[1:17 PM] There was an interesting story in the Washington Post the other day about covert CIA paramilitary teams operating in Baghdad, attempting to assassinate Iraqi political leaders. While fascinating in itself this line caught my attention

Not all the explosions in Baghdad captured by western television cameras are the result of aerial bombs and missiles, the source said, implying that some have been planted by the teams.

I haven’t heard any television coverage mention this article or speculate on the explosions that we see on television. I’m surprised given the ubiquity of a shot of smoke rising over Baghdad on most American television coverage. Okay, maybe I’m not that surprised.

[7:51 PM] "Pentagon Expels CSM Reporter from Iraq." An enticing and perplexing headline from the AP. How can the U.S. expel a reporter from another country? The reporter in question, who was not embedded but joined up with a Marine unit, allegedly gave away troop position prompting the action. But the story goes on to say only, "The commander felt it was necessary and appropriate to remove (Smucker) from his immediate battle space in order not to compromise his mission or endanger personnel of his unit." The article doesn't mention again how the Pentagon can order this reporter out of Iraq or in fact that they intend to. The CSM has only a couple words more about that specific point, saying "Philip Smucker, a contract reporter for the Monitor and The Daily Telegraph of London, was escorted by the US Marines from the front lines of the war in Iraq Thursday. He is being taken to Kuwait, the Pentagon says, because of information Smucker reported in a broadcast appearance with CNN early Wednesday."

That still doesn't explain why the U.S. has the right to tell a reporter to leave an (for now) independent country--unless for all intents and purposes, they are forcibly expelling him. More later.

[10:40 AM] In their joint press conference today, George W. Bush and Tony Blair talked about all things Iraq. Listening to comments from a number of commentators afterward showed some surprise that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict keeps working its way into the conversation. Here’s what Tony Blair had to say

In addition, as has just been said to you, we had an excellent discussion of the Middle East, and we both share a complete determination to move this forward. It is, indeed, often overlooked that President Bush is the first U.S. President publicly to commit himself to a two-state solution, an Israel confident of its security and a viable Palestinian state. And I welcome the decision announced recently to publish the road map as soon as the confirmation of the new Palestinian Prime Minister is properly administered.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is a very serious issue for the British government. I think one can say without being accused of cynicism that it is simply not for the Bush administration. Tony Blair is questioned about this repeatedly during Prime Minister’s question time. This is from February 5

John Robertson (Glasgow, Anniesland): Does my right hon. Friend agree that a peace settlement in Palestine and Israel is of paramount importance to the peace process in the Middle East? Does he also agree that if George Bush put as much effort into an Israeli-Palestinian agreement as he has into promoting a war in Iraq, the whole country would be a lot better off?

The Prime Minister: I certainly agree with one aspect of my hon. Friend's question. I believe that pushing forward the Middle East peace process is an urgent priority for the world, irrespective of what happens in Iraq—it is right in its own terms. The conference we held in London was, I think, successful, and a follow-up conference is happening on 10 February. It is vital that we make progress on three aspects—security, political reform in the Palestinian Authority, and the development of final status talks based on the twin-state solution of Israel and a viable Palestinian state.

Prime Minister’s Question Time is great and always spirited. CSPAN shows a replay of it on Sunday nights (PMQT takes place on Wednesdays). One can’t watch the eloquence of Tony Blair and help but wonder what it would be like to see George W. Bush answer some of the difficult questions put to the prime minister.

[7:49 PM] This article in Slate sums up better than I have the sanitized and limited scope of American television coverage of the war in Iraq.

As many viewers quickly figured out, if you watch the BBC or go prospecting on the Internet you get a more balanced and detailed picture. During and after Friday's "shock and awe" campaign, where American TV cameras generally kept a neutral middle distance, with no foreground but the CNN crawl, the BBC got right into the street-level thick of it—a British reporter poked around the rubble and broadcast images of Iraqi civilians in hospital beds. And the written reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere—John F. Burns' accounts from Baghdad, say—has been infinitely more vivid than most of what you see and hear on ABC.

Read the article here.

[7:19 PM] C-SPAN is offering some great non-American television coverage of the war. Almost nightly the network has provided lengthy coverage from the CBC (Canada) and the BBC. The coverage is great in that the perspective is much the same as CNN or other American networks, but the way the coverage is presented is much more coherent. As I've mentioned, so much American coverage of the war is a montage of random and incomplete images with little context. Both the CBC and BBC are very good about allowing extended footage with context. Today CBC showed a long segment from on the ground in Basra where over half of the city is without electricity. Both networks have also outdone the American networks in showing Iraqi civilian casualties. You can watch all the CSPAN channels live via streaming video at CSPAN.org.

[10:59 AM] Updating my list of annoyances with television coverage of the war:

4. Stop asking experts questions they have no ability to answer. "Retired Admiral x, as you sit across from me in the studio, thousands of miles from Iraq, with no access to classified intelligence--intelligence you couldn't share with me even if you had it--Is Saddam Hussein alive?"

5. Please tell "experts" and analysts how to pronounce the name of the country we waging war in (hint: it does not rhyme with "tie rack").

[8:01 PM] Fields Report has lost his bet that Saddam's craftiness would win out in the end and he would evade an invasion. Fields Report hopes to do better in his office NCAA tournament pool. In the meantime he's keeping up with the war the best he can. Slate has a nice "War on the Web" guide some Internet sites to follow the situation.

I admit to being hooked on following the up to the minute developments. But is it just me or is U.S. television coverage pretty useless? Same night vision shot of Baghdad. And most aggravating, really no decent linear recaps of what has happened. Just lots of the same pictures with no context. I've seen so many shots of the "Shock and Awe" phase today, with little commentary saying, "See that flash? That was site x." Come on. Take a guess at what it is. Since when has television news been afraid to wildly speculate.

My wishlist for better television coverage:

1. Show us Iraqi TV. What are the Iraqi people seeing. I watched a televsion journalist interview a western expert on what the the Iraqis are now seeing on Iraqi television. Is it that hard to pick up the feed, tape it and show us?

2. Get some new pictures. All we see are talking heads. There are great photos out there from AP and Reuters photographers. Show us! (Ask and you shall receive. As I type this Aaron Brown has heard my request).

3. Show us a map a little more often. Who's where and with what kind of hardware? Use some of that crawler technology.

More later.

[2:53 PM] What was George W. Bush talking about today?I'm not speaking of Iraq—I tune out when he repeats the same four talking points over and over again (gassed his own people; 12 years to disarm, etc.). In the press conference in the Azores, Bush admonished the U.N. “And the U.N. must mean something. Remember Rwanda or Kosovo. The U.N. didn't do its job. And we hope tomorrow the U.N. will do its job.”

Huh? Rwanda? (this from the anti-intervention president). Perhaps he mixed up abbreviations and meant U.S. instead of U.N. Wasn’t it the U.S. that opposed any action in Rwanda? Wasn’t it the U.S. government (sadly during the Clinton administration) that was caught up arguing about whether to use the “g-word” as Samantha Power wrote in her book A Problem from Hell; America in the Age of Genocide. Maybe GWB should go back and read the Rwanda chapter. Here are some excerpts

National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who happened to know Africa, recalls “I was obsessed with Haiti and Bosnia during that period, so Rwanda was…a ‘sideshow,’ but not even a sideshow—a no-show.”

Belgium did not want to leave ignominiously, [after the killing of 14 of its soldiers] by itself. Warren Christopher agreed to back Belgian requests for a full UN exit. Policy over the next month or so can be described simply: no U.S. military intervention, robust demands for a withdrawal of all [UN] forces, and no support for a new UN mission that would challenge the killers.

On April 15 Secretary [of State] Christopher sent Ambassador Albright at the UN one of the most forceful documents produced in the entire three months of the genocide. Christopher’s cable instructed Albright to demand a full UN withdrawal…Christopher wrote that there was “insufficient justification” to retain a UN presence…

If anything Bush should have used the Rwandan argument as one that bolsters the case for unilateral action—a point I made in the essay in the Humanist (see left column). And it would offer the double whammy of criticizing the Clinton administration at the same time. But I suppose when you’re as fixated on war as GWB is, there’s no time to get all your facts straight.

[12:18 PM] I wish more columnists/pundits would take Thomas Friedman’s (and my) approach in discussing opposition to a war with Iraq. Friedman make his point on Sunday and today.

The first thing that bothered [about Bush’s primetime news conference] me was the phrase, "When it comes to our security . . ." Fact: The invasion of Iraq today is not vital to American security. Saddam Hussein has neither the intention nor the capability to threaten America, and is easily deterrable if he did.

This is not a war of necessity. That was Afghanistan. Iraq is a war of choice — a legitimate choice to preserve the credibility of the U.N., which Saddam has defied for 12 years, and to destroy his tyranny and replace it with a decent regime that could drive reform in the Arab/Muslim world. That's the real case.

The problem that Mr. Bush is having with the legitimate critics of this war stems from his consistent exaggeration on this point.

Well said.

[11:48 AM] Several people I discuss Colombia with are quick to throw the Vietnam analogy around—although I could never figure out why just based on the very small number of troops that are allowed there by Congress (400). Now according to this article, the U.S. would like to reduce that number to about zero. I’m sure that please the Vietnam worriers and those who believe U.S. involvement in Colombia is all about enriching defense contractors here in the U.S. But what about the poor Colombians caught up in this 40 year old war? The Colombian armed forces are not strong enough to defeat the 20,000 plus guerrilla insurgents. Here's an excerpt:

The Bush administration has made it clear that the country will have to shoulder more of the military and financial burden of fighting its guerrilla war. U.S. officials have used the words “exit strategy” and “endgame” during recent visits here to describe Washington’s desire to do less in Colombia even as President Alvaro Uribe seeks more U.S. help.

“We’re not looking to put more people in here,” said Marc Grossman, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, during a news conference Wednesday in Bogota. “This is a Colombian problem that the Colombians will have to solve.”

I’m not necessarily advocating a stronger U.S. military presence, but there is certainly a middle ground between full-scale involvement and picking up your marbles and going home.

[11:36 AM] What about Iran? I’ve written that here several time before—well before North Korea surpassed it signaling that it wouldn’t be the forgotten child in the Axis of Evil. This WP article reports that Iran’s uranium enrichment effort is coming right along, and they’re doing it legally, adhering to their NPT obligations for IAEA safeguards.

The article quotes Colin Powell

“Here we suddenly discover that Iran is much further along, with a far more robust nuclear weapons development program than anyone said it had,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “It shows you how a determined nation that has the intent to develop a nuclear weapon can keep that development process secret from inspectors and outsiders, if they really are determined to do it.”

Without seeing the show and hearing his tone, I can’t be certain how incredulous Powell actually sounds. But if he does sound that way, I can’t understand why. Isn’t this exactly the same strategy that Iraq, and North Korea pursued? If plutonium separation is inconvenient, go the uranium enrichment route. In fact if Iran is indeed intending to use enriched uranium for weapons and not power, their strategy would be very similar to Iraq’s initial strategy—stay within the confines of your NPT obligations and subvert fissile material under the noses of IAEA inspectors. Why does Colin Powell sound so surprised by this?

[10:38 AM] Thomas Friedman gave a wonderful lecture at SAIS yesterday about American foreign policy, the Middle East, and a war with Iraq. I’m looking for a transcript, but you can view the event online here. It is highly recommended.

[9:19 PM] “Mr. bin Laden has eluded a worldwide manhunt for more than a year,” so write Raymond Bonner and David Johnston in the NYT. Worldwide manhunt? On September 10, Bin Laden was suspected to be in Afghanistan. Fleeing after U.S. military action in Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, Bin Laden is suspected to be…gasp, next door in Pakistan or still in Afghanistan. Worldwide manhunt? This isn’t a dig at the Times.

With the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, some have suggested that this demonstrates that those who say a war with Iraq won’t distract the U.S. from the “War on Terrorism,” which of course is linked to Iraq anyway, right? I’ve posed the question before and I’ll ask it again. If a war happens in Iraq, people will die—Iraqi military, Iraqi civilians, and coalition soldiers. If the Baghdad street fight that some predict actually happens, many will die ugly, painful deaths. President Bush deems this acceptable and the price of our safety and security. The question: so why not 150,000 troops in Afghanistan to hunt down Bin Laden and “bring him to justice,” as the president promised. Bloody, messy, uncertain—absolutely. But that’s what the president has found a necessary evil of dealing with Saddam Hussein, and he had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11th. Isn’t that then acceptable for the persons responsible for that Tuesday morning massacre?

[3:24 PM] Read a transcript of the Rumsfeld interview on BBC World Service here. There are quite a few gems:

David Dimbleby: When you - when you - sorry. When you visited Iraq and negotiated with Saddam Hussein, when America wanted Saddam Hussein for its own purposes, America took Iraq off the list of terrorist states and, indeed, supplied it with the wherewithal to make the chemical weapons they're now trying to remove.

DR: I've read that type of thing, but I don't know where you get your information, and I don't believe it's correct. They may have been taken off. I was a private businessman. I was asked for a few months to assist after the 241 Marines were killed in Beirut, Lebanon. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein. I did not give him or sell him or bring him any chemical weapons or any biological weapons, as some of the European press likes to print. It's just factually not true.

Now, whether or not the United States at some point, when I was not part of the government, decided to take him off a terrorist list, you may be right. In fact, I -

DD: Are you saying you don't know, you didn't know when you went there whether he was on the list of terror states or not? You were trying to reopen -

DR: I believe he was.

DD: - a relationship between the United States and Iraq.

DR: That's right. And I believe he was on the list of terrorist states when I went there.

DD: We're being diverted a bit here, but let's just go into this, because it's another of the causes of a lack of credibility, or a credibility gap that you particularly have to fill, that you were there and met the man.

DR: I was there with the President and Secretary Shultz to meet with him and to see it was one of the few Middle Eastern countries that had not re-established relationships with the United States after the earlier Middle East war.

DD: But you aren't saying that you weren't aware that he was using chemical weapons, because the Secretary of State at the time had said they were using them.

DR: I was certainly aware of that. I didn't say I wasn't aware of that. I said I was not aware that the United States gave him, as you suggested, or I gave him, and that I had some burden to bear. That's just utter nonsense.

DD: I'm not suggesting you had a burden to bear. I was saying that there was one of the reasons you lacked -

DR: You said you particularly.

DD: No, you went and talked to the man.

DR: I did.

DD: But what I'm suggesting is that the United States in the world outside, over and over again people say, well, now they're trying to get rid of the weapons, as Jesse Jackson put it when he was at Hyde Park Corner a week ago, for which the United States has the receipts. I mean, that's the problem, that you created this monster, evil, as you know -

DR: You who?

DD: You, the United States, not you personally.

DR: Well, first of all, you're wrong…

DD: And yet America is seen as applying double standards in this, isn't it? I mean, using the UN against Iraq, for instance, and then you yourself saying - repeating two or three times, in the context of Israel and the UN resolutions there, that the occupied territories on the West Bank are so-called occupied territories. That's the kind of thing that makes people think, well, actually America is not serious about this, they're so pro-Israel that they're not.

DR: Interesting -

DD: Well, you said that.

DR: Well, first of all, I did not repeat it two or three times. You're just factually wrong.

DD: You said it twice in the same series of remarks. You used the expression “so-called”.

DR: Fair enough. I was in a meeting, and I was asked a question, and the phrase came out.

DD: But is it what you think that they're so-called occupied, or do you think they're occupied and should be given up?

DR: I think that that's what a negotiation is going to solve. I mean, that is what the negotiation is about. Obviously Israel has offered to give back a major portion of the occupied territories. We know that. The agreement was there. It could have been solved if Arafat had accepted it. He didn't.

DD: But your use of the word "so-called".

DR: If it bothered you, then don't use it.

DD: It's not me it bothers. It's the other Arab states it bothers.

DR: Well, don't you agree that the purpose of a negotiation is to decide those things? It seems to me that's fairly reasonable. Israel has offered to give up a major percentage of the occupied territories.

[1:06 PM] Donald Rumsfeld will be interviewed on BBC World Service at 21:30 GMT today (whatever that means, it’s in 30 minutes). If you like NPR, international affairs, and don’t listen to World Service, you’re missing out. Fields Report is lucky enough to have a local radio station that airs it almost 24 hours a day. You can obviously listen online and on its website you can find short-wave frequencies for the Caribbean and East Asia which may reach the U.S. And according to its website, on some cable networks, you can hear it on the SAP channel of CSPAN-2, although it doesn’t work with my Direct TV satellite. No, I am not a paid spokesperson for the BBC although I’m open to talk about it.

[4:23 PM] Check out the new issue of Foreign Policy. Click on the image to the left. More on it later.

[11:28 PM] Both the UN and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry maintain websites that chronicle the daily inspection process. You can see the Iraqi’s here and the UN’s here. Interestingly, the Iraqi’s usually provide much more detailed description of each day's inspections, including how long they lasted, who led which UNMOVIC or IAEA team, and what time the team returned to its hotel. The UN description usually simply lists the type of team (UMOVIC chemical) and where they went. Interesting reading nonetheless.