I got my first piece of spam offering copies of the Iraqi Most Wanted (original) playing cards today. Some yobbo’s selling the PDF on Ebay. You can download it for free from the DoD, of course. Here’s someone who printed out the PDF onto card stock, and is selling the results for 16 bucks a pop; he’s also claiming that you can’t print from the PDFs others are selling. Just amazing.
Popular right-wing comment of the week: “look what the left has been defending.” Well… OK. If we’re responsible for the horrors of Saddam’s rule, I’d like the reasonable sensible right wing bloggers to stand up and take responsibility for this: Osama is a pathetic little bitch. I swear, if I run into his sorry little ass in an alley somewhere, I’m gonna turn that turd into my own personal sex toy. And I’m not even gay. I’ll still get an orgasm just thinking about the humiliation I’m laying down on his murderous stinking ass. ...
Frontline ran an excellent piece on North Korea tonight. As usual, they stuck all the good stuff up on their Web site. Gotta love it. And, since (as we all know) PBS is hopelessly liberal and biased, they made sure to include an interview with the highest ranking North Korean ever to defect in which he praises Bush to the skies. Cunning, those liberals. My cynicism aside, I particularly liked the Ashton Carter interview. He has lots of good insights, and he takes a pretty rational appearing line on the implications of a war on the Korean peninsula. Also, he has the quote of the entire piece: ...
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. ...