April 05, 2003
It's looking worse.
Eye witness sees 30 busfuls of American prisoners. The eye witness was a Saddam fedayeen. I ask you, would a man about to die lie to us?
UPDATE: Chris Bertram of Junius writes:
I think your implied attribution to Al-Jazeera of the Iraqi airport storyI've been had. I wonder, is the Al-jazeerah-with-an-H a sincere rival to the better-known Al-jazeera-without-an-H (i.e. it means "the news" or something like that in Arabic, so that many news outlets might have that name), or a parasitical site that deliberately seeks to trade upon the somewhat higher credibility of its namesake?
is wrong. Their site iswhereas your link is to
(with an H) which is different. Confusing, I know, but the authentic one isn't reporting Iraqi propaganda as fact.
Transport in the year 3000 looks pretty fine, pretty fine.
Actually, Patrick Crozier's time machine only took him a few years into the bright future of the railways but I have this pathetic need to prove my familiarity with popular culture.Uh, maybe not the snipers, Patrick. But the list of sponsors at the end was heartwarming.
Unconventional warfare.
A.R.C. writes"A U.S. tank column has driven through parts of Baghdad and in response, Saddam's police, with a picture of Saddam on the lead car, are driving round the journalists' hotel, and possibly other parts of Baghdad. Do they think it is an election campaign, with rival candidates driving round letting the public see them?"Well, sorta.
British troops
discover makeshift morgue containing hundreds of executed corpses, some in military uniform.UPDATE: This BBC story says they could be repatriated corpses from the Iran/Iraq war - or they could be people executed after the Basra rising of 1991. The bodies do look very dessicated, even given the desert atmosphere, so it seems unlikely that they are recent victims of Saddam. Get forensics onto it.
And make sure they examine every corpse. Where do you hide a tree? In a forest.
April 04, 2003
April 03, 2003
Joke, one, officers for the use of.
Capt. Heinrichs writes:1. Ideally the two arms of the pincer should follow vectors whose directions (axis of advance) cross at a separation angle of 60 to 140 degrees . Attacking directly from the north and south implies an angle of 180 degrees, and that means friendly fire becomes not-friendly quickly.2. "... launch their pinpoint demolitions": generally demolitions should be 'fired', 'initiated', or 'triggered'. Launching a demolition is difficult as most are fastened securely to a large, immobile object. However, it is possible you are talking of a Centurion AVRE and its 165mm 'Petard' launcher, which permits one to launch a demolition, but not necessarily be 'pinpoint'.
3. When advancing on two fronts, these fronts should be moving parallel, and in the same direction. Divergent or convergent axes are confusing; converging at 180 degrees could have an impact on the operation's success.
4. I pontificate pedanticly, but, it's me.
I think you mean "pedantically."
UPDATE: Capt. Heinrichs points out that the headline to this post ought to read, "Joke, one, officers, for the use of." I missed out the third comma. Mea culpa.
Krugman Truth Squad pincer movement.
On the northern flank John Weidner and his mobile strike force of Special Forces economists launch their pinpoint demolitions. On the southern flank, we have the massed firepower of Donald Luskin and National Review pushing ever forward. It is an awesome advance on two fronts. But be warned, the wily Krugman has survived all-but-fatal blows to his credibility before. He will not give up easily.Sorry about this. The upwave of my war-emotion sine wave has this regrettable tendency to override my good taste circuits.
April 02, 2003
A.R.C.
writes:"...given the rate of advance today, I suspect we must be approaching any red line Saddam drew about the use of chemical weapons. I wonder (noting that one can over-interpret these things) if his broadcast inviting junior officers to 'sack' any superiors who did not fight with sufficient determination could relate to resistance to orders to use chemical weapons?"One thing seems clear; he must lack reliable secret communications with his troops to broadcast such an admission of questionable morale over the air.
"There is a historical analogy. After July 20th 1944, Hitler broadcast that any German soldier who knew that his superior had been connected with the plot should act against him immediately. One of the last entries in Anne Frank's diary records her hope that this would lead to a breakdown in German discipline as a discontented soldier could shoot his superior and claim he was a plotter. As we know, no such breakdown occurred, quite the contrary, so we shouldn't place too much weight on Saddam's broadcast. However, while Saddam does not match Hitler in his atrocities, he matches him even less in his abilities; it may be a sign the end comes."
Speculation:
Saddam Hussein was killed by that first strike, and it helped Iraq's military performance.
An internet tragedy of the commons, or how the crude and thoughtless hordes of the blogosphere took something fragile and beautiful and spoiled it.
I spotted The Dullest Blog in the World because it was just above a post cited by Instapundit. So did a few thousand others, apparently. Where yesterday there were but one or two comments on each sublime post now there are thirty to forty. And you know what? I can hardly bear to say this; it is such an indictment of the way our oafish Western size 11 feet trample on the very beauties they prize most. Some of those comments were... interesting.Vandals. How could you?
UPDATE: Other comments were in Finnish. At least I think it was Finnish, but I do not know for sure. I do not speak Finnish.
2nd UPDATE (FINALLY GETTING THE HANG OF THIS, I THINK): Wishing for a better world. I often wish that there were more nice things happening in the world and fewer nasty things. When I have finished wishing that I think about other matters.
"Do not confuse a highly educated workforce with that of a highly skilled one."
Scotland turns out twice as many lawyers as it needs and half as many engineers, according to a report spotted by David Farrer. And remember, compared to doing media studies, getting a law degree counts as hard-nosed realism.There's nothing wrong with education for the joy of it. It's part of what makes having a brain worthwhile. Just don't demand that other people pay for your pleasures then tell them fibs about how its for the good of society. This applies even to engineering students; I am not completely convinced that the claimed shortage really exists. If it does, how come all the engineers aren't rich?
OK, there could be lots of possible reasons. We won't know what the country really needs until there is a free market in hiring, firing and education.
April 01, 2003
"But wouldn't he have attacked Saudi Arabia after Kuwait if we hadn't stopped him there? We could have hoped so. A secularist Muslim with tolerance for Christians could have overthrown an absolute monarchy where the penalty of preaching the Gospel is beheading? We are talking about the government that has actually supported more terrorism than any other and was the source of the funding and schooling of the 9/11 hijackers. Why in the world are we going after a nutcase in Baghdad with limited resources whilst coddling and nurturing the real demoniacal forces of radical Islam?"My answer in three words would be "first things first." (It deserves more than three words, but that's all I have time for.)
Must resist... must work... must not waste time on internet...
Bleah. I give up. Go on, bring penury a little closer by surreptitiously spending some work time reading the The Dullest Blog in the World and A blog by Kim Jong Il.
(Hat tips to Is That Legal for the former link and Randy of San Diego for the latter.)
March 30, 2003
Yes, I know.
Said I wouldn't be blogging for a few days, but this took me by surprise.Iraqis, says a war correspondent, are so terrified of the massacre that would follow if Saddam's rule were to return to their area that they chant pro-Saddam slogans despite having very different thoughts in their hearts. He says he heard the same sentiments many times.
Where's the surprise in that, you ask?
The source: the story comes from Arab News. Yes, that Arab News.
Kudos to their war correspondent, Essam Al-Ghalib, for reporting things that will make him very unpopular at home. His willingness to do so is a good sign for the future of the Arab press.
Link found in Joanne Jacobs' blog. (If that permalink bust, try the general link here.)