The Guardian or the CIA?
We have two reports tonight, one from that fount of all supercilious wisdom, the UK Guardian, blabbing that Saddam has escaped the attack on him in a restaurant in Baghdad. I must say I don't see why he would have chosen just this moment for a family outing. But, hey, he's the Führer. And who could doubt the Guardian's neutrality and objectivity? /sarcasm, as they say on Lucianne.com. NOT that I'm saying that all Brits are like the Guardian twits. Too many died to secure Basra for that to be true. But I must mention they've done a fabulous job. Well, Drudge won't let me go to the other article, about how the CIA is positive Saddam is dead. That would be nice. Even nicer because it would show up the Guardian. But I can't get there. Wait. Let me try a few other places. Backsoon. Ah, WashTimes. maybe this has as much as is available. OK to bed and wait for the plumber.

Beyond the Middle East
There's a lot of talk, in the last days of the Mesopotamian campaign, about the effect of democracy on the despotisms of the Middle East. It's a grand experiment, an audacious stroke, some say, to eliminate socialist/fascist collectivism from the Levant. But doesn't it have a wider application? It seems to me that the point of the Worldwide War on Terror is that America will not allow threats to arise from ANY quarter, whether East Asia or South America or Central Asia or Africa, that can endanger the progress of democracy and capitalism. As an objectivist, perhaps I'm projecting. But Ayn Rand always maintained that a truly free state, in a world of autocracies, had the right and the duty to suppress or at least neutralize collectivism wherever it might be prudent to do so. So those who are trying to contain the application of the Bush Doctrine - those who cooperate with terrorists will have tanks show up in their palaces - to the Middle East are making a major logical error. And America is the only country who can do this. Every other powerful country has ineffective controls on the military and an insufficiency of culture. God bless America.

Mr. Saddam, meet Mr. Bomb
I'm going out on a limb and saying that Saddam is now the inhabitant of a sixty-foot-deep crater in the Al Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. I know, we've thought this before, but somehow this time it just seems right. Apparently he didn't have a tunnel all the way to the Syrian border. The palaces and airports are all occupied by gum-chewing 20-year-old GIs. Kinda reminds me of the US Army going into Berchtesgaden in 1945. But Hitler didn't have as much gold and gimcrackery as Saddam. And no reports indicate he ever had an edition of Mein Kampf done up in his own blood. Just never occurred to him, I guess.

Jessica Lynch Airport
I noticed that our troops rolled essentially unopposed onto the tarmac of what was Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad. It occurred to me that the airport is going to have to change its name. Just a guess. So how about we name it for a hero of the war of liberation? Sure, George W. Bush Airport would be nice, but we're going to have plenty of those over here. Donald Rumsfeld Airport is another thought, but Rummy is so shy and retiring I don't think he'd be comfortable with that. One of our greatest heroes, who fought the fascists until she ran out of ammunition, was severely wounded, captured, probably tortured and then miraculously rescued. What a story! Why not commemorate it by naming the airport for her, PFC Jessica Lynch of the 507th Maintenance Division? Then everyone coming in to or going out of Baghdad will think about the kind of commitment and sacrifice displayed by the US and British forces who ridded Iraq of a bloody totalitarian autocrat, whose name will be chiseled out of every monument, whose statues will be pulled down and whose picture will never be shown again in public in the country he plunged into "years of darkness, rivers of blood". Also, a statue of Jessica will be a lot easier to look at than one of what's his name.

What?
I can't believe someone is actually complaining that the UN, the hope of the world, the replacement for nasty unilateral undemocratic individual nations, is "powerless", that "The U.N. secretary-general has done nothing to stop the war, in fact the U.N. secretary-general has done something in the opposite direction." I suspected as much. Kofi Annan was on our side all along. Darn. Another illusion shattered. If you can't depend on the UN to keep people from destroying your bloody totalitarian autocracy, what can you depend on?

Fisk - or Custer?
Hmm. I thought Robert Fisk was a journalist. In this delusional breathless manifesto, he comes off as a true-believer, last-ditch supporter of a bloody totalitarian autocracy. But I must have forgotten. He's a leftist journalist! That's right, Fiskie, there's a secret weapon that the Great Leader will set off from his bunker and drive the J-E-W-S and Crusaders back into the desert and the sea. Then on to Jerusalem! The next group of Islamic street kids that beats Fisk up will be waving copies of his article, and shouting the names of their relatives killed by Saddam. And that beating he will deserve, but I'm sure he won't admit it.

War, what war?
James Keegan of the Telegraph (from the Melbourne Age), has it just about right:

Saddam, or whoever is in charge, is fighting the strangest war. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder, on the evidence so far presented, whether the Iraqis have been fighting a war at all.

He goes over all the things the US forces did without much resistance from Saddam's forces and the rhetoric the left and the appeasers swallowed so easily and concludes:

Unless and until there is some serious fighting, observers will be left with the eerie impression that the Second Gulf War is not really taking place.

Of course. This was all arranged in advance. Saddam is(was) a CIA spy. Bin Laden is a Jew. And our few but honored dead are still alive. I wish.

Lileks boots it
James Lileks, in his Backfence column, makes some snarky comments:

Yes, I know -- the big dispute concerns whether THE PLAN had enough "boots on the ground," as people who like to sound in-the-know love to say. (Brings to mind a huge cannon stuffed with boots, blasting footwear all over the desert.) It's an interesting debate, and seven years from now I expect to find a History Channel documentary at 11 on Sunday night that will put it all into perspective. For now I find the imbroglio over THE PLAN less interesting than events on the boot-strewn ground, and I find the latter better served by newspapers.

And then, life imitates art, at Fox, no less:

Iraqi Soldiers Shed Their Uniforms

Coalition forces swept through roads littered with black combat boots as Saddam Hussein's loyalists, hoping to avoid capture, shed their uniforms and switched to tribal robes.

Take that, smarty child-rearing dad humorist!

COALITION TROOPS THREE FEET FROM BAGHDAD

Reliable reports relate today that coalition tank and infantry forces have closed to within three feet (1 metre) of the centre of Baghdad. The Iraqi Information Ministry indignantly denied the claims. Minister Saheed Sahaf, who has now changed his name to Sd Sf, to save space, called the Coalition reports lies and says, “There are no coalition forces in this hemisphere! Look, look, I can swing my arms wildly without hitting anyone!” His statement was interrupted by cries of “Ouch!” and “Hey, watch where you’re swinging your arms!” from several US Marines, Army Rangers and Coast Guard foretopmen.

In related news, the Iraqis denied British claims to have liberated a chain of fish and chips shops and several pubs in Basra. “This is a Muslim country!” said the Iraqi Defense Minister, from his position six inches behind the Information Minister. “The ignorant Crusaders do not realize that “chips” are specifically outlawed by three separate sections of the Koran? Foo on your infidel potatoes! As for pubs, yes we have those, but we can prove the British have not taken them because I was just in one and the beer is still cold. We have the aggressive aggressor invaders just where we want them! Welcome to our quagmire, Christian soldiers! No one here gets out alive!”, the last to the tune of “Hotel California”. As Coalition forces collapsed onto the last portion of Baghdad, a great sucking sound was heard and scientists theorize that a black hole spontaneously formed and consumed the fiercely resisting Iraqis. At the end only a swirling black moustache could be seen, fluttering like a maple leaf down, down into the vortex of evil.
Update
The actual quote from the Information Minister goes like this:
"They're not even [within] 100 miles," he said. "They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion. ... They are trying to sell to the others an illusion." And that's from CNN.

Oh, Brave Hollywood!
Albawaba has it nailed. The just and righteous Jack Valenti has stood up to the nefarious Bush-ite fascism and rejected the demands of the Washington cultural tyranny that Hollywood support the unprovoked aggression on Iraq. Ah, yes, the Johnson-stooge learned all he needed to know at the feet of the master. How can an entire culture fall for this kind of nonsense?

Schizo-alert
This article shows as clearly as anything how bizarre the editorial viewpoint of this so-called news organization is. "Uncle Saddam" may be released, but I doubt anyone's going to draw the kinds of conclusions from it that the editors seem to have tacked on to the end to support their version of current events.

Sad
The sad thing is that these Mideastern numbwits, who have been told over and over "Hollywood opposes the war" don't realize that this doesn't meam that Jack Valenti or Susan Sarandon or Barbra Streisand or Martin Sheen or Danny Glover ever actually will DO anything to actively oppose the war. Oh, no , dear me, that might involve, you know, economic loss. It's kind of like protesting with Rob Reiner against the evils of tobacco and then smoking in your next movie. It's all business, darling, surely you understand, n'est-ce pas?

Nothing
It strikes me that the vaunted Iraqi military, with its tanks and Scuds and poison gas and SAM missiles, has accomplished exactly nothing against the military might of the US and Britain. No coalition tanks have been destroyed in tank-to-tank battles. No Iraqi aircraft have even left the ground. No infantry charges have overwhelmed US Marines. No aircraft have been downed by surface-to-air missiles. The only casualties we've suffered have been from a group of mechanics who wandered away from the main body and were captured or executed by irregulars, and by fake surrenders of what looked to be paramilitaries and by suicide bombings. So what has all those billions for all that military hardware, squeezed from the starving, disease-ridden Iraqi people, produced for Saddam? Nothing but ashes in his mouth.

Good place for them!
I thought it was reassuring, Homeland-Security-wise, that it's reported that 4,000 Arab martyrs are heading for Iraq, where they will, like thousands of their brethren, throw themselves on the guns of our tanks and APCs and Bradleys rather than carrying homicide bombs into Israel or Ireland or Iowa. Better start cranking up the virgin-producing machines upstairs. You're going to be getting a lot of business. And isn't that what Homeland Security is all about anyway? Bringing the battle to Basra rather than Boston? God knows the Marines and Army are better equipped for fighting Arab would-be martyrs than four-year-olds in the suburbs or secretaries in high-rises downtown. And without the Marines and the Army, that's where the martyrs would be heading. Kill them all.

Update
ColbyCosh, the Albertan wunderkind, apparently agrees. Just ignore the hockey and manufactured epidemic stuff and scroll on down to the advice to potential martyrs. The more martyrs whose death-wishes we satisfy now, the fewer will be left for the Battle of Damascus and the Battle of Tehran and the Battle of Riyadh and the Battle of Cairo - hmm, I'd better warn my sister to get out before that last one happens.

Pause? We're already there!
I love this article from MSNBC:
Ground advance may be delayed

or "pause in push northward".

What? How much further "northward" does the army have to push? How can our "advance" be delayed when we're already where we're going? We're already knocking on the gates of Baghdad. Are we going to go around it and head for Mosul and Kirkuk? I don't think so. The Kurds are already heading that way from the north. And God help any Ba'athists they find on the way. Then there's this from the Brits:
British military official: No pause in campaign. Hmm. A little confusion or is there an internal consistency? Sounds to me like a statement from a junior officer was misinterpreted, much like William Wallace's (Scots wha' hae!) statement yesterday that "we didn't wargame this", which apparently he never said. The fog of war reporting is a lot worse than the tactical situation, which this chickenhawk summarizes thusly: We're destroying every Republican Guard tank, APC, truck, pickup, camel or donkey we lay our sights on. We've brought a relief ship into Umm Qasr, which means we're also offloading troops and supplies there. The 4th ID is on the way. We have a secure airfield and more troops and supplies every hour coming into Kurd territory. It's obvious the Ba'athist forces in Mosul and Kirkuk, if they aren't withdrawn to defend Baghdad, will be crushed from the north. Remember, we do have overflight rights now in Turkish airspace. Say, withdrawing troops to defend the center. What does that remind me of? Of course, the Romans, in 450 AD or so, pulled legions out of Britannia to defend Rome from the Huns, leaving a vacuum which Hengist and Horsa and their Angles, Saxons and Jutes gladly filled. That's why we all speak English now instead of some barbaric Celtic tongue.
Anyway. The "pause" is a typical journalistic delusion. Of course we're constantly resupplying, tightening control of the supply lines, dealing with paramilitaries, knocking down statues of Saddam, suffering car bombs but persevering to prove we're in Iraq to do what we came to do. I also heard some "Iraqi agents" were trying to get over the Mexican border to attack the Crawford, Texas Bush ranch. Maybe that will stimulate action on border controls. Got to do it.

Steyn nails the press
The reportage quagmire bogs down the media army, holding them short of their goal in an Allah-sent sandstorm of misconceptions and outright lies. How can you get the real story when you've been blind since birth? But not to worry. The BBC has confessed its bias. It's been obvious for a while but I didn't like to point it out. From now on they'll just have to stop reporting anything the US or UK says and tell the truth. There are no foreign troops in Iraq. Uncle Saddam has killed them all with his shotgun. The Republican Guard are advancing up the Edgware Road, approaching Slough. Windsor Castle is flying the white flag. Why is everyone afraid to tell the real story?

Balm
What with all the defeatist claptrap and hot air being blown around by such as David Hackworth on Sean Hannity's radio show, it is clear to any rational observer that this war is going remarkably well. Who would have said that the Iraqi defense minister would have conceded on day 8 of the war that Baghdad will soon be surrounded by enemy tanks? Why, I thought the Republican Guard divisions were going to destroy the Crusader invaders! And the people were going to rise up in righteous wrath and throw themselves at tanks and Hummvees. The most aggressive civilians who haven't had a gun to their heads have been the thieves and desperados who ripped off a truckload of relief supplies brought in to Umm Qasr to keep the international whiners from going ballistic because people who haven't ever had running water or electricity in most of their homes don't have running water or electricity! So this upbeat column by Ralph Peters in the New York Post was soothing, like the balm of Gilead. One can only listen so long to blowhard doomsayers. I like Peters' vision of the next week or so:

I SEE no reason why Week Two should not be as successful in its way as Week One.

* Our troops in the north will secure more of Iraq's oil fields, while speeding the dissolution of Saddam's forces.

* On the approaches to Baghdad, our air and ground team will complete the destruction of Saddam's Republican Guards and Special Republican Guards.

* Liberated Iraqis will be fed, and we shall see ever more enthusiastic and public expressions of support from these long-suffering people - as they realize their torturers really are gone for good.

* And even if Saddam uses chemical weapons in a last-ditch attempt to stop our troops, we will overcome that, too.

Yea, verily!
Finally, a sensible perspective on the war. The Bible, like most books that have survived a couple of thousand years, has a good deal of sense in it. I'm sure even critics like Hitchens who don't like Kissinger because of "realpolitik" would agree that when you have a bunch of Amalekites running around, you have to deal with them extremely realistically. Love the conclusion:

Indeed, showing mercy to those who cannot comprehend the concept is no mercy at all to potential future victims.
Just as the memory of Amalek had to be wiped out for its cowardly and unprovoked act so, too, must the Children of Israel learn to respond appropriately. Indeed, the result of weakening one's resolve on this issue -- as with king Saul, when he refused to kill Agag the descendent of Amalek (Sam.1: 15: 4-35) -- has dire consequences. Martin Buber could never reconcile himself to this response, opining that Samuel had simply misunderstood God's word. Contrariwise, a midrashic tradition states that if you show mercy to the cruel, you will invariably end up being cruel to the kind. (Kohelet Rabba 7:36)
It's odd, don't you think, that if we've been commanded to "blot out the name of Amalek", we seem to remember it so vividly. Perhaps that's because Amalek is always with us. I can certainly see Amalek alive and well in modern Iraq.

Are you listening, Colin Powell? I don't think Rumsfeld needs reminding.

Weak, but vicious
The Iraqis are claiming to have downed another US helicopter. This story from the military, however, brings up the strong possibility that the helicopter shown in the video is the same one that came down, quite likely with mechanical problems, a few days ago. That means in six days of ground war the Iraqi military may have brought down one helicopter, no fixed-wing aircraft and one unmanned drone. The Somalis did better in Mogadishu. The Iraqis are also claiming to have destroyed two tanks. The US story, though, says that both tanks fell into ditches and couldn't get out, one because a bridge collapsed under it. Then they were attacked, after the crews abandoned them, by militia with RPGs. By the way, I always thought RPG stood for "rifle-propelled grenade". The TV keeps calling them "rocket-propelled grenades". Anyway, the facts seem to favor the US interpretation. If the fedayeen had stopped the tanks, the crews would never have got out alive. All in all, the perfidy and brutality exhibited by the Iraqis should in no way have been a surprise. The Japanese were notorious for the same traits. A couple of nukes should turn their heads around.
The war is going even better when you reflect that only about one-third, or 90,000 US troops are actually in Iraq. Think about this when anyone says 250,000 wasn't enough to send in the first place. When supply depots and bases are available in Iraq, the forces will be much better supported. Saddam is already looking for a way out, you can be sure. I can't find it now, but yesterday I ran across an article in the SF Chronicle saying that the roads were still clear from Baghdad to Basra and mocking the US war effort. It seemed so out of sync with the other stories we've been hearing that it intrigued me. I'm going to be hunting it down, thinking to myself, there must be some way to mark a web page without having to make it a formal book mark and without losing it on one's hard drive. Searchability is everything.

Guardian sneer
Want to know why the lefties will never win, why Europe is so poor compared to America, why bringing up a family will always be better in America? Just read this sneer of an "article" in the Guardian about why we're "losing" the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people. The editor must be even more supercilious than the writer, because the headline isn't supported by the story. About the only place in American journalism these guys could work is at the New York Times. Look at this selection:

A few miles from the bridge to the south lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, founded 8,000 years ago, the birth place of Abraham and a flourishing metropolis at a time when the inhabitants of north-west Europe were still walking round in animal skins.

Sgt Sprague, from White Sulphur Springs in West Virginia, passed it on his way north, but he never knew it was there.

"I've been all the way through this desert from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant," he said. "These people got nothing. Even in a little town like ours of twenty five hundred people you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other."

Those barbarian knuckle-dragging Americans! How dare they try to act for "civilization". And meanwhile in Britain there's a MacDonald's on every corner and more country music sold in every little town than here in Tallahassee. Oh, for another Thatcher! Blair's OK, a good comrade in arms, but he won't change the culture at all. He'll lead the Brits into the euro and submerge them in socialism even deeper. Regime change, anyone?

What's in Najaf?
US forces headed for Baghdad (boy, does that sound good to say!) have encircled the town of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. The armies are bypassing it, after a major attack that resulted, incredibly, in hundreds of Iraqi dead and no, as in none, as in zip, zero, US dead. Did such an overwhelming victory even happen in Gulf War I? I don't think so. Reports from inside the town say the commander has told Baghdad about his situation. Hey, I thought we destroyed their communications. Or, hmm, is this a trap? And if it's a trap, what's the bait? Why is an entire column of 1,000 Iraqi armored vehicles supposedly heading south from Baghdad to relieve Najaf? Those tanks in the open will be destroyed by our A-10s and F-16s before they get anywhere close to Najaf. So why the suicidal desparation? Maybe there's something really important in Najaf. WMD? One of Saddam's sons? Maybe even Saddam himself? Stay tuned. All the stories lately about how slowly the war is going are insane. Another bunch of stories say we don't have enough troops there, we're moving too fast, exposing our flanks and supply links. Balderdash. I have a feeling the military guys have been thinking this out for a few years now. They may not be perfect or be able to control every eventuality, but I'd rather be in a tank at the head of the advancing US troops right now than in Saddam's deepest bunker.

Update - Great minds think alike
Silent Running appears to agree with me that the column leaving Baghdad - if there is a column, and if it is leaving Baghdad, and if it is headed to Najaf - may be taking some kind of bait and is doomed. Yea, verily, I say, doomed.

Bulgars join the fight
My favorite "new Europe" nation, Bulgaria, has joined the fight in Iraq. After this war we will have not only a lot of new friends, but comrades in arms as well. Eat your heart out, Chirac. The ripples from Bush's wisdom and courage are spreading far and wide.

Old Media
Maybe I'm spoiled by instant continuous 24/7 high-speed internet access, but the stories on the evening news and the morning shows are so obsolete it's painful. As more and more people rely on sources like Drudge and Debka - leaving aside the credibility problems - and when even CNN and Reuters have word on happenings half a world away within minutes of their occurence, could there be anything less important than seeing how RatherBrokawJennings are going to sneer the headlines about smashing US military advances? I actually heard a reporter this morning - from Washington DC - relating as news events that happened more than two days ago. Editors are going to have to realize their big-budget programs are becoming irrelevant. We used to hear about an event on the radio, then tune in Walter Cronkite - now turned traitor - to see if it was true. Now we have ten sources to evaluate within minutes. The truth usually emerges. The rebellion in Basra (I changed my mind on the spelling) is a good example. It was first reported by SkyNews and Debka, then picked up, reluctantly, by CNN and Reuters when it looked like there was some possibility of it being true. Within an hour or so of the first reports from British military intelligence, it was apparent that 1) something happened involving Iraqi troops firing on Shi'ites in Basra 2) British artillery engaged the Iraqis - from now on I'll call them "fascists" and 3) that this probably wasn't the big uprising we had been hoping for. Then six hours or more later the nightly news reported a fragmented version, sanitized and spun to fit the liberal editors' prejudices. Old media is aging at an accelerated rate. Not fast enough for me.

A ruse?
The great news today was the apparent emergence of a "popular uprising" in Basrah, Iraq's second largest city. But could this just be a ruse by that old trickster Saddam or one of his fiendish offspring? Could the plan be to leak the word out to the Brits, who surround Basrah, that it was safe now to come on in to the center of the city, then when tanks and APC's show up in the main square, fedayeen by the thousands pop out of ruined buildings and fire RPGs at the vehicles? Wouldn't surprise me, but maybe I'm getting cynical and war-weary, after almost six days! I hope it's real. The Shi'ites have suffered so much for so long, they certainly deserve revenge and at least autonomy. It gets interesting, though, if a Debka story is true (Stop laughing!) Debka says the uprising is being led by an Iraqi "ayatollah". I don't like that word. There's just something about it that stirs up bad memories. Nothing specific. Something in that part of the world, isn't it? Give me a moment, I'll think of it. Why do I hear the sound of genies escaping from bottles? Aladdin! Hey, we need you!

Inside story
Kanan Makiya's diary, on the New Republic site, is well worth reading. The realities of Saddamite Iraq, soon to be history, are difficult for Westerners to fathom. The miracle is that so many young Americans, who could hardly conceive of such evil, are willing to give their lives to rid the world of it. The existence of such a place explains 9/11 more than reams of documentary evidence or DNA or fingerprints could do. The intensity of the evil carries the seeds of its own destruction. As in Basra, where a rebellion is apparently going on right now, as soon as those who have lived under the evil feel at all safe, they will turn on their oppressors with the energy of desparation and the anger of decades of loss. Tomorrow - or next week, or next month - will be a brighter day. I hope the whole story comes out, in all its complexity, so Americans can begin to realize what a magical place we inhabit, and how precious freedom is.

Expectations
It's unbelievable how a few casualties can change the mood. And I do mean few. A maintenance convoy gets lost and some "surrendering" Iraqis pick up their weapons in contravention of all the rules of warfare and one - one! - chopper goes down and the media play it up like the US forces have suffered some kind of setback. Meanwhile tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks, massive amounts of logistics, overwhelming air superiority and special forces penetrating every part of the country must make it look to the Iraqis like something less than a victory. Not one tank lost - not one! And we're at the gates of Baghdad. And we didn't even use the full force of our air, the vaunted "Shock and Awe". That may have been a mistake. Who knows whether the full version would have convinced those in the Saddam regime to throw in the towel? Meanwhile, if it weren't for treachery, such as false surrenders, hiding behind women and children and in mosques, hospitals and schools, the fascists would not have been able to inflict any losses at all on the US/UK task force. This is an extraordinary war, humane and measured beyond belief on one side, the same old barbarian savagery on the other. The world will, I am sure, eventually see the contrast betweeen the US conduct of this war and the way the fascists are "fighting". Most won't care, but some will appreciate it and give us credit. Every deed today affects our future. So far, it's making me proud and optimistic.

Work of art
All reports of the bombing of Baghdad tell of pinpoint precision. Even the Iraqi regime is only reporting three civilian deaths in the biggest attack yet. Given that the newsreaders compared the pictures of the bombardment to those of Dresden and Tokyo in WWII, with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, it's an extraordinary way of waging war. Remember all those idiots who said 9/11 was a "work of art", a "conceptual masterpiece"? This bombing with utter destruction for the fascists' resources and absolutely limited civilian damage is worthy of admiration even from those who don't approve of American "Imperialism" and "bloodthirstiness". It's becoming clearer and clearer that we are about exactly what we said: disarming the Iraqi regime at minimal cost in lives. Modern art critics seem to consider art to be whatever surprises or shocks them. There's a shock - a major world leader doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Artistic, no?

Dead reporters
It's beginning to look like there may be more dead Western reporters than dead Western soldiers. This is a bad thing? If you had told anyone in 1991 that Baghdad could be taken with so few casualties, who would have believed you? I think it was true then. The regime had expended its force protecting Kuwait and was vulnerable. OK, so, without the extreme precision munitions we're seeing, there would have been many more civilian casualties in 1991 than there are going to be in 2003. But, as Genghis Khan might say, this is a bad thing?

Henry V, 2003 style
The Times of London has an article about a speech given by a British officer before sending his troops to war in Iraq. It's loaded with emotion about honor, duty, decency and empathy as much as determination. I think the reporter's right. It will survive us.

What must Iran think?
It must be interesting to be in Tehran tonight, watching the US and Brit forces slice through Saddam's vaunted army. In the Iran-Iraq War in the Eighties, Iran lost hundreds of thousands dead and never got farther than a few miles into Iraqi territory. The Anglosphere forces have done that much in a few hours and look to be in or near Baghdad by the weekend's end. Every family in Iran must know someone who was killed in that war. What must they think of their government, of their army, even of their religion and society? The word "traitor" must be flying around. I would not be surprised to see a convulsive revolution. But, at the very least, the Iranians must see clearly how little chance their military would have against the forces which took Afghanistan in weeks and are now racing through Iraq. Soon countries on both sides of Iran will have been conquered by Anglosphere forces and handed to home-grown democracies. Can't blame the Persians for thinking it might be possible for them. No Shah, no mullahs, just simple old democracy. What a concept!

Come to think of it, the Russians must be having some second thoughts too.

What we don't see
It strikes me that the stories we're not seeing are as important as the predictable easy advance and conquest stories we are seeing. For instance, I've not seen a single reference to Iraqi aircraft. Where are they? Back in their hangars? Remember in GW I a dozen or more Iraqi MiGs took off for Iran after the US dominance was clear. Not even that kind of story has emerged.
No chemical or biological warfare. Is that because the warnings by Rumsfeld have been effective? Or because they really don't have them in usable form? Maybe we'll find bunkers full of rusted-out rockets and artillery shells, leaking toxins into the sand. Talk about an environmental disaster! But with any luck the bunkers aren't close to occupied areas.
Also, we're not seeing Scuds flying toward Israel. Or Republican Guard tank columns cleverly hidden in the sand emerging behind Anglosphere forces. No tricks. It almost looks like there was little or no planning for this assault. Oh, they blew a few oil wells. But essentially the Saddamites were counting on pure bluff. Counting on the UN. Counting on the FRENCH!! Idiots.

Fog of War
It's not so much a fog as an absence of detail. What's happening in Kurd-land? How about Ansar al-Islam? Have the Kurds exterminated them yet? What's going on with the envelopment strategy? I have heard nothing except the same repetitive stories about Umm Al-Qasr and Basra. It's odd how little stories pop up and then disappear, to never surface again or be triumphantly or sadly confirmed hours later. It would seem that whoever got the story wouldn't need to wait hours to get confirmation. The British are reporting that the Rumailah oil fields are under Anglosphere control - that's what it is - the Anglo Empire. Could do worse. The sun already never sets on it. Guam - where the Anglosphere's day begins.

If Saddam was really taken out in the first microseconds of the war, this could be the biggest anticlimax in history. And no "shock and awe", to the disappointment of us bloodthirsty chickenhawk readers of Jayne's various treatises. Now the next tyrant will have to wonder what it's all about. What if Japan had effectively surrendered in August 1945 before the A-bombs had been dropped? No demonstration of the effect of nuclear weapons in wartime. No Cold War? Or a Russian advantage when they get the bomb a few years later? It would be beyond wonderful, though, if the bloody Baathists could be defenestrated with minimal casualties. They're saying that command and control are ineffective or absent throughout the Iraqi military. This could be because Saddam's dead or because the US campaign to interdict communications has been amazingly successful. Perhaps Saddam isn't dead but can't talk to anyone or threaten their families to get them to fight.

So these little dribs and drabs of information are truly frustrating. But when the news does come, there's at least a chance it will be good.

Update - see what I mean?
CNN has a headline on this story that makes you think they're really going to tell you something about the situation in northern Iraq, but when you look through it, it's just the same old thing. It does look like Western Iraq is being secured without much if any resistance, though, so perhaps Kirkuk and Mosul will fall easily as well. If I were an Iraqi commander who hadn't heard from my headquarters for a couple of days, I'd be getting a pole ready to hoist my spare undershirt on.

Aziz captured?
Debka says Tariq Aziz, Iraqi foreign minister and mocker of democracies for years, has turned himself over to the Kurds, presumably so he can claim the protection of the democracies he so dislikes and avoid the wrath of Saddam and any implications of involvement in war crimes. Smart guy. Of course, it is Debka and no one else has this yet, so it may turn out to be foo-foo dust. But the very fact it's being reported may influence Iraqi morale in the direction of surrender. That's a good thing. Less than ten hours to I-hour or whatever they're calling it. Debka also says the invasion has started, with Brits and USMC going in to Iraq in the direction of Umm AlQasr. Again, a scoop if it's true.

Thanks but no thanks
At the last moment, the Turks may decide to allow US troops to use their bases. Well, whoop-te-doo! I think we should say keep your bases, we don't need them, we've made provisions to work around your refusal. How do we know the Turks won't turn right around and pull the rug out from under us during the mopping-up and reconstruction process? Uh-uh. Too late. Live with it. No $15 billion, no favors, no military assistance, no assurance on the status of the Kurds. You blew it.

Sense?
Again, more indications that people may - just may, so far - be coming to their senses about AIDS. I was especially interested to see that the only response was on "epidemiologic" grounds. After twenty years, with more funding than any other disease in history, and they still can't lay out the etiology of the disease!! I especially liked the last sentence:

We may never know how many of the millions of AIDS victims could have been saved if AIDS researchers had been more honest in the 1980s.

As someone says, indeed!

I-Day
Sgt. Stryker nails it again. It isn't any more complicated than what he said. I hope it comes out well, but, as the Klingons say, "Today is a good day to die!" Do your worst, Islamo-fuckazoids, the USA is coming your way. Maybe I don't agree with everything the Federal mis-government does, but when it comes to revenge for 3,000 Americans and guests, you've got it coming and it's coming now.

Tullamore Dew - or is it getting weird?
OK, I just had my first sip of Tullamore Dew ever - it's coming on to St. Paddy's Day and I thought I should familiarize myself with the products of the Auld Sod - no, not Evelyn Waugh - the Emerald Isle, and I had never had Tullamore Dew so I thought I'd try it and as soon as it hits my bloodstream, fish start speaking in Hebrew. Sure and begorrah, it's strange, but if the Good Lord can make Scotsmen, he can make carp yelling in Yiddish. Only this is real Hebrew, as testified to by a New York Hasid. The end is near, it said. But no, I look at the bottle again and there's plenty left. And I've got some Guinness in the fridge. Oops, gave the game away. A real Harp wouldn't put Guinness in the fridge. It's best at room temperature, I hear. I've never had Guinness in Dublin, although I've had Heineken in Amsterdam.

Anyway, I'm really Scottish myself, but the fish is reported to have spoken. All we need is another UN resolution and six more months of inspections of things no one can find and we'll all be speaking in tongues.

Debka, Debka, Debka!
Those wacky Debka folks are saying the war has already started, with over 1000 air sorties a day and "large expanses of Iraqi territory" under US control. So I know more than they do? Maybe not, but I'll believe it when someone with a uniform on says it's true. Gee, what a conformist straight-arrow I've become!

Gefasst?
More reports, or continuations of old ones, that Osama may be in captivity. As I opined before, it's fascinating to speculate on when these stories will reach critical mass. Maybe here the question is: Is there any reason to keep Osama's capture secret? And I can think of at least one. Wouldn't it be nice to keep the AlQaeda operatives scattered around the world thinking that they were still communicating with Osama when they were really talking to the CIA? The opposing forces did much the same thing in WWII, when they caught spies. Before they executed them, they used their contacts to roll up whole networks. Can there be anything more important than rolling up every last shred of AlQaeda? I don't care if it takes six months, as long as it's done right. Here's another thought. Maybe the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed happened because they already had Osama and were using his contacts to do exactly what I've said. Wouldn't it be nice if they could reel in some of Saddam's agents and maybe even a Kraut or Frog?? Dreaming, I know. Diplomacy wouldn't let us mention it even if it were true. But it could be another good lesson in why not to mess with us.

Grey fluff
This interview with Hans Blix sent Andrew Sullivan over the edge, as well it should have. It's valuable, though, to know for sure the mentality of the "leader" of the inspection team that's supposed to save the world from a terrorist dictator like Saddam. I like the way Sullivan put it:
"Social problems" caused a multi-millionaire religious fanatic to murder 3000 people? Give me a break. You see in this interview every half-baked European rationale for ignoring the threat we face. No wonder the guy eventually sided with the French.
And the global warming comment is proof positive that Blix's brain fits Eeyore's description of "little bits of grey fluff that blew in by mistake".
This is the man we're going to entrust with the future of freedom and capitalism? I don't think so. Blix may have just lit the fuse. And about time.

Valley Forge
Does it feel like the whole world's against the cause of freedom? So it must have seemed to the soldiers at Valley Forge in 1777. Demonstrations and European blowhards and Socialist twits are attacking on all fronts. It's cold and we haven't had any nourishing victory news for weeks now, since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But we must hang on, our supplies will get here sooner or later. The only real difference between our situation now and that of the Continentals at Valley Forge is that the eventual rescue and victory was helped along by the French. Today we're fighting them and the Brits are with us. But just a few years after VF, the French changed governments in the most drastic way possible. I wonder if they still have some guillotines stashed away somewhere? And like the Continental Army, we must rely on George.

Bonus
Looking over Duesberg's AIDS site, I came upon a page I hadn't seen before, filled with links and pictures of researchers. If you don't know why some people still say there's no such thing as AIDS and HIV doesn't cause it, consult this page.

Alternative future
Mark Steyn, in a typically readable and hard-hitting article in the Spectator, ponders the future of an increasingly impotent Europe, losing population to support its Socialist culture and relying on immigration from, in large part, the Muslim world. I made the point in a comment that it won't always be a good idea to rely on Muslims continuing to crowd into a cold, wet Europe if their home countries become more hospitable:
I haven't seen much comment on the possible effects of a successful US liberation of Iraq and democratization of the rest of the Arab world. Many of the Muslims in Europe will go home to build their nations and the rate of immigration to Europe will slow dramatically. The demographic consequences for Europe for the next few decades will be even more drastic than those you suggest. There will be no more immigrants, no one to support the oldsters and the shiftless. And no constituency for Shari'a.
Am I just being knee-jerk anti-Europe? I've stopped buying French wine and am resolved to drink up what I have - big deal, three bottles! Tony Blair is sticking with us, so steak and kidney pie and Walker's shortbread are still OK. Of course, the country with the really good food and wine would have to be the one that has ticked me off so much I'm boycotting it. I wonder how Bulgarian paté tastes?

Update - Horrible thought
Reading this Musil post, via Instapundit, made me have a pretty sick thought about what is in the back of the French mind, perhaps the German too. They don't want the Middle East to get all cleaned up and democratically spick and span because then they wouldn't have all those cheap and easily-looked-down-upon immigrants coming in any more. The Syrians and Iraqis and Afghans and Egyptians and even Lebanese wouldn't have any reason to crowd into housing developments in le (or is it "la"?) Zone if they could make a good living at home. If Iraq and Iran and even Egypt rebuilt their polities to full modern status, they would form another rival concentration of power. Just what the declining Eurogeriatrics need. Also, if the US were instrumental in bringing that new situation about, the rebuilt states would be firmly in the US camp, like the ungrateful and impudent Eastern Europeans. Talk about a good reason to oppose a US-led war! They really think ahead, those Old Europeans! Many French and German companies have enormous economic stakes in the area, as laid out in the Instapundit-linked articles and posts. Those companies have vested interests in totalitarianism, disorder, violence and Islamofascism, which is to say, the status quo. Pretty sick. Freedom fries, anyone? Hot dogs and ground beef patties?

Proto-story
For some days now, ever since the arrest of Kalidh Sheikh Mohammed (ptui!), I've been seeing articles saying that Osama bin Laden (double ptui!) has been captured. These stories have been immediately and energetically denied by US and Pakistani authorities. Yet they still keep popping up. It's interesting how little it takes to keep a story going. Perhaps an Army patrol reports arresting a tall wild-bearded Arab somewhere near Baluchistan. Someone sees the report and thinks, hey that could be Osama! He mentions it to a friend, who jokes about it to a reporter, who relays it to his paper as a possibility. With $25 million on tap as a reward, is it any wonder any half-plausible story is boosted to the maximum? When the real story comes along, it may take a while to realize it. I do think he's dead. But if he isn't, there can't be a Pashtu in Pakistan who doesn't know his fortune is made if he can betray him to the Americans.

I wonder what one can say will be an indication that the story actually is true? If it's reported on Drudge, Debka and Instapundit at the same time, is that a lead-pipe cinch? Or if it's on albawaba.com or reuters, does that mean we can safely ignore it? I'll be watching.

Rush Crush
Limbaugh just had a caller who said our victory in Gulf War I was responsible for 9/11. "We never had any terrorism on US soil until Gulf War I!", he whined. So Rush asked him if he supported the present effort to disarm Iraq. He said, reluctantly, he would, for the soldiers' sakes. Rush's comeback was to the effect: "Why? By your logic, another attack will only produce more terrorism. So you should be against it no matter what!" Good point. However, the guy was right. The events of 1991 et seq. DID lead to 9/11. The terrorists saw a huge army defeat Saddam utterly and then stop short of taking him out, leaving him to claim a distorted sort of victory. This impression of US weakness and indecisiveness was confirmed by Klintoon's disastrous eight years of wishy-washy willy waving.
So if we were to do again what we did in 1991, that is, go in and disarm Saddam but leave him there or let another homegrown tinpot Islamofascist gain power, we would indeed encourage terrorism. If we remove all vestiges of the mad mustachioed murderer, empower the Kurds and Shi'ites and insist on guaranteed rights and democratic forms and procedures, we will be sending the strongest kind of message that terrorism will not be tolerated. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to raze Tikrit to the ground and sow it with salt and establish a few huge military bases chock-full of B-52s and B-1s, so they wouldn't have to fly in from Diego Garcia or Missouri to bomb places like, just to take a random example, Saudi Arabia, whose permission and "help" and tolerance we will no longer need or want and whose arrogance and bloody-mindedness we could start working on, finally. And how about Disneyland Middle East? I'm sure the Iranian mullahs' kids will bug the heck out of them to go.

Never forget
A positive aspect of this interminable wait for the liberation of Iraq is that the character of our opponents, particularly France, Germany and the UN, emerges as the farce drags on. It's clear now that France will never agree to any war led by America, and especially Bush. It's clear now that Germany will never willingly support any Bush policies at all. And it's becoming clearer that Russia has fallen for the catastrophic delusion that their interests are the same as Germany's and France's. We need to remember these days after the war, when the stories of torture, murder and horrendous weapons come out, when we continue to encounter resistance to our efforts to democratize Iraq and in pursuing the terrorists, even to France, Germany and Russia. What is there about those who say they are against terrorism that can't realize that terrorists need state sponsors?

It's also becoming clearer that the "coalition" of Gulf War I was a disaster in the long term. It created the need for "no-fly zones" for twelve years. It allowed Saddam to continue to exist. It allowed Saddam to crush the Kurds and Marsh Arabs. It perpetuated the myth of inspections and the farce of the "embargo". The whole mockery of a foreign policy Clinton pretended to conduct gave ammunition to every collectivist blowhard and carper to cast America as the source of all evil. Their lies and distortions gave rise to massive hatred and encouraged widespread misinterpretation of any move America made to defend itself and promote freedom. Did I say we need to remember that they did this? We never can forget the delays forced upon us by the midgets and vampires of the UN, delays which have already cost thousands of Iraqi lives and given Saddam more time to prepare his pathetic but no doubt deceptive and cowardly defenses. We can only pray that this administration learns from this experience the futility of trying to please "world opinion" in the persons of Chirac, Schroeder, Putin, Blix and Annan.
Update - no sooner said ...
CNN has a story (via Instapundit) about the EU "threatening" to withhold aid for the rebuilding of Iraq if the US goes in without UN permission. Glenn Reynolds calls it "sabotage" and continues:
I think we should cooperate. No contracts relating to reconstruction should go to companies from countries that oppose the war. I wouldn't want to subject them to a moral dilemma.
If more evidence is needed of the perfidy of "Old Europe", I'm sure they'll supply it any moment now. And notice the piddling amount of the "aid" - fifteen million Euros. These same people's supporters in the antiwar movement are saying the war and reconstruction may cost "$1trillion". That's nonsense, but it's certainly going to be a hundred or a thousand times what the EU is "setting aside". Who needs 'em?

World-historical turnabout
This Tech Central Station essay has a lot of good things to say about, as I say in the previous post, how this war is different from every other war and how things will continue to be different until a new world stability establishes itself. The prevalence of individual technologies like satphones and the web and email makes the new kind of attack on sovereignty possible. One interesting sidelight: an article I can't find again mentions that terrorists communicated by logging on to a web-based email site, leaving a message and then having the recipient log onto the same site. No message is ever sent and so no message can be traced. Of course, this is no different from putting a blog post up or putting anything on any web site, except for the password protection. And I'm going to bet that the black magic intelligence gurus have figured out a way to detect even those messages. After all, as the essay points out, we created the Internet. The terrorists cannot create their own technology without becoming like us, which they won't do. So they're stuck in their role of dog-in-the-manger savagery. Good. They'll reap the whirlwind.

How is this war different from all other wars?
A Catotheyoungest fisking of one of those Democratic presidents everyone has been trying to forget about for years but who won't keep his mouth shut, (there are so many I'd better say it's Carter) reminds me how this war upcoming is essentially different from WWII, even Vietnam. We don't clearly know in every case exactly who the enemy is. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, they didn't bother to hide the rising sun emblems on the wings of their planes. In the Gulf of Tonkin, it was obvious where the (hypothetical?) torpedo boats came from that triggered deeper US involvement. And there was no doubt that China and Russia were funding, feeding and arming the VC and the PAVN. In the Falklands, Britain didn't have to think, "Hey, wait a minute, are we sure the troops holding our sheep captive are Argentinian?" Even in Grenada there was no serious doubt about whether or not Cubans were involved. In Gulf War I we didn't have to spend much intelligence money finding out whose tanks those were in Kuwait City.
But now the effective defense of the United States depends on knowing exactly who is attacking you and how best to eliminate them. I'm sure one of the nightmares of the War against Terror planners is that some unknown terrorist group with a whole other grudge against America totally unrelated to Islamofascism was responsible for 9/11. Not. That much we know. AlQaeda did it and they are steamed up against America because of the success of American culture, which makes them feel like the failures they are. And the biggest thumb in their eye is the existence and relative prosperity of Israel. And who's giving money to suicide bombers attacking Israel? Old porno mustache himself. So to ask whether Iraq has "ties" to AlQaeda or would or did participate in an attack on America is ridiculous. Iraq is part and parcel of Islamofascism. Saddam Hussein is a hero to all those who hate America and think that all the Arab world needs is another Saladin to stand up to the "Crusaders" and they will fold like the paper tigers they are, because America is corrupt and immoral and soft and on the "wrong side of history" just like the imam said in the mosque on Friday or whatever heathenish day of the week they have their mosque rants. The "Axis of Evil" is no different from the Hitler/Mussolini/Tojo Axis of World War II in that regard. They think their way will inevitably win, because they are superior to the mongrel Americans. The Moscow/Peking axis was just as convinced during the Cold War. Did it not say so in the sacred Marx's books?
So to ask whether a man who has a Koran written in his own blood (he says!) is sufficiently Islamic to find common cause with Osama and Arafish and his buddies makes no sense at all. Still, though, one must wonder. Is attacking Iraq now in this way the right tactic to cause a historic collapse of Islamofascism to parallel the fall of Berlin in 1945 and of the Berlin Wall in 1989? Hmm - that's interesting. Two worldwide ideologies came to symbolic grief in Berlin. I never realized that before. Maybe instead of Waterloo we should be using Berlin as a metaphor for final unmitigated defeat. I don't see how that could happen this time. Or maybe Osama is hiding out in Berlin and he'll dine on Unter den Linden and he'll choke on a piece of pork in a sidewalk cafe and his whole movement will evaporate in disillusioned disgust, maintaining the curse.
Anyway. The recent capture of Sheikh Mohammed makes it clear that crushing Iraq is merely one act in a series of battles. It's important. State sponsorship of an organization like AlQaeda must be eliminated, to reduce the threat of atomic terrorism. And Iran has a lot to answer for in that regard, too, as does North Korea. The coming war will be swift and overwhelming. It will cause a huge reaction in the Arab world, but not the one the liberals think. It'll be more like, "Say, can you come into our country and help us like you did the Iraqis? We could really use a break from Assad/Mubarak/Qaddafi/Khamenei/ the Sauds and even Musharraf." Could be a busy couple of years coming up.

Talking Turkey
Colby Cosh has an interesting bit on Turkey's problems in allowing democracy to operate freely even though it might lead to Islamofascism. Surely this is a classic opportunity to show the worth of a constitution that protects things like freedom of religion, separation of church and state and freedom of expression, all of which figure nowhere in the Islamofascist calculus. The example of Algeria is apropos. A military regime goes all wimpish and democratic and finds to its horror that Islamofascism is going to win the vote. Then it cracks down and here we are, what? 8 years later? With tens of thousands dead and freedom of all sorts in ruins. Now doesn't this remind us of another election in, oh, 1933? And another in 1917? And one in Vietnam in about 1956? Isn't it possible that true constitutional freedom means stopping those who would trash the constitution from taking power, even by "democratic" means? Islamofascism, after all, would completely change our legal system, our social polity and our culture. Even if a temporarily insane majority voted for such a change, would the rest of the country be justified in restraining the elected nutcases until they came to their senses? Couldn't that power be abused and itself lead to totalitarianism, as Hitler rose to power citing the dangers of letting the Bolsheviks contend for electoral power?
It's entirely possible that a majority of the American voting public may be in favor of eliminating some constitutional freedoms or others, from privacy to freedom of assembly to flag-burning. But of course this just shows the invalidity of talking about freedoms as though the Constitution was intended to create them. The purpose of the Constitution is to centralize enough power - just enough, ideally - to assure that domestic and foreign enemies of freedom can be defeated. The Constitution is a limited, constrained grant of power to the government, not a mechanism to bring freedom to the people. As the Tenth Amendment reminds us, all freedoms and rights originate with the people. The Constitution does not give the government the power, for instance, to establish Islam as the state religion. Any party that proclaims that goal as part of its election campaign to gain power under the Constitution is going against the Constitution and must somehow be stopped from implementing its goal, even if it does gain a majority and power. How to do this is the problem. Is some "prior restraint" appropriate, so that any party that advertises, "Vote for us and we'll give you jihad" will be taken off the ballot and, perhaps, prosecuted for sedition? That's the way Turkey seems to be going. That's definitely what happened in Algeria, clumsily and ineffectively. Or should the Supreme Court examine the actions of the newly empowered regime and declare it invalid? Can the impeachment mechanism work effectively against a force of zealots who do actually represent a majority of the people? Constitutions provide a check on majoritarian democracy. They draw a line beyond which government power cannot go. And constitutions implicitly authorize whatever actions are necessary to preserve their principles. Even the amendment process is not superior to the body of the constitution. Otherwise, a series of amendments could completely change the nature of the republic. Many Americans are convinced that the 16th amendment went beyond constitutional limits in imposing a tax on individual income.
But in Algeria there was no effective constitution that a recognized authority could hold up and point to, so the military created a public relations and then a human rights disaster. Turkey is not Algeria. It has no history of colonial occupation for Islamofascists to rebel against, for one thing. The warts on the democratic process are on full display these days, since the 2000 elections. Event after event strains the social and political fabric, in Algeria to the breaking point. We live in interesting times.

Update
Debka this morning (3/9) seems to think the Turkish political system will morph into a shape that will allow US forces to use bases in their country to jump off into northern Iraq. Is this military preemption of democracy or true political change adhering to the principles of constitutional government? I'm sure many will analyze it after the fact. Bottom line, in Debka-world, there WILL be a northern front and, perhaps more significant, the cynics such as I who said Turkey would never let this war happen without being in there to protect their interests vis-a-vis the Kurds, appear to have been right again. "Developing" - as Drudge says.

Update 2
Colby Cosh emailed me to say that the Turkish turnabout is not unusual in parliamentary systems. Any parliamentarian can cobble up a government, which can change policy on a dime. He compares the situation to Jim Jeffords handing control of the Senate to the Dems. Pray to God it won't be anything like that. I saw somewhere else that the Islamic parties in Turkey were actually not against the move to let US troops use Turkey as a staging area. Confusing. But it is the Middle East, he said simplistically.

Wrong? Me?
Can it be that I have been wrong about the African AIDS "crisis"? This article in the Spectator certainly argues that the threat is real. Botswana's population has dropped from 1.4 million to under a million since 1993? Unfortunately, the writer gave no reference for this statistic. That's one problem. The other is that the author tells several anecdotes citing heterosexual transmission of AIDS in one encounter. Everything else I've read says this is nonsense, that transmission even from husband to wife, and especially vice versa, takes dozens or hundreds of contacts. Can people like Peter Duesberg and Kary Mullis be wrong about this? Time will tell. If Botswana is empty in ten years, we'll know.

My opinion? This article is a mishmash of old myths, recycled anecdotes and scare stories unexamined and uncritically accepted for decades now. For instance, why a population statistic on Botswana, but not on Zambia, where all the funerals he talks about are happening? Sloppy work. I would truly appreciate some statistical source, however. I don't like to be wrong. But I like even less to think I'm right when I'm really wrong.

Awwww!
Seems like some of the "human shields" who supported Saddam's bloody dictatorship have been stranded in Beirut trying to get home. Gee, we sure hope none of those Hamas or Hezbollah or Fatah or Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigade monsters blow them up in the night or take their remaining money or kidnap and torture them or strap bomb belts on them and force them to walk toward Israeli checkpoints or use them as human sandbags in a grenade attack on Israeli children at recess or send them back to Damascus to serve in Bashir Assad's harem after being appropriately operated on. Any of that would be a shame and probably against several UN resolutions and just not fair, darn it!

Those kwazy A-rabs
A frank and revealing article in Ha'aretz gives a lot of quotes from different Arab leaders about the mess Iraq has gotten the Arab world into. The Arab League held a meeting at which the insults and demands flew fast and thick. This quote from Egyptian president Mubarak gives the tone:

When a journalist suggested - at a press conference with Mubarak - that the Arab states could invoke the oil weapon, the president retorted angrily, "Do you want the Gulf states to stop the flow of oil? Did Saddam Hussein consult with the Arab states when he invaded Iran? Did he consult with them when he invaded Kuwait? The Arab states paid Saddam $60 billion and assisted him in the war against Iran. Then he invaded Kuwait and split the country in two. He attacked the American forces, and his policy brought about the largest American presence in the history of the region."

Curses upon your moustache, monkey!
"Monkey" and "traitor" are not the words usually exchanged between friends. This Ananova article, though, reports the depths to which the insult-mongering descended at the above meeting. Gee, who would have thought the presence of 300,000 American troops in near proximity to a whole bunch of Arab nations with a whole lot of oil could have this kind of effect? Any tickets left on the Concorde to Switzerland?

Twisted
A bizarre story on Albawaba.com contends that a large tornado that hit Cyprus was a product of an Israeli weather experiment that went awry. It also links it to the loss of the Columbia, which apparently was passing over at the time. They're saying that the Israeli Air Force, NASA and the Israeli astronaut, the late Ilan Ramon, were involved in creating this tornado, then lost control of it and it struck Limassol on Cyprus. This story has so many things wrong with it I don't know where to start. Perhaps its lesson is the kind of mental activity that passes for thinking in some internet denizens. The words paranoia and ignorance don't even do this view of the world justice. OK, so the Israeli astronaut casts a spell from orbit that causes a storm, which gets Allah angry, who then strikes down the Space Shuttle on reentry. He doesn't try to stop the storm and kills all the other astronauts too, but that's neither here nor there. The hubble-bubbles must have been going like crazy the night after that one. Even the Enquirer would find it difficult to match that. Hmm, I haven't been to the grocery store lately, so, who knows, maybe the same story is sitting next to the checkout counters right now. Here's the tagline:

Unfortunately, any information regarding the “experiment” perished and vanished into space’s never-ending vastness, along with other “secrets” aboard Columbia STS-107. (Albawaba.com)

Ah, I see. The experiment went awry, so the sinister powers controlling things decided that the Space Shuttle, with all the incriminating evidence, had to be destroyed! Yeah, and Bush is really Hitler preserved by freezing in a Siberian bog and brought back to life by the CIA. Right.

AD:

A young girl comes out of a movie. A ghostly figure, another young girl bloody and hollow-eyed, points an accusing finger at her:

“YOU did this to me!” the spectre cries.
“But how, what, what did I do? I haven’t done anything!” the moviegoer protests.
“I died in Saddam’s torture chambers! And you helped him!” the spook sighs and disappears.

The girl is shaken, not understanding. She keeps walking toward her car, wondering what she could have done wrong. Then out of a misty fringe of trees, two bloody ghosts appear, one a mother, one a small child, limp in his mother’s arms, both pointing with their last energies directly at her:

“WHY, why, why did you kill us? We died in a suicide bombing by Fatah in Israel. Why did you help them?” the mother accuses.

“No, no, it wasn’t me! I didn’t do anything!”, cries the girl. Even more shaken, she hurries to her car and, trembling, starts up and surges out onto the road. Turning a corner by a mountain, she almost drives off the road when she sees two figures hovering in the air, holding hands, though they seem to be falling. Again, they are pointing accusing fingers at the astonished girl:

“We died because of you! You helped them! Now who will avenge us? We had to jump off the World Trade Center to avoid being burned to death and died on the streets of New York, because of your friends AlQaeda!” The girl can’t stand it any more.

“ I did nothing! I’m a good American! I hate terrorism and Saddam. Why are all these dead people accusing me? I didn’t help their killers!” She brakes the car to a stop and dissolves into tears.

The camera goes back to the marquee of the movie theater. The movie stars George Clooney, Sean Penn, and Susan Sarandon. Next statements by each of them opposing the war on Iraq, supporting the Palestinians and calling Bush the “real terrorist” are shown, the actual statements by the real actors.

Then the camera shows Saddam listening to the antiwar statements and sagely nodding and smiling; Yasser Arafat thanking his Hollywood supporters; and Osama bin Laden citing the antiwar demonstrations as supporting the rightness of the Wahhabi cause.

Voiceover: “You may think you did nothing to help terrorism. But your money for a simple movie ticket may go to those who support the killers of innocents, the attackers of America, the enemies of truth. Think again before you go to a movie. Choose freedom.” Then appear pro-freedom statements by Charlton Heston and Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Then the narrator says again, “Choose Freedom.” Fade out.

Some Swedes get it
Finally, some people are realizing the idiocy of recycling? This article from the Telegraph reflects my oft-stated conviction that having a socialist bureaucracy send huge trucks around to every house collecting teeny bits of plastic and glass couldn't possibly be efficient. Shocking! How many Swedish readers of Conundrum are there? Maybe this post is tacked up on bulletin boards all over Uppsala and Malmo. Even the Red East Sussex Council is having second thoughts:
One deputy council leader in the south of England said: "For years recycling has been held up as the best way to deal with waste. It's time that myth was exploded."

A spokesman for East Sussex council, which plans to build an incinerator at Newhaven, said: "It's idealistic to think that everything can be recycled. It's just not possible. Incineration has an important role to play."
Now if they can just start coming around on the concept of the right to bear arms. Dream on, o Conundrumist! Today East Sussex, tomorrow - West Sussex?

Food for thought
The arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad seems a good development in the WoT (love the new acronyms!). Of course, now the numbskulls - even one in Reason - are implying that, now that we've practically wound up AlQaeda, we can stop hassling Iraq. I put it somewhat differently in a comment I left on the Reason

With any luck, the interrogation of Kalihd may produce some information that will make the liberation of Iraq easier and more painless. And maybe without their "mastermind" AlQaeda may start making false steps that may bring in other leaders and even produce proof of ties to Iraq that even the French have to accept. I hope Saddam is having the same thoughts right now.

So there's no connection between Saddam and the war on terror, eh? Combined with the news that Saddam has six missiles fewer, this might be a decent time to go ahead in and give the old totalitarian a lesson with a two-by-four (now where did I get that idea?) Maybe we can keep pushing this disarmament thing until all he's left with is a peashooter and one deaf and dumb eunuch ( that would be Chirac). That would make regime change pleasant.

As to the Turkish parliament's refusal (via Instapundit) to let US troops jump off from bases in Turkey - I think that's a good thing. The fewer allies you have to appease, the better things are likely to turn out. My instinct tells me the Turks will about-face at the last moment in order to get the money on offer, but we should just tell them, "No, thanks, that's OK, we can do very well without you and we need the money for other things, like making sure the Kurds have all the arms and training and logistical support they can possibly use. Just to fight Saddam, of course! You'll understand when we don't invite you to any conferences to settle the borders of the new Kurdish state. Obviously you don't want to get involved. Don't worry, we'll take care of it."
Note on the transliteration of Arabic names into English - I accept no set rule on the transliteration of Arabic names, I just make it up as I go along. I do know something about the sound of the language, at least as it's spoken in Egypt, so my guess is as good as anyone's.

Duesberg in reverse
The CDC, that hotbed of noxious idiocy, is preparing its retreat on the AIDS question. I've taken the hard line that AIDS doesn't exist, that HIV is not injurious and the medications used against AIDS are killing millions. The story is entirely consistent with that point of view. Call me paranoid, but if you had run a twenty-year panic about a disease that didn't exist in order to secure funding for the medical establishment and now the evidence of that disease's non-existence was becoming clearer and clearer, what would you do? Of course! Find a "CURE"! It's pretty easy to find a cure for a disease that doesn't exist. And any people you treat who do die obviously didn't die of the disease but of other "lifestyle factors"! Just run Duesberg in reverse and keep your credibility relatively unimpaired. On to the next flim-flam. The same thing seems to be happening with mad cow disease. It never really did kill anyone. I'll try to find that article I read earlier and link to it. Advantage Duesberg, Mullis - and Conundrum!

I don't believe it
Maybe I'm just becoming a heartless old crank, but I don't believe this article about the "disaster" in Southern Africa caused by famine and AIDS. The population statistics I've seen don't support it. Let's face it, there have always been thousands of orphans in Africa and famine and diseases beyond counting. Until I see statistics from some source other than UN bureaucrats who have to justify their jobs or African dictators who are looking for something else to blame for their countries' poverty than their own evil and incompetence, statistics that show an actual decline in population traceable to AIDS, why would I believe it's true? How can countries like Zimbabwe and Malawi have a sky-high population growth rate and yet be "devastated" by AIDS and famine?
The UN has become a factory of lies. The point of every lie is to extract money for UN bureaucrats and their sponsoring Third World totalitarian thugs like Mugabe and European enablers like Chirac and Schroeder. The concept of proof is as foreign to a UN official as it is to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. In fact, it's in their interest to discourage the notion of logic as a "Western imperialist construct". Then every demand for proof can be met by presenting a picture of a wide-eyed swollen-bellied moppet. You heartless man! How can you in your corrupt prosperity deny this child its RIGHT to live - at your expense?
But it's the UN-ers who travel in air-conditioned limousines past the dying children to their next gourmet meal, chuckling at the naïveté of the Americans. No more. Not in MY name.

I want some, too
What's Iran doing in this Tehran Times article? Why, they seem to be reminding people of how bad Saddam has been to them over the last twenty years or so:

Ambassador Zarif -- recalling the Iraqi army's use of chemical weapons -- said his government's "conservative" estimate is that 100,000 Iranians were either killed or injured in those attacks.

"Some are continuing to suffer from the effects of chemical weapons on a daily basis," he said. Despite Iranian anger, the ambassador said Iran opposes U.S.-led war against Iraq. "I believe our region cannot take another war. It's a region that has been the subject of two destructive wars, unfortunately, both of which have been launched by Saddam Hussein." He said Iran was concerned "about the humanitarian consequences of another war, about the political consequences of another war, and about the uncertainty that will be pervading."

Why would they be doing that? Could it be that they saw Turkey getting tens of billions of dollars for being on the side of the Great Satan and thought, well, we could spend some of those dollars, too? And then there's this somewhat astonishing statement:

In a meeting between the Iraqi chief spy and a son of Israel's Ariel Sharon, Saddam sent the following message to the Israelis: If Israel convinced the United States not to attack Iraq, as a quid pro quo Iraq will officially apologize to Israel for supporting the Palestinians; Iraq will accommodate two million Palestinians and will grant them Iraqi nationality; and Iraq will supply 350,000 barrels of oil to Israel every day. The Israelis told the Iraq chief spy that they will respond after the elections.

I haven't seen that anywhere else. And some stuff that sounds awfully nutty about American chemical weapons that were taken when Saddam conquered Kuwait and used against the Americans in Desert Storm? Make up your own mind, but something's going on among the mullahs. Mullah-ing things over, I guess.

AIDS in Africa - another theory
Medpundit, (via Colby Cosh and RangelMD), has some details about a just-released study that seems to show that HIV transmission in Africa is not via heterosex, but through dirty needles. So there's more evidence that heterosexual "breakout" of AIDS just doesn't happen. Why not? I'm getting tired of repeating the same evidence from Duesberg and Mullis and virusmyth.com asking over and over how this virus chooses its victims on the basis of their sexual orientation. Isn't there some other "at-risk group" that uses dirty needles - not just poor Africans?
Well, I'm off to take the bar exam, so I won't be blogging for a few days, not that I've done much lately. Hmm, must have something to do with all that studying that right now feels so completely ineffective. Oh, well, I'll just have to go back in July and take it again. Another little vacation.

Ailsa Craig
Is it sick to love a rock? I've been mooning lately, courtesy of Colby Cosh, over a steep barren "volcanic plug" ten miles off the west

coast of Scotland. It produces seabirds, curling stones and smugglers' caves and not much else. But its barrenness and

uncompromising tenacity in the middle of a wild ocean make my heart go pitter-pat. Oh, you know those things. She - I mean

it's just so cool and beautiful and Scottish. It is, by the way, just south of the Isle of Arran, where my father's family came from,

so maybe that's it, ancestral blood vibrations. I must have received the gene for searock-worship. I could see a religion based on it,

though, nice big temple out there shaped like a curling stone, or is it curling iron? Seabird sacrifice at the winter solstice. Although

probably in December the rock's covered in glaze-ice. Remember in Thomas Mann's "The Holy Sinner" when the "hero" turns into a

hedgehog and goes to live on top of a wild rock for ten years, before he becomes pope? Like that.

I should read that again. I may have got a detail wrong, but maybe not.

Ante up!
Why do I get the feeling that Saddam and the Euroweenies are playing poker with a Texan who knows the game just a little bit better

than they do? Maybe it's wishful thinking, but it's at least possible that the last six months have seen a session of high-stakes

diplomatic five-card stud (whatever that is) that has jockeyed all the other players into exactly the positions Bush wants them to

be in. And when the hands are laid down, I think we know which one's going to contain the 82d Airborne and the US Marines and

GPS-guided munitions by the thousands. Even if it was Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili who said it, there may still be some

truth to the statement that "God is on the side of the big battalions". And it doesn't hurt your chances of having Him on your side

when the opponents have played every combination they've got (oops, here I go into chess analogies) and your bishops still control

two long diagonals. When you add to that the risks of antagonizing the customer who is responsible for the profitability of many if

not most European companies and not a few Asian ones, I don't think it's unrealistic to think that France, Germany and Belgium

are taking risks they may not be able to back up with money. Everybody's quoting Maggie Thatcher about now not being the time

to "go wobbly". On the contrary, as I remember poker, maybe this is just the time to raise the stakes.

Anybody got the chutzpah to envision a generation of REAL American hegemony?

Oops!
Studying for the bar exam, I must be suffering from brain-mush. I can't remember where I posted this comment.

I think it's true, though, and hope to expand on it after the exam, next week. Or maybe sooner, but it might not make

much sense. It's about the massive anti-Americanism on display this past weekend, which I think is a symptom of a

profound social disease among the European "antiwar" crowd:

The anti-Americanism seems to stem from a deeply immature fear of "upsetting the applecart" that may be explained

by the gradual deterioration inevitable under a mixed socialist economy. If you are unemployed and watching Islamic

immigrants flood in to take advantage of absurdly generous welfare systems, you would feel this sort of fear and might

react by thinking, "Don't do anything to get them upset", since you know your government won't do anything to stem the tide.

If you have no resistance in your heart, you might conclude you'd better not have children and your best course of action is

to get angry at a target you think you can affect, the offensively optimistic Americans who you see as making things worse

quicker. Despair becomes a habit and the old verities such as "No victory, no peace!" are mere jokes unsuited to practical

modern half-men. Thank God for America!

Update
It strikes me that the intensity of the anger and concern showed by demonstrators can be seen as a reflection of their impotence

to effect any real change in their home countries, or at least their perception that they are powerless. Turning your anger on the

US only makes sense when the polls offer such "choices" as Chirac and LePen or Schroeder and Fischer, or even Merkel. The

title of this movie? "When Democracies go Bad" or at least stagnant and hopeless. When the people of historical democracies,

who shed blood for their own freedom, demonstrate in the streets by the hundreds of thousands to plead with their leaders not to

get them involved in a thoroughly moral and winnable war and can't even mention the Iraqi people's heartfelt wish to be rid of a

tyrant, something is wrong. What will they say if a million Iraqi immigrants leave Europe and go back to a peaceful and prosperous

Iraq? I wouldn't go expecting a lot of gratitude.

Meltdown
I guess I pushed the wrong buttons too many times. This blog has exploded and I can't seem to figure out how to delete all the cabbage. I'll just blog along and see what happens. I've sent an email to BloggerPro, but haven't heard back. I can only trust they can figure out how to get things going. Now I have to go study for the bar exam - one week left! In limbo for a bit.
Robert Speirs

Not Fair!
OK, I'm supposed to be studying for the Bar. I am studying for the bar. I take a break to do a little blogging, check out International Sentinel and see the blogroll entry for the Prague Post. I've always liked the idea of living in Prague, heard a lot about it, so I go there, bookmark it and an irresistible force leads me to this article. I mean, what's a beerophile to do? Especially when it features this photo?

Great idea - but!
Tom Friedman has a good idea for the Security Council - de-Frogicize it. But how? Does the UN Charter allow for one of the founding nations to be booted off the Security Council by majority vote? If so, why hasn't the USA been booted out long ago? And why can't France just veto such a move? And God, if we did that, would they keep sending Chateauneuf duPape to Florida? I love that stuff. By the way, the dumbass Franco/German - but I repeat myself - idea to send thousands of "lightly armed" UN troops to Iraq to enforce the arms inspectors' efforts is so lame I can't see how anyone can use it as a fig leaf to cover their lack of recognition of the threat Iraq poses. Luckily, I think we can depend on Saddam to reject it out of hand, therefore strengthening Bush's position that real war is necessary. Will the Weasels once again play into the strategy of the WeaselMaster? Stay tuned. This whole thing is getting like a too-long soap opera, with twists and turns and innovative possibilities that haven't a chance of success being bruited about as though they hadn't been brought up before (via Instapundit). DenBeste is worried about it, but he seems to have been on a bit of a hysteria kick lately. I must say his nightmare scenario featuring the French attacking US carrier battle groups must have been induced by something a little stronger than Chateauneuf duPape! He certainly does a good engineer-like job of laying out every single possibility, but enough is enough. Hmm, come to think of it, he hasn't considered the possibility that Saddam actually is French. That moustache is awfully Froggish.

More than just intellectual dishonesty
John Podhoretz has a good column on the intellectual dishonesty of those who just now announced their support for Bush's war preparations because of Colin Powell's speech to the UN Tuesday. He's right, for someone to say they had read and heard everything that's been out there about Saddam and Powell's summing up of it was all that was needed to change their minds makes no real sense. Podhoretz says it's because Powell's regarded as a quasi- or even "closet" liberal, so his words are more to be trusted than Rumsfeld's or Wolfowitz's or Rice's or, heaven forfend, Bush's. And there's some truth to that. This approach shows the limited honesty and fearful approach to foreign policy that marks most "liberal" so-called intellectuals. But I think it shows something more. And that's racism. Because Powell is black, liberals find it very difficult to express distrust of what he says. That's what got - and is still getting - the execrable coward and fool Cynthia McKinney national attention. Liberals have built a philosophy on the notion that black people, solely because of their color, have a special insight to things, especially to power. For them to mistrust Powell would mean they'd have to back off that frame of mind, which they are far too chicken to do. A "person of color" couldn't possibly be advocating the "genocide" and "aggression" that a stupid cracker like Bush wouldn't hesitate for a minute about waging on the Third World. Yes, it's just that crude and stupid, but good enough for cocktail parties and faculty lounges. There's an added bonus for liberals here. If the war does come out badly, that is, if the liberals' demands for no mass bloodletting or civilian casualties are not met, they can always blame it on Powell. What good liberal could have ever thought that a wonderful minority paragon could trick them like that? Oh, well, Belafonte was right.

Physics and religion
OK, maybe I should say science and psychology. I struck me in my quasi-spiritual readings the other day that the regular Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology and all are fine for regular life. Sort of like the way Newtonian physics will allow you to calculate everything you need to know to track an artillery shell or send a space probe to the Moon. But when it really gets down to the nitty-gritty, in the realm of the very large and the very small, the very energetic and the very weak, you have to pay attention to Einstein and Planck and Heisenberg and those guys. So maybe in the realm of religion, which deals with "emergency ethics" and the questions that you don't REALLY need to know the answers to in order to function every day, maybe one has to go beyond the usual sense impressions and reasoning. Maybe you have to explore internally a bit and see what works when you're in a foxhole on Vimy Ridge waiting for the Germans to open up with their walking artillery barrages or when you have to decide whether to commit the troops of the 101st Airborne to a parachute drop into Basra, as W. may just have done, maybe then you need more than just everyday reason. Maybe the level of certainty you need to attain to jump out of an airplane into a biowarfare-contaminated killing ground is a bit beyond that which can be reached by calculation. Which brings us to the real question: How do you make those decisions and how can they be made better? More later.

NATO as the new UN
Mark Steyn, in the Spectator, advocates quitting the UN. I heartily agree, but he overlooks the role of NATO, starting at least with Kosovo, as a truly effective international organization. It makes sense to expand the mission of NATO to cover other than military matters, and to expand NATO. Oh, and kick France and Germany out, too. Having an organization of buddies with whom you have pledged to go to war if any is attacked, and whom you trust to support you, beats the UN whining shop all hollow. Why not merge NAFTA and NATO and the other military treaty alliances we have cobbled up all over the world? Now that would be an international organization that truly reflects the power relationships in the world, as Steyn mentions the UN used to during the Cold War. Including Israel might be a little tricky, but would be worth thinking about. Make places like Pakistan and Indonesia and Morocco choose between having good relations with the US and continuing their Zionism-bashing.

Better Health for Florida!
Some doctors in Florida are going on strike, sort of. The article doesn't say whether the strike extends to Tallahassee, but it can't hurt. Every time there's a doctor's strike, you see, death rates drop dramatically. Almost makes you think the job of a doctor is to get rid of the surplus population, like a veterinarian. Nah. They kill too many perfectly productive and wanted patients. The vets, I mean. But at least they do it on purpose.