Death and the Lost Weapons

With the deaths of the Hussein brothers, the US has claimed a major victory in its continuing war in Iraq. Their deaths will quell the resistance movement, it is claimed, and reassure the Iraqi people that the regime has really fallen. Even the subsequent upsurge in killings of US soldiers has been dismissed as short-lived revenge. But is there any reason to believe that the deaths will lead to peace in Iraq? And what of the wider questions that their deaths raise?

Let's start with those notorious photos. Displaying images of the dead brothers was inevitable. Many Iraqis do fear the return of the old regime, and had greeted news of the deaths with a believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude. The Americans needed to prove the deaths were real; displaying these images was their best, indeed only, means to do so. You can argue that the bodies should have been cleaned first, or that the British press did not need to carry the photos. What is beyond argument is the need of any formerly repressed people to know the fate of their oppressors.

Where the arguments really begin is the reason for the deaths in the first place. Taken alive, they would have stood trial, a display more effective than any gruesome photograph. But more importantly, this was a war that was fought to find Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Uday and Qusay were two of the three best witnesses. Of everyone in Iraq, only possibly their father would have known more about these illicit weapons programs. With the brothers in American custody, that information would have been theirs. The torture of anyone is not something I condone, but we know that America uses it. If America genuinely sought the weapons of mass destruction, taking the brothers alive would almost have guaranteed the discovery of all extant programs.

The value of the brothers to the search for the weapons of mass destruction cannot be overstated. No one in the US command can have been unaware of this. Their deaths represents either a massive mistake, or evidence of a deliberate campaign of obfuscation. The American gun battle with the brothers and their entourage was the result of a planned operation whose known objective was to apprehend the brothers. That much we know. What is unclear is what orders were given to the soldiers on the ground. Was there any intention to take the brothers alive? We know no siege was attempted - shots were fired at the Americans, who responded with lethal force. Was this the result of soldiers on the ground disobeying orders from above? Or did the US high command not value the lives of the Husseins as highly as their knowledge of the weapon programs suggests?

Unless, of course, the US high command knows what many of us have long suspected. That there are no weapons of mass destruction, that there never were. Why risk American lives to gain confirmation that the deposed Iraqi government had been more honest than our own? It is unlikely that the brothers knew much else of value. They probably had no means of contacting their father, and evidence of torture victims and mass graves seems easily obtained elsewhere. Suddenly, a take-no-risks strategy makes sense.

The US places no value on a search for weapons of mass destruction. Are they willing to leave these deadly weapons for any resistance group or would be terrorist to use? I can't believe that. Would the discovery of such weapons relieve the growing political pressure on both Bush and Blair? Of course. The lack of concern can only be because the Americans know there are no weapons to find. As the Hutton enquiry begins, it is increasingly clear that we have been lied to, and that our leaders are now protecting those liars. The only real question that remains is who lied to who, and when? And if our leaders were duped by the intelligence services, why are they now protecting them?

Graham Robinson. 30th July 2003.

Spying on the Internet

Internet privacy is a major concern of our times. Much of it focuses on cookies, normally for reasons that are not readily apparent to those who understand the technology. Those of us who do, have far larger worries.

Let's start with cookies, and those baseless worries. A cookie is a small piece of information that is sent with your web page. Next time you visit the same site, that information is returned. Unless your browser is seriously broken (admittedly, Netscape version 3 and early version 4 were broken) this information can only be returned to the same site it came from. Worst case scenario, the owner of the web site knows you've been there before. What a cookie cannot do is provide any new information about you. The web site writes the cookie - if they do not know your name, it cannot be in the cookie.

A cookie is simply a way of tracking users between visits, and for storing information that the user has given the web site. Their main effects are to allow sites like Amazon to remember your username between visits, and to allow marketing departments to track how many visitors are repeats. Still worried?

If cookies worry you, panic about JavaScript and Java. I won't go into the differences here, but essentially these are two different technologies for embedding programs into web pages. In both cases, what those programs are allowed to do is limited - they shouldn't be able to delete or read files on your disk, for instance. Again, assuming your browser works properly. What they are allowed to do is frightening. They know where your mouse is, what you click on, what keys you press. And they can report all this back to an arbitrary web site. Usually this is achieved by the trick of reloading a small, transparent GIF file and tagging their report on to the URL.

This use of JavaScript or Java is a major invasion of privacy, not to mention contrary to the American Bill of Rights. Anyone aware of this trick should be seriously considering turning off JavaScript and Java altogether. Which is a shame, as there are many legitimate uses for these technologies, and many web sites will not function without them. Legislation may be a solution, but I'd rather press for more secure browsers. If you care about privacy, be very aware of what your browser is configured to do.

Graham Robinson. 30th July 2003.

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