I SPENT THE AFTERNOON buying a new (environmentally friendly!) lawn mower and mowing my lawn. Then I read a book and had a nice dinner. I’m taking the rest of the evening off in an effort to stay sane amid all the war hysteria. I’m also taking a moment to think of our troops, who don’t have that luxury.

I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the Command Post, which should be here now (at least, the new URL of www.command-post.org is working for me; if it doesn’t work for you try this one instead), and the many fine blogs linked below. Oh, and don’t miss this piece by Howard Kurtz on weblogs and war.

And if you want to help out some service people, Operation Uplink lets you donate calling cards so that they can stay in touch with the folks at home.

See you tomorrow.

WHEN YOU HEAR CLAIMS OF “CIVILIAN DEATHS” keep in mind this post from the BBC Warblog:

One of the problems in the fighting in Umm Qasr has been that some of the conscript army appeared to surrender, but then disappeared.

It’s thought they then took off their uniforms, became civilians, but kept their guns. And so they were effectively acting as a guerrilla force which makes it very hard for conventional armies to fight that because they don’t want to risk killing civilians.

Soldiers out of uniform, of course, are war criminals. I eagerly await the European protest marches regarding this practice.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Iraqis have executed American prisoners of war. I eagerly await the demonstrations over that, too.

ANGRY CLAM NOTES THAT IT’S NOT THE POOR WHO ARE DYING in this war, despite Rep. Rangel’s claims.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS REPORT, HANS?

About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad. . . .

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert.

Stay tuned, but this looks like another Blix embarrassment, following upon the Scuds that weren’t supposed to be there.

UPDATE: A couple of readers say that MSNBC is reporting (on TV) that this story is false. I can’t find anything about it on the website at the moment. As I said, stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story from Fox, this story from ABC news, and this story from Agence France Presse say that there was a chemical weapons factory found. I suppose that could change, but for now the story seems reasonably credible.

LOTS OF STUFF AT THE COMMAND POST. Also, I’ve been remiss in not mentioning The Agonist earlier, but when I tried to visit his site it was down.

UPDATE: Note: The Command Post is now here instead of at the above link, because of — hold your breath at this improbability — some sort of Blogger/Blogspot glitch.

JAMES RUMMEL thinks I’ve blacklisted him. I haven’t. Has anyone else had this problem?

THE ANGLOSPHERE MEME continues to spread. I think that this article confuses the term — at least as Jim Bennett and others have used it — with British-style imperialism, though.

MAX BOOT ON DIPLOMACY AND “UNILATERALISM:”

Bush has gotten the most flak for, in essence, placing too much stock in the U.N., not too little. Like his father, he thought it could become an effective collective-security organization once it was freed of Cold War constraints. This approach worked in the first Persian Gulf War, because his father was confronting a clear-cut case of aggression — Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But not even Bush père could have gotten U.N. approval for regime change in Baghdad.

That’s why he didn’t try. His son did — and nearly succeeded. His mistake was becoming a little too ambitious. Not satisfied with U.N. Resolution 1441, which passed unanimously in November, Bush unsuccessfully sought a second resolution (or, more accurately, an 18th). Now, like every U.S. president since 1945, he has embarked on military action without explicit U.N. authorization. . . .

It’s true that acting “unilaterally” — actually with a substantial “coalition of the willing,” in Bush’s words — increases distrust of U.S. power. But it’s far from clear what the consequences are. Will France and Germany stop fighting al Qaeda? Refuse to continue helping to rebuild Afghanistan? Torpedo the free-trade treaties they have supported? All possible, but all unlikely, because they didn’t undertake these actions as a favor to Washington — it’s in their self-interest to promote trade, stamp out terrorism and foster peaceful development in war-torn lands.

Political scientists warn of “bandwagoning” against a hegemon, and they might see some evidence of this in the U.N. debate, where France, Russia and China ganged up on the United States. But only one of these nations — China — is making an effort to challenge U.S. power, and then only in one region. France and Russia, along with the rest of Europe, are doing little or nothing to build up their military capabilities. If they were serious about taking on America, they would be forming a military alliance against us. No one imagines this will happen.

Why not? Because for all their griping about the “hyperpower,” our fair-weather friends realize that America is not Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany.

Indeed.

THEY’RE NOT PEACE PROTESTERS:

Two Jewish youths were hospitalized Saturday afternoon after being stabbed in Paris by individuals who had taken part in an anti-war demonstration. . . .

One young man was stabbed and lightly wounded after a group of men noticed his yarmulke. He was taken to the hospital for treatment. The attackers are believed to have been immigrants from North Africa.

They’re just the enemy.

UPDATE: Reader Khalid Yukub emails from Britain and sends this link, with the suggestion that it somehow parallels the story above. I can’t read the Arabic, but it has a picture of what I assume is supposed to be a dead Iraqi civilian killed by Americans. After the Baby Milk Factory episode in the last war, I can hardly swear to its accuracy — and, statistically, a dead Iraqi civilian is far more likely to have been killed by Saddam than by Americans. But assume it’s what it purports to be, a dead Iraqi civilian.

War is hell. Civilians get killed. The United States is trying hard — far, far harder than any Arab nation ever has — to avoid killing civilians in the course of war. Nonetheless, it still happens. To suggest that somehow that sort of thing is the same as deliberately targeting someone for stabbing because of his religion is — well, it’s typical, is what it is.

UPDATE: Khalid emails:

I’m not suggesting that there is a direct parallel between the attack on the Jewish youth and the killing of the Iraqi civilian, although both attacks are on innocent people and are indeed illegal and immoral. I’m suggesting that your coverage, in general, focuses more on the suffering (or jubilation) of some people more than others. Violence you agree with is downplayed and/or justified, while violence you (often rightly) disagree with is highlighted to bolster your black-and-white view of the world.

Uh, no. “Both attacks” are not illegal and immoral. Collateral damage in a war is neither, though it is unfortunate and the United States has made unprecedented efforts to avoid it — far more than against Germany in World War II despite lame claims that this is a “racist” war. It’s not remotely comparable to deliberately stabbing someone because he’s wearing a Yarmulke. (And the original email sure seemed to suggest that to me).

As to whether my presentation reflect my beliefs — you bet it does. I also go out of my way to offset the biases of mainstream media, who swallow Iraqi propaganda rather uncritically (as with the “Baby Milk Factory” episode).

What I find interesting is that any act of violence by the United States seems always to be condemned, while almost any act of violence by third world thugocracies is excused. If recognizing that is a “black and white view” then so be it.

If Saddam, or Osama, had the power that the United States enjoys, how would they be exercising it? And yet that difference is seldom recognized.

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish thinks I’m giving Khalid too much credit here:

It’s Jew-hatred, plain and simple, Glenn. Don’t let him distract you with trying to get you into moral arguments. These two young Jewish men did nothing. “Immigrants from North Africa” stabbed one, tried to break into a Jewish building to stab more, and instead beat the hell out of the next Jew to exit the building.

She goes on to say that Khalid’s guilty of the same kind of sentiments. Well, I don’t know Khalid. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt here. The war has everyone on edge, and his comments may reflect that. I don’t want to see innocent people killed, and I don’t see any evidence that Khalid does, either. I think it’s worth making clear, however, that although some Muslims seem determined to see this as a war against Islam, it’s not. I don’t want it to be, and I don’t think anyone much in America does. Certainly Bush has gone out of his way to make that clear, as he did with his visit to a mosque right after 9/11. And those Muslims who want to turn it into one don’t have the best interests of Muslims, or anyone else besides themselves, at heart.

Anyway, for more on civilian casualties, etc., read this lengthy and thorough post by Jacob Levy.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Another email from Khalid makes clear that he condemns the stabbing above, as I thought. Unlike rather a lot of my anti-war emailers, he has managed to be quite civil, too, which I appreciate. The email from the “peace” movement has never been especially pacific, and it’s gotten a lot worse lately.

JEFF JARVIS REPORTS:

DENVILLE — Holding signs that read “Honk if you hate Saddam” and “Honk if you support our troops,” about 50 boisterous but orderly Denville middle school students held a pro-war rally Friday on Main Street.

The spontaneous demonstration began when students, on their way home from Valleyview School after a half-day, picked up cardboard and started scrolling their feelings on the makeshift signs.

Slowly, more children joined in and, by 1:30 p.m., the students had seized the corner of Broadway and East Main Street — to the delight of the multitude of passing motorists honking horns around them.

“Too many people are against the war,” said 14-year-old Zac Walsh, one of three students who organized the rally. “We wanted to show our support for it.”

Here’s a list of pro-liberation rallies, most with pictures. I haven’t seen much reporting on these, though I understand that Ashleigh Banfield covered one yesterday.

UPDATE: Here are pictures from a pro-America demonstration in Knoxville. Looks roughly comparable to the anti-war demos here in terms of size, but I didn’t see it.

AMITAI ETZIONI reflects on journalistic values.

ANNA WRITES on the failures of the peacemongers. There are quite a few on her list. Meanwhile Russell Wardlow says in my name but not yours, all right.

ON TO BAGHDAD: Friendly fire seems to be the biggest danger so far, and I suspect that there’s a systematic problem in communications involved — though it may be just that the absence of other fire makes it seem so conspicuous. Here’s a UPI story too.

UPDATE on Friendly Fire: Apparently, the British plane didn’t have a working IFF system. Why the hell not?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Gerald Hanner emails:

Sometimes the IFF/SIF goes out in-flight. There are no backups. In addition, there are times when you want to turn off your IFF/SIF to avoid giving the enemy a chance to interogate it themselves. I don’t know what they’re doing in Iraq. In many cases, most of them peacetime, IFF/SIF is not strictly needed. In this case it was sorely needed. I’m wondering what AWACS was doing during all of this.

Me, too.

BILL HERBERT HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON PRESS FREEDOM, and he wonders why Reporters Sans Frontieres aren’t complaining about Baghdad’s expulsion of journalists.

Meanwhile Susanna Cornett points out security issues with embedded journalists — and, surprise, the French are involved.

UPDATE: Randy Paul sends this link indicating that they’re at least criticizing Castro for his crackdown on journalists in Cuba.

“I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam.” Why yes, yes, you were. But at least he’s learned:

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad – a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, “Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good”. He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam’s regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq’s oil money went into Saddam’s pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.

It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I told him: “Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am not with the UN, I’m not with the CIA – I just can’t help you.”

Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to face. I told a few journalists who I knew. They said that this sort of thing often happened – spontaneous, emotional, and secretive outbursts imploring visitors to free them from Saddam’s tyrannical Iraq.

I wonder why they haven’t been reporting on that more? Here’s my favorite part, though:

The driver’s most emphatic statement was: “All Iraqi people want this war.” He seemed convinced that civilian casualties would be small; he had such enormous faith in the American war machine to follow through on its promises. Certainly more faith than any of us had.

Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don’t think he believed us. Later he asked me: “Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?”

Heh.

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE? “Kurds hemmed in by Turds”? Eew. I wonder if any of those defecating San Francisco protesters were involved.

From The Telegraph:

Thanks to reader Eric Williams for the screenshot.

HOW ARE THINGS GOING? Well, pretty well so far. Iraqis are surrendering, the biggest casualties seem to be from accident and friendly fire, not enemy action, and Iraqi leaders seem demoralized while Iraqi citizens seem pleased. Still, it’s too early to say, really. Steven Den Beste is happy with how things are going, but has a list of things he’s worried about.

JAY CURRIE and some other Canadians have set up the Canadian Friends of America website. Drop by and say hello — and if you’re an American, say thanks!

THE PARABLE OF THE GIANTS: A tale of considerable relevance for our time.

AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE relating to the D.C. sniper.

UPDATE: Here’s more. This is very troubling if it turns out to be true. (LATER: Dixie Flatline clarifies and retracts a few of his more overwrought statements, which he added in response to Oliver Willis after I initially linked this report. I’m not surprised. Everybody gets overheated from time to time. Even Oliver.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more:

“Two men are being held, one of which is a Muslim soldier who is an engineer,” Ramsay said.

“It appears he was hiding in a barrack where the attacks happened. A second man, who we believe is not an American soldier, is being held by the military.

“As the man who carried out the attack moved away there was some shooting. He was shot in the leg. He was held on the ground less than 100 yards from where the attack happened.”

He said fears about the Muslim soldier’s behaviour had been raised in recent days by colleagues.

As I say, troubling. Here’s another report, via Howard Owens’ constantly updated warblog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tacitus has more.

LOTS OF GOOD STUFF at Outside the Beltway and Letter From Gotham. There’s a lot of war coverage on BlogCritics, which you might not have expected. And, of course, Jeff Jarvis’s Big Media warblog has lots of cool stuff, too. And here’s a journalist’s blog by John Pendygraft of the St. Petersburg Times.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn looks at war coverage — and North Korea is getting worried:

The United States says it wants a peaceful settlement to the dispute. But the U.S. war in Iraq is getting intense study from North Korean officials, Strong told reporters.

“They are watching it very carefully and with deep concern, and questioning what this means in terms of the U.S. ultimate intentions toward them,” Strong said.

I’d be concerned, too, if I were them. Especially because if the war continues to go well, the United States won’t need much time to replenish its stocks of JDAMs and Tomahawks, which I suspect North Korea has figured out. I also think there’s more going on with regard to North Korea than meets the eye.

(Both links via Bill Quick). Meanwhile, Tom Daschle is happy about how the war is going.

And check out the BBC Warblog, which is kicking CNN’s ass, especially since CNN shut down Kevin Sites’ blog (though it would be better still if individual items had permalinks). Excerpt:

Basra :: David Willis :: 1446GMT

I’m looking out now as this large convoy and can see local people in Basra . There are lots of people coming out, lots of children and they are applauding. The people coming out to shake the hands of American forces who are seen as liberating the city of Basra. This has a significant impact on morale.

No doubt it’s affecting a lot of people’s morale. And there’s this, too:

Two direct blows on the Iraqi command – including Thursday night’s strike on the headquarters of Qusay Hussein, son and anointed heir of President Saddam – appeared to have unnerved Iraqi officials. But so long as the rest of Baghdad remains almost unscathed, ordinary Iraqis appear relatively buoyant, as they reach for the possibility that maybe this war will be less punishing than they had feared. Perhaps, they reasoned, the Pentagon’s warnings of days of shock and awe were merely part of a propaganda war meant to unnerve Iraqis.

If that was the intent, it appeared to be working its magic on Iraqi officialdom. By Mr Ahmed’s side, the information minister, Mohammed Sayeed al-Sahaf, similarly attired in olive green uniform, was spitting fury at the selection of targets in Thursday night’s air attacks.

Of course, it’s from that warmongering, Bush-loving propaganda outlet, The Guardian. But then there’s this:

Interviewer: You probably are aware of the demonstrations being held around the world. A lot of them were happening before you came here, and probably in the month that you were here more have popped up around the world. What would you say to these demonstrators who are pretty much living in free and democratic countries and here they have a great deal to say about the U.N. and the United States coming into Iraq?

David: Well, I would tell them I’m proud of you. That’s what democracy is all about. That’s what freedom is all about. Free, you can talk, you can do anything you want to do. But the people of Iraq cannot do it. Where you been when Saddam Hussein killed 100,000 Kurds? Where you been when he killed a million Iraqi soldiers and Iraqis and Iranis? Where you been when he occupied Kuwait and he killed over a thousand Kuwaitis? Why nobody says nothing?

Interviewer: If Saddam Hussein were in front of you instead of me what would you say to him?

David: (Laughs) I would tell him, “What comes around goes around. Now, your time to go. Your time is up. Now, we’re twenty-first century. No room for dictators.”

This is good, too. And Howard Owens’ big-media warblog is a regular linkfest.

BRYAN PRESTON HAS MORE INFORMATION on the Paris Ricin episode’s linkage to both Iraq and Al Qaeda.

PAUL JOHNSON WRITES: “In one blow, Chirac shattered the U.N., NATO and the EU.”

JAMES LILEKS’ OBSERVATIONS about the BBC:

It’s interesting, listening to these guys – I’m unsure how it’s possible to sneer the entire time you’re speaking. I fear the announcer’s face will stay that way. Perhaps you can recognize an old Beeb hand by the permanently curled lip. I’ve tuned in twice in half an hour; both times they were talking about the FAILURE to get Saddam, and what this FAILURE means for the war which might be hindered by this initial FAILURE. And then the reporter – a female one, with a sneerier sneer – says the question now is when the attack will come, and whether the President will give his generals permission to act with a free hand.

Um . . . haven’t we already settled that question? I know it conflicts with the Beeb’s view of Bush as a vulture with a bloody globe clutched in one claw, the other holding the leashes of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I heard hours ago that theater decisions had been left to the folks who do this for a living.

Yeah, and Congress voted its approval. Twice. Now Mickey Kaus has been listening and says:

Now I know what Andrew Sullivan’s been talking about! … And James Lileks is right about the British network’s near-permanent anti-U.S. sneer. (There was also a hilarious segment in which the Beeb’s man-on-the-scene, in the best British tradition, had chosen to report on the mood of the American citizenry from “Lake County” in California — i.e., California wine country. He managed to find a few Republican citizens and make them sound like comically rabid John Birchers.) … If I were in the Bush White House, I too would be paranoid and suspect the BBC’s airing of Bush’s pre-speech primping wasn’t just an honest mistake. …

Yes, it’s funny how often anti-Americanism goes hand-in-hand with being a state-funded apparatchik. That goes back to the anti-capitalism point mentioned below.

As Andrew Sullivan notes, a lot of people are experiencing epiphanies as the dishonesty of once-respected media institutions becomes apparent.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Speaking of BBC lip-curling: I’ve just seen one reporter on BBC News 24 question an Iraqi at an anti-war protest. The reporter obviously didn’t do any kind of pre-rehearsal, because things did not go As Planned.

The young lady turns out to be absolutely pro-war, despite having family members in Bagdad, and was about 2000% more eloquent than some of the more telegenic air-heads that the BBC seems to have this curious talent for singling out, and then airing footage of over and over again.

Finally the reporter asks “Why are you at an anti-war rally if you agree with the war?” in a rather peeved tone of voice. The gist of her answer is that most of the protesters don’t have the faintest idea of what it’s like to live under a regime such as Saddam’s, which is right of course.

Then the reporter turns to the camera and says “Well, there you go, one Iraqi who approves of the war” as if this was some mind-boggling occurance, and as if their own footage didn’t show Iraqis dancing in the streets when the US Army showed up, and as if there was not one single Iraqi, anywhere else on the entire planet, who might have a itsy-bitsy-teensy-weeny little bit of an issue over how Saddam has been running their country.

No surprises here. (LATER: Here’s an account of what seems to be the same interview, from OxBlog.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg has been listening to The Beeb too, and has some not-very-flattering observations.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Perry DeHavilland writes:

The coverage of SkyNews has been head and shoulders better that the rest, as was also the case during the fighting against the Taliban/Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. CNN and ITN are both fair to adequate, and the BBC is hovering between adequate and truly dire, with dreary hackneyed commentary filled with technical errors. Are the BBC incapable of finding a few ex-military people to employ who might know that there is no such thing as an ‘Abrahams’ battle tank?

It is also easy to see the institutional political biases of the different channels: SkyNews has been repeatedly showing an extended clip of bemused Royal Marines in Umm Qasr surrounded by exuberant Iraqi men welcoming them as liberators… I saw one clip of about 6 or 7 seconds long of this on the BBC. Once.

Interesting.

JIM MILLER has some thoughts on unilateralism.

JAMES MORROW POINTS OUT more evidence of an Iraq/Al Qaeda link in the carbombing that killed an Australian cameraman in northern Iraq.

ANTIWAR HYPERVENTILATION: The Politburo notes:

The Village Voice’s James Ridgeway claims that “the enormous ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign against Baghdad, now being carried out by the U.S. military to ensure there is no safe place left to hide in the capital city, will inevitably recall the Allied firebombing of Dresden during World War II” in which 250,000 civilians were killed. As we noted below, the Iraqis have claimed that the first night of “shock and awe” claimed three lives.

Poor guy. Ridgeway just has too much invested in the notion of a murderous America to face reality.

THOSE DAMNED INCONVENIENT TRUTHS AGAIN:

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip “had shocked me back to reality.” Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera “told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn’t start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam’s bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head.”

Makes it hard to portray them chiefly as victims of American imperialism, doesn’t it? Not that some people will let the facts get in their way. But some, thankfully, will. Perhaps we’ll see some highlights from this video broadcast at the Oscars tomorrow night, a tribute to the power of film to reveal truth. . . .

GROWING ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM IN EUROPE: Sharing a common source. To that I’d add the growing anti-semitism and anti-Americanism among some in the American left.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

MORE IRAQIS:

‘You’re late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious’

‘I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand’

Of course, the quote’s from that warmongering Bush mouthpiece, The Guardian, . . . .

“PEACE” PROTESTERS WITH MOLOTOV COCKTAILS: There are some thoughts over at The Volokh Conspiracy.

THESE GUYS ARE ALWAYS BACKING THE WRONG HORSE:

Thousands of Palestinians on Friday demonstrated across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in support of Iraq, waving Iraqi flags, holding pictures of Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat and calling on the Iraqi leader to “burn Tel Aviv.”

You know, Bush will probably push through some kind of two-state settlement after things in Iraq are settled down. But given the Palestinians’ willful self-destructiveness on so many levels, it will be hard to say that they deserve it. And those who portray the Palestinians as victims need to recognize that they’re mostly victims of their own hatred and imbecility.

RUSSIAN PRIORITIES:

“We will have to defend our interests so that the contracts which were signed under Saddam Hussein are not annulled as lacking legal force and to make sure the Iraqi debt owed us is respected,” he said.

Baghdad owes Moscow at least £4.5 billion in Soviet-era debt.

The request to expel diplomats and freeze Iraqi assets was “not made by accident,” Ivanov said.

“In this way, they are saying that everything before today was illegal, all contracts signed before are illegal, and legality begins with the arrival of a new administration, even a temporary one.”

He catches on pretty quick, though. Did these guys really think that there wouldn’t be a diplomatic price?

DEFENSE TECH has a lot of interesting observations on precision weapons, war-fighting, security at Los Alamos, and more.

ENTIRE POPULATION OF IRAQ WIPED OUT: I get this number by taking the Iraqi claim of 250 civilian casualties, which I just heard on Fox, and then multiplying it by the Marc Herold polypseudomathicator. . . .

UPDATE: Actually, as H.D. Miller points out, even Marc Herold can’t seem to spin this into a massacre:

So, one is left with the conclusion that if even Marc Herold can produce a credible number of no more than 8 civilian deaths, after three days of intense warfare, then American forces are certainly taking extreme care in conducting this war.

And, unfortunately for Marc Herold and company, the point is also proven that when you’re forced to use real numbers in your statistics you often end up making the case for the very people and causes you vociferously oppose.

Those damned inconvenient facts again!

IRAQI-AMERICANS talk about Saddam:

Alroumi, 44, fled his home city of Al Basrah in 1991 and hasn’t seen his family since. He was granted political asylum in the United States after a stint in a Saudi Arabia refugee camp.

Across the table, Alroumi described watching dogs pick at the bodies of citizens killed by the Iraqi Republican Guard after the Gulf War in 1991. Like his friends, he fled to Saudi Arabia, and eventually, the United States, where he now works as a mechanic.

“I am worried about my family, but I am happy to get Saddam Hussein,” he said. “I hope he’s running down the highway with (deputy prime minister)Tariq Aziz.”

As news spread of Iraqi troops setting fire to oil wells ahead of advancing U.S. troops, Alrikabi thought again to his days as a young student.

He recalled watching televised speeches of Saddam in which he threatened to leave “an empty country — just dust” to any foreign force that tried to invade.

“That’s what he’s doing now,” he said. “Saddam’s burning my oil. It doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to the Iraqi people.”

Saddam sees the country as his personal possession. Ordinary Iraqis, naturally, resent this. Another one of those weaknesses I mention below.

TOMMY FRANKS is doing a good job in his press briefing, which I’m watching at the moment. The reporters, also, don’t look quite as dumb as they did at Rumsfeld’s briefing the other day. Well, most of them.

JEFF JARVIS JOINS THE CHORUS condemning CNN’s decision to make Kevin Sites shut down his warblog. And he’s a big-media guy. Who wears suits!

MORE PICTURES OF IRAQIS CELEBRATING LIBERATION — via The Politburo, which has a lot of good coverage.

IRAQI TROOPS ARE SHOOTING THEIR OWN OFFICERS rather than fight:

IRAQI conscripts shot their own officers in the chest yesterday to avoid a fruitless fight over the oil terminals at al-Faw. British soldiers from 40 Commando’s Charlie Company found a bunker full of the dead officers, with spent shells from an AK47 rifle around them.

Stuck between the US Seals and the Royal Marines, whom they did not want to fight, and a regime that would kill them if they refused, it was the conscripts’ only way out.

In total, 40 Commando had collected more than 100 prisoners of war yesterday from the few square miles of the al-Faw peninsula that they controlled. Two of them were a general in the regular Iraqi Army and a brigadier. They came out from the command bunker where they had been hiding after 40 Commando’s Bravo Company fired two anti-tank missiles into it. With them was a large sports holdall stuffed with money. They insisted that they had been about to pay their troops, to the disbelief of their captors.

These were the men who had left their soldiers hungry, poorly armed and almost destitute for weeks, judging by the state we had seen them in, while appearing to keep the money for themselves.

Such “leadership” is more common than not among the world’s armies, and probably goes a long way toward explaining U.S. military superiority all by itself. Salam Pax features this quote from Samuel Huntington on his page:

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

But having officers who don’t abscond with their troops’ pay is, in fact, one example of the superiority of Western ideas, and it’s one that translates rather directly into superiority where organized violence is concerned. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Dictatorships like Saddam’s — which based on history and prevalence might be regarded as the “natural” form of human governance — turn out to be lousy at war. Democracies embodying Western ideas turn out to be a lot better. That’s not a coincidence, however much non-Westerners might wish to believe that it is.

UPDATE: Hey, maybe these protesters were actually Iraqis!

MORE MISSILES AND BOMBS IN BAGHDAD — and, though less televised, elsewhere — but not much real news. It’s talking-headville on the cable networks, and overall the coverage remains rather boring.

Mostly there are lots of live camera shots of the Baghdad dawn with nothing much happening. Cruise missiles hit some buildings and bunkers, but Baghdad as a whole seems gratifyingly intact. Well, gratifyingly except maybe to some of the news folks, who would no doubt like to have more to show.

Anyway, since the Baghdad skyline figures so prominently in the news, and since I neglected to install a webcam in Baghdad prior to the outbreak of hostilities, I’m instead offering this photo of the Knoxville sky, taken a few hours earlier from near the University of Tennessee campus, looking west. It’s intact, too.

No missiles here, for which I — and the rest of Knoxville, no doubt — am grateful. Good night. See you tomorrow.

IRAQ AND TERRORISM: Alex Knapp has a roundup.

KEN LAYNE WRITES: “CNN is so Gulf War I.”

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs reports that some idiot on CNN radio described Iraq as “a Republic like the United States.”

TACITUS OFFERS a photo-Fisking.

Some antiwar types are upset at my comments below about a peaceful liberation of Iraq being the “peace” movement’s worst nightmare. I think that the post to which Tacitus is replying proves my point — not that it needs proving to anyone who has been paying attention.

Anyway, here’s Worst Nightmare II. Heh.

UPDATE: And here’s a different kind of “photo-Fisking.” Heh, again.

HEY — THERE ARE TOO French fighters in Iraq!

HMM. A SUDDEN CALL FOR BAGHDAD’S BEST NEUROSURGEON. Who could be needing him?

A TROUBLING REPORT:

CIA sources have revealed that several Iraqis are being hunted in Mexico.

The six suspects are thought to have chemical and biological weapons with them.

According to reports, the men have tried to persuade smugglers, who profit from helping people cross the Mexican border into the US, to get them into America.

With any luck, they’ll die of thirst in the desert.

UPDATE: Mexico is denying this report.

THE COMMAND POST says it has caught CBS in flagrant photographic fraud.

KARL ROVE’S USEFUL IDIOTS: This report from San Francisco says it all:

In the Financial District, the demonstrators were of the traditional kind — fatigue jackets and granny dresses. Indeed, around Montgomery & Market, the happenings had the air — the sexy air — of old Berkeley. But at the Civic Center, at traffic intersections around Mish, 7th, 8th, and along Van Ness and up through the Tenderloin, things were absurd and self-indulgent. The demonstrators were of the freakish sort: clown clothes, bicycles, and cans of plastic string. But it wasn’t fun.

At 7th & Mish, by the U.S. Court House, I sat in a van driven by Nathaniel Shelton, who transports patients to and from Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. We were stuck, along with a fleet of Fed Ex drivers, just after 9 a.m., as demonstrators rode bikes in a circle in the intersection, closed it off with colored string, and berated the truck drivers.

“It’s almost as if they were protesting us,” said Shelton. Indeed, the enmity and ridicule of the protesters was directed at working people trying to get their work done. The massive Court House, a seat of government power, was ignored. At the Civic Center, a group of demonstrators defecated. Then they left, leaving the mess to be cleaned up by others. Not only disgusting, but this idiocy belittles the proud tradition of civic protest in our national history … Sigh …

They protest in the name of the working people, but they don’t actually like working people.

A NEW MTV POLL SHOWS that the antiwar movement is out of touch with America’s youth — the majority of whom support the war.

AN ENTIRE IRAQI DIVISION HAS SURRENDERED. Keep ‘em coming.

AFRAID OF COMPETITION? CNN has put the kibosh on Kevin Sites’ warblog.

IRAQIS TRY TO SURRENDER TO WAR CORRESPONDENT — an email account via Nick Denton.

KEEP YOUR EYE OFF THE BALL: I expand on some advice by Matt Welch, over at GlennReynolds.com.

WI-FI RULES: Spent a little time at the Downtown Grill and Bar, a brewpub owned by a friend from high school, and persuaded them to add free wireless Internet access.

There are a lot of people moving to fancy downtown apartments in Knoxville’s Old City, and they think that this will be a lure for business, especially during off-hours. I think they’re right. And since my readers — to judge by email — have a rather strong interest in the Knoxville barmaid community, I’m including this photo, taken atop the brewing tanks. The IPA is especially good.

UPDATE: Hey, Stephen Green is following my example:

Later tonight, my brother-in-law Rick and I will go support the troops by over-tipping cute cocktail waitresses who might have boyfriends or husbands serving in Iraq, right now as we speak.

Frankly, I’m shocked and saddened that no one else has had the courage to do something for these brave gals, and I assure you Rick and I are both beaming with pride at the prospect of tonight’s patriotic action.

He’s a great American.

“HUNDREDS OF IRAQIS EAGERLY SURRENDER:” Well, yeah. We’ve had our learning curve, and they’ve had theirs. And what they learned last time was that surrendering wasn’t so bad, while fighting was pretty damned lethal.

Then again, other people seem to have figured out what’s going on, too:

In the town of Safwan, Iraqi civilians eagerly greeted the 1st Marine Division.

One little boy, who had chocolate melted all over his face after a soldier gave him some treats from his ration kit, kept pointing at the sky, saying “Ameriki, Ameriki.”

This is the “peace” movement’s worst nightmare, isn’t it?

NOT ALL FRENCH POLITICIANS ARE STUPID. SOME ARE PROPHETIC. Tuesday:

Liberation reported that Dominique Dord, a deputy from the majority UMP party, said during Tuesday’s assembly debate, “We would look really stupid if Iraqis applaud the arrival of Americans.”

Today:

“No Saddam Hussein!” called one young man. “Bush!”

Another young man named Abdullah cheered the arriving Americans. “Saddam Hussein is no good. Saddam Hussein a butcher.” . . .

“Americans very good,” a man named Ali Khemy said. “Iraq wants to be free.”

Some of the townspeople chanted, “Ameriki! Ameriki!” Others put makeshift white flags on their cars and trucks. And many simply patted their bellies in a sign of hunger.

These are all scenes from the liberation of Safwan, Iraq — a “poor, dirty, wrecked” town near the border with Kuwait. Before crowds of Iraqis, American Marines used their jeeps to pull down portraits of Saddam. Maj. David “Bull” Gurfein told the people of Safwan: “Saddam is done” and launched them in a cheer: “Iraqis! Iraqis! Iraqis!”

Like I said, prophetic.

FRANCE CONTINUES THE PROCESS OF SELF-MARGINALIZATION and of undermining the U.N.:

The French president said at a European Union summit he would “not accept” a resolution that “would legitimize the military intervention [and] would give the belligerents the powers to administer Iraq.”

“That would justify the war after the event,” Chirac told reporters.

We should keep the United Nations, and its cadre of neocolonialist “internationals” as far away from Iraq as possible, and we should do our best to underscore the United Nations’ fecklessness and futility at every turn.

Er, to the extent that Chirac doesn’t do it for us, that is.

UPDATE: He’s hard at work, our Jacques:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) – European Union (news – web sites) divisions over Iraq (news – web sites) widened Friday when three anti-war states agreed to hold a summit on defense integration without Britain, while London stood by charges that France had wrecked diplomacy in the crisis.

As EU leaders wrapped up a second day of tense talks, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt announced plans for France, Germany and Belgium to meet next month to discuss integrating their armed forces more closely.

A military union of France, Germany, and the dreaded Belgians! That’ll show ‘em! Well, it’s showing us something, all right. This way they can be ineffectual in unison, instead of individually. . . .

UPDATE: Brian Erst emails: “Ineffective in unison. Now we know the French meaning of ‘multilateral.’”

MAJOR AIR ATTACKS IN BAGHDAD — I’m watching Rumsfeld’s briefing now.

UPDATE: Rumsfeld says the Iraqi government is losing control. He’s gleefully pointing out examples of Iraqi officials’ “confusion.”

“The regime is history.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeez, some idiot just asked Rumsfeld if we’re winning so easily that we’ll be “seen as a bully.” Rumsfeld’s response, basically, is “only by idiots.”

ACADEMIA’S TRENT LOTT MOMENT:

On Saturday, at one of the state’s public colleges, another man said something even worse about another black female government official.

In front of an overwhelmingly black audience of about 100 at Coppin State College, Amiri Baraka, New Jersey’s Lunatic Laureate, called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a “skeeza.”

For those of you not in the know, a “skeeza” is a derogatory street term used in reference to a woman and as offensive as calling her a prostitute. It’s a noxious, bilious, disgustingly sexist term and one of the worst things you could call a woman.

It is something Rice certainly is not. Baraka knows she’s not. Those blacks who laughed, giggled, tittered and applauded when Baraka said it know she’s not. But what was the reaction of these black folks when Baraka finished his invective masquerading as poetry that he called “Somebody Blew Up America”?

They gave him thunderous applause and a standing ovation. At no time was there the indignation that was present when O’Malley said much less about Jessamy. I guess Baraka can get away with it because he hates all the right people.

I’m waiting for the chorus of condemnation for this slur. You know it would be forthcoming if Trent Lott had said it. Instead, we get this:

Robert Cataliotti, an associate professor in Coppin’s department of humanities and media, said Baraka was paid for his appearance, and he defended his being invited to speak.

“[Baraka's] a major figure in the development of African-American literature,” Cataliotti said. “I’m not here to judge the content of his poem. He has the right as an American to express his opinion.”

And others have the right, and perhaps the duty, to condemn his opinion — unless they share his ugly views.

FAISAL JAWDAT FISKS THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT in one stinging sentence.

JONATHAN LAST WRITES THAT BIG MEDIA ARE FINALLY CATCHING UP with guerrilla media. Or at least trying to. Evan Coyne Maloney gets a mention.

THIS PBS NEWSHOUR TRANSCRIPT shows Iraqi-Americans jubilant about the invasion of Iraq.

I’m glad to see this stuff — but how come they weren’t doing more stories on this kind of thing a month or two ago, when it might have had an impact on the war debate?

Hmm. . . .

NOW THE LEFT CAN HATE SADDAM TOO: Jonathan Adler details his environmental crimes.

LILEKS HAS BEEN WARBLOGGING. Here’s my favorite bit:

3:10 PM NPR is interviewing a Saudi editor, who warns us that the average Saudi – who of course holds Saddam in contempt as a brutal butcher – will nevertheless be very angry if America kills fifty Iraqis and continues to block UN resolutions on Israel. I say when this war is over we couple the issue of Palestinian rights with Saudi women’s rights. Self-determination for everyone. The Pals get autonomy; Saudi women get driver’s licenses. Agreed?

Heh. Read it all, and don’t miss this:

5:17 PM News report: Hans Blix admits that he would have never have found all the WMD. Thanks, Hans. Much obliged. I’m guessing that he was paid by the week, not by the discovery; if we’d given him a bonus for Finding Stuff, and the bonus exceeded what he would have made in a year of desultory squinting, we might have had the material breach in week one.

Indeed.

WILL SALETAN FINDS COMIC RELIEF AT THE UNITED NATIONS:

Fischer and de Villepin have declared passionately for months that war would be wrong and that their governments wouldn’t stand for it. So what are they doing about it, now that it’s started? The same thing they did about Saddam Hussein’s rearmament: nothing. Sloth and cowardice, it turns out, are as agreeable to American aggression as to Iraqi aggression.

“The Security Council has not failed,” Fischer told fellow council members. “The Security Council has made available the instruments to disarm Iraq peacefully. The Security Council is not responsible for what is happening outside the U.N.”

Wait, let’s hear that again. The Security Council is not responsible for what is happening outside the U.N.

And to think some people said the United Nations was useless.

Saletan continues:

Let’s see. The Security Council negotiation process failed to give pro-war nations the legitimacy they sought. It failed to give anti-war nations an effective veto. It failed to keep the peace. A massive American-led assault on Iraq is underway—I’d call that an alternative—and nobody’s paying attention to Fischer’s urgently relevant remarks. I’ve underestimated the German sense of humor.

De Villepin followed Fischer’s speech with an equally indispensable lecture on the wisdom of France. The U.N. weapons inspections, he explained, had merely been “interrupted” and would soon resume. To those who think this war will eradicate terrorism, de Villepin warned, “we say they run the risk of failing in their objectives.”

Fair enough. So here are our options: the risk of failure or the certainty of it. Gentlemen, gentlemen. Your words are as compelling as your deeds.

If the Franco-German axis had set out deliberately to construct a compelling case for American unilateralism and the futility of the United Nations, it could hardly have done a better job.

DOCUMENTARIAN DAVID HARDY writes that Bowling for Columbine shouldn’t be eligible for an Academy Award as a documentary because — by the Academy’s own standards — it’s not actually a documentary. But will the Academy listen?

THE ARAB (WELL, ISLAMIC) STREET SPEAKS:

The “Great Satan” has invaded Iraq but students at Tehran University seem pleased at the prospect.

“It will be a good thing to have American troops in Iraq. Perhaps that will bring change to Iran,” said Namin, a lanky engineering student strolling to class.

“Maybe that will put more pressure on the regime here.” Unlike fellow Muslims in the Middle East or their predecessors 23 years ago who seized the United States embassy, students today are not seething with anger against America and are unmoved by the government’s daily references to “the enemy” in Washington.

“I think only about the consequences of a war. If the war has good consequences, let it be,” said another student, Mohammad. “We’re not protesting like European students. We don’t have a democratic government like they do. We’re not acting like them because we’re not in European shoes.”

Politically incorrect attitudes on campus are not helping calm the nerves of the country’s conservative leadership, which appears genuinely concerned at the implications of “regime change” next door.

Heh. It should be.

BLIX SAYS IRAQIS IN VIOLATION: A day late, and a dollar short, as usual.

THE GLOVES ARE OFF: Britain is releasing figures on Franco-German trade with Iraq:

As Tony Blair prepared to meet President Jacques Chirac at the European Union summit in Brussels last night, Downing Street drew attention to statistics that detail the value of EU sales to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The figures show that since 1997, France and Germany have exported goods worth more than £1.7 billion to Iraq, compared to British exports worth £193 million.

Government sources claimed France and Germany interpreted UN sanctions more liberally than Britain.

“More liberally,” eh? Indeed. Meanwhile, Blair and Chirac are not exactly getting along at the EU summit:

The diplomatic war of words between Britain and France over Iraq reached new heights last night as Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac clashed at a European Union dinner in Brussels.

Downing Street made clear its disgust at the French president’s behaviour after he insisted on removing a paragraph from the summit communique expressing regret that Iraq had not responded to UN demands to disarm under resolution 1441.

In a withering reference to the French president, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “One is always surprised when people do not want a reference to the unanimous decision of the UN.”

But Mr Blair put his foot down when M Chirac also tried to remove a reference in the declaration stating that the EU’s aim remained the “full and effective disarmament” of Iraq.

Chirac’s fuming impotence is beginning to look comic, rather than sinister.

UPDATE: Then there’s this:

European leaders today expressed personal condolences to Tony Blair over last night’s helicopter crash in Kuwait – but the French president, Jaques Chirac, was not among them.

And it’s headlined in The Guardian, of all places.

UPDATE: Reader Xavier Basora emails:

You’ll need to correct the last paragraph,. Early this morning I listened to Blair’s press conference on CNN after the meeting and he stated publically that Chirac handwrote a personal letter of condolences to him; the government sents its condolences to the British. I don’t have a link yet but one should be up by this afternoon.

What? The Guardian wrong? Actually, what’s most interesting about the Guardian story isn’t the story, but the strong anti-French slant — which becomes even more interesting if the slant is so strong as to be false. I think this means that Tony Blair’s left flank is well-defended, thanks to growing anti-French sentiment in Britain.

SKBUBBA WRITES:

I think the fact that Baghdad is still largely intact (among other things) is evidence they may have actually gotten Saddam. It sounds like they may be exploiting the breakdown of command and working other channels to arrange some sort of surrender, thus avoiding massive destruction of Iraqi infrastructure (not to mention civilians). Andrew apparently agrees. This would be a good thing, at least in terms of reconstruction and “democratization” efforts, and for humanitarian considerations. This would also reduce the likelihood of massive refuge problems in neighboring countries.

So far it seems like the war is being prosecuted with remarkable restraint and a subtlety that was not evident in the pre-war rhetoric and blustering. On the other hand, today is another day and more surprises could be in store. If so, I’d look for fireworks around 3:00 to 4:00 AM Baghdad time, which would not only provide cover of darkness but would also coincide nicely with network prime time in the U.S. and present the opportunity for dramatic accounts of “daring pre-dawn” raids, which I know Wolf is just dying to say on the air.

And I know the world is breathlessly awaiting analysis and commentary by some anonymous Bubba, so there you go.

Of course we are. At least, I was! Meanwhile, both this Andrew and this one do seem to agree that we may have gotten Saddam after all. This article from the Washington Post (which has the New York Times beat hollow on war reportage) says that intelligence officials think Saddam was in the bunker, but don’t know if he survived. We’ll see. Interestingly, it’s probably not in anyone’s interest, on any side, to go public with definitive news of Saddam’s life or death just yet, even if they know for certain.

And most of the pre-war bluster about massive casualties and destruction came from peace activists and gullible journalists, I think. Of course, that only made it more credible to some. . . . Hmm. Maybe they’re not just Karl Rove’s useful idiots — maybe they’re Donald Rumsfeld’s useful idiots, too. But hey, at least they’re making themselves useful for a change!

SO FAR, SO GOOD:

KUWAIT CITY, March 20 — U.S. and British ground forces punched into Iraq across a broad front tonight after a booming artillery barrage, seizing territory along the Kuwaiti border with only modest resistance and pushing on toward the key southern city of Basra. While the sweeping land invasion began under a hazy desert moon, a second torrent of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed several buildings in Baghdad.

The long-awaited ground war started a day earlier than planned because of President Bush’s decision to launch the “decapitation” attack on the Iraqi leadership early this morning, U.S. officers said. Although the invasion was clearly underway after months of buildup, U.S. defense officials characterized the movements as the first step in a much more massive push toward President Saddam Hussein’s headquarters in the Iraqi capital.

The news isn’t exciting, but that’s a good thing.

HERE’S AN ACCOUNT OF PRO-LIBERATION ACTIVISM by Brandeis University’s student group, United We Stand. I like the part about attending extra classes, to make up for the anti-war students who were on “strike.”

TIRED OF WAR-TALK? Check out the NASA Solar System Simulator, which I found via The Sleaze Report. (I don’t know why — there’s nothing sleazy about it, it’s very cool. . . .)

And, of course, Gizmodo just keeps plugging along with cool new gadgets, most of which I’d like to own. Finally, this post about wireless pizza blogging is largely war-free.

IF YOU’VE MISSED IT BEFORE, Outside the Beltway is a warblog that’s worth reading.

SPENT SOME TIME WATCHING CABLE: Fox, CNN, MSNBC — even ABC and NBC. They’ve spent a lot of money so that their correspondents can beam images back via videophone. So far all it’s producing is a lot of blurry images of the rear ends of tanks and AFVs while color commentators desperately try to make it interesting.

Personally, I think that’s a good thing. When your invasion is unopposed, and thus boring, things are going well indeed. But the network executives must be gnashing their teeth. So far the TV coverage of our war is pretty dull.

If you get bored, try checking out this collection of maps and links to maps, courtesy of Quana.

TONY ADRAGNA has a firsthand report from the rather unimpressive D.C. antiwar protest.

FUNNY, you don’t hear much about North Korea at the moment. And North Korea’s being awfully quiet itself, too. If I were the suspicious type, that would make me wonder.

JIM HENLEY has a pretty damn interesting suggestion for who ought to be in charge of postwar reconstruction in Iraq: Vaclav Havel. Read the post.

I wonder what Matt Welch thinks about it?

HMM. Limitations on aircraft near Disneyworld and Disneyland went into effect Tuesday. There were some others involving the New York and D.C. areas, but I agree with John Moore that these seem a bit, well, specific. I wonder if they’re in response to an actual threat, as opposed to mere precautions?

THE UNITED STATES is confiscating Saddam’s assets:

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, hereby determine that the United States and Iraq are engaged in armed hostilities, that it is in the interest of the United States to confiscate certain property of the Government of Iraq and its agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities, and that all right, title, and interest in any property so confiscated should vest in the Department of the Treasury. I intend that such vested property should be used to assist the Iraqi people and to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq, and determine that such use would be in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States.

(Via Mike Campbell, who reports that it’s $1.4 billion).

SUPPORT FOR WAR IS INCREASING among Australians, just as it is among Americans and Britons.

ARE THE ANTI-NEOCONS Saudi stooges? Matt Welch explores the question.

PRO-BLIX DIXIE CHICKS NIX PIX FOR STIX! Heh. Let’s see if Kaus can match that one.

GERALD HANNER EMAILS:

I just saw a CNN segment done in Dearborn MI. The reporter was interviewing people at a mosque just after evening prayers. They were Iraqis, and they were very much in favor of ridding Iraq of Saddam — even if a few more of their countrymen die in the action. All of them had lost family to Saddam’s tender mercies.

Seems to me that trumps anything the anti-war [folks] put up.

I wish I’d seen it.

IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST, READER ERIK JOHNSON EMAILS:

While “High Noon” is an excellent refutation of Tom Friedman’s errroneous Western-posse hypothesis, one need look no further than “The Searchers,” the greatest Western ever made. John Wayne gets a posse together (the UN) to hunt for his niece, but then ditches them when they don’t have the stomach to stalk the Apaches (Iraq) who kidnapped (terrorized) his family (the US and its allies). He takes one cousin (Britain), albeit reluctantly, in a relentless search for his niece, whom he eventually finds while destroying a good part of the tribe that performed the kidnapping (terror). He returns her safely (regime change) to family friends so she can live a normal life (democracy and freedom).

In my very humble opinion, Tom Friedman has not watched enough of the great Westerns. Otherwise, he’d find perfect parallels in these two movies. Whenever anyone calls someone a “cowboy,” I think of John Wayne and Gary Cooper — who better represented our American ideals? Whoever thought of “cowboy” as a term of denigration? It’s the highest compliment you can pay an American!

Indeed. That’s about the size of it. . . .

Heck, has Friedman even seen City Slickers?

Meanwhile Scott Rogers emails from Washington University School of Law:

Here at WashU’s law school we’ve been showing different movies to that highlight aspects of the law. This message went out yesterday. I only mention it per your link to Geitner Simmons.

“In view of the international events taking place this week, the award winning Japanese film–A Taxing Woman–which as to be shown this week in the Harris Institute International Film Series will be postponed. In its place we will show as A Paradigm of American Justice, the classic film–High Noon–starring Gary Cooper (who won an Oscar for his role) and Grace Kelly. The film will be shown at 2 pm in the small courtroom.”

Bravo.

REUTERS CALLS IT the day of the warblogs. (Via Jeff Jarvis).

SADDAM’S BUNKER HAS BEEN LOCATED — sounds plausible to me.

WHO ARMED SADDAM? And who does he owe the most money to? Take a wild guess.

STRIKE TWO for the Dixie Chicks — posing for a PETA anti-fur ad? What were they thinking? Here’s the money quote:

THE TRIO POSED in a field of flowers, wearing nothing but blossoms and their strategically placed instruments. A photo of the ad can be seen on the photographer’s Web site, sebreephoto.com.

It turns out that the Chicks are staunch animal-rights supporters, but at the last minute the group’s management put the kibosh on the ad.

“The Chicks themselves were lovely about the whole thing, but their management got worried that some of their fans were rifle-toting, Bambi-shooting types who would take offense at an anti-fur, pro-animal message,” says a source. “They forbid release of the ad because they were worried about backlash or boycott. They even tried to pay PETA $10,000 to say it never happened.”

Somehow, I think those “rifle-toting, Bambi-shooting types” will be buying CDs by some other artists from now on.

UPDATE: Meanwhile some people are muttering darkly of “blacklists” because of anger at antiwar celebrities. Hey — it’s not a blacklist when you piss off your fans. Calling it that just serves to underscore the combination of overentitlement and moral unseriousness that marks entertainers today. As Yvonne Zipp writes:

A boycott is not the same as a blacklist. No one is hauling celebrities in front of committees and threatening them with prison. Nor are they being told they can never work again if they don’t “name names.”

Entertainers are free to use their fame to promote their political views, and those people who don’t find them entertaining anymore are free to change the channel.

It’s called the free market.

Maybe that’s why so many celebrities hate that, too.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

“Somehow, I think those ‘rifle-toting, Bambi-shooting types’ will be buying CDs by some other artists from now on.”

In that case, I’ve got the perfect headline for you: “Pro-Blix Dixie Chicks nix pix for stix!”

I love it.

DOUG “InstaLawyer” WEINSTEIN took some pics of the rather lame protest at the federal building here in Knoxville. I believe that they managed to turn out a lot more people — though still not that many — for the previous Gulf War. I think the anti-war movement is dying, for lack of a rationale. Note the dummy sprawled on the pavement. I don’t know what that signifies. I guess I could suggest that it stands for the movement, but that would be needlessly cruel. (There are a few more people off to the right, shown in some other pics, but not many).

Doug’ll have more pictures on his site a bit later. I’m hosting ‘em for him on my server, since he’s blogspot-only, the poor bastard.

UPDATE: Doug’s got his pictures up now. Here’s a link, though of course the one above works, too.

BRYAN PRESTON writes that there’s an Iraq connection to the Paris ricin discovery.

“SHOCK AND AWE” — PR JiuJitsu taking advantage of anti-American hyperbole?

We’ll see. I love the idea, though.

STREAMING VIDEO of air raids in Baghdad at the MSNBC front page. Click on “video.”

RICIN IN PARIS? Hmm. I guess that appeasement stuff isn’t working.

PARIS (Reuters) – The French Interior Ministry said on Thursday that traces of the deadly toxin ricin have been found in the Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris.

A spokesman told Reuters that two small flasks containing traces of the poison were discovered in a left luggage depot at the mainline railway station which serves the south of France.

In January, British anti-terrorist police arrested several people in connection with the alleged discovery of ricin in a tiny north London flat.

I wonder if any Algerians are involved?

VICTORY CONDITIONS: How will we know when we’ve won? Discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

STEPHEN REINHARDT, ARCH-FEDERALIST: This 9th Circuit opinion says that non-commercial kiddie porn can’t be regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause. I’ve barely skimmed the opinion, but I note that the Sixth Circuit, in U.S. v. Corp held the same thing, and the opinion was written by Harry Wellford, a rather conservative judge.

Reinhardt’s evil hidden agenda, however, was no doubt to render my latest law review article — which just came out a couple of weeks ago and deals with the general reluctance of Federal appellate courts to take Commerce Clause limitations seriously — immediately obsolete. Oh, well: you want timeliness, read the blog. Er, which you are, of course.

(Via The Volokh Conspiracy).

JASON KOTTKE and Taegan Goddard are wondering if the start date for the war was leaked to media folks early. Meanwhile, Gotham predicted the date a while back, using a rather different methodology.

HOWARD OWENS is blogging up a storm.

L.T. SMASH BLOGS FROM THE FRONT:

Saddam fired a couple of those Scuds that he doesn’t have at me this afternoon.

He missed.

Heh.