-Click for larger map-
BIG!

Archives

---

Resources

---

News
Opinion
Defense Related/ Oriented
Bloggers
Think Tanks
Photo Albums

 
The War in Pictures (NYT)
A visual diary of the conflict in Iraq, featuring more than 100 slide shows.
posted by Bill at 5:09 PM

 
The Ironies of War (NRO: Victor Davis Hanson)
What we have witnessed is unprecedented in military history.

The Marines just rolled by the battlefield of Cunaxa, where in 401 B.C. 10,000 Greek mercenaries suffered one wounded in their collision with the imperial troops of Artaxerxes. On the northern front Americans passed near Gaugamela where Alexander the Great’s shock troops destroyed the enormous army of Darius III at a loss of a hundred or so dead before descending on Babylon. Ours may be the richest and most educated generation in history, but some things never seem to change: The West still fights — and wins — in the East, in the same old places...

posted by Bill at 5:09 PM

 
Three Miscreants (WaPo: Jim Hoagland)

Three commandments drive the Bush administration's big-power strategy beyond Iraq: Punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia. That vivid formula was reportedly suggested in policymaking councils recently by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser...

posted by Bill at 5:02 PM

 
Comment on NYT Op-ed by Eason Jordan
Jordan is chief news executive at CNN. The News We Kept to Ourselves was published Friday.

Sins of Omission (TCS: James K. Glassman)

A Journalistic Enron? (MSNBC: Glenn Reynolds)

Censored News Network (WSJ: BOTWT: James Taranto)

CNN Fallout (NRO: Jonah Goldberg)

OK, CNN (Rand Simberg)

CNN's Dubious Iraq Connections (Phoenix: Dan Kennedy)

posted by Bill at 4:52 PM

 
The Coming Spin
Comment from Andrew Sullivan: "You can see it now. Chaos. Looting. Disorder. Losing the peace. It's not that there won't be some truth to these stories; and real cause for concern. The pent-up fury, frustration and sheer anger of three decades is a powerful thing, probably impossible to stop immediately without too much force. And the last thing we want is fire-power directed toward the celebrating masses. The trouble is that they could become the narrative of the story, especially among the usual media suspects, and erode the impact and power of April 9. By Sunday, or sooner, you-know-who ["Johnny" Apple, NYT] will probably have a front-page "news analysis" that will describe the joy of liberation being transformed into the nightmare of a Hobbesian quicksand of ever-looming cliches."
posted by Bill at 4:23 PM

 
Lest We Forget (WSJ: Michael Gonzalez)
France and Belgium pay the price for backing Saddam.

"How did we get here?" asked a former French minister in a newspaper column recently. "Here" is a situation in which French Jews are being beaten up in the streets of Paris and in which President Jacques Chirac has to write to Queen Elizabeth to apologize for the desecration of British tombs in France, and in which one-third of the French have been pulling for Saddam Hussein to win.

An even better question is who brought us here...it's time to name names. Mr. Chirac brought us here, as did his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. In Belgium the foreign, defense and prime ministers...have brought their country to shame too. And that's just the start...

posted by Bill at 4:09 PM

 
Movin' on to the next 'disaster' (Telegraph: Mark Steyn)

On to the next quagmire! Don't get mired in the bog of yesterday's conventional wisdom, when the movers and shakers have already moved on to new disasters. America may have won the war but it's already losing the peace! Here's your at-a-glance guide to what the experts who got everything wrong last week will be getting wrong next week...

He's right.
posted by Bill at 4:00 PM

 
Welcome to Anglo-Saxon reality (National Post of Canada: Mark Steyn

Well, this whole quagmire seems to be getting worse, eh? I see the Yanks have now been reduced to staging fake scenes of supposed jubilation on the alleged streets of what the Pentagon assures us is Baghdad. If you pause the video, you'll see the guy on the right jumping up and down thwacking his shoe on the head of Saddam's toppled statue is actually Richard Perle disguised as an Iraqi cab driver and the woman standing next to him ululating "Blessings be upon you, o great Bush" is David Frum in a chador...

posted by Bill at 3:56 PM

 
The man to trust on Iraq's future (NY Post: Deborah Orin)

Paul Wolfowitz was right about Iraq - and a lot of people owe the deputy defense secretary a great big fat apology. Especially a lot of State Department people...

Tip from Laurie Mylroie.
posted by Bill at 1:02 PM

 
What Moral Legitimacy? (WSJ: Editorial)
The United Nations lost its chance on Iraq.

So now they want in. True, Kofi Annan did have the wit to refute a Kremlin announcement that he would be joining the coalition of the unwilling--France, Germany and Russia--at this weekend's confab in St. Petersburg. Yet even in the face of footage from Baghdad that conjures up images of Paris 1944 or Berlin 1989, we're still asked to believe that an America spilling its blood and treasure to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein has less moral credibility than a U.N. that helped prop him up for 12 years...

posted by Bill at 11:39 AM

 
The allies got it so right... (Telegraph: John Keegan)
...how did the pundits get it so wrong?

...the decisive stage of the war has clearly come to an end. The capital and almost all major towns in Iraq have fallen to the coalition...The main direction that the inevitable post-mortem examination will take is to establish how so much ground was taken so quickly. [Review of factors.]

...When the history of the campaign comes to be written, that to which it may be compared is the German blitzkrieg in France in 1940. The distances covered are similar; so is the speed of advance; so is the extent of the collapse...

...Perhaps the most intriguing subject for retrospection lies outside Iraq, not within: why did so many otherwise rational people get their predictions wrong?...perfectly sensible people, who surely know better, clutter up their minds with such irrelevant factors as "the Arab street", "international opinion", the anti-war movement at home, votes in the UN and so on. They then predict that "American success is not certain", "this could be a long and bitter war" and "the spectre of Vietnam looms over George W Bush"...

Via Glenn Reynolds.

posted by Bill at 11:11 AM

 
Condensed Apple Sauce (Slate: Jack Shafer)
Consumed whole or reduced by 75 percent, Johnny Apple's copy positively zings with cliche.

When editors at the New York Times want to inspire their reporters to dig deeper and give a news story extraordinary sweep, they command, "Write it onto Page One"...This tradition looks much less inspirational, of course, whenever the Times publishes Page One stories swollen to the point of corpulence with clichés, platitudes, and the most foolish sort of conventional wisdom. Stories, that is, by veteran correspondent R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr...

Today, Apple spills an ocean of dull gray type into his Page One "news analysis," titled "A High Point in 2 Decades of U.S. Might." Every paragraph, every sentence, every punctuation mark is bloated with ordinary and commonplace observations about the war in Iraq, its back story, and its repercussions.

Never before has Apple soared to such heights of self-parody!...It's restful--almost meditative--to read Apple on any topic, they say. You can feel whatever knowledge you have about the subject reach the vapor point and hear it whoosh as it's sucked from your head.

Andrew Sullivan's prediction: this piece will leave Times-watchers laughing out loud. Worked for me.
posted by Bill at 10:31 AM

 
The News We Kept to Ourselves (NYT Op-ed: Eason Jordan)
Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

[Horrors recounted.]

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Does this guy realize what he's saying about himself and his organization?
posted by Bill at 9:04 AM

 
How did the Army get this good?

In 1982, Wass de Czege had written a major revision of the Army's war-fighting manual, FM 100-5, the official expression of Army doctrine and the foundation for all decisions about strategy, tactics, and training. The previous edition, written in 1976 by Gen. William DePuy, had recited a strategy of attrition warfare, a static line of defense against the enemy's strongest point of assault, beating it back with frontal assaults and superior firepower. Wass de Czege's rewrite outlined a strategy emphasizing agility, speed, maneuver, and deep strikes well behind enemy lines.

The advanced-studies school at Fort Leavenworth was set up explicitly to weave this new strategy into the fabric of the Army establishment. By the time of Desert Storm, a small group of Wass de Czege's students had been promoted to high-level posts on the staff of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's Central Command. This group of officers, who self-consciously referred to themselves as the "Jedi Knights," designed the ground-war strategy of the first Gulf War, and it was straight out of Wass de Czege's book—the feinted assault up the middle, the simultaneous sweep of armored forces up to the Iraqi army's western flank, the multiple thrusts that surrounded the Iraqis from all sides, hurling them into disarray before their final envelopment and destruction.
posted by Jack at 9:04 AM

 
Don't listen to the Arab elites... (London Times: Amir Taheri)
...the Iraqis didn't and they're the ones cheering today:

A regime regarded by every sane person as the worst the Arabs have seen in contemporary history has collapsed with relatively few casualties and limited material damage...Logically, the Arabs should be jubilant. But some of the Western media tell us that they are not. Are the Arabs masochists? The answer is: no.

The Arabs can be divided into three groups with regard to the war to liberate Iraq. The first consists of Arab regimes, most of them despotic, who secretly wished to see the end of Saddam while praying that they would escape a similar fate. The second consists of the Arab masses who, as yesterday’s scenes of jubilation showed in Baghdad, are happy to see at least one of their oppressors kicked into the dustbin of history. The so-called "Arab street" did not explode in countries outside Iraq, thus disappointing the “Don’t-Touch-Saddam” lobby in the West. All in all 17 demonstrations were held in four Arab countries. The largest, organised by the Syrian Government in Damascus, attracted just 12,000 people.

Then we have the "long-distance heroes," corrupt and confused elites who, tortured by what is left of their numbed consciences, still hope that someone else’s sacrifices will somehow redeem them. These are not Iraqis. They are people far from the scene of the conflict who urged the Iraqis to die in large numbers so that they could compose poems in their praise or pen incendiary columns inciting them to "martyrdom." They dreamed of a second Vietnam or, failing that, at least a "Stalingrad in Baghdad"...

posted by Bill at 8:23 PM

 
Saddam Takes It On [From] Chin
posted by Bill at 5:57 PM

 
'Cakewalk' Revisited (WaPo: Ken Adelman)

What a difference a week makes. The chump-to-champ cycle usually takes longer, even in Washington. Administration critics should feel shock over their bellyaching about the wayward war plan. All of us feel awe over the professionalism and power of the U.S. military. Now we know. On Feb. 13, 2002, I wrote a sleeper-cell op-ed for this page. It lay dormant, being virtually ignored, until springing to life more than a year later. Its title, "Cakewalk in Iraq," contained that "c" word (also found in the piece), which was scantly speakable one week ago. [more]

posted by Daniel at 3:11 PM

 
Killing A Regime, Not A People (WaPo: Charles Krauthammer)

Gulf War II, the Three Week War (or possibly Four), is a monumental event: the first war ever aimed at destroying a totalitarian regime -- and sparing the invaded country. Surgically removing a one-party police state while trying to leave the civilians and the infrastructure as untouched as possible is an operation of unusual difficulty. Yet the pictures from the opening nights of the war told the story: plumes of smoke from precision strikes on Saddam Hussein's instruments of power while the city lights remained on and cars casually traversed the streets.[more]

posted by Daniel at 3:06 PM

 
What Counted: People, Plan, Inept Enemy (WaPo: Thomas E. Ricks)

Military professionals attribute the success to three key elements: a seasoned and well-equipped military, a surprisingly inept Iraqi response, and the decision of the Bush administration at the end of March, when the U.S. and British attack seemed to be faltering in southern Iraq, to keep the Army and Marines focused on Baghdad.
posted by Jack at 11:12 AM

 
Liberated Baghdad (WaPo: Editorial)

...Yesterday's scenes of celebration were an answer to skeptics who doubted that Iraqis wished to be liberated from Saddam Hussein by American troops, just as the collapse of resistance in the capital silenced critics, including several senior field commanders, who questioned whether the Pentagon's war plan was too ambitious or relied on too few troops. The capture of Baghdad ultimately required half the time, and less than half the American fatalities, of the expulsion of Iraq's army from Kuwait in 1991. In the Middle East and Europe, political and media commentary has shifted swiftly from gloating over the presumed humbling of the American superpower to speculation over which rogue state -- Syria, Iran, North Korea? -- will be the next target for invasion. Senior Bush administration officials have done little to quiet such fevered talk and, in the case of Syria, may have even encouraged it. If that worries the dictatorial regime in Damascus, which also has a record of supporting terrorism and stockpiling chemical weapons, perhaps the effect will be beneficial...

WaPo: War News. Maps: The Latest and Previous Actions
posted by Bill at 10:27 AM

 
The war critics were right... (Christopher Hitchens)
Irony unbound:

So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all...Oh yes, the Arab street did finally detonate, just as the peace movement said it would. You can see the Baghdad and Basra and Karbala streets filling up like anything, just by snapping on your television. And the confrontation with Saddam Hussein did lead to a surge in terrorism, with suicide bombers and a black-shirted youth movement answering his call. As could also have been predicted, those determined to die are now dead. We were told that Baghdad would become another Stalingrad—which it has. Just as in Stalingrad in 1953, all the statues and portraits of the heroic leader have been torn down...

posted by Bill at 10:19 AM

 
Smearing Mr. Chalabi (WSJ: Editorial)
Opening salvo: WSJ takes on State and NYT.
posted by Bill at 9:55 AM

 
Media Ask Tough Questions
posted by Bill at 8:13 AM

 
A-10 Thunderbolt (Warthog) Shot Up, But Still Flying!
"One tough aircraft." Photos of battle-damaged A-10. Forwarded by John Ritchie, '51, via Joe Gilbreth, '49. Also forwarded by Megan Price with this note from "Lt Herriott," with update on pilot's name from IWN master blogger, John Norton '88:

This is a picture of one of our Hogs that just refused to go down. This hog was shot at numerous times. I saw this plane coming in a few hours ago, and we were overjoyed to watch it come home and land. The last picture is one of the female pilot (Kim Campbell). Amazing things are happening here each and every day!

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

...and 111th Fighter Wing A-10 photos.
posted by Bill at 9:13 PM

 
Who is Ahmed Chalabi? (WaPo: Jim Hoagland)

You are hearing a lot about Ahmed Chalabi right now. Much of it is not true. Worse, you are not hearing what you need to know about a man who is neither an Iraqi puppet for U.S. forces nor a conniving political fortune hunter taking the Bush administration for a ride.

Who is Chalabi? The antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq crowd spreads the puppet version to smear this Iraqi exile leader, while State Department and CIA senior officials peddle the fortune-hunter image. Both groups use Chalabi as a dartboard to serve their own interests or those of their Arab clients. Their objections reveal more about their politics than his...

Thanks to Laurie Mylroie for tip.

posted by Bill at 8:02 PM

 
All over but the shouting.

Actually, no. The shouting is going on. All over but some shooting left to be done. Like CPT Carter said two days ago, "I do believe this city is freaking ours."

posted by blaster at 11:53 AM

 
Operation Iraqi Freedom Update: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs
Briefing for Members of Congress - April 9, 2003 - 0900 hrs.

Key Points - Coalition forces are making good progress on their objectives of removing the Iraqi regime, liberating the Iraqi people, and beginning the process of disarming Iraq of WMD. The main focus of the land component continues to be the area in and around Baghdad. Coalition warplanes covered the skies over Baghdad, targeting enemy forces and government buildings. Coalition forces also attacked enemy forces hiding in southeast Baghdad, and five weapons caches, consisting of more than 10 tons of ordnance, thousands of rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-surface missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and a host of mortar rounds, assault rifles, and ammunition were discovered. A B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a building where Iraqi leaders, including possibly Saddam and his sons, were believed to be meeting. In the east, US Marines attacked across the Diyalah river, destroying an Iraqi force of tanks and other armored vehicles. In Basra, Coalition forces succeeded in reducing the remaining concentrations of Ba’ath Party officials and regime forces, setting off demonstrations of jubilation in the streets by local residents.

Situational Update- The Iraqi Regime is in disarray and many parts of the country are free. News reports this morning are filled with jubilant Iraqis cheering Coalition forces. Coalition forces know that there is still much work to be done. Despite severe weather conditions, two critically wounded U.S. Army special operations soldiers' lives were saved by a Combat Search and Rescue team that evacuated them from about five miles south of Baghdad to be later transferred to a hospital in Kuwait. U.S. Central Command has received further clarification on two incidents of journalists being harmed during combat operations in Baghdad. These tragic incidents appear to be the latest example of the Iraqi regime’s continued strategy of using civilian facilities for regime military purposes. The Coalition regrets the loss of innocent life and will continue its efforts to protect the innocent from harm. Two Coalition airmen are missing after their F-15E Strike Eagle went down in Iraq approximately 7:30 p.m. EDT Sunday. The cause of the incident is unknown at this time and is being investigated.

Today in DoD - Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers will hold a press briefing at 12:45 EDT today. Press briefings may be viewed on Senate Channel 27 or House Channel 24.

posted by Daniel at 10:11 AM

 
Devil's in the details (AP: Zawya)

Cairo, Apr 07, 2003...[Iraq's ambassador to the Arab League, Mohsen Khalil, Monday told a news conference in Egypt]: ..."Iraq will not be defeated" in the war..."Iraq has now already achieved victory - apart from some technicalities."

Via BOTWT.

posted by Bill at 11:21 PM

 
"And now for something completely different..."
Better with broadband, it's...music, photos, a theme, and...different.
Via Glenn Reynolds.
posted by Bill at 7:35 PM

 
Operation Iraqi Freedom - Daily Briefing from House Armed Services Committee

An Air Force B-1B bomber dropped four 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) on a suspected meeting of senior Iraqi regime leaders in the al Mansour section of Baghdad. The group may have included President Saddam Hussein and his two sons.

In their fourth day in downtown Baghdad, U.S. Army units fought a series of battles as they occupied two presidential palaces. U.S. forces are also operating in the vicinity of the Iraqi Information Ministry and the Rasheed Hotel.

Near Karbala, chemical weapons experts are testing large drums that may contain nerve gas or mustard gas. Secretary Rumsfeld stated it was too early to characterize the find as more detailed tests are conducted. (Adobe Acrobat Required) [more]

posted by Daniel at 5:48 PM

 
Proof Positive (NY Post: Ralph Peters)

...Iraq's military has fallen apart. Thugs and party hacks cling to Baghdad. Every day, more and more Iraqis come out into the streets to cheer their liberators. One terrorist training camp after another has been overrun. Reports stream in of probable chemical weapons stockpiles. Pretending its death rattle is a growl, the dying regime continues to violate every code and convention on warfare...

Where are they now, the voices that cried out that sanctions and inspections were working? Where are the champions of a terrorist regime who ignored the plight of the Iraqi people, insisting they didn't want to be liberated? Why don't we hear from all those who denied any connection between Saddam's regime and terrorism?

Consider the proof that this war was based on sober assessments of real threats...

posted by Bill at 5:24 PM

 
A postwar harder than war? (Trudy Rubin)

U.S. post-Saddam plan is huge - and worrisome - in its ambitions.

As U.S. troops surround Baghdad, plans are being made for the next Iraqi government. Made, that is, by U.S. officials, who are waiting in Kuwait to enter Baghdad.

Few Americans are aware of the enormous task to which the Bush administration is committed once the war ends. The President has pledged to rebuild Iraq and bring democratic institutions to the Iraqi people.

"Achieving liberal democracy in Iraq is a principal objective of the Bush administration's campaign against Saddam," writes William Kristol, intellectual guru of the neoconservative movement and editor of the Weekly Standard. That is a breathtaking goal to set for a country that has never known democracy, in a region pulsing with anti-Americanism. It means the postwar struggle will be harder than the war.

posted by Joe at 3:01 PM

 
The Rashomon War (Ralph Peters)
A negative view of Rumsfeld's planning and management of the war.

April 5, 2003 -- The classic Japanese film "Rashomon" relates the same incident from several points of view. Each successive narrator's perspective on events is jarringly different - yet each version of the tale might be equally true. The film is a brilliant early example of "spin" and an uncanny metaphor for our present war.

Ground commanders complain that they were not given the resources they required, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld counters that the war is going remarkably well. Troops in combat insist that the kinds of Iraqi resistance encountered were unexpected, but Gen. Tommy Franks states firmly that the war is going according to plan.

Retired generals accuse the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) of interfering amateurishly in war planning and refusing to send enough ground troops to win quickly, while minimizing risk. OSD responds that more troop deployments were planned all along. President Bush announces that this war is one of liberation for the Iraqi people. The Arab media declare it an unwelcome invasion.

Each of these statements is true from the standpoint of the advocate. But several of the truths mask lies.

posted by Joe at 2:12 PM

 
Saddam's utter collapse... (Telegraph: John Keegan)
Reflections/analysis of a military historian.

The war in Iraq seems to be drawing to a close in circumstances as mysterious as those that have surrounded its unfolding from the beginning...Saddam's war plan, if he had one, must be reckoned one of the most inept ever designed. It made no use of the country's natural defences. All advantages the defence enjoyed were thrown away even before they could be utilised...

Andrew Sullivan's comment: John Keegan, arguably the best military historian around, has the goods on the bizarre campaign now concluding. Why did Saddam do everything wrong in the defense of Iraq? How was victory so swift? It seems to me that in retrospect, when this war is properly analyzed and chronicled, it may well be that the question is far less: "What did the allies do wrong?" than "What did Saddam do right?" Money quote:

Because the war has taken such a strange form, the media, particularly those at home, may be forgiven for their misinterpretation of how it has progressed. Checks have been described as defeats, minor firefights as major battles. In truth, there has been almost no check to the unimpeded onrush of the coalition, particularly the dramatic American advance to Baghdad; nor have there been any major battles. This has been a collapse, not a war.

Keegan is particularly brutal about the Western media's coverage. Their spin was almost as pathetic as Saddam's defense. And just as effective.

posted by Bill at 1:57 PM

 
US finds missiles with chemical weapons - NPR (Reuters)

U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio reported on Monday.

NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were ``ready to fire.'' It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were ``not just trace elements.'' It said the cache was discovered by Marines with the 101st Airborne Division, which was following up behind the Army after it seized Baghdad's international airport.

U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar had no immediate comment. The United States and Britain launched the war against Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denies having such weapons.

posted by Daniel at 5:25 PM

 
Burridge: war is not 'infotainment' (Guardian)

The commander of the British forces in the Gulf has launched a blistering attack on the British media, accusing them of "losing the plot" over the war on Iraq.

In an extraordinary broadside, Air Marshal Brian Burridge said the media had turned the war into "a spectator sport" and a "reality TV" show. He said he was frustrated with the "superficial" coverage of the war, adding that there was too much conjecture and too little straightforward reporting and analysis.

"The UK media has lost the plot. You stand for nothing, you support nothing, you criticise, you drip. It's a spectator sport to criticise anybody or anything, and what the media says fuels public expectation," he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph...

posted by Bill at 3:35 PM

 
Citizen Uprisings Reported in Baghdad and Basra (FoxNews.com)
Iraqi civilians are rising up against Saddam Hussein's militia in Baghdad and Basra, the country's two largest cities, according to various news reports.

Sources in Baghdad were reporting citizen uprisings against the Fedayeen Saddam, Kuwait News Agency said Monday. Fox News also has confirmed that preliminary tests on substances found at a military site near Karbala in central Baghdad have indicated the presence of several banned chemical weapons.

posted by Daniel at 2:25 PM

 
Air War: Striking In Ways We Haven't Seen (WaPo: Stephen Budiansky)
Budiansky is the author of a book on the history of air power, forthcoming from Viking; a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. Interesting article.

The first thing to understand about the air campaign in Iraq is that what we see on television is but a small fraction of it. And the fraction we do see is doubly misleading: Images of spectacular explosions in downtown Baghdad play into deep-seated preconceptions, myths and even cultural beliefs about air power. But such images do not reflect the true character, tactics or purpose of air operations in modern conflict...This kind of air power -- the kind that does not show up on our television sets, but which in fact is the focus of the modern U.S. air effort -- is precisely why Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other proponents of military "transformation" have argued that smaller ground forces can now do the job that once required multiple heavy-armor divisions...The relative invisibility to the public of the true nature of modern air power has lent specious credence to highly publicized accusations by some retired Army officers last week that Rumsfeld, in an effort to "prove" his theories, had refused to provide adequate ground forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom...

This, however, is where the burden of history and myth -- and old festering interservice politics -- comes to bear. The Army has always been skeptical that the Air Force would really be there when help was needed on the battlefield. It has also naturally wanted to justify its own weapons programs and protect its roles, missions and force structure by claiming as much of the job for itself as it could. Historically, the Air Force has also done its bit to foment suspicions; for decades its leaders scorned battlefield support as a "misuse" of air power, a "diversion" from its true mission of striking directly at the seat of enemy power through the strategic bombing of cities, government headquarters, arms factories, transportation systems and economic infrastructure. Using airplanes as "mere flying artillery" (as Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay once dismissively described it back in the 1950s) was to squander air power, according to the strategic bombing proselytizers. They were convinced that swift victory would follow from an obliterating attack on enemy political and economic targets alone...

posted by Bill at 1:03 PM

 
Liberated Baghdad shouldn't have to pay Saddam's French debts (WSJ)
Don't let the French and Russians loot liberated Iraq.

So much for Donald Rumsfeld's flawed war plan. Just over two weeks into the conflict, U.S. forces are moving with impunity in Baghdad and the coalition controls most of Iraq. So it's not too early to consider how, and how fast, to start Iraq on its post-Saddam era.

posted by Guest33 at 11:27 AM

 
Alistair Cooke Reflects on Life of Pat Moynihan (BBC)
in his current "Letter from America."
posted by Bill at 10:56 AM

 
Washington Post

Interactive Map of Baghdad

Media Index: Audio, Video, Photos, Maps

posted by Bill at 7:00 PM

 
U.S. Searches Shattered Iraqi Guard HQ

SALMAN PAK, Iraq - Marines pulled intelligence from a shattered Republican Guard headquarters Sunday after a night of fiery bombardments, and they searched a suspected terrorist training camp, finding the shell of a passenger jet believed to be used for hijacking practice...Central Command spokesman Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said Marines raided the complex using information from captured foreign fighters from Egypt, Sudan and other nations.

"The nature of the work being done by some of those people we captured, their inferences about the type of training they received, all these things give us the impression that there is terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak," Brooks said Sunday.

posted by Bill at 4:57 PM

 
NY Times "Interactive Graphics"
Interesting. Example: "Ballet Behind Battle: The choreography of a mechanized assault."
posted by Bill at 4:48 PM

 
The Others (NRO: Michael Ledeen)
We have miles to go in eliminating the Axis.

A year ago, as I was finishing the first draft of The War Against the Terror Masters, I wrote that Syria and Iran could not tolerate an American success in Iraq, because it would fatally undermine the authority of the tyrants in Damascus and Tehran...[I]n recent days we have heard some pretty tough words from both the secretary of state and the secretary of defense warning Syria and Iran to stop their lethal support of Saddam Hussein's crumbling regime, lest we treat them as hostile countries.

Now, Eli Lake of UPI reports that the government is aware of Iranian terrorist operations inside Iraq, and there have been many stories reporting Syria's campaign to send terrorists across the border to attack us. In truth, we didn't need intelligence to know this was going on, because the Iranian and Syrian tyrants had announced it publicly. Assad gave an interview recently in which he proclaimed -- in words that could have been taken right out of my book -- that Lebanon was the model for the struggle that had to be waged in Iraq against Coalition forces. And Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a speech a few weeks ago in which he said that the presence of American troops in Iraq would be even worse for Iran than the hated regime of Saddam Hussein.

See also Amir Taheri's comments: "Mullahs Disagreeing; the internal debate about Iran's future."
posted by Bill at 4:28 PM

 
The Train Is Leaving the Station (NRO: Victor Davis Hanson)
Will our "friends" jump on in time?

Wars disrupt the political landscape for generations. Changes sweep nations when their youth die in a manner impossible during peace...So, too, one of the most remarkable military campaigns in American military history will shake apart the world as few other events in the last 30 years. Depressed and discredited pundits now turn to dire predictions of years of turmoil in postbellum Iraq...But it is eerie how the more the experts insist on all these probable scenarios, the more they seem terrified that things are not as they were.

Something weird, something unprecedented, is unfolding, driven by American public opinion -- completely ignored in Europe -- and the nation's collective anger that Americans are dying by showing restraint as they are slandered by our "friends." Despite the protestations of a return to normalcy, this present war will ever so slowly, yet markedly nonetheless, change America’s relationships in a way unseen in the last 30 years.

posted by Bill at 4:14 PM

 
Professors Protest as Students Debate (NYT)

AMHERST, Mass., April 4 -- It is not easy being an old lefty on campus in this war. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, awash in antiwar protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a student newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes to protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.

Irvine Valley College in Southern California sent faculty members a memo that warned them not to discuss the war unless it was specifically related to the course material. When professors cried censorship, the administration explained that the request had come from students.

Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed this semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining hall with antiwar signs...Some students here accuse professors of behaving inappropriately, of not knowing their place...

Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights...

posted by Bill at 3:45 PM

 
Saddam is ripped.

Via Charles Johnson.
posted by Bill at 3:38 PM

 
The war? That was all over two weeks ago. (Telegraph: Mark Steyn)

This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon's Failed War Plan and while The Independent's Saddamite buffoon Robert Fisk is still panting his orgasmic paeans to the impenetrability of Baghdad's defences and huffily insisting there are no Americans at the airport even as the Saddam International signs are being torn down and replaced with Rumsfeld International.

Two weeks ago, which is when the Hopelessly Bogged-Down Vietnam Quagmire began, I wrote in this space:

The best thing is to ignore the various scenarios and look at patterns of behaviour. Whatever happened in that bunker on Thursday morning, the Iraqis are certainly acting as if they're headless. In a tyranny like Saddam's, local commanders are careful not to show initiative. They do what they're told and, if they're not told, they do nothing. That seems to be what's happening in much of Iraq.

I should have left it there and gone to the Virgin Islands for the duration. The way to understand this campaign is to look at the dogs of war that didn't bark: no missile attacks on Israel and only a couple of perfunctory strikes at Kuwait; not a single Iraqi plane in the sky in defence of the homeland; the key river bridges mined with explosives but not a single one detonated; no significant land engagements, etc.

All these are big decisions which would have been taken at the top and, if there's no top, nobody takes the decision. If you choose to believe that was the real deal on Saddam's latest video, it doesn't alter the fact that the Iraqis are still acting headless: everything that has not happened this last fortnight is consistent with the leadership being embedded into the rubble with a last startled look on their moustaches...

posted by Bill at 3:15 PM

 
Dash to Baghdad Leaves Debate in Dust (NYT: R.W. Apple)

Even by the standards of the Third Army's headlong dash across France under Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, the allied invasion of Iraq has accelerated with stunning speed in less than a week.

No less remarkable has been the transformation of the political atmosphere at home and, to a lesser degree, abroad. The dramatic, lightning-like thrust of the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, their way eased by the devastating application of air power to the Republican Guard, has taken the political heat off President Bush and his hard-nosed Pentagon boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld...

Andrew Sullivan: "Johnny Apple - barely drawing breath after declaring absolute military disaster - now proclaims stunning political and military success, "taking the heat off" president Bush for his conduct of the war. Ta-da! Only on 43rd Street, of course, could anyone believe president Bush was in political trouble at any point in the last couple of weeks because of his conduct of the war. But there you have it."
posted by Bill at 3:03 PM

 
Downtime turns deadly for troops hit by surprise

NAJAF, Iraq - West Point graduate 1st Lt. John Fernandez was fighting his way to Baghdad with the 3rd Battalion of the Army's 13th Artillery Regiment. His platoon was north of the Karbala Gap, almost to the Euphrates River, firing field artillery and making impressive headway. But early Thursday morning, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad, the soldiers were hit with Iraqi mortars during downtime. Fernandez was blown off his cot and landed in the dust, still in his sleeping bag...

posted by Bill at 2:52 PM

 
Interesting Interactive Map (CS Monitor)
posted by Bill at 2:46 PM