Looking at the television coverage we can see (without comment!) images of Basra in which multiple explosions every second are occurring throughout the city. This kind of carpet bombing will obviously generate huge numbers of civilian deaths and injuries.

So, what is coming out of the mouths of Rumsfeld and other Administration and media propagandists? That there has supposedly been an "uprising" against Saddam Hussein in Basra, and that forces loyal to Hussein are firing mortars into crowds of defenseless civilians in order to put this uprising down.

Not only that, but these dastardly loyalist forces are supposedly even posing as members of the Red Cross and other relief workers. Yes, they have actually claimed this.

I see this as Rumsfeld preparing excuses for the coming news of civilian deaths and injuries inflicted by his own carpet-bombing of Basra. He will claim that any civilians murdered in this bombing were killed by supporters of Saddam Hussein, and that any relief workers exposing (as the Red Cross is now doing - see http://www.cicr.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/special_iraq ) the immense pain and sacrifice of the civilian population, are really Saddam's wolves in Red Cross clothing (and therefore deserved to be killed if they were also hit by the U.S./British onslaught).

How credible is it that MORTARS would be used to fire upon unarmed civilians in the middle of a battle against invading forces? How credible is it that people would be out in the streets demonstrating about ANYTHING as bombs are falling all around them? These are just more lies by the mass murderers of the Bush Administration.

The water plant in Basra is now non-functional because of these bombings, and the river is filling up with raw human waste. In a short time, a massive public health crisis will develop, in which a hundred thousand people will be immediately at risk.

This is the completely predictable (and predicted) catastrophe that we have been trying to stop, and must continue to work to stop and reverse.