My boss sent me this today and it made me smile. I needed to smile because it is snowing again…that is too depressing.
“You know the world is off tilt, when the best rapper
is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the
tallest basketball player is Chinese, and Germany
doesn’t want to go to war.”
-Charles Barkley
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I am guessing that anyone who ever checks this site is by now also checking Instapundit fairly regularly. If not…well…you aren’t making the best use of the internet resources at your disposal because Reynold’s site is AWESOME.
Anyway, he linked to this editorial yesterday that makes an interesting prediction on how long the Iraq war is going to take. It makes a lot of sense. I’m not going to endorse it because I have read interesting and persuasive arguments on stuff like this before and been burned. Check out the article by Austin Bay for the prediction.
Here is a picture from a Yahoo slide show that I thought was interesting.
The caption:
Royal Marine Eric Walderman from the British Army’s 40 Commando wears a bullet-riddled kevlar helmet, which saved his life after it was hit during a firefight in the assault on the southern Iraq (news - web sites) port of Umm Qsar, March 26, 2003. A first seaborne delivery of aid to Umm Qasr has been delayed by 24 hours until Friday, a British military spokesman said on Thursday. REUTERS/POOL/MOD-Angie Pearce
Kevlar is cool.
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I liked this part of yesterday’s Best of The Web from the Wall Stree Journal:
As The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last points out, in the history of military routs, hardly any have taken less than eight days. The 1983 liberation of tiny Grenada, for example, took 10 days:
–Still not convinced? Consider the greatest military collapse of modern times, the infamous French fold at the start of World War II. Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940, didn’t get to Paris until June 14, and didn’t get a French surrender until June 22.
Even the French–the French!–were able to hold out for 44 days. If Saddam prolongs the fighting for another 5 weeks, all he will be doing is rising to the level of military competence set by France.–
So if you’re getting impatient, just relax. Go for a walk, catch a movie, pick up a good book, spend some time with the kids. Soon enough the war will be over, and America will have won.
Sometimes its nice to have everything put into perspective. I especially like when that can be done at the expense of the French!!!
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I just found out today that one of the POW pilots of the Apache that went down in Iraq is LDS. Our family has been praying for all of the POWs. I hope they get out of there alive and get the hero’s welcome they deserve.
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Courtesy Instapundit…Here is a really really informative article from The Strategy Page about Iraq. #4 is the most interesting.
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DenBeste has a great post this morning about what is probably going on in areas of Iraq where there are no news cameras or embedded reporters. I am sure he is right. Good post.
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The caption with this picture: “A U.S. Marine helps an injured POW moments after securing the port of Um Qusar in southern Iraq, Sunday, March 23, 2003.”
This picture from the Herald-Sun.com interactive slide show effectively shows the strategy the U.S. is following in this war. Compassion toward the enemy to win them over. So far it doesn’t appear successful but soon stories of events like that shown in this picture will be so common place that many Iraqis will have to see the stupidity of the cause they are fighting for. The bad thing about this strategy is that it is very likely that more American soldiers will die than if we were to fight a scorched earth type of war.
If you get a few minutes check out as much of the slide show linked above as you can. It is amazing how much better a slide show like this is at giving one an idea of what is going on in Iraq than the crappy 24 hour coverage on CNN, FOX and BBC. There really are some unbelievable pictures on the site.
(Link courtesy of The Corner)
In yesterday’s Best of The Web (the blog of James Taranto from the Wall Street Journal Online) there was a story about Sgt. Asan Akbar, the guy who lobbed grenades into the tent of his comrades in Iraq. Apparently he was upset about the war in Iraq. Here is a Mr. Taranto’s description of the letter the Wall Street Journal received and Mr. Taranto’s Reaction:
In the wee hours of Sunday morning, we received a curious e-mail from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, sent at 2:29 a.m. EST, which reads as follows:
–The troubling report of a U.S. soldier launching grenades into tents of his own brigade in Kuwait has disturbed all Americans.
A suspect has been apprehended and according to preliminary reports acted alone. This soldier should be subjected to a military court of justice and must now bear the consequences of his seditious act if he is found guilty of committing this crime.
We warn against exploiting this incident and making sweeping generalizations about others of the same race, ethnicity, or religion of the suspect.
We find no excuses, or acceptable motives, that can justify such a reprehensible act.–
We shall follow the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s warning and not mention Akbar’s religion. (If you must know, it’s in the Reuters story.) Suffice it to say that it seems unlikely the guys at the Muslim Public Affairs Council would be up at all hours fretting about the incident if the culprit were, say, a Mormon.
I read this interesting post at USS Clueless this morning. DenBeste claims the press is actually trying to make things in Iraq sound worse than they are to push forward their view that this is so costly a conflict that voters in the future need to do what they can to keep the U.S. more humble in its foreign policy. I don’t know if I agree with him but after reading this awesome editorial in the NY Post by Ralph Peters I really do agree that the press has been off base in some of its reporting.
Here is a new tactial unmanned aerial vehicle that can be used by troops in the field. Sounds like it could possibly save the lives of some troops in the event the Iraqis decide to use chemical weapons. Read the whole Wired story here.
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Here is a really cool post at Instapundit about a human shield who came out of Iraq with a new point of view…and 14 hours of un-censored video of conversations with Iraqis. It will be interesting to see this video after it is released. Check out the link!!!
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Wow. Last night after everyone went to bed I wanted to take our new minivan (see www.themannings.org for more information) for a drive. I was excited about the car but I also wanted to find out what was going on in Iraq. As soon as I got in the car the song “Bullet the Blue Sky” was on the radio. U2 was interrupted by the DJ who said, “Here’s President Bush live from the White House.” I heard President Bush’s war announcement then switched to WTOP (the big new station here) to listen to everything that was going on. Apparently there was a lot less action than most new people expected. This was a mild surprise.
The described in great detail an attack. Apparently there was a very focused strike on a bunker near Baghdad. Three-dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Red Sea and from the Persian Gulf converged on the target and one after another slammed into the bunker. Apparently this was to soften the target for the two 2000 lb bunker buster bombs carried by F117 fighter-bombers which were dropped immediately after the missile strike.
Imagine the coordination that had to be involved in something like this. Missiles from ships were fired one right after another from 2 completely different locations hundreds of miles apart with perfect timing. While this was happening a flight of stealth fighters with the huge bombs was dispatched from yet another location to arrive at exactly in time to drop their payload as the last missile hit the bunker.
The former general who was providing commentary was even amazed at all of this. He described how the order to carry out this strike must have been given at least 5 hours in advance to get everything coordinated. The Pentagon claimed that the strike was directed at very senior Iraqi officials. They didn’t say how they knew this. (See speculation below)
This morning I turned on the news and saw that Hussein was denouncing the U.S. for their war. Apparently he (or at least one of his doubles) was still alive and hadn’t been killed in the strike.
Then I read this:
A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that military advisers originally did not intend to begin the assault Wednesday. However, Bush was told in the final meeting that fresh intelligence had prompted military planners to change their recommendation.
I thought about this. What fresh intelligence could they have received? Then I remembered…
Yesterday morning there were new reports that Tariq Aziz, the deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, had attempted to defect and was shot near Kurdish territory. It didn’t take long for him to appear on Iraqi TV to deny that anything had happened. He was pretty pleased with himself and even brandished his sidearm to show that he wasn’t close to abandoning Saddam. I thought all of this was weird but didn’t give it a second thought until this morning.
I started to laugh when I did give this a second thought. Here is the speculation. Clearly this was no coincidence. The CIA put out word that Tariq had defected fully expecting him to publicly show himself in good shape and supporting Saddam. Then either by satellite or Special Forces on the ground in Baghdad they tracked him to wherever he went. Then they sent the new intelligence they had gathered to Washington where the decision was made to devastate the locale.
Absolutely brilliant. I love it. I’m obviously just guessing at all of this but it makes perfect sense. They smoked the sucker out of his hiding place, watched were he went to when he tried to hide again, then they killed him. Don’t be surprised if we don’t see Mr. Aziz on TV again. I’ll be looking but I would bet anyone a milkshake that he is toast.
Sorry for the long post but I wanted to share this on my blog with the world and it took lost of words!!! I hope everyone is safe. Please pray for the troops…some of them are in my ward and one is the wife of my boss.
God Bless America
UPDATE:
Here is a story about last nights raid from the Post. Very interesting…
3/24/03 1501
Another UPDATE:
Dang. It looks like Aziz is alive. I guess that messes up my theory. Oh well. It seemed like a pretty cool idea!!!
Thomas Freidman in Today’s New York Times compared the way George W. Bush and Tony Blair are addressing their rational for the war on Iraq. This should be required reading for anyone interested in knowing what I absolutely detest about this whole situation (yes…all 1 of you). Even though I support the war on Iraq (marginally…see this post)I do not feel that being the world’s policeman (or its carpenter) is in the interests of our county. I hate that whole idea. In this respect I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who is any more of an isolationist than I am.
Mr. Freidman attempts to paint Bush as only caring about disarming Iraq because it is in the U.S. best interest. He says this is a BAD thing. He claims Bush should be trying to make a better world. He argues that Bush should be working on global warming with the same gusto he is working on the death of the Iraqi tyrant. He argues that Tony Blair is right, that we need to be “fixing the world”. I say that is crap.
Fixing the world is exactly what we shouldn’t be trying to do. We should be doing our best to make sure that we are safe from terrorism or other forms of attack from any source. If that means a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, its weapons, and its leader who finances and supports terrorism then so be it. We definitely don’t want to be the one dictating to the rest of the world how we want it to act so we can consider it fixed. If people in the Middle-East or elsewhere want to live in the barbaric conditions that many of them currently live in than that is their business. We won’t get in their way unless they make themselves a threat to our nation’s safety. If this happens we should swiftly rain merciless death on them without a moment’s worry that we aren’t spending enough time building a friendlier world.
I should follow up with a comment about how important I think it is for our country to be engaged with the rest of the world in the private sector and the free market but I’m too irritated after reading Tom Friedman’s whiny piece to think about that right now. I’ll write something later.
I had lunch with Dan today. He told me the funniest thing and I decided to put it here. He told me about how he was making better use of the time he budgets for entertainment by watching DVDs at 1.5 times the normal speed on his computer. “I can watch all of those movies I kind of wanted to see but never got around to seeing and I don’t have to spend as much time as I normally would!” The cool thing is that he has been using Netflix so he is able to get the maximum amount of entertainment for his $$$ too!!!
My favorite part of what he told me was that he is afraid he is going to have a hard time when he goest to watch a movie in a theater because he may get bored with the slow pace.
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