Oscar Jr. Was Here

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Juan Gato is a very clever fellow.

Fun with Google: You'll See It When You Believe It

Tonight, we meet Dianne Lobes, Ed.D., "peace activist" and International ANSWER "Coalition Co-Signer." When she's not Ending War and Stopping Racism (oops, Stopping War and Ending Racism), Ms. Lobes fights to stop (or end) military-themed Easter baskets:

The local chapter of Women's Action for New Directions, or WAND - a national group dedicated to reducing violence and militarism - is outraged that national retailers such as Rite-Aid, Wal-Mart and Kmart are selling military-themed Easter baskets, particularly when a U.S. attack on Iraq appears imminent.

"They're really offensive," said Dianne Lobes of Eugene, a WAND member. "To pair grenades and tanks with the Easter bunny is as absurd as claiming we are going to liberate the Iraqi people with this invasion, when in fact, it will be a massacre."

We'll see about that soon enough, I suppose.

Professionally, "Dianne Lobes, Ed.D., L.P.C.C., practices transpersonal psychology, Bio-Optic Holography, and meditation..." She writes:

Every moment of every day we use the exacting power of language to create our reality. Imagination, through the medium of our language, is the basis of our unfolding reality, both internal and external (and eternal! as one graduate recently said). What we create in our minds' musings eventually happens in us, through us and around us. Conscious imagination of our heart's desires, vividly experienced with the sixteen (and more) senses, comes about in reality when a few basic laws are followed. These laws help us co-create with our Creator our heart's desires, eliminating self-sabotage and embodying clear, authentic communication.

Sixteen senses! Huh?

Elsewhere, she is quoted:

Each person creates an individual world within the sphere of her/his own beliefs and thoughts, which become a powerful sorting lens. This hasn't changed since September 11th. Many of us have said in the past, "I'll believe it when I see it." It's really the other way around - you'll see it when you believe it. What if the words we speak, which are based on our beliefs, are self-fulfilling prophecy, dreams coming into manifestation? How many of us are ready and choosing to believe in our own inherent talents and greatness, and that of our community and our world? Could our world use this kind of commitment now?

There you have it: those of us who support those Iraqis who want to live free of dictatorship and tyranny just aren't believing in them enough.

What if some people believe war is an unfortunate but necessary solution, while others, like Ms. Lobes, believe otherwise? Do both self-fulfilling prophesies exist simultaneously?

My head hurts, but I'll understand these "peace activists" yet.

Crazy Arrogant Stuff

Via Random Jottings, I found a transcript of a speech given last Wednesday by Yale professor, Weekly Standard contributing editor and domestic terrorism target David Gelernter on the Power Line blog. Excerpt:

But our goals in Iraq go beyond protecting our country; and if self-defense were our only goal, we could have blown the regime apart far more easily than by waging the kind of war we're waging today. We have another goal: to save the Iraqi people from misery and murder.

We know it's a strange, radical idea, because the world keeps telling us so. What an honor to be told by France and by Germany -- the symbolism, the historical resonance is so perfect, it's almost unbelievable -- what an honor to have France and Germany tell us: drop it, forget it, it's not your problem! Torture and mayhem and murder visited by a brutal dictator on a helpless population...it's not your affair.

After all, these things happen. Sophisticated nations shrug it off. Where do you Americans get the arrogance to believe that no man is an island entire of itself? Who ever gave you the crazy idea that each man murdered, each man tortured, each woman raped diminishes you because you are involved in mankind? Who ever told you that crazy arrogant stuff?

Here's a portion of the "Editorial Review" on Gelernter's book, Drawing Life, linked above:

In 1993, Yale computer science professor David Gelernter opened what he thought was an unsolicited doctoral dissertation. It exploded, destroying his right hand and eye and making his torso resemble a construction site. Gelernter, bleeding and "royally annoyed," walked to the local hospital, keeping his feet trudging along in time with "an old Zionist marching song with a good strong beat." When he got there, his blood pressure measured zero and surgeons barely saved his life. "Music is useful," Gelernter observes.

While doctors rebuilt Gelernter, he published three books. In this one, Gelernter talks about getting blown up and sewn up and vehemently argues that society is losing its lifeblood--its belief in moral authority. He blames this on the takeover of the national mindset by the liberal intellectual elite, whose anything-goes ethic has silenced the drumbeat of tradition that used to keep us all in line.

Bill Whittle: History

You really, really ought to read this essay.

Wow.

Saddam's Terrorist Friends

On NRO, Jed Babbin writes about the connection between the war against Saddam Hussein's regime and the War on Terrorists. Long excerpt:

There is more, much more, than is being reported about the suicide bombing that killed four Americans earlier today. And from a very credible source, I have heard enough to convince me I had to correct something I wrote this morning. This suicide attack does represent an evolution of this war to something far uglier than we may be prepared to deal with. The suicider was not, as the Iraqi vice president announced, an Iraqi army officer. He was a member of Hamas--or possibly a Saudi--and one of many terrorists that are embedded throughout Iraq. This is no longer a war to remove the threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and liberate Iraq. Yes, those still are part of our objectives. But it is--much more--a war between our conventional forces and most of the terrorist world.

For many years, Saddam paid a bounty to Palestinian terrorists or, rather, to their survivors. The going rate now is about $25,000 per bomber with bonus money for those who manage to kill more than a few Israelis. Saddam has called in the chips with Hamas, and hundreds of its members are in Iraq. The reports of Hezbollah terrorists coming down from Syria would be old news to the Iraqis. Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and many other terror organizations have been sending their thugs to Iraq for months.

The "Saddam fedayeen" are, in part, a fiction. Yes, there are mostly thugs recruited from Iraq's prisons, given a gun and a uniform and turned loose to terrorize the populace. But among them, and also operating independently, there are hundreds of others who are not Iraqi.

(emphasis added)

Please read the rest. It's disturbing stuff, but I can't resist the thought that this could hasten the end of the overall war. If every Islamofascist terrorist decides to fight in Iraq, it could save us the trouble of finding them later.

Frank J. University

Frank J. of IMAO still hasn't gotten around to delinking this site. This may be due to the fact that he's taken on another, more important project: teaching the world about America's enemies. Yesterday, he shared his special knowledge of Iraq's "Republican Guard" (who aren't and won't). Excerpts:

* The Republican Guard were a replacement for the less successful Iraqi Democrat Guard, who would try to whine and tax their enemies into submission. Eventually Saddam became too annoyed with them and had them executed.

and

* The Republican Guard is supported by tanks and other hardware that, according to U.S. military experts, are fun to blow up.

and

* In the first Gulf War, most experts identify the main military blunder of the Republican Guard in their fight with the U.S. military as being that they we[]re fighting the U.S. military. It's yet to be seen if they have learned from that mistake.

As I often say, reading is learning.

Looky There! II

First, Page spiffs up her blog. Now, Dave Trowbridge has his site handsomely redecorated.

The Blogosphere grows increasingly esthetically pleasing. Looks like it's time to start stealing ideas researching some improvements for this hovel.

If anyone stumbles into this place without visiting either of those blogs first, please take a look.

A Movable Blog

Great news: Pejman Yousefzadeh has new digs! The new site's much easier on the eyes, too. He posts great stuff, but I could never read his old blog with tired eyes.

As always, if anyone stumbles into this place without visiting there first, please take a look.

Iraq and al Qaeda

Question: Who was right?

The French?

"We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the French judge who is the dean of the region's investigators after two decades fighting Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorists. "And we are working on 50 cases involving Al Qaeda or radical Islamic cells. I think if there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever."

German intelligence?

Talk of an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection is "nonsense," said a high-ranking source in the German intelligence community. "Not even the Americans believe it anymore."

Or President Bush?

On Friday, Bush specifically linked Hussein to the terrorist network. "We know he's got ties with Al Qaeda," Bush said during an election rally in New Hampshire.

Answer: According to this Fox News article:

Al Qaeda fighters may be in southern Iraq, coordinating grenade and gun attacks on British forces in a town near Basra, it was reported last night.

I'll give the last word, for now, to Ralph Peters:

Meanwhile, more evidence emerges every day that this war is worth fighting. Cache after cache of Iraqi chemical-warfare gear turns up. Our troops witness one atrocity after another. And there is ever greater proof that President Bush was right all along about Iraq's support of terrorism.

The recent report of an al Qaeda cell in Basra, helping regime loyalists terrorize the population, is the smallest part of it. Our special operations forces in the north are going after thousands of terrorists who previously had crossed over from Iran to set up training camps.

Above all, it becomes clearer by the day that Saddam's Fedayeen thugs have been training for years on terrorist tactics - that's what they're using against our forces. In sheer numbers, Saddam's Fedayeen appear to be the largest terrorist organization in the world, an al Qaeda on steroids, with a country to call their own.

Ahem.

But...but...but... "Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein."

Tonic III

It's Friday, and here's today's Victor Davis Hanson essay on "our vulture pundits." Excerpts:

Casualties, POWs, and skyrocketing costs blanket the airwaves; rarely mentioned is the simple military fact that in a single week, a resolute American pincer column has driven across Iraq and is now systematically surrounding Baghdad — and with far fewer killed than were lost in a single day in Lebanon. When American soldiers move decisively against terrorists and killers in the Middle East, they have a far greater chance of surviving than they do sitting in their barracks as living targets under “rules of engagement.”

and

Indeed, the only wrinkle is that our present military faces cultural obstacles never envisioned by an Epaminondas, Caesar, Marlborough, Sherman — or any of the other great marchers. A globally televised and therapeutic culture puts an onus on American soldiers that could never have been envisioned by any of the early captains. We treat prisoners justly; our enemy executes them. We protect Iraqi bridges, oil, and dams — from Iraqi saboteurs. We must treat Iraqi civilians better than do their own men, who are trying to kill them. Our generals and leaders take questions; theirs give taped propaganda speeches. Shock and awe — designed not to kill but to stun, and therefore to save civilians — are slurred as Hamburg and Dresden. The force needed to crush Saddam’s killers is deemed too much for the fragile surrounding human landscape. Marines who raise the Stars and Stripes are reprimanded for being too chauvinistic. And on, and on, and on.

When this is all over — and I expect it will be soon — besides a great moral accounting, I hope that there will deep introspection and sober public discussion about the peculiar ignorance and deductive pessimism on the part of our elites. In the meantime, all we can insist on is absolute and unconditional surrender — no peace process, no exit strategy, no U.N. votes, no Arab League parley, no EU expressions of concern, no French, no anything but our absolute victory and Saddam’s utter ruin. Unlike in 1991, commanders in the field must be given explicit instructions from the White House about negotiations: There are to be absolutely none — other than the acceptance of unconditional surrender.

An Observation

Once again, I conclude that nineteen-hour workdays really inhibit one's blogging.

And blog-reading. Did I miss anything good today? If so, would you be so kind as to leave a link in a comment? (As I fantasize about my own personal Carnival of the Vanities (TM), I also shudder "No Chomsky, please!")

Anyway, go Coalition of the Willing (and Able)!

Saddam's Strategy

On NRO, Jed Babbin discusses what his intelligence sources say is Saddam's slaughter victory strategy:

Suppose Saddam's illegals rounded up a crowd of, say, two or three thousand Iraqis, promising food or other rewards for making threatening gestures and throwing rocks. Suppose they then dressed up in the American and British uniforms we know they have. And suppose they then attacked and killed the thousand "demonstrators." A handy snapshot or two while the shooting went on would be good, and the endless Al-Jazeera footage would be better. It would be omnipresent on the world's television stations for days or weeks.

With that video in hand, the Arab League--which condemns the war and the U.S. on alternate days--would march into the U.N., where France, Germany and Russia would be waiting to join in condemnations and threats of U.N. sanctions and war-crimes trials unless we stopped in our tracks. The pressure to negotiate a ceasefire would be more intense than anything ever mustered against Israel, and the Democrats would finally have the ammunition they needed to attack the President. Calls for investigations, congressional special panels, and more press than anyone has ever seen anywhere would be all over the president. The war would be forgotten in this feeding frenzy.

Babbin ends his blog-entry by noting:

The only way to combat this monstrous strategy is to expose it before it is put in motion. I think we just did.

I hope he's correct.

Meet Young Dick Cheney

It's nice to know that not all children in the Middle East will be named Osama, Saddam or Chirac. On NRO, we are introduced to young Dick Cheney:

Now the children range from Kertistan (ph), who is their firstborn, 18 years old, to the youngest, who is 4 years old. He's running around here somewhere. And in between, their child is Dick Cheney. Dick -- where is Dick?. Dick. That's Dick Cheney. And yes, he was named after the U.S. Defense Secretary. Dick was born in 1991, and his father says he named him Dick Cheney because they admired the American. Now he was born in '91 during the liberation of Kuwait. And according to his father, if they are expecting another baby anytime soon, they will be naming him George Bush.

I hope, after the war, we can be introduced to young George Bush.

Essays on Iraq II

Michael Ledeen speculates:

We would have been wiser to demonstrate our real plans for a new, democratic Iraq, by creating one long before the onset of hostilities. The northern and southern “no fly” zones were under our effective control for years. We should have declared Saddam Hussein an illegitimate ruler, recognized a legitimate government in the two regions, and invited Iraqis to flee Saddam’s despotism to live freely under a normal and democratic government. The existence of a “free Iraq” would have shown the citizens of the country, whether military or civilian, the true nature of this war in a way no propaganda offensive could possibly achieve. Had we done so, and had we defended free Iraq from Saddam’s depredations, we would be far less likely to be facing the fierce battles in the southern “no fly” zone today.

David Warren offers perspective:

You wouldn't know it from reading most of the papers, but the war in Iraq is going fabulously well. After just five days the U.S. Third Infantry Division and supporting units are approaching Baghdad. The immense steel column continues to drive reinforcements across the Iraqi desert, while its leading edge rumbles through the fields, villages, and waterways of Mesopotamia. To its rear, the "sleeper cells" of Ba'athist and terrorist hitmen waiting in ambush are being eliminated one by one. Special forces have seized bridges, dams, airstrips, oil and gas fields, and weapons sites all over the country. The U.S. Air Force has devastated leadership targets, military infrastructure, and the physical symbols of the Saddam regime, across Baghdad and elsewhere. Allied troops have Basra, Nasiriyah, now Karbala, and other Iraqi cities surrounded, and are tightening each noose. Snipers in the towns are being patiently deleted. The "Scud box" of western Iraq is in allied hands, daily more secure, and allied forces are building with endless air deployments to the northern front. In all, the allies have taken only a few dozen killed, and a couple hundred lesser casualties -- many of these from small accidents within the most amazing and vast logistical exercise since our troops landed in Normandy (when we lost men at the rate of up to 500 a minute, liberating France).

Tonic II

Ralph Peters writes again today in the New York Post. Excerpt:

Once our forces are ringing Baghdad, Saddam isn't going anywhere. There's no deadline on giving that bad boy the big Indian rub. If necessary - if the regime doesn't implode beforehand - the world is going to witness the first post-modern siege.

Historically, sieges could last over a year, while the population inside the city starved and died of plague. Not our style. We haven't even turned off the lights or shut off the water in Baghdad yet, and we may not do so in the future, except for limited periods and purposes.

Once the last die-hard Saddamites are corralled in Baghdad (and, perhaps, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, a city that just brings out the nuclear side of my character), we're going to work 'em like history's biggest cat batting around a blind, three-legged mouse.

And what is Saddam going to do about it? We can even send in food supplies, if the population needs to be fed. Let even our enemies eat as they wait to be killed. Saddam's birthday is coming up in April. I'll pay for the cake and FedEx it myself.

Youth

On NRO, Victor Davis Hanson today wrote:

Most parents do not leave their teens alone on weekends; but hundreds of thousands of them now are driving tanks and trucks to their rendezvous with the Republican Guard, a modern SS mercenary band of killers and criminals.

Tonight, at The Command Post, "Gregoire" wrote (in the comments):

It's not a mindset. It's a religion. The members of the religion in question happen to have a particular mindset. They are nuts. Nuttiness born of ignorance, and hate. We have lots of highly ignorant, very hateful people in our own country, so I wouldn't be so quick to judge.

The extremists' hate might be irrational, but how rational is ours? of course we have reasons, i know 'em all. but the point is so do they. so you need more than that. I happen to agree with our reasons, but that's just me speaking. what makes my (or your) opinion any more valid than theirs.

I'm impressed by anyone who'd die for what they believe in. It's an easy thing to say, but a hard thing to do (as some of them perhaps found that out in afghanistan). they perceive, not 100% incorrectly, that a war is being waged upon their religion... what can ya do?

Curious, I visited his website, on which this apparent Columbia University matriculant wrote:

Now don't get me wrong, I support our brave fighting men and women who are too dumb to go to college (or alternately too dumb to figure out that giving 3-6 years of your life in exchange for a few thousand dollars off your tuition isn't actually a very good deal). Not that I'm hoping more Americans die (that would be unpatriotic of me... i must hate America... If you're against the war that's what you're doing, hating America… I frickin' DARE someone to try and talk patriotism, citizenship, etc. with me. I will BURN you- third place nationally, constitutional debate...what)

Ah, contrast!

Looky There!

Page has spiffed-up her blog. I like it! If anyone stumbles into this place without visiting there first, please take a look.

Speaking of which, I need some fancy graphics for this page. I really like the Harold Lloyd picture, but it looks lousy on my monitor at work. Any suggestions or offers of charity?

Essays on Iraq

Discussing the impending remake of the Middle East, Mark Steyn makes what seems, to me, a rather apt analogy:

So America, in returning to Iraq 12 years on, is embarking on its boldest gamble in decades--a new Middle Eastern domino theory that says the liberation of Iraq is the best way to reform Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and beyond. Yes, it's a long shot, but in this discussion it's the fellows who insist you can never implant Western concepts like the rule of law and economic activity who are being the simpletons. The modern ''Middle East'' is an Anglo-French invention that they never had time to complete: They're like Baron von Frankenstein interrupted in his lab while he's still fine-tuning the formula and chased off by the excitable burghers, leaving the monster to break free of his shackles and stagger off down the hill to terrorize the village. But, even as a failed and prematurely abandoned experiment, certain distinctions can be observed: A rough rule of thumb is that the least worst countries in the region are those which were most Britannicized. The continuing ''moderation'' (comparatively) of Jordan and the Gulf emirates is essentially the enduring legacy of the Colonial Office. Were Iraq to be restored to its 1950s condition as a ramshackle Hashemite backwater, that in itself would constitute an almighty improvement in a part of the world that could certainly use some. Writing about last year's Arab League summit, Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post noted that if Zimbabwe's election-fixing strongman Robert Mugabe had shown up, he's have been the most democratically legitimate leader in the room.

No one knows what regional ''reform'' will look like down the road. The odds are not good. But they're better than the certainty of disaster that another couple of decades of Baathism, Wahhabism, Hamas and the Ayatollahs will bring. When the most prominent Saudi trust-fund baby is Osama bin Laden and the most famous middle-class Egyptian is Mohammed Atta and the only example of Arab pluralism is a Christian deputy prime minister of Iraq who enjoys gassing Kurds and lobbing Scuds at Israel as much as his Muslim masters do, one thing is sure: The status quo is not an option.

More Steyn goodness here:

But on the opening weekend of Gulf War II Tariq Aziz was silent. Even though perking up Svend and Co. is far more critical to Baghdad's strategy this time round, Iraq's Mister Available isn't returning his messages. He hasn't been seen since last Wednesday when some curiously timed rumours were floated that he'd either defected or been shot in the attempt. Saddam ordered him to go on TV and deny it. He did, and then left the studios to go to a meeting of the inner council. The meeting was broken up in the early hours of Thursday morning when the Pentagon dropped a bunker-buster on it.

We don't know for sure who was inside and who got out. But an awful lot of Baghdad's A-list crazies seem to have cut back on their personal appearances since, oh, Thursday a.m. It could be that the marked lack of command-and-control coming from the Iraqi capital is due to technical problems. But, on the other hand, look at the depraved video al-Jazeera was airing all weekend of Iraqi captors flaunting their American prisoners -- some alive, some dead and bearing marks of execution rather than war wounds. Saddam's hardcore thugs were able to round up their POWs, get out the camcorder, murder them, defile their corpses and get the footage from a relatively remote part of the country to the studio while the blood was still warm on the dungeon floor. As with the Daniel Pearl execution tape vis-à-vis Osama, it invites the question: If they can do this, where's the boss? The speed of this revolting production suggests that, if the Iraqi leadership aren't making video appearances, it's not because of technical difficulties, it's because they're not in a condition to be filmed.

and

We'll know in the coming days just who was in that building and who survived. But, if "America's assassination attempt" (as BBC announcers sneeringly call it) was even partially successful, Washington will have changed the dynamic of rogue-state relations. When Jean Chrétien told reporters in Mexico that you can't just go around removing leaders you don't like, one assumes he meant it at least in part as a matter of practical possibility -- the human cost of taking out the butchers is too great, the civilian casualties too high. Dictators from Kim Jong-Il to Robert Mugabe rely on that argument.

But, if it emerges that Washington effectively disabled the entire leadership on Thursday morning, that the first casualty of the war was a Mr. S. Hussein of Baghdad, well, that's an awfully cautionary tale for Kim and Co. America will have invented not the neutron bomb but the neuron bomb: They'll have shown they're capable of disconnecting the regime's nervous system while leaving everything else standing -- bridges, hospitals, men, women, children. If I were M. Chirac or one of those other fellows who think the real threat to the world is American hegemony, I'd be longing for a reassuring call from Saddam. Otherwise, that North Korean crisis is going to go very differently.

Robert Bartley, while celebrating the imminent liberation of Iraq, helpfully discusses the many failures that brought us here, from Clinton's apparent lack of resolve to G. H.W. Bush's fear of bad press and muddled initial messages, and concludes:

The lesson of this second Iraqi war is that the U.S. cannot afford an on-again, off-again attention span, whether from fear of "quagmires" or notions of Realpolitik. Withdrawal of American power creates a vacuum into which forces of instability flow. History has thrust the U.S. into peacekeeping; its elites now have to learn to do it without having to bust up the same real estate every dozen years or so.

David Pryce-Jones discusses the potential post-war problems that Iraq's many religious/ethic group conflicts might pose, and suggests a solution:

There is only one force that has the power to guarantee that disputes in Iraq are resolved without violence. That force is the American army. American military power can prevent Iraq from sliding into anarchy, as it has prevented civil war from breaking out in Afghanistan since the removal of the Taliban regime, protecting Mohammed Karzai - who is committed to peaceful politics - from the warlords, who are not.

The Americans can ensure that only peaceful procedures are used in Iraq. But to do so, they will have to use their power subtly, indeed almost invisibly. It would be a terrible blunder if the Americans try to act as an adjudicator in Iraq's religious and political disputes, deciding who will get which of the spoils of war. If the Americans start to be perceived as meddling in Iraq's internal politics, the result will undo any possible good that might have come from removing Saddam.

Finally, Peggy Noonan discusses the many benefits that will accrue from a victory over Hussein's bloody regime. Excerpts:

Another thing, and a crucially important one. The United States is showing to the world, to its friends and foes, that it will pay a high price to make the world better. We will put it all on the line. This country is, still, the place that will take responsibility when no one else will. In this our entire country is like the firemen of 9/11 who looked up, saw the burning towers and charged. In the past few days, weeks and months, America charged. It has a lot to be proud of. (Being America it will soon be beating itself up again, but it should take some time over the next few weeks to feel the healthy pride it's earned.)

and

A victory in Iraq is about to enhance America's stature in the world. America deserves it. Because of all the powerful countries in the world, it is the most trustworthy, reliable and constructive. Soon this war will be over. It was hard getting there, hard doing it and there will no doubt be hard going. But it will be over, and we won't come back from hell with empty hands. We will have won a great deal. In the next week and weeks it will be good to keep that in mind, and keep our eyes on the prize.

We have 2.7 million members of the active and reserve American armed forces today. The world owes a great deal to America, and America owes a great deal to them, and not only because of their courage but because of their faith in us. And they have faith in us, and in this place we all live in, this great country, or else they would never risk their lives for us. Which leaves us humbled, and wishing we could say to them what the world should be saying to the country they represent: Thank you.

Tonic

Via Command Post, a great article by Ralph Peters summarizes our progress in the Iraq war to date and answers potential worries. Excerpts:

After declaring victory on Friday and Saturday, a number of media outlets all but announced our defeat yesterday, treating the routine events of warfare as if they were disasters.

Nonsense.

We're winning, the Iraqis are losing, and the American people have executive seats for what may prove to be the most successful military campaign in history.

and

In the end, all the Iraqi irregular forces are accomplishing is to make our troops more determined. The latest message I had from a friend serving in the war made it clear that our troops are enraged, not deterred, by Iraqi actions - not least by the execution in cold blood of American prisoners and the abuse of other POWs.

"Bush Good, Death to Saddam"

Lots of bad Iraq-war news today. Here's some better news, a couple of posts from the Beeblog (which could really use permanent links):

Southern Iraq :: David Willis :: 1646GMT

I'm accompanying a vast convoy of tanks, artillery and supply vehicles which is slowly heading north from Basra towards Baghdad.

So far, the reception has been warm.

As we left the main highway north to snake our way across country, local farmers came to the roadside to applaud. 'Bush good, death to Saddam', said one old man, flashing a crooked grin at the heavily armed American visitors.

As the convoy moved on, past a row of stone huts, children dressed in dirty smocks approached begging for food.

...

Southern Iraq :: Gavin Hewitt :: 1350GMT

We are currently travelling on a road north of Nasiriyah in an armoured column passing through towns and villages and people have been coming out to line the route, especially the young people have been waving, some have been jumping up and down.

Some of the kids have been using the English word water, water and occasionally American troops will throw out a plastic bottle with water in it. One or two other places are being more reserved.

Occasionally you can see someone looking solemn, but just a few minutes ago I saw as we passed a cluster of buildings a little bit off the main road, kids just running across the fields waving.

The reaction seems to have been very positive, certainly along this stretch of road to this column of American armour which is heading along a road towards Baghdad.

March Madness Break

Again via The Command Post:

Excerpt:

Under brash new head coach George W. Bush, the U.S. has been more aggressive on offense then ever. Bush and assistant coach Donald Rumsfeld stress a “run-and-shoot” strategy on the court and incendiary trash-talking off it, drawing the ire of veteran coaches like Jacques Chirac.

Despite being loudly jeered in most arenas, the U.S. finds itself in the Final Four. “Their next game’s gonna be a tough one,” mused Katz. “North Korea has a lot of weapons.”

Heh.

Why We Will Win, Reason #7,413

I learned something new today: Donald Sensing explains surrender tickets.

"Show this coupon to American soldiers. This coupon entitles you to food, water, clean clothing, humane treatment and protection from combat."

Neat!

Camp Pennsylvania Coverage

Via The Command Post, this CBS News article states:

Strassmann said the grenades were rolled into two commanders' tents at the camp. When officers ran from the tents, they were hit by small arms fire.

"From our reports it appears that a terrorist penetrated Camp Pennsylvania, one or more terrorists threw two hand grenades into a tent," said George Heath, spokesman at Fort Campbell, home base of the 101st.

Strassman said three suspects were being held for questioning, two Kuwaitis who served a translators and an American soldier described as a black Muslim.

Uh oh.

On the Junk Yard Blog, Chris Regan notes that the terrorists in that attack used the same technique that D.C. sniper John Muhammad used during the last Gulf War in 1991.

In a separate post, he notes additional evidence tying Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda.

Update: A comment on TCP reminds me of this Little Green Footballs post. Excerpt:

I always thought (and still think) it's a great idea to join the US ground forces for a simple reason: they're all getting shipped off to the Middle East for FREE! So, you go there, free, with US equipment and weapons, yada yada yada, then when you get there, you change sides and fight the kufar! After changing your uniform of course! And while you're at it, you can sabotage some of their stuff from the inside!

Outright sedition, from a campus Muslim leader; another obvious glaring sign that the infiltration of radical Islamists into US society is much farther along than anyone wants to believe or admit. The sheer incompetence is almost funny, though; even as he advocates murder and treason, he signs his posts “Big Brother is Watching You!”

Was today's terrorist attack evidence of a fifth column?

Blogroll Update

I've added Glenn Frazier (inexplicably omitted previously), Cox & Forkum (a blog of great editorial cartoons), L.T. Smash (currently blogging from the war), Avocare (by one of the founders of the great The Command Post blog) and Outside the Beltway (found via The Command Post) to the massive blogroll.

Welcome!

Update: Via Right Thinking from the Left Coast, another one:

Yowza.

Saddam's Stooges

Via Cox & Forkum, I find this Fox News article on the anti-war protest sugar daddies. Excerpt:

Money is needed to rent or buy stages, sound systems, permits and portable toilets, and tabs often run as high as $200,000 per demonstration — much more than the average grassroots peace group will ever have in its coffers.

So who is picking up the tab?

"The major anti-U.S. government demonstrations are organized by people who have been around for a long time, particularly the Workers World Party, which has existed for more than 30 years now and has always supported the enemies of the United States," said Herbert Romerstein, a retired agent of the U.S. Information Agency.

The Workers World Party describes itself as Marxist in nature.

Officially, protest organizers are groups such as Not in Our Name and International A.N.S.W.E.R., but the demonstration's sponsors have long histories of backing anti-government causes.

Not in Our Name is financed by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. I.F.C.O. is a million-dollar-a-year non-profit that supports Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and once sponsored a group headed by Sami Al-Arian — the University of South Florida professor being charged with fundraising for terrorist organizations Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A.N.S.W.E.R. is an offshoot of the International Action Center, which intelligence officials say is a front for the Worker's World Party. A.N.S.W.E.R. canceled a scheduled interview with Fox News but a worker in the Seattle field office acknowledged there are ties.

"There are some Workers World Party members in A.N.S.W.E.R.," said A.N.S.W.E.R. coordinator Jim McMahan.

The International Action Center was founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is a longtime public face of the anti-war movement.

The Workers World Party supports North Korea's brutal regime and I.F.C.O. defied U.N. sanctions when it made a trip to Iraq in the mid-1990s. Now, both are sugar daddies to the anti-war movement.

"The American people have the right to know whether stooges of [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il or Castro or Saddam Hussein are involved in these demonstrations," Romerstein said.

Not a 25-Roll War

Must-read Steyn:

It's interesting how much was clarified in the first hours of the war. On Thursday, the Palestine Liberation Front released a statement announcing the identity of the first verified casualty: PLF "1st Lieutenant" Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz was killed in Baghdad, "while confronting the treacherous US air bombardment on Iraq".

The PLF is the terrorist group that, among other triumphs, hijacked the Achille Lauro back in the 1980s and pushed Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, into the Mediterranean.

What was a PLF terrorist doing attending a war council of Saddam's inner circle in Baghdad? Well, I leave that to all the experts who've assured us that Baghdad has no ties to terror groups.

That was just the first of several myths to fall in the opening shots. If Hans Blix and Jacques Chirac are really interested in continuing with inspections, some of those missiles the Iraqis insisted they no longer have are now available for inspection in the sand on the Kuwaiti side of the border.

On Civilian Control of the Military

Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), left, here with then-Rep. Ed Pease (R-Ind.) in 1998, will serve as an operational law judge advocate in a POW camp. He saw similar service in the first Gulf War.

From the Washington Post article:

"As soon as you heard me call you 'sir,' you should know I'm activated military," Buyer said.

and

Buyer is not the first member of Congress to deploy overseas during wartime, nor is he the House's only active reservist. For example, Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), who flew combat missions over Kosovo and Iraq, has been on active duty at the Pentagon since January. He said he hopes to ship out with a Navy carrier during the House's spring break next month.

and

Members of Congress are exempt from military service if they choose. But Buyer was ready to deploy, his spokeswoman, Laura Zuckerman, said. Buyer declined to be interviewed.

Via Daily Pundit.

Contrast:

Hussein appeared on television in military uniform, as if to demonstrate his role as defender of his country. Hussein has no military experience, but he appointed himself "field marshal" before Iraq's disastrous invasion of Iran in 1980. He last appeared in uniform in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War.

and

Saddam has divided the country into four military sectors, each headed by a relative or confidant. None has had a military career even as an army conscript. They are there to ensure political control and make sure that the regular army has no room for any independent maneuver, including a move to topple the regime. The defense minister, the Army chief of staff and the nation's 20 most senior generals are excluded from the chain of command that Saddam announced.

Veritas

Jason Steorts, Harvard senior, reports via NRO on a campus protest, and sums things up nicely:

The utter irrelevance of these arguments only exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the antiwar movement. Any serious criticism of the war must rely on one or both of two claims: First, that it is not in the security interests of the United States forcibly to remove Saddam from power; or, second, that a war to rid the Iraqi people of a psychopathic dictator is worse for that people, in humanitarian terms, than letting them continue to suffer under him.

Rather than make these claims, Harvard's high-minded intellectuals recite their usual litany of complaints about capitalism, about globalization, and above all, about George W. Bush. Yesterday's protest was an exercise in many things: vanity, condescension, evasion, arrogance, and smug self-righteousness. But it failed miserably as an effort at persuasion. This should come as no surprise to those of us who recognize that war is tragic, but who also know that life under tyranny, or life overshadowed by the danger of apocalyptic slaughter, is more tragic still.

Hitchens on the Status Quo Ante

I've meant to link to this fascinating essay from Monday by Christopher Hitchens, "(Un)Intended Consequences, What's the future if we don't act?", but have been distracted of late. Long excerpt:

As an experiment, let's take a Carter policy. As president, he encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1979 and assured him that the Khomeini regime would crumble swiftly. The long resulting war took at least a million and a half lives, setting what is perhaps a record for Baptist-based foreign policy and severely testing Carter's proclaimed view that war is a last resort. However, of these awful casualties, an enormous number were fervent Iranian "revolutionary guards," who were flung into battle as human waves. Not only did this rob Shiite fundamentalism of its most devoted volunteers, but it left Iran with a birth deficit. The ayatollahs then announced a policy of replenishment, financing Iranian mothers with special inducements and privileges if they would have large families. The resulting baby-boom generation is now entering its 20s and has, to all outward intents and purposes, rejected the idea of clerical rule. The "Iranian street" is, if anything, rather pro-American. How's that for an unintended or unforeseen consequence?

Or take another thought-experiment, this time from one of Carter's lugubrious warnings. There are many smart people who have come to believe that the first bombing of the World Trade Center, in 1993, was in fact a terrorist revenge for Kuwait on Saddam Hussein's part. Ramzi Yusef, generally if boringly described as the "mastermind" of that and related plots—and the nephew of the recently apprehended Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of al-Qaida—may have been an Iraqi agent operating with a Kuwaiti identity forged for him during Saddam's occupation of that country. One cannot be sure. But suppose that this was a terrorist counterstroke of the sort that is now so widely predicted to be in our future rather than our past. Would it have been better to have let Saddam Hussein keep Kuwait and continue work on what was (then) his nuclear capacity? That seems to be the insinuation of those who now argue that a proactive policy only makes our enemies more cross.

Conventional Ignorance

It's Friday, so there must be a great, new essay by Victor Davis Hanson on NRO. Yep, "Dumb and Dumber." Excerpt:

We are presently watching the last hand in a long-drawn-out poker game. All the chips — the EU, NATO, the U.N., European anti-Americanism, French chauvinism, domestic opposition, the future of a democratic Iraq, the very nature of the Middle East, and of the war against terror itself — are now stacked on the table, up for grabs. As some of us once argued, it would have been far better and safer to go in last autumn; but war is full of irony, and so by forcing us to wait, our opponents have only upped the ante and may well lose all that they have so recklessly wagered.

Otherwise Occupied

What are you doing here? (Not that anyone is here.) I'm over reading The Command Post, a new, terrific, temporary group warblog, brainchild of Michele as executed by Alan of Avocare. It's modeled after NRO's also indispensable The Corner. Blogs of War is also following events in great detail.

Steven Den Beste has a useful list of additional internet resources here.

Speculators now give odds of Saddam's removal by the end of the month of 67 percent. I say he's gone (if not already) by Sunday.

The New Unilateralism

On NRO, James S. Robbins writes:

You have heard that the United States is prosecuting this war unilaterally. You probably know this is untrue from firsthand experience. Forty-five thousand British air, sea, and ground forces stand with you, as do 2,000 Australians. Other forces are being offered by Albania, Denmark, Latvia, Poland and Spain. WMD experts have been supplied by Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Germany. Logistical support is coming from Bahrain, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Other forms of support are coming from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Colombia, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. Even the French, who have opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein beyond all reason or understanding, may choose to fight if the Iraqi regime resorts to the use of chemical or biological weapons. We may honor the French troops sent to fight by your side even as we question the motives and judgment of their political leaders. Saddam Hussein, by contrast, is truly alone. He will receive no open military support from any country in the world, and must set machine gun-armed secret police against his own people to prevent his violent overthrow.

The Baluch Connection: Iraq and al Qaeda

Here's an interesting article by Laurie Mylroie, The Baluch Connection, in which she ties together her earlier research (e.g., "The Iraqi Connection," "THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMB: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters", and "Familiar Rogue") to recently-arrested terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once again demonstrating potential links between terrorism and Iraq. Excerpt:

Why should the Baluch seek to kill Americans? Sunni Muslims, they live in the desert regions of eastern Iran and western Pakistan. The U.S. has little to do with them; there is no evident motive for this murderous obsession. The Baluch do, however, have longstanding ties to Iraqi intelligence, reflecting their militant opposition to the Shiite regime in Tehran. Wafiq Samarrai, former chief of Iraqi military intelligence, explains that Iraqi intelligence worked with the Baluch during the Iran-Iraq war. According to Mr. Samarrai, Iraqi intelligence has well-established contacts with the Baluch in both Iran and Pakistan.

NRODT Goodness

From Rob Long's "The Long View" in the March 10, 2003 NRODT:

SATAN: ...winning reelection to the French presidency -- my work...watering down U.N. Resolution 1441 -- my work...keeping the invasion of the Ivory Coast quiet -- my work...disrupting NATO and weakening the smaller EU candidate countries -- my work...my work, my work, my work! You think any of that would have happened without me? Gimme a break.

and

M. CHIRAC: ...at which point I turned to my lover and said to her, "The most absurdist surreality has occurred, ma chérie. The devil himself has appeared to me to offer the most Faustian of bargains." And she and I laughed at the philosophical illogic of it. Later, when I shared the story with my wife, she, too, found it ludicrous. And so I categorically reject the suggestion that he and I had any form of bargain. We met, yes. We dined, of course. But the meeting came to naught.

The Rumsfeld Phase

Steyn:

...The Arabs would benefit from a little more straight talk: they're very bad at confronting the consequences of their recklessness. And that's one mistake Rumsfeld's never made, either at the Pentagon or in his pharmaceuticals business - in both of which, as he points out, if you get it wrong, "people will die". Right now, on Old Europe, South Korea and much else, Rummy's getting it right. Mrs Thatcher used to say, a propos Viscount Whitelaw, "Every Prime Minister needs a Willie". Every President needs a Rummy. We have had a six-month Powell interlude. The Rumsfeld phase is about to resume.

(emphasis added.)

Azores and War Hawks

Well, the Bush/Blair/Aznar meeting in the Azores seems to have shaken things up quite a bit.

Here's Drudge:

From the Financial Times article he links:

War against Iraq appeared to be all but inevitable after the leaders of the US, Britain and Spain on Sunday night set a deadline of Monday night for fading diplomatic efforts to win United Nations support for their hardline stance.

At an emergency summit in the Azores islands in mid-Atlantic, President George W. Bush and prime ministers Tony Blair and José Maria Aznar said they would abandon the quest for a new Security Council resolution authorising military action if agreement had not been reached by the end of Monday.

"Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world," said a sombre President George W. Bush. He said it was time for the international community to stand by its commitment to peace and security "by supporting the immediate and unconditional disarmament of Saddam Hussein".

In reaction, the implied probability of Saddam's downfall by the end of March (originally discussed here) increased to 52 percent (a one-day increase of 63 percent -- wish I'd purchased yesterday). Here's a graph of trading in this contract today:

The asking price for the June 2003 contract is now 95!

While there has been much speculation as to why this meeting was held there, I am pleased to discover that the Azores "were named after a bird from the hawk family that was found in the area."

Update: Iraniangirl is now posting on the terrific Winds of Change site. While her English is unsurprisingly imperfect, it's great to be able to read her words. She writes:

Iraqis has also agreed with the war that for sure will have positive effects in their destiny…For we Iranians, this war & the next one that will be against Iran in any ways it wants to be, is just like a great revolution & for sure all Iranians are longing for that…

Occasional Photograph

Here are a couple of late-night photographs of my Manhattan neighborhood during the snowstorm-before-last:

Touring the Web

Via The Agitator, I see that "anarchist-anachronist-economist " and son-of-Milton, David Friedman, has a new blog. This should be interesting. And wouldn't it be great if he could get his father to start a blog?

Anna, the Belligerent Bunny, has an excellent and very amusing post up (with lots of photos), "The Ides of Marching with Commies" on the latest International A.N.S.W.E.R. rally in DC. A couple excerpts:

I attended -- not to endorse, but rather to Fisk. Now, crowds are heck on bunnies. Everybody gets all wet-eyed and asks to pet the bunny. And I don't want to smell like patchouli oil for the rest of the day. So for the shots from the interior of the crowd, I sent an ally. With that out of the way, let's take a look.

and

International Answer likes to call itself a front for unreformed Stalinists, but you can't fool me. As you can see from the sign, they like it when folks show them the money. And they aren't above shameless mendicancy, either.

On the Blogs of War site, John links to a fascinating Debka report on a recent mediation between Saddam Hussein and an American Colonel. A taste:

”When do you intend to attack and try to kill me?” Saddam asked.

”Basically, after the March 19 deadline passes,” came the reply.

”You managed to get me to destroy my missiles,” the Iraqi leader said, pausing for effect. “Is the 19th the date of the attack or just the day when you want me to leave Iraq? After all, that’s what you came for.”

The US colonel answered: “According to our orders, that’s the date when we are supposed to head out and get you. And we’ve already been told, ‘Don’t come back with him left in place.’”

Saddam was not pleased. “You are the sons of Satan. Go to hell. I’m not afraid of you.”

”We may not even wait until the 19th now,” the colonel shot back.

The full Debka report also contains this interesting fact/rumor:

DEBKAfile’s Iraqi underground sources reveal that, on the same day, a failed attempt was made on the life of Saddam’s elder son Uday at the al-Jadariye Boating Club on the Tigris River. There with a party, he is thought to have escaped with injuries from this second known assassination attempt, while three of his bodyguards were killed.

Cinderella Bloggerfeller is seeking suggestions for a new blog name. I'm obviously no good at this sort of exercise, but I'm kind of fond of “Mogadon: Shadow of the Rhododendron.”

Perhaps coincidentally, Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries is seeking suggestions for a name for a newborn baby girl (not his). If you have a favorite, let him know. I won't be submitting “Mogadon: Shadow of the Rhododendron.”

I Read It on the Internet, So It Must Be True

Via Dustbury, via The Sound and Fury, the humor that troubles the disposition of my body is:

Which Humor
Troubles the Disposition of YOUR Body?

This potentially dangerous imbalance can be treated with Leaches - by drawing off a portion of Sanguinous Mass through phlebotomy. More conservatively, a manurning libido can be quenched by a cool food such as lettuce. Acid foods are a counter-acting agent, while sweet foods can intensify the imbalance and should be avoided.

Blood, a hot, sweet, tempered, red humour, prepared in the meseraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus (chyle) in the liver, whose office it is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and colour, being dispersed through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards in the arteries are communicated to the other parts.

Well that's good to know!

I Am What I Purchase

On my walk from work to the subway last night, a fellow offered to sell me a (presumably stolen) laptop computer, still in the box. While I would never knowingly buy stolen merchandise, I did spend some time thinking about how much one might pay for an unseen computer (or, possibly, brick).

That reminded me of a day years ago when my former roommate and I purchased from a similar fellow a keg of beer he claimed to have found. We rolled the keg home, placed it in the bathtub, covered it with ice, and proceeded to invite everyone we knew over for a party. Sadly, the beer had gone bad, so we had to rush out and purchase more, but the party was good and continued for three days.

In any event, the laptop incident seems to have put me in a shopping mood. I spent the morning browsing for apartments in a city possibly to be named later. I spent the afternoon looking for flights to the brother's impending wedding.

I finally got around to ordering an LGF t-shirt:

With luck, resistance by anti-idiotarian women in Manhattan will now be futile.

I also had an Amazon gift certificate to expend, and did so (and them some):

Forgot to buy this one, though, and am kicking myself for it:

Next time, of course.

So, now you know me.

A New Foreign Policy

It's Friday, so there must be a great, new essay by Victor Davis Hanson on NRO. Yep, "Muscular Independence." Excerpts:

Bases in this baffling new world are a polite mechanism for blackmail and concessions — and are increasingly as much trouble as they are worth. Whether we think we protect them or they think they are exploited by us, it matters little: We are held hostage by our very professed desire to want something they have. Every time we beg for votes in the General Assembly, try to buy a Turkish vote, bully a pacifistic South Korea, or beseech the Saudi kleptocrats for help, we only weaken America. And we end up looking hypocritical in the bargain — as recently as when we thanked the dictator Musharraf while castigating a republican Turkey.

and

The American people are not naifs who yearn for isolationism, but they are starting to ask some hard questions about the way we have been doing business for 50 years, and it may well be time to grant the French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, and a host of others their wishes for independence from us: polite friendship — but no alliances, no bases, no money, no trade concessions, and no more begging for the privilege of protecting them.

I think this is correct.

Bad Publicity Better Than None?

Here's a bit more of what I've read on France in the last couple of days:

Paul Johnson:

We have been reminded that France is not to be trusted at any time, on any issue. The British have learned this over 1,000 years of acrimonious history, but it still comes as a shock to see how badly the French can behave, with their unique mixture of shortsighted selfishness, long-term irresponsibility, impudent humbug and sheer malice. Americans are still finding out--the hard way--that loyalty, gratitude, comradeship and respect for treaty obligations are qualities never exhibited by French governments. All they recognize are interests, real or imaginary. French support always has to be bought. What the Americans and British now have to decide is whether formal alliances that include France as a major partner are worth anything at all, or if they are an actual encumbrance in times of danger.

David Warren:

The French et al. smell blood, they are not going to back off now when they see the prospect of doing real damage. Their strategy was from the beginning to split the British from the Americans by humbling Mr. Blair, to delay the inevitable full-scale attack into the Iraqi hot season, when the fighting would be more difficult and thus the casualties higher; to isolate the U.S. diplomatically; to galvanize the international peace movement against the Bush administration; and to improve Saddam's prospects for creating a catastrophe when war comes.

The French betrayal is as total as it was surprising, after earnest promises from President Chirac to support the U.S. in return for elaborate concessions on U.N. Resolution 1441. They think they now have President Bush in a fox-trap: from which he cannot escape without chewing off a leg. They may be right: he may now have no choice but to chew off the British leg.

But whether they are right or not, they will now reap the whirlwind.

Charles Krauthammer:

The French are bent not just on opposing your policy but on destroying it -- and the coalition you built around it. When they send their foreign minister to tour the three African countries on the Security Council in order to turn them against the United States, you know that this is a country with resolve -- more than our side is showing today. And that is a losing proposition for us.

Michael Kelly:

In Washington and New York and Paris and London, the idea of war with Iraq is still, theoretically, theoretical. Although no one believes that war (or regime change and a temporary U.S. military occupation of Iraq without war) will be avoided, it is still barely possible, for the purposes of news product and national posturing, to pretend that the last bit of jaw-jaw remaining has some connection with reality: that it matters what judgments pass so finely parsed from the thin lips of Dr. Blix, the Great Equivocator; or what the precise details are of the latest ploy by the French to save their great, greasy oil contracts with their client-tyrant Saddam Hussein.

Ralph Peters:

The French would love to prevent the war in the Gulf, thus setting themselves up as the champions of tyrants everywhere and of Arab tyrants in particular. But Paris realizes there is really very little chance of deflecting Washington. So their essential goal is to complicate matters, to vilify America and to make the United States pay the highest possible price for any success it achieves, while remaining ready to capitalize on any American failures.

Read the whole thing!

and

Ralph Peters has canceled his orders for 2000 Bordeaux. And he will cancel his support for the Bush administration if it does not punish France for its betrayal.

The French may yet regard "cheese-eating surrender monkey" as a compliment.

The Road to Blogdom

Argh...bad title...too early to post.

Here's a weblog for scholars of 1974 Nobel Laureate (economics) F.A. Hayek:

The purpose of the weblog is to give web browsers a convenient format to eavesdrop in on the latest topics & conversation among the 500+ Hayek scholars participating on the Hayek-L email list. The Hayek-L blog will also provide an opportunity to provide additional material linked thru htlm relevant to ongoing Hayek-L conversations...

Hayek's "Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel" is here.

Excerpt:

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success", to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Speaking of which, I see that my copy of The Road to Serfdom is missing. Not good.

Inspiration at Last?

Via Ananova, via the Belligerent Bunny, we are inspired:

Website call to 'adopt a drinker and save a pub'

Country pub regulars have been put up for adoption on an internet site in an attempt to raise funds for rural drinking houses.

[City] pub regulars have been put up for adoption on an internet site in an attempt to raise funds for [urban] drinking houses.

From this week, people will be able to sponsor a regular drinker for £20 a year, which is split between charities supporting rural pubs and the drinker. In return, sponsors will receive a certificate, a signed photo of their adoptee, a beer mat and a newsletter giving updates on how their drinker is faring.

From this week, people will be able to sponsor a[n occasional] drinker for [$200] a year, which is [given to Oscar Jr.]. In return, sponsors will receive [a misguided email thanking them for the MacArthur genius grant and a very occasional notification of blog-posts] giving updates on how their drinker is faring.

One regular up for adoption is Arthur Ayres, a 90-year-old retired gamekeeper who has been drinking at the Tavern Inn in Kemble, near Cirencester, for 52 years.

Landlady Nyra Stepp said Arthur - nicknamed Weasel - is very popular with other drinkers.

"He has his own chair with a picture up on the wall. He knows everyone in the bar, has his own glass and is the only customer who gets waitress service.

"He comes in most days and last year we worked out that he has drunk an entire swimming pool of beer in his 52 years."

Okay, I'll give the money to Weasel. He's earned it.

Then again, what was he doing for his first 38 years?

Dr. Strangeblix

"Or How I Learned to Start Worrying & Looking for Bombs." Via Buzz, play the Flash game.

We'll Always Have Paris?

This famous, boisterous, 18th century playwright Beaumarchais lived close by, just up the street, at 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple. There he wrote in 1784 “Le Mariage de Figaro” adapted to the opera “Le Nozze di Figaro”, by Mozart in 1786. There he founded in 1776 his “House of Commerce” and from 1776 to 1782, Beaumarchais provided arms and soldiers to the Americans, helping their revolution and the independence of America.

I really enjoyed a stay at this beautiful little hotel. I wonder if I'll ever feel inclined to return...

Always, right? (Warning: Indymedia.)

"France is not indulgent towards Iraq, but any action aiming for regime change would contradict the rules of international law and open the door to letting things get out of hand."

and

In a clear dig at the United States, Villepin also argued there was a moral imperative for making Iraq's arms an issue of collective responsibility and collective legitimacy, rather than seeing one country impose its will.

"Democracies lose their meaning if they don't respect abroad the principles upon which they're based at home," he wrote.

The conservative daily Le Figaro echoed Paris's sceptical stand in an editorial on Monday charging Washington was trying to deceive the United Nations by holding out the option to go it alone if the Security Council rejected its tough resolution.

"As George Bush has said he wanted to work through the United Nations and the Security Council, it would seem logical that he accepts the choices on offer," it wrote.

"But more and more it seems that this approach, which is still the wisest, is a decoy... The more a war against Iraq seems inevitable, the more the American position weakens."

Via Instapundit, contrast:

French soldiers at their main base in Abidjan used teargas to disperse marchers denouncing a power-sharing accord which they said President Laurent Gbagbo only agreed to under pressure from the former colonial power to end a four-month civil war.

and

Gbagbo agreed to share power with political rivals and rebel chiefs on Saturday and named respected former premier Seydou Diarra, who has his roots in the rebel-held Muslim north, to head a "government of national reconciliation."

Demonstrators in Abidjan were particularly maddened that rebels said they had been offered defence and interior ministry portfolios in the new government.

"It is not for the French to decide what to do with our country," said one woman protester in Koumassi neighborhood. "There is no question of the rebels joining the government. We cannot agree that they set foot here."

Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer and for a long time a haven of regional peace, was plunged into crisis by a coup attempt on September 19.

The putsch failed, but ensuing civil war has left hundreds dead and split the country of 16 million on ethnic lines.

Update:

On NRO, Rod Dreher says, "I Like France."

Excerpt:

Look, I find it impossible to defend France's politics or its diplomacy, but that's not why I go to France every chance I get, and will go again. France is a deeply wonderful place to visit, and a place where the people know a great deal about how life should be lived. It is a country for grown-ups. And they damn sure know how to eat.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Bigwig has an excellent post up comparing the United Nations to a dysfunctional, insufficiently exclusive Homeowner's Association. A couple of excerpts:

What consequences there are, say for ignoring 12 year of resolutions demanding that one destroy one's weapons of mass destruction, come about not because of France or Germany or Russia or China, but because of the United States and Britain. The U.S. is not only the U.N.'s host and main financier, but the primary enforcer, which makes the United States the guarantor of the primary international diplomatic process. The main beneficiary of this support has been the rest of the world, especially Europe, which has been at peace since the United States assumed that role. The Unites States has been the Atlas holding up the United Nations for more than 40 years. To describe the U.S. as contemptuous of that body doesn't even rise to the level of an insult. It's just stupid; empty rhetoric served up to the politically ignorant by the politically frustrated.

and

This will happen because the reasons the United States had for becoming the main guarantor of the international process are the same as they were back in 1945. At heart, we're not isolationists, we're bobos, and we see the world as a great big gated community. We have to deal with Iraq because Saddam keeps starting fires in his backyard, hoping that they'll burn down the neighbor's house so he can build there. The problem is, one a fire starts you don't know what it's going to do, and there's a number of houses in his section of the neighborhood that, far from being up to code, are built entirely out of straw. At this level, there are no cops to call, no sheriff to come over to confiscate Saddam's gasoline and toss him in the hoosegow for thirty days. There's only the Homeowner's Association.

What we wanted the UN to do when it was founded was to go around making sure that everyone mowed his lawn, kept his house up, and respected the property rights of his neighbor. What we've discovered is that this is not enough, that we also need to make sure that the man of the house isn't a crazy drunk who beats on the wife and kids at the drop of a hat. Eventually those guys move on to letting the yard go, then start threatening the neighbors.

We're beginning to realize that this is our own fault, because we let anyone one who mouthed agreement with the neighborhood covenants to join. They didn't have to be in compliance, they just had to agree that in principle the covenant was a good thing. A country could have the international equivalent of cars up on blocks and a yard covered in kudzu, but if they said the right words they got a key to the pool and invitations to the yearly barbecue.

Read the whole thing -- it's good stuff!

Andrew Stuttaford Roundup

Stuttaford versus Goldberg on the best cheap NYC hot dog.

I'm with Stuttaford on this one.

He also cites a producer quoted in the New York Observer on Sean Penn:

“Sean Penn has a constitutional right to speak out about the war. Good for him. But don’t whine about the repercussions. I have a constitutional right not to go bankrupt hiring him. If there’s a black list, it’s not going to be created by the studios; it’s going to be created by the American public.”

Finally, more Nurse Bloomberg:

Nurse Bloomberg is a coward as well as a bully. It turns out that his ludicrous new anti-smoking law is going to be enforced selectively. The New York Post is reporting that health inspectors will issue tickets to the owners of bars and restaurants that ‘permit’ smoking, but not to the smokers themselves. This is nonsense, and it puts the proprietors of these businesses in an untenable position. Why should they be solely responsible for enforcing this law? Either smoking is illegal in such places or it is not. The law should be enforced properly, and that means by police, not barmen. Bloomberg has championed a grotesque, intrusive and expensive piece of legislation. He should now be made to enforce it.

And if that makes him a laughing stock, that will be exactly what he deserves.

New Home

A kind welcome to any visitors.

I'll soon put up a link on the old site announcing the migration to this new one. It's still somewhat of a work-in-progress, but it will be easier to post here while I fancy things up than to post there and then import here. I'll leave the other site up to preserve others' links and as a backup.

I've imported all of the posts from the old site (even those I regret, and except for a few place-holders created for permalinking purposes), and I've copied all of the comments (even those I regret). I haven't figured out how to post correct dates and times for those comments, though -- any hints?.

I created this new site not due to any problems with the former host, though I did want a url that I could actually memorize, nor due to any problems with Blogger. Blogger is much easier to get started with. I would have floundered without it, but I liked many of the features offered by Movable Type.

So, here I am. Thanks for visiting.

Evil?

Propaganda:

Korean women's important role in society

Pyongyang, March 7 (KCNA) --The Korean women, who account for a half of the country's population, play a big role in society. The law on equality of the sexes, the first of its kind in Korea, was promulgated in July Juche 35 (1946) so that the women could take part in social and political activities as men did.

They, who had been illiterate, benighted and politically rightless until the mid-20th century, have extensively participated in the management of the country's political affairs and played an important role in economic sectors thanks to the correct policies of the government.

Women make up 20.1 percent of the deputies to power bodies at all levels and nearly 50 percent in the nation's working force.

Tremendous are the achievements the Korean women have made for the country and the people.

During the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War, nursery An Yong Ae, pilot Thae Son Hui, driver Kim Hak Sil and many other women performed heroic feats in battles for defeating the enemies and defending the country.

In the wartime, postwar rehabilitation and construction period and Chollima great upsurge period, many women made a great contribution to the development and prosperity of the country, demonstrating the dignity of the nation.

Among those who became models of the time and heroines in recent years when the country was in hard time are world marathon champion Jong Song Ok, agricultural official Pak Ok Hui and scientist Hyon Yong Ra.

Now when the imperialists' war preparations are being further intensified to hurt the dignity and sovereignty of the country, a large number of girls are serving in the army and getting married to officers in frontline areas.

Today the Korean women deem it their worthwhile life and happiness to devote themselves to the country and the people and to society and collective.

Testimony:

At the end of February 1990, we were carrying edible clay in bags. Some male prisoners on the other side of the river must have seen us eating the clay. They looked like skeletons with skulls and bright eyes. They gestured to us begging for some clay. None of us responded for fear of punishment. Desperately, three of them came to our side of the river to get some clay.

Suddenly, we heard shooting. It was a horrible scene when the shooting ended. We were all so scared. The intestines of one of the male prisoners were protruding. But he was still alive because we heard his feeble voice whispering, "Help!" The second prisoner had his leg broken and bleeding. The third prisoner was dead instantly. Soon a truck arrived and an officer said, "Put them all onto the truck, dead or alive." We were told to resume our work. That night, some twenty women complained of pain and died as a result of having eaten too much clay.

and

One day in May 1988, I had been in the prison for only six months and I was still trying to get accustomed to the prison conditions. I was working on the second floor of the export factory moving half finished products from one table to another for assembly. Dung lunch time, I saw a pile of fresh cabbages at the kitchen entrance through the windows. This was the only time I saw cabbages in such good shape at the prison. I was so hungry that I began to wonder who would be the lucky people to eat them.

A little later when I came back to the same spot, I saw some fifty women prisoners eating the cabbage from a bowl with their fingers. The cabbages appeared somehow steamed. Soon, I saw the prisoners vomiting, bleeding from their mouths and moaning on the ground. I could not stay to watch more.

Read the whole thing, if you can.

And, via Drudge tonight, evil bombast.

Pyongyang: We'll put a torch to New York

and

Kim Myong-chol, who has links to the Stalinist regime, told reporters in Tokyo that a US strike on the nuclear facility at Yongbyon "means nuclear war".

"If American forces carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Yongbyon facility, North Korea will immediately target, carry the war to the US mainland," he said, adding that New York, Washington and Chicago would be "aflame".

After Iraq, if necessary, but soon, please.

Saddam Dead Pool Update: April It Is?

The implied probability of an April removal of Saddam is now up to 75 percent. Overall, the speculators' probability of his removal by June has increased to 84 percent.

Meanwhile, via the Taipei Times, Bloomberg reports that markets are looking up in Baghdad, too:

War concerns have sent share prices lower around the world, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 6.8 percent since Jan. 1. Inside the Baghdad stock exchange's two-story concrete building, investors are upbeat.

The benchmark BSI index, which closed at 2,212 on Monday, has gained 31 percent this year, according to data provided by the exchange's research department. The big movers: Baghdad hotels such as the Palestine, the Ishtar and the Sadir. Investors are betting that a quick war, followed by the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, will lead to a surge of visitors and tourists.

and

"There's optimism about a better future," Makhtoum said. "Maybe international companies will return to Iraq someday."

Finally, prospects continue to improve in Kuwait, too:

I hope this evidence will cheer Bill Quick.

Back Soon, I Hope

Real life has again interrupted all planned blogging on my part. As the title of this post indicates, I hope to be back at it soon. With a domain name that I can remember.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by the site.