The next war thread
 

Items:

Mark Steyn points out that the Palestine Liberation Front announced that one of their top guys was killed in Iraq Wednesday night. This is a much closer tie to the PLF than Powell brought to the UN on Feb 5.

Someone brings 12 molotov cocktails to S.F. rallies. But I'm sure they would only hit bad guys and experience no collateral damage, because lit bottles of gasoline are precision weapons. Look at how well they work in an Athens "peace" protest:

http://cellar.org/2003/flamecop.jpg

Meanwhile, other SF "peace" protesters took shits in front of the Civic Center, whilst others staged a "vomit-in" -- lovely examples of humanity all.

Iraqi conscripts shoot their own officers rather than fight. (No link here) I have found no stories of Islamist terrorism in Western cities in the last week. Anyone else? There were two findings of Ricin, one in London and one in Paris; besides that, nothing. (No link here)

Even the harshly anti-American Guardian has a story of welcome troops:

Re: The next war thread
 

I read an article about the puke-in, but missed the info on the poop-in ...

I was going to add a sarcastic "their parents must be SO proud," but then I realized that they quite possibly are ... which says some sad things about society today.

Could these protestors be charged with use of WMD? Bodily fluids (and I here include solid wastes as well) represent a significant biohazard.

Weapons of ass eruption?

Pretty amazing when you think of it ...

After, what, 12 years of ignoring anything they had to say, Iraq is calling on the UN for help.

Of course, what they think of as help includes "make the US stop beating up on us" and "disarm Israel."

Operation "Iraqi Freedom"? What kind of name is that? If the world expects us to follow our imperialistic ways*, it should have been Operation "Desert Eagle"! :D

It's now my fondest hope that all the protestors will get on a plane -- no! wait for it! Not what you think! -- and travel to Iraq and help rebuild houses and schools.

I, on the other hand and in my proud imperialist fashion*, will donate $100 smackers to the first Iraqi children's fund I find.

Oh, yeah. I'm also going to donate $100 to the EFF for the war on DRM.


*Dripping with sarcasm; the very Soul of Sardonicy. I mean about the imperialist claptrap, not about the money.

Re: The next war thread
 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again..."Give me peace, or I'll kill you."

Hey, any excuse for an anarchy festival, right?

Pretty much, any rally attracts the farleft/rentamob crowd so you're always gonna get that stuff, i've watched it enough times here. The war appears to be going well - at least from our carefully vetted news sources, which is good news for everyone involved. On the other hand i think Bagdhad is going to be the clincher and there was talk of 'stiff resistance' from a few major centres before they even got close to Bagdhad, good luck to the boys (and girls) over there, lets hope at least it's a fast one.

Anyone heard any more about the cruise missile that aparantly hit an oil well in Iran?

Shouldn't that be 'someone brought' ?

Saudia Arabia has been doing this for years. But when they sent investigators to learn how the money was doing, they found no schools, no meal programs, etc. Saudis did extensive investigations into easily a hundred of these relief funds. They discovered that too many were actually fronts for Al Qaeda. $10millions had been contributed. More often, nothing for the benefit of children was actually being done.

Then the right wing American critic of Saudia Arabia simply distort that report into proof that Saudia Arabia supports terrorism. Do we now say Uryoces also supports terrorism?

Re: Re: The next war thread
 

LMAO. I like it. It's kinda like "killing unborn babies via abortion is *wrong*, so I'm going to kill doctors with this bomb"

It's a fucked up world. Sometimes ya just gotta sit back and watch.

You did see his disclaimer, right?

That wayward missle has been reported as hitting everything from an oil well to defenseless women and children.

If it was one of ours that is certainly more than a little off course ... while it could happen, I dunno.

The possibility that it actually belonged to Iraq is being investigated, I believe

Jag, I've been looking at the ABC site periodically, but not enough.

How are Australians feeling about this war in general?

The point was to demonstrate how one can become accused of supporting terrorists without even trying. And to demonstrate what the Saudis have discovered which I believe has not been reported domestically. Yes, anyone can become a terrorist without even trying.

Our local Action News outfit has a call in at the end of the show where folks are encouraged to comment on stuff. Guy called yesterday, I believe, and mentioned he was watching some BU students reacting to the war coverage. He said it reminded him of the Palestinians cheering when the towers fell. Interesting perpective.

It's easier than that. All you have to do is say they have "links" with Al-Qaeda. You don't have to explain it.. it will just be believed by the public blindly. :)

There's an article about this over at Kuro5hin. Sounds like they're pretty annoyed about it, to me. Although there are only 2000 of their troops there. I also read something about a measure being passed to bring their troops back.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/3/20/9125/66826
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/det...ews&m=3&y=2003

Damn! No more weed for me! :D

If you mean the Saudi Government is corrupt, yes I do believe it is.

Items:

Two early rumoresque reports of discoveries of chem plant/weapons. The reports are too early to take seriously but one of them was in the Jerusalem Post with an awful lot of detail.

The missiles fired into Kuwait were not SCUDs after all. Blix off the hook...? no, they were more of those rockets that were not allowed to travel that far. Remember tw's note about *loaded* missiles not being able to fly further than the allowed range? These were loaded, and flew further than the allowed range.

Plenty of protests, plenty of anger. It's impossible to know whether the majority support it or not, i think that'll depend on how many die - on both sides.

I've barely being following the war, tad too busy at the moment but i keep getting the feeling we're not being told the whole story all these reports of 'combat casulaties', 'stiff resistance' etc which them seem to somehow dissipate. I'm just curious to see what happens when they hit Bagdhad.

The Iraqi military leader dude saying something like 'we're not afrid we're not going to lose' just as a massive explosion blew in the curtain behind him and made him flinch was funny.

I heard something about finding a bunker or two of rockets and warheads, no NBC talk though. I'm still waiting for the drinking buddy photos of Bin Laden and Saddam

*shrugs* I'm not bothering with the protests - it's like protesting cloning or GM, it's happened, it's not going to go away, deal with it, move on, adapt, reaim. Save the wales dude, peace.

Item #1 above - the Jerusalem Post article now has legs as a "senior Pentagon official" confirmed it to Fox.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81935,00.html

A chemical weapons plant. 100 acres in size, camoflaged from the air to look like desert, booby-trapped, surrounded by an electrical fence, and protected by an Iraqi unit that included a General. Sounds like they wanted to protect something.

100 acres is pretty damn big.
War seems to be going ok, i do feel sorry for the US POWs though. I think the problem is going to be eliminating those gurilla type Iraqi guys, it's not going to be easy.

I didn't realize Wales was in jeopardy...we better tell Prince Charles.

Yer a real ass, but yer funny. :) (using spelling errors to bust on someone is even too low to use on Jag..........well, maybe not)

Nah, I like jag...that's why I bust his chops all the time. Just like I bust your chops, inbreeder.

Al Saoud missiles only flew 100 miles. Since all that land up to just north of Basara (100 miles) is now dominated by Anglo/American forces, the Iraqis would need Scuds to attack Kuwait. Because the Al Saoud are such short range missiles, then Israel was way to far for attack. Either Iraqis are not using hidden Scuds or they have no missiles to fire. Kuwait has no missile attacks once those first 100 miles were invaded - the range of Al Saoud missiles.

They could only fly either just below or just above 150 kilometers which is arguementative nonsense. Did they fly farther than 150 kilometers? Split hairs because Al Saoud range was that irrelevant - unless one is despearate for an excuse to start a war. Once Basara was surrounded, the Al Saoud missile's limited 150 kilometer range (+ or - 10 kilometers) made it useless to attack Kuwait.

Update to the update to the item: the Pentagon has retracted its confirmation. It wants to investigate further before making any official statements.

Ugh. News is flying too fast right now. Time to settle back a bit...

I take periodic breaks on the news. I have to, otherwise, I get burned out by it. From what I've seen thus far, the news changes every 2-6 hours, with some exceptions.

Media wars. What do you know? What do you show? Looking for what's going on I found this blogger listed on a Swiss news site. embedded. truth? fiction? its interesting. Baghdad blog

After posting, Kuwait was attacked by three missiles. Listed were Frog and Ababil missiles. Frog, I thought, was an anti-ship missile that operates like a cruise missile - not a ballistic missile - and does not do well against surface targets. Never heard of Ababil before. These were launched from somewhere west of American supply lines towards the Saudi border. No Saoud missiles have been launched into Kuwait since the first days.

Also rather interesting is that Iraq so far has not launched any radar guided anti-aircraft missiles. Iraq continually sent such equipment into the No-fly zones to test them against American airplanes in years before this war. You can bet that once the attack on Baghdad actually begins, what Iraq has learned will be attempted against US and British aircraft - as a surprise tactic.

And then there is confusion. One American pilot thought he was being painted by Iraqi anti-aircraft radar. He took it out. Turns out he attacked and destroyed a Patriot anti-missile battery.

Unfortunately too little news is being provided.

Tw, how do you filter through all the confusing nonsense and actually come up with an understandable reconstruction of all this stuff?

USS Clueless makes a good point this morning: there is a tremendous amount we don't know, and won't come out until afterwards.

He suggests that maybe the embedded reporters are part of the plan to confuse, to bring attention to certain highly-visible parts, in order to draw attention away from other parts.

To back that up, he points to an Israeli expert who sez:

Still, I was very amused to hear that yesterday they blew up GPS jammers with GPS weapons. I bet that was a strategic statement...

It just goes to show all the people who were wildly speculating with "what if" scenarios that would be bad for the military: the military has thought this stuff out to an amazing degree. If we lay people can say "what if", you can bet a professional has already thought of it and developed many different approaches. That's why they are so flexible out there.

CNN is the enemy's best intelligence asset in modern warfare.

Or a practical test. Of course, they didn't give details... it could be the "GPS weapons" were made to target the jammers once they lost their GPS fix. My personal guess is that the Iraqis got cheated -- they probably got some old obselete (Russian? Chinese?) jammers which knocked out the C/A code but not the P(Y) code.

Technical digression:

The C/A -- coarse/acquisition -- code is the unencrypted code used by civilians and used by some older precision equipment to help acquire the P(Y) code. The P(Y) code is more precise and uses encryption (called A/S, Anti-spoof). The higher code rate and the encryption both make jamming more difficult, as well as making spoofing (without cracking the encryption) near-impossible. The military has been working on ways to directly acquire the P(Y) code without the use of the C/A code; I assume they've succeeded. Though it wouldn't really matter for a cruise missile fired from friendly territory, as it could acquire the code before launch and hold on to it.

Very little in the news on this war is confusing. But it helps to understand perspective of the report. For example, Rumsfeld is in a defensive position and finds lying as acceptable behavior. Therefore everything he and the administration says requires serious confirmation.

Central Command wants to be honest but must not tell everything. For example, when Swartzkopf said the door was closed and Republican Guards could not escape north of Basara, I kept asking how? When reporters kept asking the same question repeatedly, then I knew I was not the only one smelling a rat. The naive just called the reporters stupid for not understanding the answer the first time. Perspective. I knew better. They smelled a rat and we now know they were right. Roads through swamps do not stop armor. But that is what Swartzkopf had to claim since the 101st was stopped half way to their objective. IOW I suspected he was lying because of things well beyond his control. Again, perspective.

Embedded reporters are providing numerous Gems in the rough. For example, Ted Koppel accurately provided important details of that repelled Apache attack when he said every Apache suffered damage. This was confirmed by newspaper stories of how badly each chopper was hit - some having to eject their guns that had even caught fire. A fact they says thery are all lucky to be alive. Chopper crews got out and all hugged each other. That is how badly mauled those Apaches suffered. As Koppel then noted, 3rd Army would have to change tactics. What worked in the Gulf War no longer works in Iraq. The enemy learned. Perspective.

BBC is a constant source of good information. So is ABC. NBC & CBS does provide some, but not as well. Reports from the little people in the field is where most gems are found. And then every report is put to a map. No map means you have wasted time listening to the news. Too many will never understand this war if they think "wordwise". If one does not think "geographically", then one has no clue.

I have a benefit. I read extensively things like the Pentagon Papers, Clancy's non-fiction books, recently Daniel Ellsberg's book which mostly reminded by of what so many had written previously, the many books by David Halbersham, have maps of the current territory, personal statements from my peers who were in Nam, read BlackHawk Down, and watched how the news was reported in Nam. Everyone and much more applies to this war. And I read like I read car reviews. Perspective. Why does Liza Thomas Laurie report crap? Her perspective is hype and ratings - not honest facts. She will lie by telling half truths. Same logical analysis with perspective also applied to all news from Iraq.

If you cannot see through the half truth lies in local TV news, then you most certainly would be swamped by Iraq war news.

Kennedy was so successful because he kept asking during the entire missile crisis, "What is he thinking? What does he know? Why would he say that? What is he being told?"

I am so appauled by the war mongers who did not see through the administration's propaganda. Reports today are no different from those in Nam or from the Gulf War. But it helps to have seen it all done back then - AND then have seen what was really and what was not true - after the fact. Did we really understand that CBS news report on how we had to burn the village to save it? That report only demonstrated that we were the enemy in VietNam. But war mongers accused the reporter and CBS news of being anti-American. That is what war mongers must do - filter out facts that contradict their already pre-concieve attitudes.

IOW I am desperate for more gems. The reporter who says how their terrain has changed from desert to fertile lands - a gem. The description of those bridges in Nasiriyah and the BBC reporter who found town after town unsafe to keep asking questions. We are not (yet) the welcome invader once those little gems are discovered.

What happened to those 12 maintenance soldiers ambushed in Nasiriyah. I hate when silly people say the pictures were too gruesome. I need those picture to evaluate for myself what happened AND how accurate my sources are. For example, the administration says soldiers were executed. Fine. Show me the pictures because I don't trust anything from this administration. Perspective and their history of distorting facts.

I cannot get enough information. There is not filtering. There is extensive piecing of every statement into a big jig saw puzzle.

Some gems that have me seriously bothered. Iraqis have not used radar guided anti-aircraft defense systems. Why? What are they waiting for? They have chemical weaspons. When will they use them (and they most certainly will)? Technicals have finally figured out how to take out an Abrams tank with a newly designed anti-tank missile. Suddenly American armor is not so invincible in land that will not be as tank friendly (it helps to understand what is and is not tank friendly and to have maps to see where a smart Iraqi would make a defensive stand).

War is that assymetrical meaning that it is a most intriguing, multi-dimensional jig saw puzzle. Not hard to understand. Every piece fits in the puzzle if you understand where it is coming from. View it from many different perspectives - which is why I have been so against this war - and why I am so concerned for how we will win this war, and why I cannot get enough news.

No quite what he said. Of six identified jammers, only one was believed destroyed by a GPS guided munition. They did not blow up jammers with GPS weapons. Only one may have been destroyed by a GPS guided weapon.

An example of a Gem:
The article then describes how Iraqis even tried to crash their car into a tank. Tank crushed the car without firing a shot. But this demonstrates how badly the Iraqis want to be liberated.

Also describes by the NY Times is another gem. 3rd Army must now expend more forces to surround the town of Najaf because Americans are finding whole cities too much in support of Saddam. That means much less forces to attack Replublican Guards using a division that may not have been sufficient size to make the attack originally - according to too many Gulf War generals.

After Najaf, then Karbala must be surrounded since it too cannot be taken. An then Al Musayyib. And why is As Samawah being so quite? These gems only continue to say what administration refused to admit when we started this war. We will be at war for a long time. But then the Generals did not get the plan they wanted - directly traceable to multiple actions of the George Jr administration.

Oh, I see; "gems" is code for "statements that make it through my selective filtering for anything that proves my predetermined conclusions."

I've probably had a few "gems" myself. It's hard to avoid.

What's wrong with General Motors? I know their 350 leaks like a civ, but that just means you can replace the rear main at 50k and the valve cover gaskets 20k later. I don't think I'd protest it though. Just get a good mechanic.

Dan Rather is officially over the hill. It occurred late last week when he said, "And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air." Jesus...

I've stuck mostly with MSNBC/NBC, BBC, CBC, and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.). I've watched a little CNN and Fox as well, and was visiting Al-Jazeera until Sunday night (when they started having server issues). I've been hitting the Sky News and ITV sites as well. I personally don't find ABC and CBS to be that strong newswise anymore...for several years now.

Gem:

- Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, hammering the last nail into his own coffin of illegitimacy, angrily says that the US will lose the war.

(Maybe if Saddam uses the WMDs he says they don't have?)

Hey! I had a 350 in my '88 Caprice and it never leaked a drop of oil! I put 140K miles on it before I sold it.

UT would have all readers forget that the US won every battle in VietNam - every one - often decisively - and yet lost the war soundly and completely. War mongers are quick to have us forget these lessons of history.

This war will not be won if we don't win the land. Currently the US holds no territory except the little that contains military forces. That, even defined in the Art of War, means we are not winning. And we will not win IF we end up the enemy of Iraqi people - which we are quickly becoming.

Currently on ABC news are people desperate for emergency rations while openly blaming the US/British - not Saddam - for their plight. Where is this victory that UT proclaims when the liberated people blame their liberators? Does anyone remember VietNam? UT does not realize how precarious the US position in Iraq really is. It still could go either way.

When you don't like what is said, then war mongers put on their filters. They insult others by posting irrelevant nonsense - such as Scott Ritter is a child molester. One could even say UT is a server molester. But that too would be irrelevant.

They closed down the plant <crap, can't remember which one now> in the US and started making the blocks south of the border.

tw, you have a particular slant on things, a bit left-leaning. It sounds like you are reading from someone's political playbook. I like to think I have a centered world view, but my view's pragmatic tendencies lean to the right. Hell I'm the guy that gets his war coverage from Comedy central's "Daily Show with John Stewart".

What I'm saying is that you don't have a privelleged view, no matter how many times you bring up the Pentagon Papers. You've got a lot of great knowledge on subjects political, and I spend a great deal of time Googling the facts you bring to bear, but a lot of what you are stating is opinion.

You revelation that we can't trust what the current aministration is saying is not a news flash. The fact that a great many people will lose their lives is not a news flash either. If this were a Gore war, it would be in Columbia, ensuring that the coca fields are protected. No one is innocent in this.

Probably because every time they turn one on, it gets destroyed by radar seeking munitions.

Your main problem here is you assume you know what the puzzle looks like, so you fit every piece you can into that notion. The other pieces get hacked to fit and/or discarded. You also assume that you're the only one to have picked up on some of these items. Don't you think the US military had some idea of what the terrain was like? And if the military really naively expected all the people to welcome them as liberators, why did they bypass Basra?

van Creveld has it right: Everything said by either side is a lie. Or at least potentially so. What politicians say is orthagonal to the truth. The military wants to boast of its own accomplishments, and it wants to send a message that resistance is futile. But at the same time it wants to conceal its operations and also get Iraqi forces to overextend themselves outside the cities. The few things you can believe aren't sufficient to put together a coherent picture. You can tell things aren't going according to a best-case scenario, but jumping from there to a worst-case scenario is an incredible leap.

(and when am I going to learn not to respond to tw? Probably when Saddam Hussein learns humility...)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...653833092.html

Near Basra, Iraq: British military interrogators claim captured Iraqi soldiers have told them that al-Qaeda terrorists are fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein's forces against allied troops near Basra.

I don't understand your point. Are you saying because you cannot confirm what was posted on the net or through google, then it must be opinion?

No, you don't.

So we agree on something. But to be explicit: I am trying to understand your point. Please explain it.

Unlike UT, I did not assume that Al Qaeda is allied with its arch enemy Saddam - then spend hours seeking proof to justify this myth. UT is convinced of the need for this war - knows what the puzzle looks like. I don't know what the real picture looks like which is why this multi-dimension jig saw is so interesting. It literally has my every available waking moment. I thrive on the mystery and surprise in these events. I was strongly opposed to the reason for this war, but I can't get enough of it. Just too many unknowns in this jig saw picture.

For example, what ever happened to 'Shock and Awe'? Last night, a key piece was delivered on Charlie Rose. One of the early architects of 'Shock and Awe' said it was suppose to be a coordinated attack on all Iraqi military, simultaneously, including coordinated direct ground attacks on Republican Guard units.

So what happened? Somehow it got downgraded into a political show of 'will' and only by air. Originally was suppose to overload the entire Iraqi Command and Control structure with too much information and too many calls for help. Instead it was nothing more than one night of fancy fireworks by air forces. It got downgraded into something that was to create 'Shock and Awe' by only attacking top leadership.

Did not realize what this part of the puzzle looked like until many retired Gulf War generals began talking this weekend about how the military did not get the forces it deemed necessary. Without sufficient forces, 'Shock and Awe' has bogged down into 'waiting for reinforcements'. In the meantime, what will Franks do now that 3rd Army will confront 6 - not just 3 - Republican Guard units. Just another problem created by insufficient assets - as Lt General Wallace finally admitted today (BBC reported this somewhat sarcastically by saving he finally "came clean"). 3rd Army is the only heavy armor on the battlefield with heavy armor reinforcements not coming until mid April.

Momentum was lost. 'Shock and Awe' was subverted by asset micromanagement at political levels.

During the Gulf War, George Sr asked what was needed to accomplish the strategic objective. Swartzkopf said it bluntly. "7th Corp". Jaws dropped. But George Sr's believed in giving his people what they needed to do the job. His administration would work for Swartzkopf. In this war, Pentagon plans were repeatedly rejected for using too many assets. George Jr politicians told his people what they needed to do the job. Latter is a classic example of MBA management. Therefore 'Shock and Awe' has degraded from a two week war into a multi- month slug fest of attrition. Just what Saddam wants. More jig saw pieces that had no place in the puzzle now make sense. I discard nothing.

I also assume you too have been asking what happened to 'Shock and Awe'. If you have more information, add it on. I need your jig saw pieces. Still don't know what this entire puzzle looks like. Still can't get enough news reports.

Another interesting jig saw piece reported in today's Inky. A Special Forces 'A' team was overrun in North Iraq by about 100 Iraqis (a Company?). Normally such information is secret - never even appears in the casulty reports. Overrun usually means killed or captured. Another jig saw piece that has no place in the puzzle - and yet will never be discarded. Since "I have assumed everyone else has no information", then don't bother helping with the puzzle - OR keep your ears on. Such military losses are not trivial especially when it happened in what was suppose to be Kurd friendly territory. Special Forces are not suppose to be overrun especially by a poorly trained third world army.

Something like 3500 sorties with GPS-guided weapons in 6 days is not exactly a "downgrade" in any sense of the word -- except to the TV cameras, which can no longer show us pretty pictures.

Which was something that I brought up as a possibility before this started. The media didn't understand, when they positioned their cameras, that the entire city wasn't gonna be blown to bits. That the "shock and awe" wasn't going to be shocking and awesome to THEM.

To be sure, I've never felt that an al Qaeda connection was legit. I thought that the administration felt the same way when they stopped mentioning any Al Qaeda connection last fall. Then Powell's bit at the UN, which has led to much disagreement over how tight a tie his evidence represents. I felt I could take or leave that bit, but it was interesting.

I've felt there was a non-zero probability of connection*, but I'm not smart enough or clued-in enough to judge exactly what that probability is.

And I've felt there was a non-zero probability that Hussein has or was close to having nukes. And myriad connections to other terrorist groups. Now you take those probabilities and put them together.

It's not that simple, of course, but I am pretty much without doubt that on the moment of the first act of the war, the US became a much safer place to be.

Wall Street agrees, with something like six straight days of rises. tw, didn't you once try to make a point around a one-day rally...?


* Sorry to use a high-falutin' phrase like "non-zero probability of connection". I couldn't think of any other way to say it.

Oh yes, and - a great source of war news and clues can be found at:

http://www.command-post.org/

In a stage packed full of major characters, one should be conspicuous by his absense - Colin Powell. The need for and getting that second UN resolution was his idea. He failed. Now nothing from or about him especially when he should be involved in discussions between George Jr and Tony Blair about a diplomatic solution after the war ends.

Just wondering if he has been mortally wounded in this administration, simply binding his wounds, or shrewdly keeping a low profile and good distance from current events.

Shock and Awe
 

Another possibility is that the major part Shock and Awe just hasn't started yet. That it's the next phase of the campaign, after Coalition troops have positioned themselves around Baghdad and secured their rear. There's currently talk of a siege, which seems pretty stupid to me -- I can't see the US taking the PR hit that a siege would cause. I figure more likely Baghdad will get hit from all sides at once.

Anyone else catch Gen. Franks interview on KYW yesterday? He didn't say much (despite talking a lot -- future politician, this one), and what he did say probably had little relation to the truth, but he sure seemed to be enjoying the hell out of the interview.