I’m still waiting for a link to the story, but here’s the teaser from above-the-mast at Drudge:

DEM HOUSE LEADER PELOSI TOLD REPORTERS THURSDAY: ‘I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REGRET ABOUT MY VOTE [AGAINST] THIS WAR. THE SAME QUESTIONS REMAIN. THE COST IN HUMAN LIVES, THE COST TO OUR BUDGET, PROBABLY 100 BILLION. WE COULD HAVE PROBABLY BROUGHT DOWN THAT STATUE FOR A LOT LESS’…

As of now, the tally of Coalition casaulties (that’s dead and injured) is under 600 — although that will go up as the fighting continues and the steam continues out of the Iraqi pressure cooker. Thirty years of totalitarian pressure doesn’t release all pretty-like.

Iraqi civilian deaths due to Coalition actios are thought to be in the 900-1,100 range. (Even the top-end number at the much-discredited Iraq Body Count is merely 1,411 as I write this.)

Iraqi military deaths? Frankly, that’s not our concern. We went there to remove a totalitarian regime, enforce 18 UNSC resolutions, find and destroy weapons of mass destruction, end support and sponsorship of terror, and liberate an oppressed people. Anyone shooting at an army with those goals gets what’s coming to them.

Anyway. If Nancy Pelosi thinks she could have come up with a plan better and cheaper (in dollars and lives) than the one Tommy Franks used, I’d dearly love to see it.

UPDATE: Here’s the link.

Comments Off

Will Saletan is as cranky as ever today, falling this short (put your thumb and index finger nanoscopically close for visual effect) of calling Bush and Blair racists:

No wonder Bush gave the Iraqis a pep talk. They’re underprivileged, at-risk, and challenged. They lack self-esteem. They need to be told that they’re capable, despite what others may say. Even Tony Blair is patting them on the back. “You are an inventive, creative people,” he told them in a televised message accompanying Bush’s remarks.

Read the whole thing for Saletan’s full point; I can’t do it justice in an extract. But anyone who thinks that Iraqis haven’t been “underprivileged, at-risk, and challanged,” must have spent the last few years, um, writing for Slate.

NOTE: Saletan’s blog-type thingy doesn’t have permalinks, so scroll down to “The Soft Bigotry of Loose Adulation” if needed.

Comments Off

The latest situation map of the Operation Iraqi Freedom is up at Strategy Page.

Comments Off

From the New York Times:

American forces hunting Saddam Hussein attacked a mosque here today and later bombed it, but appear to have missed an opportunity to kill or capture members of the Iraqi leadership.

Army and Marine officials said they believed that Mr. Hussein may have been inside the Imam al-Adham mosque at the time of today’s battle, which left one marine dead and more than 20 wounded.

Pretty slippery for a corpse.

Seriously, I have no clue if the guy is alive or not. But if he is, this act of showing up everywhere, seemingly uncatchable and invincible, is pretty smart propaganda.

If anyone were listening, that is.

Comments Off

Today’s Required Reading? Jim Hoagland.

Comments Off

Fox, I think, scored the story first, but here’s a less-boosterish version from ABC News:

Reports from several sources indicate that US Marines may have found possible evidence of Iraqi nuclear weapons at an abandoned complex south of Baghdad.
According to an article in today’s Washington Post, Marines have discovered high levels of radiation at the Tuwaitha nuclear site. Marines have held the site since Sunday, and have found high levels of radiation inside, according to embedded journalists.

The discovery of radiation has prompted speculation that the site, Iraq’s only internationally sanctioned site for nuclear material, may have been used to develop weapons grade uranium.

We’ll see how the story pans out, but right now it seems to be a good time for Chirac, Schroeder, Annan & Co. to start blushing.

Assuming, of course, they know how.

Comments Off

I have serious issues with the Bush Administration. Patriot Acts I, II, and — I pray not, but proabably other bad sequels. John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. Unrealistic budgeting. The list goes on. One problem I don’t have is difficulty believing the President says what he means about the Terror War.

Bush presented an ultimatum to the Taliban. They balked, and now they’re gone from power.

He told us he’d go to the UN before going to war against Saddam. He did.

We were promised a “good plan” for the war, and we got one.

Bush claimed he’d do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. By any historical standard, civilian casualties were way off the scale — on the low end.

The world heard from Bush that the Iraqis would choose their own government, and already — with fighting still going on in the north — locals are taking on some of their own governance.

Bush said that Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people. And the editors of the New York Times say:

Iraq is no longer a republic of fear, but it is still a republic of oil. Some 112 billion barrels lie beneath its soil, more than a tenth of the world’s known reserves. How the Bush administration handles the management of that resource as it gains control of the country will go a long way toward determining not just the future of Iraq but also America’s worldwide reputation. Any effort to manipulate Iraq’s oil for the benefit of the United States and American oil companies rather than the benefit of the Iraqi people will squander whatever political gains Washington has won in the war.

I say, “It’s all about OILLLLLLL.” Sigh.

Comments Off

Nick Kristof, Master of the Obvious:

Iraq today is at once exuberant and upset

Comments Off

Now that the campaign is all but over, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan feels free to tell what could not be told before:

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would “suffer the severest possible consequences.” CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for “crimes,” one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family’s home.

There’s more, some of it worse and all of it bad. Was stopping this madness worth 150 Coalition lives? I certainly think so.

Comments Off

From last night’s Letterman:

Top Ten Things Iraq’s Information Minister Has To Say About The War

10. “We’re pulling down the statues of Saddam to have them cleaned”

9. “Don’t believe that stuff you see on CNN…or NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox or MSNBC”

8. “If you ask me who the winner is, it depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is”

7. “Iraqi television is off the air because we didn’t want you to have to sit through ‘Becker’”

6. “Do you know of any job openings for a lying weasel?”

5. “Wolf Blitzer and I are engaged”

4. “Iraqis are in the streets celebrating Cher’s 40 fabulous years in show business”

3. “Incoming!”

2. “Saddam’s not dead — he’s just out with a case of the shingles”

1. “War? What war?”

Comments Off

I dare any protestor to sign this.

UPDATE: Andy’s petition is a smashing success. Sort of. The usual fools are making the usual noises — “well what about Sudan,” and “Afghanistan isn’t perfect yet,” and “it’s all about OILLLLLL!”

Curiously though, not one has actually, you know, signed the damn petition.

Comments Off

Yeah, but they’re loud.

Comments Off

It’s past 2am on the East Coast, but the New York Times still hasn’t updated their op-ed page.

They still smarting from the locally-sponsored victory parade in Baghdad on Wednesday?

Comments Off

Hey, Saddam — here’s who helped kick your butt.

Or as reader Mark Cridland, who sent this pic to me, wrote: “We did this with TEENAGE GIRLS.”

Comments Off

The easy part is over. Austin Bay details what’s left to be done:

With a peaceful and more just 21st century the grand strategic goals, US and allied forces liberating Iraq must

Comments Off

Ken Adleman produced this morning’s Required Reading.

Comments Off

Our very own Hitler, George W. Bush, has just conquered his very first foriegn nation. But Hitler didn’t just occupy countries, he remade them. So let’s look at Poland in 1940 to see what Bush has planned next for Iraq.

First off, we’re going to have to annex all the choice bits. Umm Qasr will come under direct Federal authority, as will all the Iraqi oil fields. Anything else of value, such as factories and munitions plants, will be placed on trains, then on ships, for relocation to American states with lots of electoral votes.

Good farmland — and there’s a lot of it in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, will be appropriated from it rightful owners. Unemployed US citizens of good breeding stock will be moved to the Middle East to work the farms. To keep them on the farm, literally, cash bonuses will be paid over and above market rates, along with money and medals for each baby produced.

National treasures are to be seized and granted as booty to the military commanders of Operation Iraqi “Freedom,” along with large, personal fiefdoms. Similar benefits are to be enjoyed by those politically connected to the current Washington regime. Tommy Franks and David Frum are about to become two of the largest landowners in all of Iraq.

Kurds shall be moved out of the mountains and into the cities. Specifically, into walled ghettos. They will be allowed outside the walls only for forced labor, and for eventual train rides to death camps, soon to be established in the more remote provinces.

If anything above subsistence is produced by the remaining Iraqi people, it is to be forcibly taken and placed in American shopping malls. Islam won’t be forbidden, but it will be officially discouraged. Mosques are to be looted, and prayers shall henceforth be addressed to the Leader, George Bush.

These are the things Hitler did to Poland, so we must expect our own Hitler to do exactly the same to Iraq.

And anyone who believes any of this is cordially invited to kiss my ass.

Comments Off

I like Kate and always will, but she has this one exactly wrong.

And that’s all I have to say — now or ever — about Sean-Paul’s agonies.

Comments Off

Here’s the latest declassified Iraqi communication intercepted by the NSA.

Comments Off

Bloodthirsty oppressor Tim Blair is happy, too.

Comments Off

Meanwhile, some bad news on the home front:

Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.

The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.

The campaign in Iraq is all but over, but the battles here at home are just beginning.

Comments Off

“OK, so that happened.” -David Mamet.

Really, that’s about all I feel right now. Maybe when they find Saddam’s entombed corpse in some bunker, or his torso splattered Ceausescu-style against a wall. . .maybe then I

Comments Off

Joe Bob says, check it out.

Comments Off

Montana has the real Patriot Act.

Thanks to Ed Lambert for the heads up. Ready for dinner next week, buddy?

Comments Off

Kids, don’t forget that the Second Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash is Friday night at Wyncoop Brewery in Denver.

Good company, good talk, and plenty to drink. I hear there might even be some pool. Lefties, righties, bloggers, readers, and the catfight girls from that Superbowl beer commercial are all invited.

Be there.

Comments Off

Jane Galt on the aging hipsters who dominate what’s left of the peace movement:

If you can’t get the kids into your movement, who’s going to march ten years from now if your neo-imperialist nightmare comes true? You can’t keep a movement going on Centrum Silver.

Megan, before long the only movements those folks will be able to muster will be courtesy of Metamusil.

Comments Off

How are we taking all the fight out of Baghdad without, you know, actually, really, fully taking Baghdad? Austin Bay says the answer is “urban judo.”

Read the whole thing — it’s required.

Comments Off