Posted
4/5/2003 05:08:33 PM
by Edward Driscoll
RHETORIC MEETS REALITY: "Victim of Saddam makes [pro-Saddam Parliament member George Galloway] shut up"
Posted
4/5/2003 01:26:41 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE, EDDRISCOLL.COM! Back on March 16th, we wrote a fairly long post titled, "America, the Middle East, and Vietnam", tracing back the roots of our Middle East involvement to our failure to win in Southeast Asia.
David Warsh picks up the theme in an even longer (and very interesting) essay titled, "The Iraq Invasion in (An) Historical Perspective".
(Found via Reason's "Hit & Run" blog.)
Posted
4/5/2003 01:12:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
PULL OSAMA'S FINGER seems to be the gist of this post by Rick Brookhiser, who adds, "The truest thing in the story is that the CIA, given its recent record, probably is looking into it."
Posted
4/5/2003 12:44:33 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"THE TRAIN IS LEAVING THE STATION", says Victor Davis Hanson, who has its number.
You've probably read it all ready, but if not...RTWT.
Posted
4/5/2003 12:13:34 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"ASYMMETRY": Eric Olsen gives his take on the difference between the recent anti-American (or at least anti-Bush) gestures of Pearl Jam versus the Dixie Chicks.
Posted
4/4/2003 09:41:42 PM
by Edward Driscoll
AP IS ON THE CASE: "U.S. Tanks Enter Baghdad for First Time".
Posted
4/4/2003 09:02:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THREE CIA "ASSETS" EXECUTED BY IRAQ, according to this UPI report.
Posted
4/4/2003 08:36:40 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE MARINES ARE INSIDE BAGHDAD, according to Fox News, who has some great video of tanks and APCs rolling in.
UPDATE (8:39 PM): Sounds like a small number of troops, probing how the Iraqis will respond, according to Major Garrett, Fox's man in the Pentagon.
Posted
4/4/2003 07:03:11 PM
by Edward Driscoll
A SPINAL TAP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY? Dave Kopel looks at Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, and concludes it's as much a "mockumentary" as Spinal Tap was.
Posted
4/4/2003 05:42:24 PM
by Edward Driscoll
HASAN AKBAR CHARGED IN GRENADE 'FRAGGING': Joel Mowbray says follow the money.
Here's my coverage from the night the incident occurred, and the day after. See also this post by Steven Den Beste.
Posted
4/4/2003 03:50:52 PM
by Edward Driscoll
DO SMOKING BANS CUT HEART ATTACKS IN HALF? Doubtful, but Jacob Sullum says that won't stop the claim from being "credulously repeated" by the media.
Posted
4/4/2003 12:04:47 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL: Jonah Goldberg's kicking it old school G-File style (ala, his early 1999-ish columns) on NRO, with some thoughts on what Iraq should be called.
Can't say I'm crazy about his final choice, but it would certainly be fun to see how the French react to it...
Posted
4/4/2003 02:04:19 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE LONG AND WINDING BOX SET: My slightly stream-of-consciousness review of the The Beatles Anthology DVD is up on Blogcritics.
Posted
4/3/2003 11:03:13 PM
by Edward Driscoll
A MEME IS BORN: God bless James Lileks for creating the logo below, available in both large and small versions, via his site.
Posted
4/3/2003 10:13:10 PM
by Edward Driscoll
US MAY ISOLATE BAGHDAD: This may just be fog of war or misinformation. But according to AP:
American forces might stop short of storming Baghdad and instead isolate it while the makings of a new national government are put in place, President Bush's top military adviser said Thursday. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated the coming days might bring neither an all-out fight for the city, as many have predicted, nor a conventional siege of the capital. "When you get to the point where Baghdad is basically isolated, then what is the situation you have in the country?" he said at a Pentagon news conference. "You have a country that Baghdad no longer controls, that whatever's happening inside Baghdad is almost irrelevant compared to what's going on in the rest of the country."And with communications effectively cut, or at least severely curtailed between Saddam (if he's still breathing) and the battlefield, one of the (many) real weaknesses of a totalitarian regime its army is revealed, as Steven Den Beste wrote late last year:
This is another area where training and morale come into the picture, with regard to Iraq, because they don't have either. When a military is cowed by fear, constantly culled by executions, and filtered based on political reliability, which is to say that when the primary mission of a military is to not execute a coup, then it is extremely vulnerable to decapitation. For ten years, demonstrating initiative in the Iraqi military was a one-way ticket to death, and few at any level will make any decision if they can refer to higher authority. This tendency to pull all decisions upward is endemic in all Arab militaries anyway, and it's going to be at its most extreme in Iraq now. Since everything is centrally controlled, then if that central command is destroyed, or even if it loses communications, then the rest of the army will be essentially useless. The men won't know what to do, and they're not used to making decisions for themselves. Even officers at ranks as high as Colonel are not used to actually thinking for themselves. And even if they were, it's not at all clear that they have any dedication to the cause of defending Iraq or fighting against us. The reality is that most of them hate Saddam as much as we do.Of course, given the number of media casualties the last announced "pause" created, like I said, it may be just be another ruse.
Posted
4/3/2003 09:13:19 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE 2003 NFL WEEKLY SCHEDULE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED. Look for some interesting rivalries and games in new or massively refurbished stadiums.
Posted
4/3/2003 08:46:30 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE: Check out these two photographs of American soldiers, from both World War II and today.
(Via Joanne Jacobs.)
Posted
4/3/2003 03:50:41 PM
by Edward Driscoll
GROUCHO WATCH: Glenn Reynolds is apparently getting secret--and very silly--communiques from the Iraqi Information Ministry--or perhaps Saddam himself.
Posted
4/3/2003 03:31:08 PM
by Edward Driscoll
CARNAC WATCH: Johnny Carson's old Carnac character is apparently now the Chief Mufti of Russia.
Posted
4/3/2003 03:28:03 PM
by Edward Driscoll
MEANWHILE, Iran has plans in post-war Iraq as well.
Posted
4/3/2003 03:25:04 PM
by Edward Driscoll
IRAQI EX-PATRIOTS HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE GO-AHEAD to return to Iraq today, according to a news item my wife just heard on KCBS radio. (One gentleman, who was thrown out of Iraq 30 years ago for being a dissident, and who recently studied at the Naval Post Graduate College at Monterey left today via SFO.) I'll have more if I can find a link to a news article.
UPDATE: Here's the news article, from the KCBS Web site:
An Iraqi refugee who now lives in Monterey has been summoned by the Iraqi National Congress to help establish a civilian government in his home country once the war is over. KCBS reporter Margie Shafer says Akeel Taee left Iraq in 1977 after being tortured by Iraqi state police for belonging to a dissident student union. He has been studying defense resource management at the Naval Post Graduate school in Monterey and is now headed to Qatar anticipating the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. "I really would like to see a transitional government established right away," Taee said. "We need this operation to be finished." Taee spoke to KCBS before boarding a plane to Qatar via London. He said once Saddam's regime is toppled. "then we will see all the solutions for all of our problems, ethnic and minority culture and the sharing of the power." Taee told KCBS he is confident different Iraqi ethnic groups can peacefully coexist after Saddam is gone. People "always work together, and nobody really tries to have a conflict," he said. "We never have a conflict within Iraqi society, even during the last 200 or 300 years." Taee is one of 200 members of the Iraqi National Congress invited to help US Central Command set up a transitional government. Taee's family will stay in London while he works on the new government.UPDATE: Here's more, via the Drudge Report.
Posted
4/2/2003 10:03:22 PM
by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Sometimes I think the reason America is so despised in some quarters is that we fail to live up to other peoples’ worst expectations."
Posted
4/2/2003 07:32:17 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FULL METAL FISKING: As Stephen Green writes, "Do not piss off Asparagirl".
Posted
4/2/2003 06:07:46 PM
by Edward Driscoll
RONALD BAILEY HAS A MODEST PROPOSAL to help solve Europe's problem with anti-Semitism.
I like it, myself.
Posted
4/2/2003 02:57:54 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ALSO MIA: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il hasn't been seen in seven weeks.
Of course, all he has to do is say, "No matter what it says on EdDriscoll.com, I’m still alive"...
Posted
4/2/2003 02:27:54 PM
by Edward Driscoll
EVEN-HANDEDNESS: Steven Den Beste says of Moises Saman, the photographer for Newsday detained by the Iraqis, "After their terrible peril, he could not bring himself to actually say what we all know: the government of Iraq is monstrously evil."
As David Frum recently wrote:
I am not a believer in journalistic “objectivity” in wartime. Journalists who cover fires cheer for the firefighters. Journalists who cover crime don’t keep neutral between the crooks and their victims. What kind of warped system of values forbids journalists to support their country when the guns are blasting?Or as someone once asked CNN, "Who do you think you are? Switzerland?"
Posted
4/2/2003 01:33:58 PM
by Edward Driscoll
I LIKE IT: New recruiting slogan was introduced by the Navy this fall. Team Stryker has details and a shot of one of a new Navy poster.
Posted
4/1/2003 05:41:04 PM
by Edward Driscoll
TIMESWATCH is a new offshoot of the Media Research Center, focusing on bias at (you guessed it) the New York Times.
Posted
4/1/2003 04:20:23 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"WHITE HOUSE TO END DRUGS & TERROR ADS": Talk about long overdue--I can imagine the negative calls that the White House got after they were broadcast during the Super Bowl.
Posted
4/1/2003 04:18:18 PM
by Edward Driscoll
US OFFICIAL SAYS AMERICAN POW RESCUED, according to AP.
Posted
4/1/2003 11:23:51 AM
by Edward Driscoll
PRESS PATHOLOGIES: Virginia Postrel, writing on her new and improved Dynamist Blog, has an interesting look at the angles that the American, British and Arab press take when slanting their stories.
Posted
4/1/2003 11:03:46 AM
by Edward Driscoll
TWO MISSING NEWSDAY JOURNALISTS FOUND, alive and well.
Posted
4/1/2003 10:46:31 AM
by Edward Driscoll
I DIDN'T SEE SADDAM ON TV THIS MORNING, but that's OK, neither did anybody else...
UPDATE: "By the way, notice that there's been no trace of Qusay or Uday since the bombing? I think we got all three of them", says Stephen Den Beste.
Good. Although, just as in World War II, when several--but not all--of the members of Hitler's inner circle committed suicide rather than face capture, it would be have been nice to Saddam and his progeny tried after the war.
Posted
4/1/2003 10:43:30 AM
by Edward Driscoll
"A PERSONAL MEMOIR": Nice eulogy for Daniel Patrick Moynihan by William F. Buckley Jr.
Posted
3/31/2003 05:07:58 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN ASKS "A Million Mogadishus--The Far Left's Wish?":
This lazy form of moral equivalence is not rare among the radical left in this country. But it is based on a profound moral abdication: the refusal to see that a Stalinist dictatorship, that murders its own civilians, that sends its troops into battle with a gun pointed at their heads, that executes POWs, that stores and harbors chemical weapons, that defies twelve years of U.N. disarmament demands, that has twice declared war against its neighbors, and that provides a safe haven for terrorists of all stripes, is not the moral equivalent of the United States under president George W. Bush. There is, in fact, no comparison whatever. That is not jingoism or blind patriotism or propaganda. It is the simple undeniable truth. And once the left starts equating legitimate acts of war to defang and depose a deadly dictator with unprovoked terrorist attacks on civilians, it has lost its mind, not to speak of its soul.
Posted
3/31/2003 05:01:17 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THAT WAS FAST: The Washington Post reports that "Britain's Mirror Hires Fired Veteran Arnett".
Posted
3/31/2003 03:54:04 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FIRST THE TRIPLETS ALL LEAVE THE DALLAS COWBOYS, now this.
Posted
3/31/2003 03:50:01 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"KNOW THY ENEMY": Fun facts about the Iraqi Republican Guard.
Of course, pretty soon, many of them will be checking in here...
Posted
3/31/2003 03:41:12 PM
by Edward Driscoll
AFTER THE WAR: Pat Tillman plans to return the NFL after his stint in the Army is up in 2005.
Posted
3/31/2003 12:35:06 PM
by Edward Driscoll
GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE PRAISED BY MSNBC, in an article that also mentions Sgt. Stryker and Salam Pax.
Congrats Steve!
Posted
3/31/2003 11:47:32 AM
by Edward Driscoll
JUST UPDATED THE LINKS PAGE to include the new URL for Virginia Postrel's new look Weblog. Click on over and check it out!
Posted
3/31/2003 11:24:28 AM
by Edward Driscoll
AMERICAN AIRLINES AVOIDS BANKRUPTCY, according to AP.
Posted
3/31/2003 10:11:51 AM
by Edward Driscoll
WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE: MSNBC "terminates" Peter Arnett "after the journalist told state-run Iraqi TV that the U.S.-led coalition’s initial war plan had failed and that reports from Baghdad about civilian casualties had helped antiwar protesters undermine the Bush administration’s strategy."
I have to give MSNBC credit--Ted Turner didn't fire Arnett for his pro-Iraqi bias in the first Gulf War.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the US military has kicked out Geraldo Rivera. "According to US news reports, Rivera was told to leave Iraq after an on-air appearance during which he drew a map in the sand revealing information about US troop locations", says this AFP article.
ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, according to Drudge, Rivera "said live on FOX this morning that he had not been expelled, and rival media outlets were spreading rumors". Fog of media war?
VERY SILLY UPDATE: Now it all makes sense!
MORE SERIOUS UPDATE: National Geographic axed Arnett as well. And Arnett really groveled on the Today Show this morning, according to Rod Dreher.
Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan calls Arnett "a stooge". Fortunately, he's now an unemployed one. And Steven Den Beste has some thoughts on Arnett as well.
Posted
3/30/2003 12:03:29 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ALWAYS FIGHTING THE LAST WAR: In the first Gulf War, Saddam thought Americans were weak because of Vietnam. This time around, he thinks they're weak because of Mogadishu:
If the U.S. cannot be made to halt the war through shame, Saddam hopes to try pain. U.S. military-intelligence officials believe the Iraqi command circulated copies of the movie Black Hawk Down before the war, as a manual for defeating the Americans. The film tells the story of the 18 U.S. Army Rangers who were killed by Somalis while attempting to rescue comrades from two helicopters downed in Mogadishu in 1993. The casualties prompted the U.S. to wind up its military operation in Somalia. The Iraqis may hope that similar scenes of Americans being bloodied in the streets of Baghdad would bring the same result.Too bad Saddam didn't learn from the French, who built the Maginot Line thinking that World War II would be fought using the same techniques as World War I. (By the way, speaking of Black Hawk Down, my post about its upcoming deluxe edition DVD on Blogcritics has sparked an interesting mini-debate about America and the UN. Click on over to read it--or participate in it.)
Posted
3/30/2003 12:02:00 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"THE GREATER THE GLORY": Provocative email sent to Andrew Sullivan by one of his readers about how the media will make our victory in Iraq even more impressive, simply because of their habitual underestimation of President Bush:
Once again the media -which is almost genetically anti-Bush- has whipped itself into hysteria fueled by the hope that he will fail. I believe their hatred of him is the motivator and they are indulging in a kind of optimism that this will be his Waterloo. The most obvious comparison is of course Modo and Afghanistan. But my point is that the more they screech that we are losing, the GREATER the glory of victory. They are walking into a political trap of their own making. I believe they are about to make utter fools of themselves one more time. On some level, a substantial portion of the public senses this, "gets it" and in the end, this will only enhance Bush. They will be doing him a political favor.Exactly. But do read the whole thing.
Posted
3/30/2003 12:01:00 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ITS SOUL WAS SOLD A LONG TIME AGO: Jonah Goldberg look sat the ludicrous double standard of the United Nations, in his syndicated column.
Posted
3/30/2003 12:00:30 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE STEPFORD WIVES THE MURDOCH BLONDES: "Easy Distinction" provides a spotting guide for the blondes that inhabit Fox News. (Including the men!)
Posted
3/30/2003 12:00:00 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"ITS SOUL IS FOR SALE": Steven Den Beste looks at Amnesty International, and does not like what he sees.
And he's right.
UPDATE: Nat Hentoff looks at some of Iraq's terriftying human rights violations, and concludes:
I participated in many demonstrations against the Vietnam War, including some civil disobedience—though I was careful not to catch the eyes of the cops, sometimes a way of not getting arrested. But I could not participate in the demonstrations against the war on Iraq.Hentoff gets it. Too bad Amnesty doesn't.
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