We should wait to see if this is confirmed. But it would be wonderful indeed if NPR broke the story about finding the first of Saddam’s chemical weapons.
“FREEDOM TODAY”: An Iraqi prisoner tells his tale.
POWELL VERSUS THE GERMANS: Wonderful take-down of an obnoxious German reporter by the secretary of state.
THE BEEB’S INQUISITION: Sometimes, the attempt to get people to pay for the BBC goes a little awry.
We’re in the presidential palace. This is getting to be a generals question in political science. Who actually wields effective power in Baghdad in the pre-dawn hours of April 7? I’m not sure what Hobbes would say right now: the Leviathan is at the gates, indeed inside the citadel, but it treads so lightly it is barely there. Maybe power shifts the minute a critical tipping point occurs in the assumptions of the population. Whom do they fear the most? Arresting: the moment when power changes hands. One day, someone will figure out when it happened. And they’ll probably be wrong.
NO U.N. CONTROL: The Pentagon and the British military liberated Iraq. They should both now govern it for the short-term. The notion that the U.N. should become immediately involved – except as a humanitarian adjunt to U.S.-U.K. forces – is a joke. I agree with William Rees Mogg in the Times of London this morning:
The Americans know that M Chirac double-crossed them over Resolution 1441; they know every detail of how and why he did it; they know what it has cost them in money and in lives. They will shake hands at photo opportunities; they will play the Marseillaise; they will drink toasts in mediocre champagne at diplomatic dinners; but they will be slow to forgive and they will never forget.
That is, indeed, the message that must be sent to Chirac, the Iraqi dictator’s chief sponsor. And if I’m not very much mistaken, it already has.
Paul Berman and Nat Hentoff make the critical arguments. Why haven’t more followed them?
BASRA FALLS: With minimal civilian casualties. Another huge victory after less than three weeks of war. The war-critics are now looking as beleaguered as the pockets of Ba’ath resistance.
VON HOFFMAN AWARD NOMINEE: “As the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their “resistance” hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So, the Pentagon’s failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation, to say nothing of the war itself.” – Robert Wright, Slate, last week.
“U.S. Army troops took control of this city revered by Shiite Muslims today, and once again drew cheers and thumbs-up accolades from thousands of smiling residents… Army officers hope that the relative ease with which Najaf and Karbala fell bodes well for their efforts to gain support from Shiite majority throughout Iraq. A gathering of senior Army officers on Highway 9 in the city late this afternoon drew an upbeat crowd of more than 100, who alternated expressions of appreciation with petitions for help. Among the shouts from the crowd:
‘Thank you very much, Mr. Boss.’
‘We love you United States.’
‘Saddam donkey.’
‘Night and day, no water.’
‘Hospital. No electricity, no food, no medicine.’
‘Very happy. I love you George Bush.'” – Washington Post, this morning.
BITTER, PARTY OF ONE: One of the things that people like me have long under-estimated is the legacy of Vietnam among the boomer generation. I wasn’t even in this country; and others in my under-40 generation in America also don’t get it. But for men like Howell Raines or Johnny Apple or others who command the heights of academia, Vietnam is still the prism through which they see everything. I’m not saying this isn’t understandable; and a sense of history is vital to understanding a chaotic war like the one we have just witnessed. But the bitterness can also cloud judgement. Just look at Allan Gurganus’ essay in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine. The man is still in shock. The visceral hostility he feels to the U.S. government, the Pentagon, or, indeed, any American authority figure stems in part from the experience of that war. I don’t think this is curable. In some ways, it’s pointless to rail against it. It’s just part of the psyche of a generation with enormous power – now, in part, the power to denigrate and undermine any real American military victory. Not all of this generation is hopeless, of course. Some are doing amazing work in this war even now. But for others, it will never recede. It’s their point of reference, their precious. And they will nurture it even more passionately if the world now proves them wrong.
More good news from Southern Iraq, where the Brits seem to be doing a fantastic job. One question: how did they manage not to collapse as a military force? After all, they allow openly gay soldiers in their units, thus undermining unit cohesion, destroying morale, wrecking troops’ privacy and making it impossible to fight. A miracle against all the odds, I suppose.
A WAR DIALOGUE: Wonderful series of emails back and forth between the editor of the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, and the editor of the rabidly anti-war Daily Mirror (of Pilger and Arnett), Piers Morgan. Morgan’s inability to see or think clearly has rarely been more brutally exposed.
A SUICIDE BOMBER: More evidence of Saddamite depravity.
CLIMATE CHANGE: So the Middle Ages were way warmer than our current temperatures. Must have been all those air-conditioners and SUV’s.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “On the separate question of whether Iraqi acts of war are on a par with those of the coalition, the answer is also simple. Ours are sometimes worse… We, by contrast, are invited to despise the independent al-Jazeera, condemned by Mr Blunkett as a Saddam tool, and soak up good news images. Ignore the nastiness and think instead of the brave ‘rescue’ of Private Jessica Lynch from the hospital ward where she was being treated with all available medical skill.” – Mary Riddell, shilling for Saddam’s thugs, in the Observer.
Some of you have asked how exactly the BBC enforces its mandatory license fee so that it can broadcast far-left propaganda to the British people. Here’s the official website that explains:
Using television receiving equipment to receive or record broadcast television programmes without the correct licence is a criminal offence. You could therefore face prosecution and a hefty fine of up to $1,000 ($1600). You may be asking yourself ‘how will they know if I’m using a TV without a licence?’ The answer is through a number of different methods. At the heart of our operation is the TV Licensing database. It has details of over 26 million UK addresses. Our officers have access to this computer system and a fleet of detector vans and hand-held detectors to track down and prosecute people who use a television without a licence. To find out how effective our methods are click here. Each year it becomes easier to find and prosecute people breaking the law in this way.
That’s what the BBC means by “publicly funded.” You pay up or they fine you. And they can spy on anyone with a television, backed up by the law and the force of government. No wonder that George Orwell used his experience at the BBC to model the Ministry of Truth in “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” On a related question, the BBC World Service is paid for directly out of government funds, i.e. general taxation. The BBC has, of course, produced much excellent television and radio over the decades. But it isn’t clear that that excellence couldn’t have been produced without this kind of 1940s socialist-style organization. And now that the Beeb has been hijacked by left-wing propagandists, the damage is getting greater.
THE FRENCH BEGIN TO WORRY: From my reader who monitors the French media:
This afternoon’s-signed editorial on French-government-owned Radio France International shockingly compared public attitudes in France today to those of the Vichy regime.-(www.rfi.fr – streaming video editorial today at 12:10-p.m. Eastern time-from Alain Genestare; archived recording should be posted soon). The Coalition forces in Iraq, said the editorial, are frequently referred to in France today as the “Anglo-American forces,” an expression apparently not widely-heard-since the-days of the collaborationist-Vichy-government over a half century ago.-As some of your readers may already know, comparing anyone or anything to the Vichy regime is, in the language of contemporary French politics,-like dropping a nuclear bomb.-Vichy is not something the French have really come to terms with, even today.-(Remember the éclat several years ago when Mitterrand’s Vichy ties came to light?)- Well, somebody in the French government must be getting worried.-It’s about time.-The radio editorial then went on to cite the Le Monde poll you posted about several days ago, and expressed shock that some one third of-the French should be hoping for-a Saddamite victory, a victory by a “criminal against humanity.”
Vichy, huh? Not far off, I’d say. But some over there are beginning to see sense.
BAGHDAD BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Suggesting more civilian casualties than the Iraqis.
An exquisite eulogy.
“What a hysterical notion. The British public ‘own’ the BBC. We have no control over what they broadcast. We cannot watch any other channel without having first paid them their state-agreed and legally enforced dues. The fact that the collection of this is at arms-length from the state does not disguise the fact that they only exist (and expand) because every house, flat and student digs that wishes to receive ANY TV broadcast has to pay the BBC a hefty bounty first AT THE BEHEST OF THE STATE. And, to make matters worse, the whole of British broadcasting is hamstrung by “impartiality” rules that prevent the likes of SKY News and other independents from saying what they really should (want to be?) be saying. I very much hope that one of the “casualties” of war will be the BBC.
Yours, a very fed-up Londoner.”
A reminder of the evil we’re about to defeat:
A grisly discovery reported by British military officials today of what were said to be the remains of hundreds of people at an abandoned military compound on the outskirts of Zubayr, in southern Iraq, served to remind allied forces and the world of other aspects of Mr. Hussein’s rule. The remains were packed in bundles that contained shreds of military uniforms, the British officials said, but it could not be determined how old they were, or how they got there … The British soldiers who investigated the Zubayr military base found 200 makeshift coffins bearing seriously decayed corpses, perhaps a year or a number of years old. Soldiers of the Royal Horse Artillery also found Arabic documents and photographs of men bearing head wounds and showing signs of torture or disfigurement in the warehouse. “I wouldn’t want to speculate, but the bones inside are obviously years old,” Capt. Jack Kemp told British reporters at the scene.
More of this, no doubt, to come.
We’re now in the center of Baghdad. The headquarters of the Republican Guard is now occupied. Could this be over sooner than we can even hope?
How do you write a defense of John Kerry’s comments calling for “regime change” in the U.S. without dealing with the language Kerry used. No one can or should object to Kerry arguing that we need a change of administration in this country. He’s running for president, for goodness’ sake. And it’s completely defensible – if spectacularly stupid – for Kerry to say so during a war. The issue is his use of the term “regime change,” as if the democratically elected president of this country represents an identical type of government as that which exists (at the time of writing) in Iraq. That’s what’s offensive. To say, as Josh does, that this terminology is irrelevant is preposterous. Here is how Josh deals with that obvious issue:
For the purposes of our present discussion, the particulars of Kerry’s remark are almost beside the point.
Nope. They’re the entire point. If Kerry’s defenders are going to give the guy this kind of bad advice, he’s toast. (N. Z. Bear has more to say on this.)
The Dish 