WORTHWHILE CANADIAN POLL:

Ottawa — Support for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s handling of the Iraq war plunged in the past week, with opinion split virtually evenly outside Quebec, where antiwar sentiment is strongest, a new Globe and Mail/CTV poll suggests. . . .

Pro-coalition rallies were planned for today in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Red Deer, Alta., and in Calgary and Vancouver tomorrow. American flags are flying off the shelves in many western cities.

But here’s the really interesting part:

Approximately 47 per cent of respondents agreed Canada “turned our back” on the Americans, while 51 per cent disagreed. In Quebec, only 36 per cent agreed that the decision amounted to a failure to support the U.S. at its time of need, while 51 per cent of those in other provinces agreed.

Still, two-thirds of poll respondents said Mr. Chrétien’s stand has shown Canada is an independent player on the world stage.

As reader Michael Nunnelley, who sent this link, observes, being an “independent player” would seem to be the main driver of Chretien’s policy.

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO writes Daniel Drezner. The defeat of Ansar Al-Islam isn’t getting enough attention, he says.

SPENT THE AFTERNOON IN THE RECORDING STUDIO — the real one, not the computer-based one at my house. Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein has been working on a demo tape for his band, The Verdicts, and wanted some help and another set of ears. Various triumphs ensued:

1. Unaccountable difference in levels between left channel and right channel tracked down to loose jack in patchbay; tightened and fixed. Finding this in the time it took was a triumph — even in our little studio, there are so many wires and connections that tracking down a bad one is a real job.

2. Flabby sounding kick drum tightened up with EQ. Not “more bass” which is what you might think, but a boost at 350 hz, which captures the crack of the beater striking the drumhead. Most of the sound of a kick drum is at low frequencies, but the beater-sound is what gives it definition and helps it cut through the mix.

3. Somewhat lonely sounding lead vocal on “Wonderful Tonight” brightened up by using a combination of delay and pitch-shifting to generate the illusion of female singers in the background. There are gadgets you can buy that do this, but I just reprogrammed a general-purpose effects box. It worked surprisingly well: subtle, but effective.

4. Request to give a trumpet solo “more shimmer” met by putting a very slight Leslie (rotating-speaker, somewhat akin to a tremolo) effect on the trumpet, and feeding that into its own reverb.

Okay, “triumph” is too strong a word, but still a very successful afternoon. I haven’t done that sort of thing in a while, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it. And, unlike computer music (or blogging) it doesn’t contribute as much to RSI.

PUNDITWATCH IS ON HIATUS:

Punditwatch is not going to grasp at the ether of pundit speculation and opinion on this war until enough time has passed to make it informed speculation and opinion. I trust David Brooks and Mark Shields to tell me who’s up and who’s down in the political arena. I don’t trust them to tell me where a war is and where it’s going after only 10 days.

Punditwatch will return when the fog of war lifts.

I know how he feels.

RALPH PETERS WRITES:

On one level, Arabs know that Saddam Hussein is a monster. They know he has killed more Arabs than Israel ever could do. Saddam has been the worst thing to happen to Mesopotamia since the Mongols razed Baghdad. But Arabs are so jealous and discouraged that they need to inflate even Saddam into a hero. They have no one else.

Try to understand how broken the Arab world must be, how pitiful, if the celebrated Arab “triumph” of this war is the execution of prisoners in cold blood and the display of a few POWs on TV.

We would be foolish to descend to their level and gloat. The world would be better off were Arab civilization a success. We all should pray that the Arab world might, one day, be better governed and more equitable, that Arab peoples might join us in the march of human progress, instead of fleeing into reveries of bygone glories.

Indeed. Read the whole thing, to see why Iraq matters.

WARBLOGFOGVERGNUGEN: Suman Palit has coined the term.

STEVEN DEN BESTE is rather critical of Amnesty International’s biased approach. He’s got a lot of links.

MAX BOOT WRITES ON THE NEW AMERICAN WAY OF WAR:

Watching images of the bombing of Baghdad brought to mind another American bombing campaign 58 years ago. On March 9, 1945, more than 300 B-29 Superfortresses attacked Tokyo. Their napalm bombs and magnesium incendiaries turned 16 densely packed square miles into an inferno. An estimated 84,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed, making this one of the deadliest days of warfare ever.

The enormity of the destruction is almost impossible to comprehend today, because the American armed forces fight so differently now. The new way of war emphasizes precision and aims for minimal casualties on both sides. This approach represents a considerable advance, but it also brings its own set of problems.

Although air strikes on Baghdad have intensified, leading to what Iraqi officials claim are more than 70 civilian casualties, the city is hardly being pounded into rubble. Electricity and other services remain. In the war’s early days, Baghdad residents even stood on their balconies to watch bombs and missiles pummel their city — secure in the knowledge that only a handful of government buildings would be hit.

This is a bit reminiscent of the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861, which drew as spectators the crème de la crème of Washington society. It is almost as if the United States has left behind the total war of the 20th century and returned to an earlier time of more limited combat, when columns of professional soldiers marched toward each other across open fields and civilians were hurt only by accident.

Boot’s not entirely sure that this is a good idea.

CAROL RICHARDS SAYS she protested Vietnam, but this war is right.

SARS UPDATE: U.N. politics may be trumping health concerns in the region:

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) When a deadly flu-like virus began spreading through Asia earlier this month, a group of Taiwanese doctors sent an e-mail to the World Health Organization asking for help in investigating the mysterious bug.

No one responded. No investigators from the U.N. agency visited. . . .

WHO is apparently waiting for permission from the People’s Republic of China. Odd.

REMEMBER NORTH KOREA? Looks like some pressure is being brought to bear:

BEIJING – For three straight days in recent weeks, something remarkable happened to the oil pipeline running through northeast China to North Korea – the oil stopped flowing, according to diplomatic sources, temporarily cutting off a vital lifeline for North Korea.

The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your provocations about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbor, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions against the regime.

Such tough tactics show an unexpected resolve in Beijing’s policy toward Pyongyang, and hint at the nervousness of Chinese leaders about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and North Korea’s tensions with the United States.

With the Bush administration asking China to take a more active role, Beijing’s application of pressure could convince North Korea to drop its demands for talks exclusively with the United States – a demand that Washington rejects. . . .

“We can’t afford to shield North Korea any longer,” Zhu Feng, an international security expert at Beijing University, said in an interview last month. “There is increasing recognition here if North Korea is finally armed with nuclear weapons, it will be a big threat to China.”

Very interesting. And what surprises me is how long it’s taken the Chinese to realize that nobody, but nobody wants a regime as kooky as North Korea’s on their border, armed with nuclear weapons. Read the whole story, which is chock-full of interesting stuff.

UPDATE: How kooky? This kooky:

ALL triplets in North Korea are being forcibly removed from parents after their birth and dumped in bleak orphanages.

The policy is carried out on the orders of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-il, who has an irrational belief that a triplet could one day topple his regime.

Sheesh. If I were the Chinese, I’d be worried, too.

THE NATIONAL GUARDSMAN WHO CHANGED HIS NAME TO “OPTIMUS PRIME” now has a weblog. This seems to me to be a moment of deep cultural significance.

MICKEY KAUS is asking a lot of questions about strategy that are also being asked by others. I don’t know the answer to these questions, and I’ve refrained from this kind of speculation because I think it’s largely meaningless in the absence, of, you know, actual facts. But his post offers a nice central repository of the “what’s Rumsfeld’s hurry?” school of thought.

Kaus also asks:

But I’m still skeptical about the Iraqi claims that two U.S. missiles have now struck crowded marketplaces and killed dozens. Why do these errant missiles always fall in crowded marketplaces and kill dozens? Why don’t they ever fall in back alleys and kill one or two people?

The answer appears to be that they’re errant Iraqi SAMS rather than errant U.S. missiles. A reader adds:

For the last few days, I’ve been wondering how come Bob Fisk hasn’t been jumping up and down waving bits of metal with “Raytheon” printed on it. Surely the Iraqis have enough of the stuff lying about the place by now…

Heard Iraqi caller to BBC phone-in yesterday (not some sort of coalition media shill, his English was lousy and he didn’t “project” as the saying goes); he said that from calls to Baghdad, the locals all believe that the Saddam regime is behind these attacks.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Well, ask and you shall receive. Fisk is jumping up and down, and may even be right, sort of — though if it’s American it’s a HARM missile that was probably fired at an Iraqi mobile radar placed in the market area. Tim Blair has more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair has even more here.

JIM BENNETT WRITES on why the “Anglosphere” concept is more about peace than war. He also has some comments in response to Jacob T. Levy’s recent piece in The New Republic.

JIM TREACHER HAS SO MANY FUNNY POSTS that I can’t figure out which one to link to. So just go read ‘em all.

SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE BLOGGERS. You kind of want to make fun of a series like this, but it’s actually good.

REVERSE-ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE: Edward Boyd has a suggestion.

HERE ARE SOME MORE PICTURES from today’s pro-America rally in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, here’s a revealing portrait of an anti-war protester, via Clayton Cramer’s blog.

UPDATE: They’re planning a big rally for America in Toronto on Friday.

AN EMAIL FROM THE FRONT that’s worth reading.

MARK STEYN WRITES:

After little more than a week, is this war coverage in trouble? Already questions are being raised about whether the media’s plan was fatally flawed. Several analysts are surprised that, despite overwhelming dominance of the air, television and radio divisions have so quickly repeated the mistakes of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, on the ground, rapidly advancing columns become stalled in Vietnam-style quagmires around the second paragraph.

He has a lot of eminent retired military guys critiquing the journalists’ strategy, too.

JUDICIAL WATCH IS GOING AFTER CHIRAC: You can read the complaint here. Here’s an article summarizing things.

WHY OIL IS BAD for national economies, and democracy.

AZIZ POONAWALLA has some interesting observations regarding asymmetric warfare. In a not-unrelated note, Fred Kaplan says the war is vindicating Van Riper. I think it’s a bit early to say that, but the piece is worth reading.

Meanwhile, this story says that Saddam has sacked his air-defense commander for doing more damage to Baghdad than the allies have. The usual skepticism toward, well, everything is appropriate here, of course, but it’s interesting.

(Via Tacitus).

AN EDITOR OF THE COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW, which has an interesting group blog that I don’t think I’ve seen before, is distancing himself from Prof. Nicholas De Genova’s remark that he’d like to see the United States lose in Iraq to the tune of a “million Mogadishus.” What’s interesting, though, is that the real anger is reserved for Nader supporters.

This post from the same blog, however, betrays muddled thinking, or at least writing:

It’s amazing to me how quickly conservatives forget the first amendment when attacking their ideological opponents but cling to it staunchly whenever a conservative academic makes remarks that draw criticism. DeGenova may not be an enlightened political thinker (his comments were both ridiculously inflammatory and uninformed, and are worthy of much criticism), but the day Columbia starts making hiring and firing decisions based on a person’s politics is not a day we should look forward to.

“The First Amendment” is not actually a synonym for “free speech,” which is what the writer here presumably actually means. Not being the government, Columbia isn’t directly bound by the First Amendment. But principles of free speech should bar firing De Genova — though as someone else commented, it’s doubtful that Columbia would be as enthusiastic about De Genova’s free speech rights if he had called for “a million Matthew Shepards.”

And as for the part about dreading the day when politics start affecting Columbia’s hiring and firing decisions, well, the most charitable thing I can say is that it reveals a charming naivete.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Actually, Columbia’s President is wrong. Columbia U. does not protect free speech. They have a draconian hate speech code that prohibits hate speech on campus. So it seems that by their own rules, they SHOULD fire De Genova for what he SAID (just as they could legally punish anyone who called for a million matthew sheperds). I’d love it if someone put this question to Bollinger.

Interesting. I’m not very familiar with Columbia’s speech code. Neither, I’d bet, is Columbia’s President, Lee Bollinger, who is a pro-free-speech guy, generally.

THOUSANDS OF CANADIANS SHOWED UP at a pro-America rally in Ottawa. Follow the link for a story and pictures.

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: Too smart and honest to be a pundit? I link, you decide.

NELSON ASCHER WRITES:

I don’t know how the antiwar Europeans will react to Anglo-American-Australian victory, but one thing is sure: they won’t identify with it and from this to a feeling of also having been defeated is just a small step. Their sense of impotence after so many protests might be overwhelming. I wouldn’t be too surprised at seeing the Western European psyche beginning [to] resemble, in many significant ways, the Arab one.

Worrisomely plausible: the same mix of entitlement, infatuation with an imagined grand history, and impotent fecklessness in the present. It fits well with this column by Steven Glover in which we learn:

A friend of mine said to me the other day that he hoped lots of Americans were killed because the United States would be brought down a peg or two. I suspect there are many people, otherwise decent and enlightened, who would like this war to be prolonged and bloody. They may even in a twisted sort of way want lots of Iraqi civilians to be killed because their deaths will vindicate the anti-war arguments. If we did not care about our reputations, if we did not in our silly, selfish way wish always to be shown to be right, we would all ardently hope for the war to be ended as soon as possible with as few deaths as possible, and with Saddam Hussein safely under lock and key. This is, in truth, what every person and every journalist should wish for, whatever their opinions on the war. But I am not sure it is what the Daily Mirror or John Pilger or the (admittedly brilliant) Robert Fisk of the Independent wants. One feels that, whatever happens, they and their sometimes less openly anti-war colleagues in the media will continue to say that the war is not going as well as the allies expected, and they will declare a successful outcome to be deeply unsatisfactory. The war will go on in the newspaper columns and on the airwaves long after the last shot has been fired, as journalists fight to show that they were right.

As Iain Murray comments: “It is saddening to think that these people probably think they are behaving ‘ethically’. They aren’t, and this needs to be pointed out time and time again.”

Indeed it does. Even in Tennessee.

DOESN’T THIS MEAN THAT THE UNITED STATES CAN TARGET ARAFAT NOW?

Hundreds of Palestinians living in Lebanon have been sent to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against American and British soldiers.

Colonel Munir Maqdah, one of the top commanders of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, said his men were already in Baghdad, prepared to launch suicide attacks. Another group of Fatah suicide bombers are due in Iraq shortly, he added.

He just took the other (losing) side in this war, I think. What, do they use lead pipes on the West Bank?

GUESS WHERE THIS APPEARED:

Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously “difficult”and vain – Streisand, Albarn, Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn? And Robin Cook! Why might anyone believe world peace can be secured by this motley bunch?

Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and self-loathing that often characterises recreational depression – an unholy alliance of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you’re scum, but also that you’re terribly important, too. For instance, what about the loony who offered to be crucified on live TV if George Bush promised not to invade Iraq? “Send your troops home and take me,” she wrote to the White House, adding later, “I don’t want to appear as some nutter.” Similarly, there are the human shields – now limping homewards after being shocked to discover, bless ‘em, that Saddam wanted to stick them in front of military installations as opposed to the hospitals and petting zoos that they’d fondly imagined they were going to defend.

Follow the link. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you anyway. Why, it’s almost something you might read here.

SARS UPDATE: MedPundit responds to Michael Fumento’s post downplaying the risk and notes (scroll up one post from the one this link goes to) that one WHO physician, an otherwise healthy 46-year-old, has died from it.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the limitations of wargaming in predicting wars, and also makes a risky prediction. And there’s this observation:

The Pacific island campaigns in WWII provide a historical example. Once organized Japanese resistance ceased and the allies had an island’s airfields and ports operating, the brass would declare the place “secure.” Infantry regiments would withdraw to refit for the next amphibious assault. The “major operation” was over– but tell that to the Navy SeaBees on the “secure island” who would scrap with snipers for months after the front had officially moved forward.

In Iraq the fedayeen’s low-level resistance could flicker for months. That’s one reason US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki says peacekeeping in post-Saddam Iraq will require more ground troops.

Guerrillas need popular support, but the Iraqi people fear the fedayeen. British troops report civilians are telling them where the paramilitaries hide. The population isn’t protecting the fascists. That suggests pro-Saddam holdouts may use guerrilla tactics but they’re death squads, not a guerrilla force.

No, I’m not going to tell you his prediction. You’ll have to follow the link for that.

PEJMAN HAS MOVED, to a new URL, and with a much easier to read design. He says he was inspired by Gary Hart.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ: David Adesnik wonders why liberals aren’t more enthusiastic about it.

LEE HARRIS writes on the allure, and illusions, of cosmopolitanism.

BLOGCRITICS RADIO is now featuring music by Elliptical, Eric Olsen’s band. Check it out.

The beauty of the DMCA is that you almost have to use indie bands who’ll give you permission. So if you’ve got something that’s worth listening to, let ‘em know!

A PEACE ACTIVIST SAYS “I WAS WRONG:”

Beginning that night and continuing on in the private homes of relatives with whom I stayed little by little the scales began to come off my eyes.

I had not realized it but began to realize that all foreigners in Iraq are subject to 24 hour surveillance by government `minders` who arrange all interviews, visits and contact with ordinary Iraqis. Through some fluke either by my invitation as a religious person and or my family connection I was not subject to any government `minders` at any time throughout my stay in Iraq.

As far as I can tell I was the only person including the media, Human Shields and others in Iraq without a Government `minder` there to guard.

What emerged was something so awful that it is difficult even now to write about it. Discussing with the head of our tribe what I should do as I wanted to stay in Baghdad with our people during their time of trial I was told that I could most help the Assyrian cause by going out and telling the story to the outside world.

Simply put, those living in Iraq, the common, regular people are in a living nightmare. From the terror that would come across the faces of my family at a unknown visitor, telephone call, knock at the door I began to realize the horror they lived with every day.

Over and over I questioned them `Why could you want war? Why could any human being desire war?` They’re answer was quiet and measured. `Look at our lives!`We are living like animals. No food, no car, no telephone, no job and most of all no hope.`

Read the whole thing.

HOW’S THE WAR GOING? I’ve got a post on the subject over at GlennReynolds.com — and check out Will Femia’s look at how Big Media and weblogs are doing.

UPDATE: Steven Levy writes on warblogging and leads off with Sean-Paul Kelley and The Command Post.

Meanwhile, Power Line compares an article in the Washington Post by reporter Alan Sipress with one that Sipress wrote during the Afghan war and finds surprising similarities. Or maybe not-so-surprising similarities:

Sipress is one of the loudest of the “this is turning out to be more difficult than we thought” chorus. Really, though, his own experience should warn him against getting too hysterical. On November 9, 2001, Sipress wrote an article in the Post titled “Vajpayee Says U.S. Wasn’t Ready for War”, in which he quoted, with obvious approval, the Indian Prime Minister who said that “the United States had not been adequately prepared for the [Afghanistan] campaign;” “it appears the Taliban are well entrenched;” “the U.S. military campaign has suffered from a lack of adequate intelligence;” and “the campaign [will] continue to move slowly” because “it appears America was not prepared for this kind of war.”

Kabul fell four days later.

Heh. Rand Simberg has sympathy for the press.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s Mark Steyn’s take on how it’s going:

In so far as the enemy has a strategy, it’s to use their own people as hostages. The ‘pockets of resistance’ in the southern towns have been able to make mischief because they blend in with the local populations. They know that Washington and its allies are concerned above all to avoid casualties among Iraqi civilians and, indeed, among your typical Iraqi conscripts. In other words, everything the Baath regime does is predicated on the moral superiority of their foe. If things were the other way round, if Iraq invaded Vermont and some diehard Yankees holed up on the outskirts of White River Junction and started firing on Saddam’s forces as they attempted to advance up the valley, the Republican Guard would think nothing of levelling the entire downtown area and everyone in it. Who’s going to complain? There’s no Baghdad ‘Not In Our Name’ movement.

So Harold ‘Poems R Us’ Pinter may think the Yanks are itching to massacre thousands of innocents, but the behaviour of the Baathist nutters suggests they know better: they assume Western decency.

His bottom line:

Well, speaking as someone not privy to the entrails of the Reuters chicken, let me go out on a limb here: the Anglo-Aussie-American forces will win. And the way they win will have tremendous implications for the years ahead.

Read the whole thing, as they say. And read Stephen Green’s thank-you to Britain — which is a lot more than just a “thank you.”

And, finally, David Adesnik rates the questions from yesterday’s Bush/Blair press conference and calls them “confrontational — and predictable.” Yep. They’re like sophomores, showing off for freshmen.

OKAY, ONE MORE: Read this bit of archival press criticism from Toren Smith.

BELOW, I refer to Prof. De Genova as a Holocaust denier, of sorts (he doesn’t deny it happened, he just thinks that through some sort of historical mumbojumbo the Jews have turned into the bad guys). But Tom Perry thinks De Genova is a Holocaust promoter for wishing for a “million Mogadishus:”

Obviously this is a dumb thing to say, and Columbia University must be a silly place. Just for a moment, let’s pretend de Genova meant it.

18 American soldiers died, and 73 were injured in the Battle of Mogadishu. Thus, De Genova would like to see 18 million American soldiers killed, and 73 million injured. That would account for everyone in the armed forces and most of the American militia, of which De Genova is a member.

Where do you want your bullet, doc?

Moving on, we find that De Genova would like to see approximately 750 million little brown foreigners mowed down by American machine guns. This is a conservative estimate, but it should be sufficient to take care of any problems we have with people in the Middle East. See, the great thing about American military defeats is, we always win!

Can do, chief!

Back in reality, we ask what de Genova was thinking. The answer: he wasn’t. Thinking is, like, passe, and so is meaning what you say.

Kind of sad, isn’t it, when a guy who goes by the handle “dipnut” is able to think and talk rings around a Columbia professor?

Sad — and, nowadays, utterly typical.

UPDATE: Here’s a firsthand account of the event, while Sarah Maserati wonders if Columbia would be defending De Genova’s free speech rights if he had called for a million Matthew Shepards. Some questions answer themselves, don’t they? But, see, to the folks at Columbia gay people are people. American soldiers are just oppressors.

Justin Katz has some further thoughts.

SAUDI ENVOY’S MYSTERY DEATH: I’m going to take a flyer and say that it was connected to the insurgency there.

IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY, go read Phil Carter’s blog. He has interesting observations on logistics, and a lot more.

STEVEN DEN BESTE:

Russian President Putin says that the war in Iraq has pushed the world into its most serious post-Cold-War crisis.

I think that it was the attacks on Washington and New York in September of 2001 which pushed the world into crisis. The only difference is that the US recognized that fact. Most of the rest of the world have been in denial about it ever since.

Yep.

THE CNN BIT seemed to go okay, though it’s always hard to tell from in front of the camera. When you do these things, you don’t usually get a monitor, which means you’re sitting in a darkened room, with bright lights in your eyes, squinting (or, rather, trying not to squint) at the camera while tiny voices talk in your ear. You can’t see the graphics, you can’t tell what the host is doing, you can’t tell when you’re on the screen and when you’re not, etc., etc. The photo on the right, which I snapped while I was waiting to go on, is a typical view. I did manage to get a plug in for Kevin Sites’ blog, though, which probably won’t please the suits at CNN. (By the way, Xeni Jardin informs me that there’s a Kevin Sites blog fan-group discussion board now. Instead of the Scud Stud, he’s the Blog Stud!)

It’s a beautiful day here, as you can see from this image I snapped on the way back to the office, and I’m going to go enjoy it a bit. I’ve spent too much time huddled in front of a computer lately, and both body and soul need some sunshine. Back later.

THAT’LL BE ALL FOR ME FOR A WHILE: In the meantime, check out The Command Post, SgtStryker.com, The Agonist, StrategyPage, Steven Den Beste, and the many other fine weblogs linked to the left and below.

The CNN thing is supposed to air about 12:15. Like all TV, that’s subject to change at the last minute.

UDPATE: Read this piece, too. I agree that the biggest danger is an artificial timetable, and I’m happy to see that Bush and Blair seem determined to avoid one.

And read this account of aid and comfort from Columbia:

“The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military,” Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. “I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.”

That kind of thing is an embarassment and a disgrace to the academic profession. Columbia should be ashamed. Even Eric Foner was embarrassed. And the people who said that Andrew Sullivan was being hysterical when he warned of a “Fifth Column” of academics and journalists who would actively root for America’s defeat owe Andrew an apology. Another one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this piece by Eugene Volokh, which seems to expose De Genova as a Holocaust-denier, more or less. Why am I not surprised? Like a lot of people who say they’re “anti-war,” he’s really just on the other side. And lest anyone accuse me of “McCarthyism” for pointing that out, let me note that he says so himself.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Lou Dolinar forwards this suggestion, whcih actually came from a friend of his:

POWER TO THE PEOPLE — THE IRAQI PEOPLE

I’d like to share with you an idea that would help win the war in Iraq…and more importantly, help win the hearts and minds of its people — which we’ll need for lasting peace:

Our government should announce — soon — that the new postwar Iraqi administration will “personalize” the nation’s oil revenues by establishing an Iraqi national investment trust — The Iraqi People’s Freedom Trust — that will receive a major share — say, 50% — of all future Iraqi oil earnings.

The rest can go to central government and federal regional governments on some per capita basis.

Each Iraqi — man, woman or child — would be eligible for a personal investment account in the trust once they register as citizens of New Iraq. This is actually a fairly straightforward administrative issue to handle — given modern computing capacity, ID systems etc.

Funds in the trust may be invested in New Iraq government bonds, domestic equities, venture capital investments in Iraq or international markets. But legal ownership will be vested in each individual Iraqi — not the tribe, clan region, power-broker etc. Any Iraqi over age 21 may withdraw funds or borrow against their balances — for any reason at all.

The core models here are the Singapore Provident Fund and the existing system by which all Alaskan state citizens receive an annual check, representing their share of that state’s oil revenue.

The effect — immediately — would be to establish irrefutably that the U.S. is NOT waging this war to somehow steal Iraqi oil — but rather to return this resource to the benefit of the Iraqi people themselves — directly. One person at a time.

It would give all Iraqis a clear sense of the profound policy difference between liberators and corrupt thieves like the Ba’ath regime who have exploited, stolen and misused oil revenues in way that infuriate ordinary Iraqis — and endanger the world.

It would give the new state administration of free Iraq an immediate, directly appealing way to register citizens — and voters — and to reward their loyalty.

By ensuring that all Iraqis will have access — on reaching adulthood — to significant sources of money — it would spur entrepreneurship, revitalize the whole economy, distribute real resources to the most remote and poor regions of the country and create a very strong interest among all ethnic and confessional groups and tribes in ensuring their nation’s future stability.

We’re not talking small money here. Once its oil facilities are repaired and production is ramped up, Iraq can earn $50 billion a year from its oil. 50% of that would be about $1,000 a year per person…and funds would accumulate for young people to even more significant sums — until they came of age… I would suggest to you that such a proposal, properly structured and publicized, would have the kind of impact — in Iraq and on world opinion — that Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation did on the domestic politics — and nternational diplomacy — of our own Civil War. It would be the same kind of profoundly moral — and revolutionary — stroke.

I cannot, by God, think of a sharper, clearer bolt from the blue that would clarify what it means to “liberate” this country. And it is very hard to think of any long-term downside to this proposal.

I don’t have to tell you that centralized government control over oil and its revenues elsewhere in the world has very often been a spur to horrendous corruption, rent-seeking, and capital flight.

There’s a reason why many people refer to oil as “the Devil’s Excrement.” I believe we could turn that manure into fertilizer.

Fascinating. I’m not sure that it’s our oil to dispose of in this fashion, but I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

BBC CHIEF DENIES BIAS — while speaking at a meeting of “Media Workers Against the War.” You can’t make this stuff up.

MORE BAD NEWS FROM FRANCE:

Violent hate crimes quadrupled in France in 2002 to the highest level in a decade, with more than half the assaults aimed at Jews, a national study has found. . . .

In the report, the committee said 193 of 313 attacks were against Jews in a “real explosion” of anti-Semitic violence. Last year, the group reported 32 acts of anti-Jewish violence.

Hopefully, the explosion of antisemitism in Europe has peaked. We’ll see.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: Roscoe Shrewsbury emails:

On the one hand, the Anti-American Class has been saying all along that Iraq is no threat to anyone; on the other, they are now crowing with trembling, barely-suppressed glee, that Iraq is far more formidable than anyone had supposed.

Yes, I’ve noticed that myself.

GARY HART IS BLOGGING.

STRATEGYPAGE has a daily roundup on the war. Here’s a bit from today’s, which is worth reading in its entirety for the kind of perspective that the TV coverage lacks:

The pundits are already making comparisons to Vietnam, but there are some important differences. The main one being that Saddam’s government is a brutal dictatorship that is unpopular with most of the population and that there are no nearby nations providing support for Saddam’s followers. Even the Iraqi government admits that it is cut off and not able to hold out for a long time. Saddam’s major weapon is media manipulation and turning himself into a heroic Arab folk hero, bravely fighting off the evil Western crusaders. The reality is different, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reinvent yourself via the media. Madonna has done it several times. . . .

After one week of operations, U.S. forces have suffered 22 killed in combat, six dead in accidents (including two killed by a soldier attacking other soldiers in Kuwait). Seven troops are prisoners and 17 are missing. By historical standards, these are record lows in casualties for troops actively campaigning against an armed enemy.

Read the whole thing.

IS ALAN COWELL DEFENDING WAR CRIMES in advance? The Scrutineer thinks so, and makes a pretty damning case. Excerpt:

Apparently Cowell finds nothing illegal, let alone “dishonorable,” in faking surrender or disguising yourself as a woman so that you can more easily kill an enemy who spares your life to avoid committing a war crime. Allied commanders may “see” such tactics as dishonorable, but I guess they’re just biased.

Well, it certainly couldn’t be the Times, could it?

UPDATE: I wonder what Cowell would think if — as a “ruse of urban warfare” — we sent a bunch of special forces types in disguised as journalists. Sounds as if it might work:

A French TV crew got lost, while traveling with an American combat unit, and simply drove into Baghdad (where they found a hotel room and decided to stay for the attack on the city.)

Sure, a “ruse” like that would probably put journalists’ lives at risk, but hey — this is “urban warfare” and all bets are off. Right?

UPDATE: A reader suggests that this is too hard on Cowell, because he doesn’t come right out and defend the behavior of the Saddamites. No — but it’s all a matter of balance. If the United States were engaging in flagrant violation of the laws of war, would he maintain such a detached tone? I don’t think so.

JAMES LILEKS ISN’T HAPPY WITH THE TV COVERAGE:

TV is useful for pictures – I get the feeling sometimes this should be called Operation Stock Footage – and it’s useful for seeing retired military people draw lines on maps. . . .

The details never seem to filter into the TV reports – for all the embeddedness of the reportorial faction, I’ve yet to see a big smashing battle. The more you watch the more you realize how little you’re seeing.

Jason Kottke wrote something similar the other day:

I’ve had the TV on all afternoon, watching it while I work. Right now, I’m watching tiny pixelated people moving around on the deck of an aircraft carrier. This scene imparts absolutely no information, knowledge, or perspective to the viewer.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cranky says he hates the coverage — but, of course, he hates everything. And — at a more professional level — Martin Van Creveld says that “all the pictures shown on TV are color pieces which have no significance.”

I agree, and I’ve barely watched it. There’s more, and better news on the web. And this view transcends whether you’re pro-war or anti-war, as the quotes above illustrate. They’re just not doing a very good job.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston has some further thoughts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Hobbs points to this interesting piece on what the war coverage is hitting, and missing.

MICHAEL FUMENTO writes that SARS is being overhyped. I hope he’s right.

“PROOF” OF IRAQI BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS:

“British forces have made significant discoveries in recent days which show categorically that Iraqi troops are prepared for the use of such horrific weapons.

“I want to make it clear that any Iraqi commander who sanctions the use of such weapons of mass destruction is committing a war crime and will be held personally responsible for his action.”

“Paperwork and other equipment” had been found in the command post search, Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce said.

Meanwhile this report notes that “a woman believed to be one of the Iraqi regime’s top biological weapons scientists was seen in a televised meeting with President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials said. It is not yet known, however, when that taped meeting took place.” Let’s hope it was an old tape. But there’s also this report of chemical weapons being readied.

Hey, I thought he didn’t have those?

IS THE BBC ENDANGERING SALAM PAX? Sounds like it.

I’m supposed to be on CNN later talking about warblogs, and I had talked them out of featuring Salam. Like it matters, when it’s been all over the BBC World Service, with lots of personal details. If he turns out to have been killed by Saddam’s goons, I’m going to very publicly blame the BBC.

UPDATE: A couple of people ask when I’m going to be on CNN. Looks like 12:15 EST, but there’s some sort of White House event that may kill it. Stay, er, tuned.

One person also asks why I’m slamming the BBC when I’ve linked to Salam myself. That’s a fair question. But what I haven’t done is release a lot of identifying details that have never been published online. The New Yorker did that, but took it off their website pretty quickly when people complained. Apparently, though, the BBC World Service — which is sure to be carefully monitored by whatever’s left of Iraqi intelligence services — repeated those details and maybe some more. My feelings on linking to Salam are that when you put stuff on the web, you expect for people to read it. He’s a big boy, and knows the risks better than we do. But putting up information that he hasn’t seen fit to make public seems to me to be crossing a line.

DORIS LESSING WRITES on the disaster that is Robert Mugabe. A must-read.

LOTS OF NEWS ON THE SARS VIRUS over at Gweilo Diaries (plus a cool Jennifer Capriati item) and medpundit. Though this will probably turn out to be nothing serious, as many similar scares have, it’s starting to worry me a bit.

ALAN BRAIN WRITES that it’s Western Germany in 1945 all over again:

Coalition forces are now within 100 km of Baghdad, and still rolling forward. It’s virtually a replay of May, 1945 in Western Germany. Even with some of the original cast. Many conscripts who surrender at the first opportunity. Small pockets of Nazi – or in this case, Ba’athist – fanatics, who, knowing their own crimes, are prepared to fight to the death in ambushes. A populace going about their normal lives, just wanting for it to be all over, and deeply mistrustful of the Liberators. Some people who think “Saddam’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.” Some people who are saying “Thank God you came when you did, what kept you?”.

I’d expect more of the same. When we get to Baghdad, there may be some street-clearing operations, if the opposition isn’t too high. Until recently I didn’t think there would be, but from all reports the Coalitions MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) doctrine and training are paying off, with far fewer civilian and friendly casualties than could reasonably have been expected. But more likely we’ll hold off, and let the Free Iraq Forces currently in training go in, identify who the Ba’athists are, and get the Iraqi populace to actively aid us.

This too is already happening – considerable support has been given on-camera by Iraqis pointing out where the Ba’athist Werewolves are holed up.

I hope he’s right. I think he is. Just read this:

Residents of the southern Iraqi city of Basra are helping coalition forces to arrest Iraqi militiamen, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, said in an interview.

“We are receiving a lot of help from Basra residents who are directing us to the positions of the Iraqi armed forces, to Baath officials and hideouts of Saddam’s Fedayeen,” Myers told the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite network.

Stay tuned.

HERE’S A SPEECH BY DAVID GELERNTER, delivered at the Yale pro-war rally mentioned below.

WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST:

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — The man accused of assassinating Dutch anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn has told judges he acted on behalf of the country’s Muslims. . . .

Van der Graaf, a father-of-one, allegedly confessed to the killing last November, saying he was worried Fortuyn was gaining too much power and posed a threat to “vulnerable members of society.”

Lots of Euros feel this way about the United States.

RANDOM OBSERVATION #1: Funny, isn’t it, that Osama bin Laden hasn’t released a statement — even a fuzzy tape recording — praising Saddam’s resistance and blasting the U.S. effort in Iraq. It’s like he’s not even alive, or something. . . .

Observation #2, from Nelson Ascher:

Before the war in Iraq there was much speculation about the possibility of a second front being opened, against Israel, either by the Palestinians, the Lebanese Hezbollah, or both. However, all of them seem to be lying low right now and none seems to be craving much attention. I’d say this is a good sign that even they agree that Saddam is not the favourite horse in this race.

Yeah. Possibly they figure that Israel will be able to retaliate against them without worrying about much world attention. And maybe it’s hard to recruit killers when Saddam’s financial support looks doubtful.

AL QAEDA FORCES FIGHTING WITH IRAQIS?

Near Basra, Iraq: British military interrogators claim captured Iraqi soldiers have told them that al-Qaeda terrorists are fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein’s forces against allied troops near Basra.

At least a dozen members of Osama bin Laden’s network are in the town of Az Zubayr where they are coordinating grenade and gun attacks on coalition positions, according to the Iraqi prisoners of war.

It was believed that last night (Thursday) British forces were preparing a military strike on the base where the al-Qaeda unit was understood to be holed up.

A senior British military source inside Iraq said: “The information we have received from PoWs today is that an al-Qaeda cell may be operating in Az Zubayr. There are possibly around a dozen of them and that is obviously a matter of concern to us.”

If terrorists are found, it would be the first proof of a direct link between Saddam’s regime and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.

The connection would give credibility to the argument that Tony Blair used to justify war against Saddam – a “nightmare scenario” in which he might eventually pass weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Hmm. It was Tom Holsinger who suggested this, based on the tactics the “Fedayeen” were using. Looks like he might be right.

Looks like some other people, who said it was absurd to see a Saddam/Osama connection, might be wrong.

And looks like Austin Bay, who said that invading Iraq would smoke out Al Qaeda, is right, too.

MICKEY KAUS has a lengthy obituary for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Worth reading. Plus: Good news about welfare reform!

TONY ADRAGNA HAS more thoughts on liberation theology. Conclusion: “There is certainly room for justifying our instant war along the lines of the church’s theology on liberation. But, let’s be careful to distnguish this from what the Latin American authors taught.”

THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS: Good news — the French government finally seems to be getting some vague idea of how much damage Chirac’s chicanery has done to U.S./French relations. The bad news — they still can’t get it right:

With French-American relations severely strained over the conflict in Iraq, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin of France offered an olive branch to Washington today — but immediately declined to say explicitly who he hoped would win the war for Baghdad.

And even as he insisted that France stood ready for reconciliation with Washington, the French official delivered an impassioned attack on American plans to sideline the United Nations and assume the leading role in running post-war Iraq.

This, of course, is only going to make things worse. I thought the French were supposed to be sophisticated where diplomacy was concerned.

KANAN MAKIYA WRITES:

Do not believe any commentator who says that a rising surge of “nationalism” is preventing Iraqis from greeting U.S. and British troops in the streets with open arms. What is preventing them from rising up and taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American intentions and fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs known as the Fedayeen Saddam, who are leading the small-arms-fire attacks on American and British soldiers. The coalition forces have an urgent need to send clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that unlike in 1991, there is no turning back from the destruction of Saddam Hussein. . . .

The United States needs to understand that Iraqis do not get CNN. They have not heard constant iterations of how Saddam’s demise is imminent. More importantly, they have not seen it demonstrated. American forces so far have been content to position themselves outside southern Iraqi cities; they have only just began to disrupt Iraqi TV, which is Saddam’s principal tool of maintaining psychological control over Iraq; and, above all, they have not allowed Iraqis to go in and organize the population, a task which we are very eager to carry out.

Read the whole thing.

IRANIAN STATE-CONTROLLED MEDIA are taking a strongly pro-Iraqi, anti-American line. Iranian viewers aren’t buying the slant.

State television marks its war coverage with a logo reading “War of Dominance,” and broadcast media without fail call the United States and Britain the “aggressors” in their campaign to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

This is despite Iran’s official policy of “active neutrality” on the war.

“Some media coverage of the war gives the impression of defending (Iraq’s) Ba’ath regime,” Rajabali Mazroui, a pro-reform parliamentarian, was quoted as saying in a newspaper. “State media are not safeguarding our national interests.”

One analyst who asked not to be named said: “Iranian television has become like Iraqi television. Its reports about the war obviously take the side of the Iraqi regime.” . . .

Many viewers are tuning into Western radio and television instead. “Why should I watch Iranian television when it is trying to brainwash me with its one-sided coverage?” said Ali, a 33-year-old engineer. . . .

The (the official media) should not make our decisions for us. I want them to just offer straight facts,” said Abbaseh, a 38-year-old housewife,

The use of satellite dishes is officially prohibited in Iran but many Iranians ignore the ban.

“I bought a satellite receiver two days after the war started,” said Fariba, a teacher. “Before that I felt out of touch with the world.”

Heh. Of course, by taking a pro-Saddam line the increasingly-unpopular Iranian clerics are only boosting America’s reputation in Iran.

I JUST SPOKE TO A WOMAN FROM CNN who said that The Command Post is very popular in their newsroom today. I love that.

THE LEMON is a parody of The Onion — and this one is pretty funny.

CANADA’S HOUSE OF COMMONS HAS unanimously voted in favor of trying Saddam Hussein for war crimes:

The motion, adopted unanimously by the house of commons, parliament’s elected chamber, calls on the government to help “bring to justice Saddam Hussein and all other Iraqi officials responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes – including through the formation of an international criminal tribunal.”

I suspect it’ll be a posthumous trial, but I appreciate the sentiment, which is a blow to Kofi Annan-style moral equivalence — one that is even more stinging coming from the Canadians.

I’M ALL FOR PATRIOTISM, and even for cyberwar against terrorism, but I’m not so keen on things like hacking Al Jazeera’s website.

Okay, so they’re a sleazy propaganda arm. But hey — so’s Reuters! And it’s just not the same as hacking, say, Al Qaeda or Taliban sites.

Am I wrong about this? I don’t think I am.

DANIEL DREZNER writes that Michael Ledeen (see post below) is being too hard on the European Union. He’s right as far as he goes — but Ledeen’s really writing about French diplomacy, not EU diplomacy (even though France is using Turkey’s desire to enter the EU), so that I think this is apples-and-oranges to some degree.

WHY LIBERATION THEOLOGY supports liberating Iraq.

Well, yeah.

UPDATE: Tony Adragna has more.

COMING INTO WORK today I saw the headline on the local paper, and it seemed like one of those things you expect to see in an old newspaper, the kind you might find in a closet at your grandparents: “PARATROOPS OPEN NEW FRONT IN NORTH.”

But it’s today. Of course, one way you know it’s today is you can see the same headline on their webpage, and what’s more, if you go there you’ll see that the Knoxville News-Sentinel is linking to Howard Owens’ Ventura Star warblog. I wonder how many papers are doing that now?

BRIAN CARNELL WRITES:

One other thing Mugabe shares with Hitler . . . he and others in his government are free to move as they want across Europe.

With the help, of course, of the French.

A PRO-WAR RALLY AT YALE got a good deal of coverage. There’s even video. Go here (click on “Pro-War Rally at Yale”), here, and here.

THERE’S NOW A GERMAN FRIENDS OF AMERICA SITE, which Fredrik Norman will soon be adding to his Friends of America Network.

HERE’S A STORY on the Patriot Act debate that I moderated yesterday, in case you’re interested.

EVER NOTICE HOW IRAQI IMMIGRANTS DON’T SEEM AS PESSIMISTIC as, well, a lot of people who have never been to Iraq? Here’s another piece, from Singapore’s Straits Times of all places, sounding that theme:

I AM half Iraqi and residing in Singapore, and I would like to inform all your readers that nine in 10 Iraqis welcome the American invasion of Iraq. The 1/10 are linked to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The invasion should be seen through the eyes of the Iraqi people. Whether there is war or no war, Iraqis are dying.

Allow me to recap Saddam’s murderous 24 years in power. . . .

This reduced a once rich and proud nation to misery and poverty. So, where does it all end?

I quote my father: ‘We Iraqis need an electric shock; we, an intelligent and cultured people, allowed a thug to rise to power and lead Iraq from one disaster to another. If the electric shock comes in the form of an American invasion, then so be it.’

To all those who are anti-war, I suggest that they go to Iraq and experience life in Saddam’s Iraq.

They will soon change their view and understand why Iraqis await the day when they are rescued from the evil regime.

Meanwhile, Susanna Cornett has much, much more on this theme. She also thinks that the Iraqi immigrant communities around the world will have a lot to offer the reconstruction effort in Iraq. That’s certainly how things are going in Afghanistan.

STEVEN DEN BESTE has some thoughts on why antiwar protests are so offensive and lame — even though it seems counterproductive for them to be that way. Interesting theory.

YESTERDAY THE SUPREME COURT HEARD ARGUMENTS in Lawrence v. Texas, the Texas sodomy case. Not surprisingly, Andrew Sullivan has a lot to say. He also points us to this account of the oral argument, by Dahlia Lithwick. Breyer’s comments are quite amusing.

I’ve written on this before — you can read my column from December here, in which I point out that state supreme courts have been reversing sodomy laws right and left, without significant controversy, under their state constitutions, and suggest that the Supreme Court could learn a lot from those opinions. You might also want to read this amicus brief written by Boston University law professor Randy Barnett and the Institute for Justice, and this law review article that Dave Kopel and I wrote a couple of years ago, which discusses the state sodomy decisions at considerable length.

Me, I’m pro-sodomy. And, in the rather unlikely event that I’m ever before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’ll dare ‘em to make an issue of it.

UPDATE: Eric Muller has a rather Freudian observation regarding a comment of Justice Scalia’s at oral argument yesterday. [That's twice you've referred to "oral" argument in this sodomy case. -- Ed. Not you, too! Sheesh! Back to Kausfiles, where you belong.]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Clayton Cramer takes a rather different view of these issues than I do.

ANATOLE KALETSKY writes in the Times about who has won and lost from diplomacy. Big losers: Germany, Russia, and Turkey.

Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen writes that Turkish non-cooperation, which may well cost American lives, was the result of French threats:

The leaders insisted on a disciplined “no” vote because of pressure — some would call it blackmail — from France and Germany.

The French and German governments informed the Turkish opposition parties that if they voted to help the Coalition war effort, Turkey would be locked out of Europe for a generation. As one Turkish leader put it, “there were no promises, only threats.”

One can describe this behavior on the part of our erstwhile Old Europe allies only as a deliberate act of sabotage against America in time of war. . . .

I think that when the events of the past few months are sorted out, we will find that French actions constitute the diplomatic equivalent of chemical and biological warfare.

Monsieur Chirac has stopped at nothing to try to prevent the defeat of Saddam Hussein, no matter how many American lives it cost.

And, more often than not, the Germans tagged along for the ride.

Damning stuff — and when you read these two items together, it really does look as if we’ve faced betrayal every bit as big as some bloggers have been saying for months.

WHY FRANCE, GERMANY, AND RUSSIA are opposing us. An interesting analysis from a surprising source.

Jacob T. Levy, meanwhile, writes in The New Republic on why Australia and Poland are our friends.

CINDERELLA HAS TRANSLATED an interview with Pascal Bruckner from Le Figaro. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s an excerpt:

LF:Is Europe currently in the process of leaving history, as Robert Kagan, a man close to the American administration, claims?

PB: Europe is characterized by the desire to leave history for good, including its own history. One of the most obvious signs was its passivity in the face of the Yugoslavian crisis, which it only emerged from in 1995, in Sarajevo, then in 1999, in Kosovo, thanks to American intervention. In 1999, in the Kosovo affair, Europe was so insistent that NATO strikes on Serbia and Montenegro should be kept to a minimum that the American general responsible for operations exclaimed: “No more interventions with partners like this!”

He is, however, somewhat pessimistic regarding Iraqi reconstruction even though he supports the removal of Saddam.

NICK DENTON WRITES:

The Arab press — hysterical in every sense of the word — is in a lather over civilian casualties in Iraq. America will pay the price sooner that it thinks. There are no limits to American injustice and highhandedness. Despite its power and tyranny America will not win because it has no humanitarian values. And that was before the missiles went astray this morning, apparently killing as many as 15 people. Hell, 15 dead: that’s a quiet day in the Arab world. Even imagining the United States was targeting civilians, its efforts are laughable compared with Saddam — 5,000 dead in the chemical attack on Halabja in one day — or Assad — 30,000 shelled to death in Hama — or pretty much any other Arab ruler. Arab governments — and their press and public — should first practice moral judgment on themselves and eachother, before turning their outrage on the United States. And, before they complain about a new hectoring colonialism, they should first show they’re capable of governing themselves by some means other than torture and massacre.

Let’s put that one in the Arab News!

And those guys really, really don’t want to see what the results will be if the United States ever decides to pursue a “no limits” strategy rather than the almost absurdly careful approach it’s following now. One can only imagine how, say, Syria — or, hell, France — would be acting if it possessed a similar degree of power.

Meanwhile Michael Totten has a post on how things are actually going on the humanitarian front.

STRATEGYPAGE lists the top ten myths of the Iraq war:

4-The United States armed Saddam. This one grew over time, but when Iraq was on its weapons spending spree from 1972 (when its oil revenue quadrupled) to 1990, the purchases were quite public and listed over $40 billion worth of arms sales. Russia was the largest supplier, with $25 billion. The US was the smallest, with $200,000. A similar myth, that the U.S. provided Iraq with chemical and biological weapons is equally off base. Iraq requested Anthrax samples from the US government, as do nations the world over, for the purpose of developing animal and human vaccines for local versions of Anthrax. Nerve gas doesn’t require technical help, it’s a variant of common insecticides. European nations sold Iraq the equipment to make poison gas.

You’ll have to go there for the other nine.

HEH:

U.S. SUCCEEDS IN TOPPLING CONNIE CHUNG

Regime Change At CNN ‘On Track,’ Rumsfeld Says

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon today that the U.S. has succeeded in removing Connie Chung from the airwaves, a primary objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“To those critics who would say that this campaign isn’t moving quickly enough, let me say this: it’s only been a week and we’ve already gotten Connie Chung’s show cancelled,” Rumsfeld said. “Goodness gracious, I’d say we’re on track.”

Secretary Rumsfeld reminded reporters that regime change at CNN was the ultimate goal of the military campaign in Iraq, and that the removal of Ms. Chung from the schedule “goes a long way” towards achieving that goal.

Read the whole thing.

I WAS ON “MORNING EDITION” THIS MORNING, along with Mickey Kaus and some other folks, talking about war rhetoric. You can stream the audio here — just scroll down to the “war rhetoric” story.

Blogging will be light for a while. I’m moderating a debate over the Patriot Act and wartime civil liberties here between CATO’s Tim Lynch and Heritage’s Paul Rosenszweig. I’ll be appropriately neutral, but you can get some idea of my feelings here.

In the meantime, there’s The Command Post and The Agonist — though the latter seems to be down at the moment.

Also, Austin Bay’s columns have been collected on the Iraq War Diary page. And this comment on racism from Eugene Volokh is extremely apt. See you later.

Oh, and read this post on what freed Guantanamo detainees say about conditions there. It’s not beer-and-skittles, but it’s hardly inhuman, either.

UPDATE: Still not really back, but I’ve got a few observations on Iraqi reconstruction over at GlennReynolds.com and Daniel Drezner has good posts on de-Ba’athification and on how various dictators around the world are taking advantage of the war to violate human rights in their own countries. And here’s something interesting about internal dissent at the BBC over slanted war coverage.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is over at Shanti Mangala’s place this week. Check out the wide variety of posts from a wide variety of bloggers you might otherwise have missed.

HERE’S AN AIR FORCE BLOGGER’S ENTRY ON U.S. CASUALTIES. Excerpt:

Look. These are the coffins of six members of the United States Air Force. They did not die as a result of enemy fire. They died while attempting to transport Afghani children to a US medical facility for treatment. That is what the United States does. To all those who say, “…but what about Afghanistan? We haven’t fixed it yet…” and other such whining, I say: screw you. Six brave airmen died trying to make life better for children and their families who were brutalized under a tyrannical theocratic regime. Show me any other nation that does this as a matter of routine, 99% of the time without any press or media attention.

It ain’t the French. (Via James Rummel).

PHILIPPE DE CROY spots more poll spinning, this time at The New York Times:

NYT SPIN WATCH. Today’s New York Times has an article titled “Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs.” It’s a report of a new poll the newspaper has run. Given the headline, what would you expect such an article to say? The implication, it seems to me, is that support for the war is declining as the costs of it become more evident. But as you read the article, you see that it focuses instead on (a) public perceptions about how well the war is going and how soon it will be over; and (b) whether support for the war is the same among blacks and whites. It is made very clear that opposition to the war among the former group runs high. And there is mention that opinions about the war generally are in “flux” in part because “many Americans say they remain unsure of Mr. Bush’s rationale for the conflict.” Okay, okay, but what about the basic overall question of whether Americans are supporting the war?

Not to worry; that question is discussed as well — in the eighteenth and last paragraph of the story: “Support for Mr. Bush and the war remains high. By 70 percent to 24 percent, Americans believe that the United States did not make a mistake getting involved in Iraq.”

Oh.

I’m shocked, shocked to find such things going on at the Times of all places.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs has some thoughts on this, too.

AUSTIN BAY HAS A NEW COLUMN up. I don’t know why they don’t have him on CNN et al., in place of the many talking-heads they do have — he makes a lot more sense.

PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME LINKS to an alleged “GRU site” featuring Russian analysis. I wasn’t very impressed when I looked at it, as much of it sounds suspiciously like stuff I heard at the beginning of the Afghan war from the same kinds of sources. Anyway, Jurjen has a pretty convincing post on why they’re, ahem, not reliable.

He’s got a lot of other interesting posts, too. Just keep scrolling.

THEY’RE NOT ANTIWAR — THEY’RE JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE: A continuing series.

ISRAELI EXPERTS say that there is so much disinformation about that it is impossible to assess the actual progress of the war. That’s my sense, too. Best quote:

Most of those interviewed agree that, paradoxically, despite the unprecedented media coverage of the war, including the many correspondents who are embedded in fighting units, nobody knows what is really happening in Iraq. Yossi Peled, former GOC Northern Command, thinks the U.S. has shown great skill in its control of the media. “You have lots of television crews in the field, yet as someone watching TV you have no overall picture.”

Military historian Prof. Martin van Creveld goes further: “Everyone is lying about everything all the time, and it is difficult to say what is happening. I’ve stopped listening. All the pictures shown on TV are color pieces which have no significance.”

“There is a lot of disinformation,” he concludes. “Every word that is spoken is suspect.”

Shahak says that until now the Americans have managed to conceal their true battle plan. “Do you know what the Americans have planned? I don’t. They also never said (what they were planning to do). How do you topple a regime in 48 hours? In a week? Seventeen days? If we don’t want to make fools of ourselves, we should wait patiently. It would just be arrogant to judge from what we see on TV.”

What’s been frustrating about the television coverage is exactly what Van Creveld describes: lots of information, none of it adding up to a very useful big picture. Which, I suspect, is the point. (Via The Command Post).

ANTI-AMERICANISM, “New Class” sensibilities, and the media: My TechCentralStation column is up.

BIGWIG NOTES:

I don’t what I expected when I first started blogging, sending ones and zeros out into the darkness. Thank you letters from soldier’s wives were not anywhere on the horizon, I know that. Nor was hate mail, for that matter, though when it came it was much less of a surprise than the e-mail above.

Read the whole thing, from a guy who’s a lot more of a power-hitter than he admits.

TED BARLOW is unhappy with the idea of Barbara Bodine as an important administrator in postwar Iraq. I don’t know much about her, but he’s got a lot of links — though many of them don’t really seem to suggest that she’s as bad as his post suggests, and some cut the other way. Ditto some of the comments to his post. So if you go there, read everything.

I genuinely have no opinion on her suitability or not for the job, but I do think that — although at one level it seems premature to be talking about postwar stuff when the war is just starting — the postwar follow-through is likely to be at least as important as the war. My MSNBC post for tomorrow is on that. I think that a lot of us — me included, sometimes — are spending a lot of time reading minute-by-minute reports that are fragmentary and often wrong, and not enough time thinking about the big picture.

UPDATE: Several readers seem to think that Gen. John Abizaid, who interestingly is a favorite of Aziz Poonawalla, will really be calling the shots on Iraqi reconstruction. Stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Hobbs likes Abizaid, too, and has some more information on him.

I’LL BE ON BBC RADIO 5 in about twenty minutes, at roughly 10:50 Eastern.

In the meantime, watch this Canadian debate on the war. The one big loser is Chretien.

UPDATE: I’m on hold right now. They called me and said “hello, Salam!” But apparently Salam Pax won’t actually be on — they’re having an impersonator read from his weblog or something. We’ll see.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It went well enough, I think. I was uncomfortable doing a show that mentioned Salam, but the producer told me that they’ve already done that a number of times, so I guess it’s not making anything worse — and I don’t think my presence made any difference anyway. But Salam, if you’re reading this, you’ve developed an awfully high profile lately. You might want to drop out of sight for a while. It’ll be over soon enough (well, not soon enough), and you can blog then. People will still care.

I hope that some of the first journalists into Baghdad once this is over will track Salam down and interview him. Once this is over.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Al Barger says we don’t need to worry about Salam.

CHIRAC’S FRIEND, SADDAM:

Iraqi troops fired artillery pieces horizontally into crowds of their own people last night after a civilian uprising in Basra, the second city.

Watching British troops encircling the city of 1.3 million inhabitants said there were “horrific” scenes. One officer said: “We have seen a large crowd on the streets. The Iraqis are firing artillery at their own people. There will be carnage.”

The French are still defending him. And they’ll probably try to blame the U.S. and Britain for the slaughter. But they want a piece of the action once Saddam’s gone.

Screw ‘em. We ought to help the new Iraqi government extradite Chirac as a war criminal.

UPDATE: On the bright side, several readers note, the fact that they’re demanding a piece of the action makes clear how the French think things will go. Heh. Yeah, Saddam wouldn’t appreciate that, would he? Me, I feel about the French the way Joe Lieberman feels about the U.N.

A NICE INFOGRAPHIC of the war to date. (Via Jeff Jarvis’s warblog).