On Saturday, I took part in my family's traditional autumn tour of my ancestors' cemeteries in central Slovakia (also diaried last year), something always followed by an excursion. Some impressions...

Sounds familiar? However, I'm not talking about Bush, 2002-3. This is not a unique script, this is a blueprint - the intel process has been corrupted for a long time.

You remember Bush's grandstanding about Saddam, "the guy who tried to kill my Dad"? Well, except that that was a lie, too. After a long search, I finally found Sy Hersch's 1993 article on the subject.

"When you go back to Camp Lejeune (in North Carolina), these will be the good old days, when you brought ... death and destruction to - what is this place called?"

A Marine answered in the darkness: "Haqlaniyah."

Estrada continued: "Haqlaniyah, yeah, that. And then we will take death and destruction to Haditha. Hopefully, we'll stay until December so we can bring death and destruction to half of Iraq."

The flatbed truck erupted in a storm of "Hoo-ahs."

"The US forces surrounded the village of Mazraa near Baiji and detained five children under 10 years old, calling on the residents by loudspeakers to hand over several other children showed on TV channels celebrating the killing of US soldiers after roadside blast last week," a police source from Baiji told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

(Actually, this is not the first similar atrocity I read of, and let's not forget the destruction of Fallujah either.)

The things to realise is: 1) forget about preventing civil war - this occupation can't do differently than cause more harm than good, 2) the US can't win even for itself, because the guerillas, contrary to US propaganda that wants all of them viewed as a unified Sunni terrorist group under the leadership of Zarqawi, have strong local support - if you wonder why, you underestimate the media blackout regarding the Western armies' conduct in Iraq (and haven't seen these statistics and such graphs).

A bit off the media limelight, the Coalition (full name: Coalition of the Duped, Blackmailed & Bribed For Giving Humanitarian Camouflage To The US Occupation Of Iraq) is dwindling.

GlobalSecurity.org's most-referenced list wasn't updated since March 15, while Wikipedia's list contains a number of errors, so, below the fold, here is a short takedown of the latest changes.