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Asia Times Online is one of the first sites on my list. All sides - anti-US, pro-US, and "concerned with one's own country first" are amply represented. Let the open competition of ideas begin! I especially enjoy seeing the sentiments and information provided by non-Americans. I am inspired by patriotism in any country. The depth of coverage on government business deals gives a much better picture of the "Great Game" for resource control between nations. May I also add some details to the "Iraq was armed by the US" argument? From an article by the hilariously caustic Canadian, Mark Steyn: "According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1973 and 2002 Russia supplied 57 percent of Iraq's arms, France 13 percent, China 12 percent, Brazil 2 percent ... it turns out Brazil supplied more arms to Iraq than America and Britain combined. London and Washington between them account for less than 2 percent of the Iraqi dictatorship's weapons; the parties that met on Friday account for three-quarters." I remain your faithful fan,
Ken McPherson
Fresno, California (Apr 18, '03)


Did you notice the banner at the top? "Asia Times. Feeding your hunger for news. Now with twice the nuts!" Having just read some of the letters, that last one made me laugh!
Smiley (Apr 18, '03)


Just read Pepe Escobar's sojourn through Baghdad's war-torn streets and districts [A (mis)guided tour of Baghdad, Apr 18]. My feeling is again that this person will not admit any good can come from the American attempt to right some wrong with the Arab outlook of scorn for those who are downtrodden. He can take his own lesson here: who could have saved Baghdad all this misery? The blame rests with the corrupt regime ruled by Saddam Hussein. He was the defiant individual Pepe should be ranting at, along with his cronies who plundered long before the rest of the countrymen could loot anything left. Look at Saudi Arabia, now waking from their dream to discover a great percentage of their youth have no jobs or future outlook thanks to an indifferent ruling clique who outspend rich Americans by a long shot. Will they do something for their country, like share the wealth? How about all the Gulf states who live well on the oil returns? We have corruption in the United States as well, and we the people do not rest easy with the revelations that periodically erupt into headlines outlining the greed of corporate bosses. But they pay for their crimes in most cases. We have no protective state for those who try to gain over the laws set.
J Dale Russell (Apr 18, '03)


While Pepe Escobar again tries to foment anti-American fervor by dramatizing the less than 500 civilian Iraqi deaths - during a war of this scale? - he never mentions the more than 100,000 Iraqi Kurds who "disappeared" under Saddam Hussein's rule [A (mis)guided tour of Baghdad, Apr 18]. I guess Pepe thinks Saddam flew them to Paris. Once again the Arab Hitler is glossed over, and Asia Times Online proves itself to be a leftist joke.
William Combs
Butler, Alabama (Apr 18, '03)


We would like to commend both Uzma and [Paul] Belden for their courageous work on behalf of peaceniks [A lady with real attitude, Apr 18]. Good luck. More than one soldier will cry when they come to realize what all this bombing has done and for nothing.
Veteran against war (Apr 18, '03)


Uzma is no lady [A lady with real attitude, Apr 18].  It is easy to be ugly, and mean and very, very wrong! I've said it before and I'll say it again. If those uniformed soldiers of the United States of America were in any tiny way the heartless, bloodthirsty bastards she and other lesser anti-war peawits claim they are, she and her friends wouldn't last long enough to inhale after their first furious screed. She says they are killers but her actions betray her. She is not brave. She is yelling at disciplined, honorable men who have come to liberate a nation where you would be killed for nothing more than a disrespectful glance at the beasts in power.
Anon (Apr 18, '03)


Interesting article about an apparently foul-mouthed fool [A lady with real attitude, Apr 18]. Gee, she can curse at soldiers - I'm impressed! I wonder if she thinks about the children in Saddam's children's prison? I wonder if she cares at all about the victims of the sadistic murderer who ruled Iraq with a brutal fist? There is nothing heroic about the woman.
BJM (Apr 18, '03)


In March 18's Japan's wrong-headed Korea move, Purnendra Jain calls Japan's Aegis warships surveillance battleships. Both these terms are somewhat erroneous. The Kongo class is a destroyer. It can (and was used in this case) be used for surveillance, but the primary role is air defense, not surveillance.
Scott Bowker (Apr 18, '03)


Chris Sandys writes, "Now that the dust of the initial phase of liberation is settling, we have the opportunity to examine in 20/20 hindsight. Let's see what we learned. Al-Jazeera was the liar, not the American media" [letter below]. Could it be that al-Jazeera, being an Arab news medium, is Arab-biased and that the American news media are American-biased? Come on, show some common sense. Why don't you look at unbiased sources or at a news source that should be biased to its country but isn't, such as the BBC, which is no longer allowed on British bases and ships because of its anti-war bias.
Anon (Apr 18, '03)


Let's see. The treasures of antiquity that were in the museums of Iraq have been looted by our troops? The Iraqis? And the Iraqis who toppled the statue of Saddam [Hussein] were carefully posed by the press, who outnumbered them? And those few Iraqis around were Iraqi dissidents, especially flown in for the occasion? Everything's a photo op these days. As posed as the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. At least the first one of those photos was genuine. I know. My uncle was there. And the further insanity: NPR [National Public Radio] is stressing the horrible cost of the war to you and me, the American taxpayer. I am stressing out over the obscene cost in innocent lives. And a lesser horror: the cost in American troop psyches as they live the rest of their lives with the hideous slaughter they have been responsible for. Oh, yes, that moves us into the Patriot Act. Anyone up for civil disobedience of a law that is as immoral and unconstitutional as the segregation laws of my childhood in Birmingham [Alabama]? How is this for a chilling thought from a civil-rights lawyer: "The ignorance and amorality of the present Supreme Court majority right now is such that you would molder in jail for years before the wrong was righted." Who says our democracy is dying?
Just people who know the truth (Apr 18, '03)


In an article on the anguish over civilian casualties, the New York Times' John Burns quotes an Iraqi antiques merchant telling fellow mourners: "The cause is not Saddam, the cause is oil." He went on to say that US troops in Baghdad have made no attempt to protect any government building from looters except the Ministry of Oil. "They won't let the looters go anywhere near it." Fellow ATol readers: I am a US citizen, and I want to believe our president - so I was wondering if there might be a CNN graduate with a degree in Doublespeak out there, who would help me read something into these quotes other than what they so obviously affirm?
Michael
USA (Apr 18, '03)

Regarding A world without the UN? Nah, Apr 17, by Sreeram Chaulia, the article does a fair job of describing the antipathy of some Americans toward the UN, exacerbated in recent weeks by the failure of the UN to act against the Saddam [Hussein] regime. He refers to those who do not support UN world government as "ilk", and I suppose I myself would be of this "ilk". There is a very important role for the UN, in my opinion; it is a wonderfully convenient place to hash out issues among nations, as it is the one place where all of them are present for that one purpose. But no one should imagine that free people would give up their liberty to such an institution. The UN has the image of being democratic, but it is deceptive; most of the member states are not themselves democratic. And of all of them, only one did I personally have a hand in electing. That is the only government I will accept to rule me. As for the legitimacy that UN approval lends to an action, that is simply public relations; we are not required to believe it. If an action is moral, it does not cease to be so because France did not agree, and if it is not moral, it does not become more moral because a preponderance of member states were induced to support it. In the case of the war in Iraq, there are moral stakes which are above and beyond mere UN politicking. French, German, and Russian contracts with Saddam do not trump US security concerns. French, German, and Russian weapons deals with Saddam do not rob the action of legitimacy, simply because they can veto UN approval. As for UN experience in nation-building, I would ask where the UN has succeeded? Where have they brought liberty, and stability, and then departed? Consider Bosnia, where UN troops were complicit in the slaughter they were sent to prevent, or Rwanda, where they abandoned their mission under fire. If Bosnia is not a charnel house today, it is due to NATO action, not the UN. If the killing in Rwanda has stopped, it is not due to any UN decisiveness, but rather because the victims began to fight back. Are the Kurds safe today because of UN resolve, or because of a 12-year US effort to protect them? Is East Timor free because of UN resolve, or because of Aussie troops backed up by the US? Where has the UN succeeded? Jenin, in the West Bank, where suicide-bomb factories proliferate under the benign gaze of UN supervisors, where [Yasser] Arafat finances terror with funds skimmed from aid money? To call the UN a "talking shop" is not a pejorative, it is a reference to its strength and purpose. As a place to discuss and hash out problems, it is wonderful. That is its purpose. But it is not a "world government", and should give up any such pretensions. And 200 countries are never going to agree on issues of morality. On such issues, in the end, each country has to choose, and then live the consequences of its choice.
Ken Martin
California (Apr 17, '03)


Sreeram Chaulia's tiresome screed on the UN can be summed up by the title of the article - only the punctuation should have been an exclamation mark [A world without the UN? Nah, Apr 17]. Chaulia stretches history and facts in asserting that the UN has successfully provided interim administrations, facilitated inter-ethnic reconciliation and, most preposterously, suggests that it can "establish" the peace. In East Timor, the author fails to note the utter failure and bankruptcy of the UN leadership prior to 1999 and the tepid midwife role played by the world body during the subsequent three years under its stewardship. Had it not been for overwhelming Australian public opinion against a continuance of the brutal status quo in East Timor, it is unlikely that the Australian government would have permitted the UN to act as well as compel a loosening of Indonesia's reign of terror. Also, Chaulia would have us believe that Saddam [Hussein]'s Iraq as the chair of the UN Disarmament Conference in May of this year, Libya's chairmanship of the UN's Human Rights Commission and the possibility of Syria ending up as president of the Security Council are all instances that have universal appeal and, indeed, will "prevent future generations from the scourge of war". My heart bleeds for his earnest naivete.
Vijay Dandapani
New York (Apr 17, '03)


Stephen Blank's Article The new East Asian arms race, Apr 8, is a shameless example of American militarism and hypocrisy. While Blank predictably spews his rhetoric about the so-called "China threat", he carefully ignores the fact that America has manipulated its so-called "war on terrorism" as a pretext to encircle and threaten China by stationing its troops in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, not to mention ratcheting up tensions against North Korea. In terms of the arms race in Asia in particular, Blank hides the fact that this arms race is being instigated and provoked by America in the first place. For example, America's withdrawal from the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty and its development of the missile defense system threatens to neutralize the deterrent value of China and Russia's missile forces, and hence prompt them to expand their arsenals accordingly. In terms of Taiwan, Blank ignores the fact that China has suggested withdrawing some of its missiles away from the Taiwan Strait as a preliminary offer in exchange for an American agreement to limit its weapons sales and proliferation to Taiwan - an offer which the American government has studiously ignored. Indeed, what America is doing in East Asia is to play a very Machiavellian game in general. The USA engages in hostile actions such as its repudiation of the ABM Treaty, development of missile defense, and Taiwan arms transfers in defiance of the Three Communiques in order to provoke an arms race which it can cynically use as a pretext to expand US militarism in the region.
Anon (Apr 17, '03)


I hope you never get out of this business. I love your articles and now I know how to comment about them, if you will let me. Where I work and live, having an opinion that is different than our own republican guard is like committing suicide. Thanks again for some of the best articles I have read - I do not always agree but they are good articles.
Anon (Apr 17, '03)


I am writing to encourage this high quality of commentary over the war in Iraq and world events surrounding it. As a resident of Australia it is very hard to get quality commentary, perhaps as a consequence of the owners of press in this country. Having become Internet-focused for quality news and looked at coverage from US, UK, Arab and Asian sources, I have found your online publication to be thoughtful, consistent and provoking. Together with some of the UK-based newspapers, you have become a foundation in the struggle to be informed. I see this struggle as one of the real and tangible losses this war has exposed. Thanks, and keep it up!
Carlton Duston
Sydney, Australia (Apr 17, '03)


Now that the dust of the initial phase of liberation is settling, we have the opportunity to examine [Pepe] Escobar's The 'Palestinization' of Iraq, Mar 27, with 20/20 hindsight. Let's see what we learned. Al-Jazeera was the liar, not the American media. At the end of the day, there is a difference between spin and complete, desperate deception, and al-Jazeera impeached its own credibility (again) by practicing the later. As far as the galvanization of the Arab world goes, what happened? Escobar should be hiding in a cave after his Stalingrad diatribe of the [Saddam Hussein's] forces defending Baghdad, that are going to create the "ultimate nightmare" for the US Army.
Chris Sandys
Greenwich, Connecticut (Apr 17, '03)


Osorio [letter below] is right. There were no civilian causalities. Even those last killed in the Mosul Massacre weren't killed by the US troops. They just shot beyond the crowd. If the civilians were in the bullets' way, it was not their fault. The same with little Ali Abbas, he was just cooking when the bottle of gas exploded. Perhaps the bombing of Baghdad didn't make any dead, civilian or even military. Did we see any in the media? So there weren't any. We can't believe what we hear from the propaganda.
Michael S (Apr 17, '03)

Your March 27 article The 'Palestinization' of Iraq was a long, well-documented [attempt to prove] the United States' inability to bring a swift end to the war. Statements such as "The Americans can't occupy Baghdad, they don't have enough soldiers" abound throughout the 14-paragraph article. As a reader who values ATol opinion, my confidence in the research ability of your newspaper has been sorely shaken. It will be a long time until I trust what you report.
David J Weber, MD
Memphis, Tennessee (Apr 16, '03)

[President] George W Bush spends billions on destroying - beg your pardon, liberating the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, but aid agencies have to go cap in hand around the world to provide aid for Iraq. Does that not tell you something about the morals of this "war of liberation"?
M J Bos
New Zealand (Apr 16, '03)


Regarding Syria puts its foot down, Apr 11: [George] Baghdadi's fine article has a flaw: Israel. Israel claims that a war between it and Syria is "inevitable", the same word that [President George W] Bush's administration used before it attacked Iraq. I expect that shoe to drop within a year.
Jim Tanner (Apr 16, '03)


Regarding SARS: Nobody's buying Malaysia's silence, Apr 10: I am Malaysian and I have full trust in my government. Chua Jui Meng, our health minister, is definitely not one that lies to his own people. I know the situation in Hong Kong is bad. You have the world's sympathy but please do not spread rumors and lies out of jealousy. Your report has no basis or whatsoever. Even the [headline] "Nobody's buying Malaysia's silence" has no truth. You wrote "nobody" but here I am enjoying every bit of my safe country. In fact, most if not all Malaysians believe that our country is safe. The credibility of a press is nothing else but reporting truth. It so happens I am a Malaysian and I know that this report of yours is bias. But what about the other reports by Asia Times Online? Do you expect me to believe them?
Toh Beng Wooi
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Apr 16, '03)


I totally agree with Jiang Yu-hang in regards to his writing on Malaysia playing down the SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] issue [SARS: Nobody's buying Malaysia's silence, Apr 10]. Being Malaysian myself, I feel so insecure and restless because of my government's selfishness. They are willing to risk its citizens rather than hurt the multimillion-dollar tourism industry. [People] in Malaysia worry about this epidemic but yet the UMNO [United Malays National Organization]-led government has refused to admit the SARS severity in Malaysia. History is always repeating itself in Malaysia, from the absurd sacking of the deputy prime minister Datuk Anwar Ibrahim, the coxsackie virus and now SARS. The authorities always assume the people are still naive and will not remember their government's mistakes and blunders.
CMCHANG
Malaysia (Apr 16, '03)


There is an increasing concern all over the world about strong indications that the Chinese government deliberately concealed the growing occurrences of the deadly SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] epidemic thereby adversely impacting development and delivery of health-care solutions to the affected people. Strangely, people are being told that this was done in order to avoid causing "panic", amid equally strange claims that the principle of "early detection and cure" was being followed. SARS is a worldwide health risk, and perhaps the greatest one for countries in Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The Chinese government should come out of its typical culture of secrecy and vigorously pool its knowledge and resources with those of rest of the world. Otherwise should we assume that SARS was nothing but some experiment in biological warfare that went horribly wrong?
Rakesh
India (Apr 16, '03)


As we travel a mile down the dusty road of Iraq and just around the bend, we will be able to see how sincere the British and Americans are in regards to freedom democracy. Will the leader they install be a freedom democracy president or will he be a freedom democracy dictator?
Anon (Apr 16, '03)


"Lengthy absences from public view are not unusual for the Dear Leader. But this time you can bet he was thinking very hard about his future options, especially once the war in Iraq finally got under way." The above snippet was taken from an article by Aidan Foster-Carter on North Korea [ How 'shock and awe' plays in Pyongyang, Apr 12].  For the record, rumor has it Kim Jong-il was in China during this time for talks. And China has issued a secret warning to the US that if it thinks it can do to North Korea what it did to Iraq, it has another thing coming. Moreover, it is the US that has shifted its hardline position. North Korea wanted talks all along.
Richard K
USA (Apr 16, '03)


Paul Belden, I understand, is grieving the loss of a friend [Silenced in the name of freedom, Apr 10]. I have no idea who he is and I grieve his loss. It is a horrible thing to have happen. Journalists are not supposed to be shot or bombed, but it happens. America lost several journalists in the war also. The Iraqis didn't target them. They were just there. I would say the same thing happened here. The United States had been bombing the Information Ministry building for days even weeks. The al-Jazeera building, it is reported, was right next to the Information Ministry. I wonder if it ever crossed Belden's mind that perhaps this was an unfortunate accident? I have just this question: Why would the USA purposely target al-Jazeera and in particular [Tariq] Ayyoub? I find it absolutely unsettling that Asia Times Online would print this article with no more proof than taxi drivers and street vendors. I want to know who of any authority told you he was targeted. If Ayyoub indeed fought for freedom and freedom of the press, don't let his death be in vain. Writing gossip and innuendo as fact is not freedom of the press, it is hijacking the press for the sake of one's own agenda.
Steve B Bazin
USA (Apr 16, '03)


We are engaged in a war to give democracy to the Iraqi people who have never had it while simultaneously taking it away from citizens of the United States who have never known any other form of government. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. However, if you are a Bush, you can fool enough of the people enough of the time. Each of the following items should be used to indict, or at the very least, censure the current administration:
1. [President George W] Bush has managed the country well enough to make the United Nations irrelevant, start an illegal war for dubious reasons, and take a tragic event in our history and turned it to his own use.
2. Bush's "Patriot Act" strips basic civil liberties from all of us and is a very important first step in dismantling our constitution and Bill of Rights.
3. He has taken almost universal goodwill towards the United States and turned it into almost universal fear and loathing in the interests of his special friends.
4. Bush has also taken a budget surplus that required 18 years to make and turned it into deficit fears unparalleled in our history, also in the interests of his special friends.
5. Bush is giving unprecedented tax cuts to our wealthiest citizens while cutting funds for health and education, programs that help our poorest citizens.
A former governor of Texas is sitting in the White House in Washington, DC, and is wielding more power than any other person who has ever lived there. This disturbs me. That the "opposition" party has allowed this scares me. There are those who say that disgruntled Democrats should get over the 2000 election and get on with their lives. The people who say this have no idea of just how frightening that "election" was and continues to be. All of these situations can be attributed to what is euphemistically called by many our "free" press. While Bush and his administration deserve to be impeached for their actions, our "free" press deserves to be brought to justice for what it didn't do. If you have any facts and figures to refute what I'm saying, please share them with me. I would really, really, really prefer to be wrong.
Mrs Teddi Curtis
Corona, California (Apr 16, '03)


It never ceases to amaze me at how America-bashers twist the truth. It is human nature to cheer for the little guy and boo the big guy but America-bashers have raised this almost to an art form. The Third World press screams about civilian casualties from US bombing and says nothing about the estimated 1 million people Saddam [Hussein] killed during his rule. The Third World press says [President George W] Bush hasn't made his case for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and is silent on the gassing of the Kurds and the use of mustard and VX gases against the Iranians. To the Third World press, the torture chambers don't matter, the deaths don't matter, the imprisoned don't matter. All the injustice in the world wouldn't matter. Why? Because when they compare America to themselves they find themselves wanting. Not in size, power or wealth but wanting in truth, honesty, freedom and justice. The very existence of America makes their own shortcomings obvious. So let's bash America so we won't feel so bad about our own faults. Why didn't Syria's one state-owned TV station broadcast the pictures of the Iraqi people tearing down the statues of Saddam? For that matter, why does Syria only have one TV station, and that, owned by the state? Likewise for all the other Arab countries in the area. These are some of the wealthiest countries in the world, so it's not a matter of money.
B A Machado
USA (Apr 16, '03)

I am very impressed by the breadth and the depth of the article The war that may end the age of superpower [Apr 5]. One of the excellent points [Henry C K] Liu has made: "Support for all expeditionary or invading forces is not patriotism. It is imperialism." I just wonder why many people in America could accept such "blind patriotism". I think it's kinda naive arrogance plus a sense of supremacy. I hope to read more insightful articles from Liu.
Andy
Bloomington, USA (Apr 16, '03)