There’s wide-spread looting in Iraq today. Not very surprisingly, the social structure of the country is in chaos. Hospitals are being looted; suspected looters are being killed in the street. On the BBC this morning, a reporter talked about seeing a man beat to death in front of him. The killers said “He wasn’t from this neighborhood.” Was he a looter? Maybe, maybe not. But man, it’s getting rough out there. ...
Philippe de Croy of the Volokh Conspiracy provides guidelines for conservative commentators who want to talk about Iraq’s chemical weapons. It’s a nice public service, really. (Or anyhow, I assume that’s what he means when he says “Talk a lot about things that ‘aren’t clear’ or that ‘remain to be seen.’ These sorts of assertions are good because they are hard to falsify.”) Sauce for the goose…
Kurdish forces have occupied Kirkuk; according to NPR this morning, there are about 20,000 Kurdish soldiers in the city along with a fairly token US presence. This is supposedly a trigger point for a Turkish invasion, so we’ll soon see if Turkey and/or the US are bluffing or not. Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Foreign Minister, said Colin Powell agreed to allow Turkish military observers to go to Kirkuk (original), and that US forces would arrive “within a few hours” to take control of the situation.
That CBS Baghdad webcam is currently showing footage of a tank and a slew of Iraqi citizens trying to tear down a big statue of Saddam. Just in case anyone wants to watch. (Addendum: here’s a rough screenshot.)
Still no chemical weapons. Maybe some will turn up tomorrow. On February 5th, Colin Powell talked about Iraqi chemical weapons. And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn’t be passing out the orders if he didn’t have the weapons or the intent to use them. Iraqi field commanders have been willing to commit war crimes. We’ve seen suicide bombers. We’ve seen Iraqi troops dressed in civilian clothing. We’ve seen false surrenders. The US has made no secret of its intent to prosecute these as war crimes. Yet… none of these field commanders, who Powell said were authorized to use chemical weapons, have done so. Why not? Why would they commit the crimes they committed, but no others? ...
So, what’s up in Iraq? I’m not even pretending to keep track of the reputed chemical weapon finds, but MSNBC is. As of now the only recent discovery confirmed by the military turned out to be pesticides. There are two or three other rumored finds out there, but the key word there is “rumored.” We may or may not have killed Saddam in a recent bombing run. Stratfor claims that there’s still fighting going on in Umm Qasr. The British are holding down that entire area, which I mention mostly for the sake of noting yet again that Rumsfeld said we wouldn’t need the Brits. Ahem. Anyhow, this is a problem because it hampers naval access to Iraq. ...
NPR reports that chemical weapon loaded missiles have been found in Iraq (original). The NPR story attributes the news to an officer in the 101st Airborne Division, but a Yahoo story says NPR attributed it to an officer in the 1st Marine Division. The latter attribution matches my memory of what I heard on NPR while driving into work this morning. That division’s commander, Joe Dowdy, was relieved of his post on Saturday. There’s been no explanation of why yet, which is not necessarily alarming, but man. Part of me wonders whether the two stories could be linked. Part of me says “That’s silly; if he was relieved of duty for refusing to report fake WMD evidence, the truth would come out pretty quickly.” The second part wins after a short battle, but the story bears watching. ...
CBS has a live Baghdad webcam (original) running. I’m sure everyone else in the world but me knows this. So surreal. Stratfor pointed out recently that all this embedded exposure is a great way to pull attention from units without embedded reporting, which is utterly true. Right now, on CBS’ webcam, someone’s talking in Arabic from off-screen. I can see a tripod to the right of the picture, and that might be the talker just barely visible next to it. I hear the other Baghdad webcams are also set up on top of this building, whatever it is. ...
Condoleezza Rice says the coalition gets the leading role in rebuilding Iraq (original): “It would only be natural to expect that … having given life and blood to liberate Iraq, the coalition would have the leading role. I don’t think anybody is surprised by that,” President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters. Well, sure, if we were doing for the reward. I was under the impression we were doing it a) to protect the West from terrorism and b) to give the Iraqis a better government. Rice makes it sound like we should get to rebuild Iraq… as a reward. Shouldn’t we be selecting the rebuilders with an eye towards who will best help reach those two goals? ...
Women don’t belong among front-line troops? Yeah, right. My thoughts: I’m anti-this war, and I’m glad US soldiers are this brave. I think the article pretty much speaks for itself.