The inspectors will go in. They won’t find anything. But there will be lots of shell games by Saddam.
Then comes a frustrating period of continued diplomacy, ending in war — which won’t go quite as expected.
Other than that, I got nothin’ right now. More in the morning.
Been busy cruising the web catalogs all night, what with Christmas coming up next month and Melissa’s birthday next week. Little or no blogging today — there’s just too much to do.
Acid Man lays down the rules for the new Republican Majority. They’d do well to listen, if they want to keep it that way.
Virginia Postrel — welcome back! — strengthens this morning’s column on Saddam’s idiocy:
Somewhere in my personal archives, I have a certain embarrassing C-SPAN tape that reminds me not to underestimate Saddam’s zeal for confronting the U.S. and its allies. Back in 1991 as allied troops were massing, I appeared on Washington Journal and, when asked whether war was inevitable, I said it wasn’t. In fact, I predicted that Saddam would back out of Kuwait, holding only the Rumaila oil field bordering Iraq. The world wouldn’t go to war just to keep the oil field in Kuwaiti hands. Saddam would call our bluff, exit Kuwait, and gain a rich prize.
Plus, more lame city slogans and a personal report on airport security. As ever, Virginia still doesn’t use permalinks, so start at the top and keep reading until you’re into re-reruns.
Forget the massive movement of men and material into Kuwait, Turkey, Qutar, and Jordan. Don’t think about the complex logistical train into the Middle East, growing daily. Worry not over plans, timetables, weapons inspectors or “material breach.”
All of that pales in comparison to the latest news from the Pentagon — they’ve named a spokesman.
What has Juan done?
We
It
That was pretty Quick.
Saddam Hussein is a stupid, stupid man.
I don
Coming up on Tuesday: Why Saddam is an idiot, true tales of war (preparations), and more of the usual.
Well it’s about damn time.
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you have an ominosity quotient of seven.you are as ominous as the creators of this quiz. which terrifies us. |
It looks like the Pentagon is preparing for a Baghdad coup as much as they are an Anglo-American invasion.
The New York Times reports nothing much new and very little unexpected in a Sunday story on American war plans:
President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad.
The plan, approved in recent weeks by Mr. Bush well before the Security Council’s unanimous vote on Friday to disarm Iraq, calls for massing 200,000 to 250,000 troops for attack by air, land and sea. The offensive would probably begin with a “rolling start” of substantially fewer forces, Pentagon and military officials say.
The only real item of interest here is that General Tommy Franks will have the ability to begin the invasion
John Hawkins landed an email interview with historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson.
Yeah, that would have to be this morning
In a Newsweek web exclusive, former Clinton speechwriter Michael Waldman identifies what went wrong for the Democrats this fall:
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Fareed Zakaria on how the US is perceived differently in East Asia from how they see us in Europe:
I asked a veteran diplomat [in Singapore] the conventional question: was he worried that President George W. Bush now had an even freer hand to do anything he wanted to?
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Free speech, which never really thrived in Europe, is now dead. Steven Den Beste has the details.
In the International News section, The New York Times reports that missile defense is getting popular with worried Japanese voters:
In a poll conducted a week ago for the liberal daily Asahi Shimbun, 95 percent of 2,068 Japanese respondents surveyed said they were “concerned” about North Korea’s nuclear program.
On Friday, Yomiuri Shimbun, a conservative daily, ran a headline that said, “U.S. to Press Japan to Build Missile Shield.” But in a briefing for the news media, the reported instrument of pressure, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said there was no need for a heavy sales job.
“You don’t have to pressure Japan for Japanese to realize that Japan is facing a serious threat of missile attack,” he said, referring to North Korean capabilities.
Now, as I understand it, any space-based defense will have to rely heavily on computing power and power-source miniaturization. We have Intel. They have Sony. Do the math.
Bill Safire, smartly angling for more interviews with Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, hasn
No, he
The martial tradition in my family runs the gamut from
What a weekend.
Anyway, I’m back at work. New stuff for tomorrow on the two-stage war against Saddam, how the Democrats still don’t get it, and some bloggy goodness from around the Blogosphere
On StrategyPage, Jim Dunnigan argues that the age of tank warfare is, at long last, coming to a slow end:
There will have to be some battles to make the point. China and India are still building tanks, using technology far behind, and a lot cheaper than, the M-1. But with smarter and cheaper anti-tank weapons available (missiles, “smart mines” and air delivered robot tank killers like SADARM), it will only take one incident of the “cheap and smart” stuff beating up on a lot of tanks to make the point. Another telling sign is the lack of enthusiasm in America and Russia for designing a replacement for current tanks. At least not a replacement that features the “bigger gun and thicker armor” that has characterized tank development for the past 80 years.
Oh, there may always be tanks in our inventory — they’re useful in lots of situations. But before too long, they’ll no longer be the prime instrument of land warfare.
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