by Rep. Peter King of New York that Kerry endorsed preemptive war against Iraq while the two were on a Crossfire show in 1997, as the Washington Times has now issued a correction.

Here's another example of Kerry's consistency on the issue of Iraq over the years: On December 11, 2001, Kerry was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on The Factor. (Transcript available on Lexis.com) Kerry outlined his position on Iraq as Bill O'Reilly was pressuring him to call in the troops. Kerry's position: Bring in allies, be patient with inspections, use Iraqi insurgency, and only get involved if America's national security depended on it.

Here's the text of the transcript, with a few lines about Kurds and a few unintelligbile, meandering, "ums" and cross-talking lines deleted: