Pentagon admits strikes on residential area

"The Pentagon has confirmed it targeted missiles and rocket launchers in a heavily populated area of Baghdad overnight. Iraqi television has shown pictures of a popular market place hit by a missile strike, in which local officials say at least 14 people died.

US military officials say they targeted the missile and rocket launchers which were located less than 100 metres from a populated area. They say they used precision weapons in the strike and simply do not know if it was this that was responsible for the civilian casualties shown on Iraqi television.

Pentagon officials say they do not know exactly where the civilians died in the city.

The Bush war plan calls for minimising civilian casualties and collateral damage while destroying the symbols of the regime."



Deputy Editor recommends this article by Norman Mailer. Lengthy, but on the button.

"If I were George W. Bush's karmic defense attorney, I would argue that his best chance to avoid conviction as a purveyor of false morality would be to pray for a hung jury in the afterworld."

CENSORSHIP IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE SYSTEMIC.
"Al-Jazeera has been banned from the New York Stock Exchange because of its war coverage - not its business coverage. The network is being punished because it showed pictures of PoWs and dead USA troops - behaviour nothing like the networks covering Guantanamo Bay, of course.

The NYSE's official line is that it is rationalising on available space - but only one network has been removed during the putative rationalisation."