"The Iraqi air force understood that it needed to stay on the ground for its own safety," said Gen. Peter Cosgrove, chief of the Australian Defense Forces, who spoke to troops at the airfield on Thursday.

The Al Asad airfield, which housed the largest known contingent of Saddam's jet fighters, represents one of the big catches of the war. Three fighter squadrons -- the bulk of the Iraqi air force -- were stationed there, 112 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The Australians say they are still taking inventory but have so far found 57 fighter aircraft, mostly Soviet-era MiGs but also three advanced MiG 25 Foxbats, the fastest combat aircraft today.

(Sorry.)

(No I'm not.)

From 1997 to 2001, Tatara appeared frequently, as often as 16 times a month, along with the critic who actually appeared on TV, Paul Clinton. In 2002, his workload suddenly dropped to, at most, five reviews a month. There were times in the past that CNN.com editors had told Tatara that the higher-ups weren't loving his work, and more and more the site was relying on Entertainment Weekly, its sister AOL Time Warner publication.

"There were always periods, after nine months or so, when someone would raise a stink about the tone of writing being too conversational, too harsh, too, too, too," says Tatara, who is not speaking in exclamation points at this moment. He's just warming up.

"Especially with the conversational tone. They wanted me to be faceless!"

"It could be that [CNN's] blood pressure was higher, because the site wasn't making money! I had a real readership, but they couldn't care less! They weren't allowing people any real personality! At this point, [CNN] is like the Kmart of news services, and instead of a news flash, they should have a Blue Light Special!"

Geez... that was about the easiest piece of online research I've ever had to do. URLs practically hurled themselves at me.

-An inquiry about proposal one, re-electing the board of directors, asked if there really was any choice at all in the re-election of the board, since Apple's shareholder notice notes "The six nominees for director receiving the highest number of affirmative votes of the shares entitled to be voted for them shall be elected as directors." There were a total of six nominees. Heinen said that people did have the option of not voting. Jobs then commented that he received 83% of the votes to be re-elected, the highest second to Al Gore who received over 90%. Gore added, "Does it matter who has the most votes?" which sent the crowd into laughter.

-A person expressed concern over dealership contract renewal . Cook responded saying that dealerships representing less than 0.2% of Apple's revenue didn't re-sign. He also said that some dealerships re-signed after the deadline, and that the number of signed-on dealerships will only go up with time. Jobs added, humorously, that 100% of the Apple Retail stores decided to renew their contracts.

-A woman asked about increasing market share, and what steps to take if one identified possible large corporate sales opportunities for Apple. Fielding the second question first, Jobs made Cook provide his e-mail address to shareholders, so that he could handle their suggestions about enterprise sales opportunities -- tcook@apple.com. Fred Anderson then answered the first question explaining that the Switch campaign has been working, and that among the consumer segment Apple has doubled its market share, based on information from IDC.

-The acquisition of Virtual PC by Microsoft was raised by one shareholder. Jobs said that Apple's relationship with Microsoft is good and that Microsoft likes Safari. He also noted that VPC has been moved to the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft and that Microsoft acquired the software not so that it could get VPC itself, but its underlying technology. Jobs said Apple has talked with Microsoft, and Microsoft promises to continue the software. Jobs also suggested that the price might drop since royalties on Windows no longer have to be paid.

Wait a minute. Doubled its market share? You've gotta be kidding me.

What, we're up to 2% now?

Nevertheless, I agree with what he said. I don't think Bush was legitimately elected President. But I was very offended as a reporter when Michael came directly back to the pressroom where I was, along with 300 or 400 other reporters, and lectured us, "Now do your job. Don't report it was a divided house. Only five loud people were booing."

The paper describes "Piles" as an adjunct to the file/folder metaphor, in the paper (co-authored with Richard Mander and Yin Yin Wong). A clue is in the title, which describes piles as a metaphor for "supporting casual organization of information".

Piles were seen as complementary to the folder filing system, which was used more for archiving than grouping recently used, but related documents. "The folder as the sole container type presents an impoverished set of possibilities," the authors noted.

"There are different aspects to Piles," Solomon told us today. "They are a visual representation, but also helping them organize things, as a way to make suggestions. There are fuzzy edges - the computer is presenting you with 'what if?' questions on a pile of stuff.

This would be helped indexing of the contents of documents in real time, much as BeOS' BFS file system indexed metadata attributes in real time using a dedicated system thread. BFS designer Dominic Giampaulo joined Apple last year, and the rumor circuit has consistently suggested that better threading is a priority for the Panther update to MacOS X. Which suggests that Apple has both the will and know-how to provide a system capable of supporting very rich Piles.

At least North Korea publicly stated that they were backing out of the ABM treaty; we, instead, have simply reversed our policy, and are re-arming for a new nuclear-armed world. Our people at STRATCOM are seeking out and designating new nuclear targets in Iraq and elsewhere as we speak. And the Bush administration made a statement early in this war that said that if the Iraqis should use chemical or biologcal weapons against the American troops, then we would use "any force necessary" in response-- which, of course, is diplomatese for "nuclear weapons". And we should also realize that the US is more aggressively developing nuclear weapons today than ever before; now we've got these so-called "bunker busters", which, uh, can take out certain underground installations. These "bunker busters" are nuclear weapons which further demonstrate that the US is committed to a double standard regarding weapons of mass destruction and who should be permitted to use them.

Maybe I should order a transcript of this show; there's probably lots more juicy material in there to work with.

UPDATE: Hmm. But then, as Matt tells me, there's the RNEP, a nuclear version of exsting bunker-busters that is apparently being developed. Somehow, though, I suspect that this only makes Schell correct by accident...

UPDATE: Actually Schell talked about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, not the ABM treaty; my bad. The stream of the interview is here; the part I was paraphrasing above is between 16:30 and 20:00.

Hey, c'mon, it was from memory.

UPDATE: James Sentman and John Weidner both report having sighted this mystery dialog box. It appears to have nothing to do, behaviorally, with iSync itself; it's just a ghost at this stage.

And a rather poorly worded ghost at that.

Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris delivers the sermon, which he begins by saying: "O people of Palestine, O steadfast people on the land of beloved Palestine, I know that your hearts are bleeding painfully over what happened in Iraq. I know that your hearts were wounded by the fall of Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate. But, the fall of Iraq does not mean that we will give up our resoluteness and bow to the enemies of God. The quick dramatic events that led to the fall of Baghdad remind us of the Monguls, who entered Baghdad and overwhelmed it in a matter of hours. History repeats itself. That was caused by treason. And today's events smack of treason. But, O God's subjects, it is early to distinguish the traitor from the victim of treason. My fellow preachers and friends blamed some figures for treason and other things. But, I say from here: O people, O God's subject, you must wait until the facts become clear. We are sure that Baghdad was delivered and that it did not surrender. The whole issue smacks of treason. But, was Saddam the head of treason, or was he the victim of this treason?

They said User at the Center features will make it simpler for individual users to personalize their computing experience and to move seamlessly among Macs and other devices. And as a marketing strategy, Panther's User at the Center capabilities are intended to challenge user-centric capabilities of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP as well as its forthcoming "Longhorn" client.

In addition, sources said Panther will finally mark the debut of the much-discussed "piles" GUI design concept, which Apple patented in June 2001. According to the patent, piles comprise collections of documents represented graphically in stacks. Users can browse the "piled" documents dynamically by pointing at them with the cursor; the filing system can then divide a pile into subpiles based on each document's content. At the user's request, the filing system can automatically file away documents into existing piles with similar content.

UPDATE: Here's a Flash mock-up of the "piles" concept in action, by Richard Das. Damn, that's cool! I want it!

Thanks to Paul for the tip.

George Galloway, the Labour backbencher, received money from Saddam Hussein's regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least 375,000 British pounds a year, according to Iraqi intelligence documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.

A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme.

He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought "exceptional" business deals. Mr Galloway has always denied receiving any financial assistance from Baghdad.

Asked to explain the document, he said yesterday: "Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows?"

Side note: From the look of the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean, Orlando Bloom has officially been inhabited by the unquiet shade of Cary Elwes.

SHEIK MOHAMMADI, Afghanistan -- The men showed up at the end of the party celebrating the new school. They broke the windows, ripped the vitamins poster in half, tore the skeleton system off the wall. They set fire to biscuits and books.

Abdul Bari Rohani hid his ID badge under a mattress. But the men found it.

"They looked at my identification card and said, `Who is this headmaster, this Abdul Bari, son of George W. Bush? We are looking for him,' " said Rohani, who managed to escape detection.

. . .

At many of the boys' schools and the nearby villages the men left leaflets claiming to be from the Jamiat Jehash Moslemein, or Muslim Gathering Movement, warning people working with the Afghan or U.S. government to quit for their own safety.

The leaflets say Muslims should not get into government cars, or visit any government worker injured in a mine blast, or go to dog fights. Girls and women should not go to school. All Muslims should stay off roads used by government cars and stay away from places where foreigners go, such as hotels.

Officials did not immediately confirm that the currency was legal tender, but an Army private here who said he had worked for an armored car company examined the bills and called them genuine.

Taylor Griffin, a U.S. Treasury spokesman, offered assurances that any cash retreived from Hussein's regime would be held aside for the people of Iraq. "If we find money and it's not counterfeit, any assets belonging to Saddam Hussein and his cronies will be returned to the Iraqis," Griffin said.

Soldiers of the division's 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment were ordered to stop searching the area shortly before midnight after commanders discovered $600,000 missing from an opened box. Officers said the cash was recovered in a tree and three soldiers were questioned.

UPDATE: Den Beste has the goods on France. Or, I guess, the bads.

Friendship gave way to overt hostility, despite the diplomatic smiles and the denials which functioned as confessions: "The Americans aren't our enemies"...By its intransigence and its promise of a veto "regardless of the circumstances," our country divided Europe, paralyzed NATO and the UN, destroying the possibility of avoiding a military confrontation through a precise, joint ultimatum that would have forced out the Iraqi dictator. Far from avoiding a war, the "camp of peace" precipitated one by playing Asterix against Uncle Sam. A ridiculed France has now removed itself from the game. You don't run a great country by getting high on media successes and rhetorical jousts. In this regard, Tony Blair, who took the risk of confronting his electorate while remaining faithful to his convictions, revealed himself to be a true head of state.

The President's conduct reflected public opinion. In the future, we will talk about the hysteria, the collective intoxication that shook France for months on end, the anguish of the Apocalypse that seized our better halves, the almost Soviet ambiance that welded together 90% of the population in a triumph of monolithic thought, allergic to the slightest dissent. In the future, we will have to study the media's partisan coverage of the war?with few exceptions, this coverage was more activist than objective, minimizing the horrors of the Baathist tyranny in order to better reproach the Anglo-American expedition, guilty of all crimes, all problems, all misfortunes in the region.

For weeks, Television Baghdad invaded our brains and our television screens to the point where the very few Iraqi dissident guests had to apologize for existing?to the point where a French singer, in an act of remarkable obscenity, left the stage of a variety show on France 3 upon the arrival of Saad Salam, a film-maker and Iraqi opponent. We will have to explain why the Kurdish minority was, during this period, forbidden from protesting when Saddam's hatchet men paraded on our boulevards, brandishing Saddam's portraits, screaming slogans to his glory, going so far as to lynch the poet-in-exile, Salah Al-Hamdani. We will have to analyze the alarming proportion of French (33%) who, not wanting a coalition victory, pronounced themselves, de facto, in favor of Hussein's victory.

UPDATE: Speaking of LGF, this comment thread has turned somehow into Ex-Lefty Anonymous-- seems just about every reader is a former liberal who underwent a political shift with age, money, responsibility, and 9/11, while yet hanging on to many core liberal values. Lots of interesting personal stories, not one of them irrational (rationality and a willingness to agree to disagree on certain divisive issues is a hallmark there).

Interesting moniker they've (we've?) adopted, too: Eagles.

It's Ironic that with the early buzz about "Shock & Awe" and the MOAB bomb, that the real big military technological advancement shown in this war is not the bomb with a bigger bang, but a bomb with no bang at all, the "Concrete Bomb", a GPS guided bomb meant to smash into things, but not explode.

Or as I prefer to call it the ACME Guided Anvil.

It should also be publicized that as "senior emeritus terrorist," he freely attended those Hamas/Fatah/Is. Jihad hate-fests in Egypt over the last two years and that Egypt laughed at our demands for his arrest.

People who had volunteered as Saddam's "human shields" will be among those contributing testimony. "Any evidence we can get hold of, we will present," Mr. Shiner said. "The [ICC] prosecutor would have a duty to investigate if there was credible evidence."

Mr. Shiner said the activists' case will probe the coalition's use, or suspected use, of cluster bombs, depleted uranium ammunition and fuel-air explosives.

These weapons are unauthorized, he claimed, because they "can't distinguish between civilian or military" targets.

An Apple spokesperson told The Post that Apple Centre isn't a subsidiary of Apple and that no Apple employees work there.

The spokesperson said Apple doesn't comment on its parts suppliers.

Knowing that Apple has managed to get a blessing from each of the major record labels to allow it to move forward with its music purchasing software, the question that many people are asking is, "Why would Apple need to buy Universal's music division in the first place?"

The answer? It wouldn't.

A buyout of Universal's music division offers Apple a strategic advantage against Microsoft's digital rights management. If DRM gains widespread adoption, it could effectively push Apple out of one of one of its major computing strongholds: content creation.

. . .

Apple inevitably feared a future in which new music and video files couldn't play on computers not running Windows. If all the major music companies sign on to this DRM strategy, consumers may feel forced to stay "inside the lines" and use only Microsoft-created solutions

However, if an Apple-owned Universal Music didn't sign on to such a scenario, being the largest recording company could create the necessary leverage to keep other record companies from doing the same.

. . .

Additionally, if Apple established a business model that encouraged ripping mixing and burning all while making a profit for both itself AND the recording industries, it would be a win-win-win situation for consumers, Apple, and the recording industry.

The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.

The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum came to light only today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb.

As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.

A full accounting of what has been lost may take weeks or months. The museum had been closed during much of the 1990's, and as with many Iraqi institutions, its operations were cloaked in secrecy under Mr. Hussein.

UPDATE: A good counterargument to our applying martial law. Not much of a consolation, but...

In the dusty playground the chanting children's voices grew louder and louder, ringing inside the head of a dark-haired boy who stood alone by a crumbling school wall.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard," the children spat.

The boy tried to run but the taunting continued - just as it did most days for him in the village of Al-Ouja near Tikrit in north central Iraq.

But on this sweltering hot summer's day the six-year-old had had enough.

The lonely, taciturn child slowly bent down, picked up an iron bar lying on the ground then slashed it through the air towards the other children.

The rag-tag group of boys ran off in fear. And Saddam Hussein first learnt the power of terror.

The meeting had barely begun when the officer proclaimed: "Gentlemen, I am here to get this power station up and running. I've got engineers and contractors itching to get started. Is there anything you would like to add?"

"Actually," said the station's planning manager, Adel Hussein al-Shati, a stout, elderly man who once studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic, "we'd like to do it ourselves." He then explained how long it would take and how many men he needed.

"Well that's a relief," the officer said. "Get to work."

"Of course," Mr al-Shati said. "This is our job and this is our country".

Apple Computer Inc. is in discussions about buying Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, for as much as $6 billion, according to a published report Friday.

Talks between Apple and Vivendi Universal, Universal Music Group's parent company, have been held secretly for months, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Apple may offer $5 billion to $6 billion for the music company before Vivendi's April 29 board meeting, the newspaper said, citing sources it did not identify.

UPDATE: CapLion has some comments on these developments.

Incidentally, here's some self-effacing Mac humor, in response to Den Beste's suggestion that Apple hire al-Sahhaf as their new spokesman.

BAGHDAD, 11 April 2003 - It was the day of the looters. They trashed the German Embassy and threw the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag - flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section - as a mob of middle-aged men, chadored women and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian Embassy was broken into a few hours later.

At the headquarters of UNICEF, which has been trying to save and improve the lives of millions of Iraqi children since the 1980s, an army of thieves stormed the building, throwing brand new photocopiers on top of each other and sending cascades of UN files on child diseases, pregnancy death rates and nutrition across the floors.

The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad after the most stage-managed photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima, but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea of what liberation means. It also represented a serious breach of the Geneva Conventions. As the occupying power, the United States is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control, but yesterday their troops were driving past the German Embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate.

After TV showed Saddam's statue come tumbling down in Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats in Brazil carried box after box of papers out of their embassy -- and set them on fire. Then they denied police reports that documents were being destroyed.

"It's all lies," said Brazilian embassy official Abdu Saif. "We are only burning debris and recently cut tree branches."

In Tokyo, Iraqi diplomats hauled garbage bags stuffed with shredded documents out of the embassy. Neighbors whispered that the amount of trash was three times the usual level.

The US is designed, from the ground up, for one specific reason, to do one specific task: to make life for Tyrants as hard as possible. America is not about Homelands, but rather about constitutions. During the darkest days of the Civil war, when the whole world waited outside to recognize America's dissolution—and the disillusion of the American people—the greatest president our nation had ever known stood up and made a speech. There he said that we would no longer be fighting just for the sake of being one nation, we would also fight for a bigger task; freedom for everyone. It was not until the call for Americans to free a people held in bondage went forth that America began to win the war. Singing John Brown's Body they marched into battle. Behind them they left Freedmen, and Freedmen's Bureaus. The fact that it took a generation to reconstruct a shadow of that Tyranny is a tribute to the men who ended it the first time...

And so today, we see that America has once more; this very day, 9 April 2003; fulfilled her mission. We have once more helped topple a dictator, a tyrant. We are told that theGame is over. We have fulfilled once more our historic mission...

Syria won't recognize the new government in Iraq? Yeah, it's called democracy. No wonder they won't recognize it.

First, they have to find him. But when they do, residents of this small town want to thank the Iraqi man who helped save POW Jessica Lynch by bringing him to West Virginia.

The man, a lawyer known only as Mohammed, reportedly led U.S. troops to the hospital where Lynch was being held. The 19-year-old Army private was rescued last week and is recovering at a military hospital in Germany. Mohammed's role hasn't been confirmed by the military.

The effort to track down the man is being led by James Thibeault, who has founded Friends of Mohammad. The organization will be based in Lynch's hometown of Palestine, which is about 70 miles northwest of Malden, a Charleston suburb.

Then I heard it rising above the traffic, that famous trilling sound Arab women make in moments of triumph. It came from a group of black clad women in front of what used to be the Camelot theater but is now a fruit market. They modestly covered their mouths with their headscarves, but I knew it was them. Their daughters in modern dress, looking like typical Brittany Spears teenage girls, danced with one another to the sound of Middle Eastern pop music like the MTV-influenced kids they are, waving to the boys with the flags in the Chevys and Ford pickups and PT Cruisers as they drove by.

One vehicle summed up this palpable outpouring of joy. Painted on the side of a black SUV: "No more fear in Iraq!"

International ANSWER responds:

On Saturday, April 12, join the tens of thousands of people of conscience who will surround the White House. The whole world is watching to see if the people of the United States can intensify the power of the anti-war movement at the moment that the Bush Administration is intending to slaughter tens of thousands of Iraqi people and occupy their country.

We urge every anti-war organizer and concerned person to bring your friends, neighbors and family members to this all-important mobilization on April 12.

...Baghdad has been bombed relentlessly, terrorizing the occupants of that city and of the entire country. ... U.S. and British forces have laid siege to Basra, bombing and destroying the electrical supply to the main water plant and blocking the Iraqi food distribution system...

Arab world incredulous at Saddam's fall
The overwhelming emotion for many was one of disbelief, tinged for some with disappointment after weeks of hearing Saddam's government pledge a "great victory" or fight to the death against "infidel invaders."

"We expected resistance, not what happened," said Ghadah Shebah, a business administration student at the American University in Cairo.

Realization dawns
A captured Iraqi colonel being held in one of the hangars listened in astonishment as his information minister praised Republican Guard soldiers for recapturing the airport.

He looked at his captors and, as he realised that what he had heard was palpably untrue, his eye filled with tears. Turning to a translator, he asked: "How long have they been lying like this?"

UPDATE: AP and Reuters report on the incredulous reaction among Arabs in the region. Disappointment, disgust, the dawning understanding of a world turning upside down.

"We discovered that all what the (Iraqi) information minister was saying was all lies," said Ali Hassan, a government employee in Cairo. "Now no one believes (Arab satellite TV channel) al-Jazeera anymore."

Really? If that's true, that's a big first step.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds says that watching the footage of the celebrations and the statues toppling is "better than blogging". I agree; 'scuse me.

UPDATE: Balloon Juice has a much better photo-fisking than this post.

BAGHDAD (AFP) Apr 08, 2003
More than 100 children held in a prison celebrated their freedom Tuesday as US marines rolled into northeast Baghdad amid chaotic scenes which saw civilians loot weapons from an army compound, a US officer said.

Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.

"Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us," Padilla said.

"There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back."

"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years."

UPDATE: Yeah, hush it up, Scott Ritter.

You've spoke about having seen the children's prisons in Iraq. Can you describe what you saw there?

The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children - toddlers up to pre-adolescents - whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace.

Yeah. Heaven forfend we should, you know, like do anything about it. It's bad and all, but the warmongers are worse!

Chalk this up as another great UN moral victory, along with the Congo, Rwanda, and Srebrenica.

It is a sound which has echoed down the centuries but which has not been heard here for 15 years - the wailing call to prayer.

On Friday however, at 0430 (0130 GMT), in the minutes before the desert dawn, the voice of the Imam rang out.

What Saddam's Baath party had forbidden, the British Army had restored.

The townspeople, whose mosque was destroyed years ago, prayed in the privacy of their own homes.

But instead of their worship being a secret and dangerous thing, it was freely performed with new joy.

The 1st Battalion Royal Irish secured a public address system for the Imam and men from their attached Royal, Electrical and Mechanical Engineers installed it on Thursday night in time for Friday prayers.

Meanwhile, someone on Ar-Rahman posts these pictures, under the subject line "A New Crusade is going on!!"

Yeah, wouldn't you just love it if it were? There's only one problem: it's a horrific paranoid fantasy from Bizarro World.

Khuder Al-Emeri, 43, left his Seattle restaurant behind three months ago to join the Free Iraqi Forces, a group of exiles trained by the U.S. military to serve as interpreters and guides in Iraq (news - web sites).

Wearing desert camouflage and assisting the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, his return to the Shiite village where he once led an uprising against Saddam's regime was a whirlwind of tears and hugs - seeing relatives he didn't even recognize after 12 years away.

"I came to help my people," Al-Emeri said.

. . .

Leader of a Shiite uprising during the first Gulf War (news - web sites), Al-Emeri left the country in April 1991 and said the Iraqi regime placed a price on his head. He was only able to communicate with his family - who was regularly questioned about his whereabouts - by relaying messages through acquaintances in Baghdad. The restaurant he ran, named "Peace" in Arabic, was seized by the government along with his other businesses.

His family were among those who rushed out to greet him - including his 15-year-old son, Ali, whom he hadn't seen since he left Iraq. When they first saw each other, they embraced tightly and wept.

Ali Al-Emeri said he was afraid to ever let his father go away again, but Al-Emeri assured him: "Stay home. You are safe. I am here, the U.S. forces are here."

UPDATE: Ah! It's not this palace at all; it's the "New Palace", further west along the riverbank:



Thanks to Capt J.M. Heinrichs for setting me straight!

WASHINGTON (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."

Well, I was watching the war coverage, and I saw this Toyota pickup truck, with three idiots in it with AK-47s, pull up to an M1 Abrams tank... and-- well, I say "idiots" because... well, isn't that like sending a tricycle up against one? And the tank just turned and blew that truck right off the road.

...So if you should go and buy a Toyota at Stevens Creek Toyota, you have to promise-- because as good as these cars and trucks are, they simply won't stand up to an M1 tank. So promise that if you go down and buy a Toyota right now, which you should, you won't use it to go up against any tanks. It just doesn't stand a chance.

Towards the bottom of the transcript is the following quote. (Note: Some readers are reporting that the version of the CNN transcriopt they see in some parts of the country has been edited to remove the following comment. George Orwell would be proud!)

QUESTION: One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country, and another thing is that how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?

BUSH: Well... (APPLAUSE)

Thank you, Jordan (ph).

Well, Jordan (ph), you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident."

But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack."

There is a problem with the above statement. There was no live video coverage of the first plane hitting the tower. There couldn't be. Video of that first plane hitting the tower did not surface until AFTER the second plane had hit.

Bush is lying through his teeth here.

[transcript of the speech]

Even though Bush is not a very good pilot (he was taken off of flight status for failure to take a medical exam which included a drug test), it would be silly to assume that a passenger jet hitting the WTC in clear weather was pilot error. The only other known impact between an aircraft and a New York skyscraper was when a military airplane crashed into the Empire State Building in a heavy fog. Because of that incident, there are mandatory altitude minimums over the island. If Bush really did see an airplane on TV hitting the World Trade Towers, then he saw that the aircraft was under control at the time.

And, it must be remembered that even after andy informed Bush of the second impact, and by his own admission Bush knew we were being attacked, he continued to read to the classroom full of children.

Just think about that for a while.

Yes, yes-- I know these weren't posed. I was being facetious... that is, full of faceces.

While the fate of Saddam Hussein may already be sealed, there is no doubt that he is creating himself as a legend which is being lapped up by the Arab masses.

Pro-western leaders, such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, acceded to the American war plan on the assumption that it would all be over quickly. Mr Mubarak has even complained that the Americans misled him by promising a speedy campaign.

The fact that Saddam has survived for 12 days is seen as a colossal success. Before the conflict, his star was falling in the Arab world, with few takers for his propaganda that he intended to liberate Palestine.

"But we are so desperate for an Arab hero after all our defeats on the battlefield and 50 years of humiliation that we will even turn that old criminal Saddam into a legend," said an Arab banker.

Akbar, an American Muslim, told family members he was wary of going to war in Iraq. His mother, Quran Bilal, told The Tennessean of Nashville that she was concerned he might have been accused because he is a Muslim.

I think a new, different kind of bowling should be "carpet bowling." It's just like regular bowling, only the lanes are carpet instead of wood. I don't know why we should do this, but my God, we've got to try something!

UPDATE: I should note that I'm not saying we should stop trying new things. That would be dumb as all hell. After all, trying wild-ass ideas just to see how well they go over is how those evolutionary changes get made, and how some revolutions get started. OS X, in its early days, tried all kinds of concepts that turned out to be stupid (the analog clock in the Dock, for example, and the non-functional Apple logo in the middle of the title bar, and renaming the Finder to "Desktop"); once it became clear that they were bad ideas, Apple came up with better solutions, many of which (such as the System Menus in the upper right) mimicked ideas that Windows had introduced.

But some wild-ass ideas have much greater consequences than others; deciding whether the AirPort status icon should be a Dockling or a System Menu item is going to have a lot less impact on people's lives than deciding whether Jews should be allowed to live. And putting the instrument cluster of a car in the center console just smacks of a short-lived fad to me.

CapLion, however, reminds me that many very successful cars have had center-mounted instruments; the Shelby Cobra, for instance, and a lot of European racer-derived cars, and the McLaren F1 (though that one has a center-mounted seat, so the point is rather moot). So it could be the retro impulse as much as the urge to Think Different.

UPDATE: James, a Saturn driver who had the same misgivings about the Ion's center-mounted instruments, wrote them an e-mail asking what the hell they were thinking. Saturn wrote back, as follows:

Thank you for taking the time to send us an email. We appreciate the time
you have taken to share your candid comments. Our brand new ION that was
released with the 2002 model year, has the instrument panel in the center of
the dashboard. It actually is placed at an angle and is at the level of the
horizon so that it is always within the driver's line of vision. This
allows us to use a smaller steering wheel with more up and down positions
for driver comfort. In addition, from the safety view point the driver does
not have to remove his/her eyes from the road to look at the instrument
panel because it is always visible, yet it does not block the view of the
road.

Ahh. So there is a rationale-- and a reasonable one at that. That's very good news; it pretty well assuages my concerns. And it raises my level of respect for Saturn by several notches.

"We smashed Microsoft Windows discs,'' explained Jeff Grubler of a small anti-war group calling itself "Think Different Anti-Censorship Collective.'' He said the affinity group, which is linked to a much larger network called Direct Action to Stop the War, has been working for years to bring greater public awareness to the suffering of Iraqis due to the Persian Gulf War and subsequent international sanctions.

UPDATE: Chris says I've missed the point; that this stunt was simply a big fake-out, that they told people they were going to a mall to "break windows" in protest of the war, only for it to become clear later that-- golly gee-- they were merely referring to MS Windows. Hyuck, hyuck. Well, I still say it's a cute premise, but that unless their goal was to parody the anti-war protesters in general (not impossible, but improbable given their group's affiliation), it's still unlikely to have proved any sort of point.

And I'd still just as soon not be counted among their ranks.

When I first tried to do this I looked at my DELL running Windows XP, but unfortuately it does not allow USB FDD RAIDs. HOW LAME!!!! So, I turned to my new favorite OS, Apple OS X. Here is how I did this low-hi tech marvel.

The British soldiers suffered defeat on the dusty streets of Umm Khayyal, when they took on the local football team.

A thousand spectators came from all ends of the town to watch the match, with the players wearing full strip, boots and squad numbers.

The home side was rallied to a 9-3 victory by throngs of screaming men and children, who marked out the boundaries of the pitch.

In the face of such passion, Leading Airman Dave Husbands said the Marines were beaten from the start.

UPDATE: John sends me this corker:



Ouch.

Sometimes I think the reason America is so despised in some quarters is that we fail to live up to other peoples' worst expectations.

Bushington, DB -- In a televised address from somewhere inside one of his 57 palaces, President George W. Bush today issued a fatwa on actress/comedienne Janeane Garofalo, calling for "all noble American people to hunt down the godless dog Garofalo and bring her to me alive." Bush then stepped back from the ornatedly carved podium and pressed a button on a large industrial plastic-shredding machine behind him, into which a pair of Secret Service agents slowly lowered a futilely struggling lamb, hooves first. "Such is the fate of all who would oppose me," Bush intoned, over the grinding of the shredder and the anguished shrieks of the gradually pulverized animal.

A Muslim fundamentalist source claimed Wednesday that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network captured five coalition troops in Iraq.
     The source who requested anonymity told United Press International by telephone that the kidnapping of four U.S. troops and a British soldier, took place last Saturday in al-Zubair region of southern Iraq, close to the Kuwaiti border.
     He said the "kidnapped troops will be equally treated as al-Qaida prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay."
     He said al-Qaida will soon release a videotape of the captured soldiers and will ask to swap them with al-Qaida suspects being held by the United States.

Garofalo labeled the U.S. attack on Iraq as "not fair" because it is an "unprovoked strike." Talking about those denouncing Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks for saying she was "ashamed" to be from the same state as President Bush, Garofalo suggested the attacks on the Dixie Chicks are a "wonderful way for really stupid people to hook up. They meet...they tell stories about who their favorite Fox anchor is..."

When co-panelist Michael Graham, a radio talk show host, recalled seeing a sign at an anti-war march proclaiming, "We Support Our Troops...When They Shoot Their Officers," Garofalo doubted it ever existed and flew into a rage about how "that's what all you right-wing radio hosts do. You make shit up all the time."

The United States Library of Congress preserves the Nation's cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library's traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and serving collection materials of historical importance to the Congress and to the American people to foster education and scholarship, extend to digital materials, including websites. The Library has selected your site for inclusion in the historic collection of the 2003 War on Iraq Internet materials. On behalf of the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive will be collecting content from your website at regular intervals during the War. The Library will make this collection available to researchers onsite at Library facilities. The Library also wishes to make the collection available to offsite researchers by hosting the collection on the Library's public access website. The Library hopes that you share its vision of preserving Web materials about the War and permitting researchers from across the world to access them.

The words "Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross.

On one side was a swastika and the words "death to the Yankees".

Also daubed were the words "dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil," and "Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)".

With all of this talk of impending war, many of us will encounter "Peace Activists" who will try to convince us that we must refrain from retaliating against those who terrorized us all on . These activists may be alone or in a gathering. Most of us do not know how to react to them.

When you come upon one of these people, or one of their rallies, here are the proper steps of etiquette to take when encountering a situation like this:

1. Listen politely while this person explains their views. Strike up a conversation if necessary and look very interested in their ideas. They will tell you how revenge is immoral, and that by attacking the people who did this to us; we will only bring on more violence. They will probably use many arguments, ranging from geo-political to religious to humanitarian.

2. In the middle of their remarks, without any warning, punch them in the mouth.

3. When the person gets up off the ground, they will be very angry and they may try to hit you, so be careful.

4. Very quickly and calmly remind the person that violence only brings about more violence and remind them of their stand on this matter. Tell them if they are committed to a nonviolent approach to undeserved attacks, they will turn the other cheek and negotiate a solution. Tell them they must lead by example if they really believe what they are saying.

5. Most of them will think for a moment and then agree that you are correct.

6. As soon as they do that, hit them again. Only this time hit them much harder. Square in the mouth.

7. Repeat steps 2 - 5 until cognition occurs, the desired results are obtained, and the person recognizes the stupidity of the argument he/she/it is making.

There is no difference in an individual attacking an unsuspecting victim or a group of terrorists attacking a nation of people. It is unacceptable and must be dealt with, perhaps at a high cost. We owe our military a huge debt for what they are about to do for our children and us. We must support them and our leaders at times like these. We have no choice. We either strike back, VERY HARD, or we will keep being hit in the mouth.

"Mr. Bush has lost us. We are gone. Enough. That's the end," said Diaa Rashwan, head of the comparative politics unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "If America starts winning tomorrow, there will be suicide bombing that will start in America the next day. It is a whole new level now."

The anger was a clear sign that U.S.-Arab relations, despite the Bush administration's campaign to win hearts and minds, was at a low point.

"Bush is an occupier and terrorist. He thought he was playing a video game," said George Elnaber, 36, a Arab Christian and the owner of a supermarket in Amman. "We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now," he said, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The popular al-Jazeera satellite television network broadcast the funerals of those killed at the market. It repeatedly showed pictures of severed body parts and wounded toddlers bandaged and crying in hospital beds.

"Those pictures have showed that America's war is not only against the Iraqi regime and the Iraqi army, but also against the Iraqi children and elderly. How can we trust them now?" said Mahmoud Sahiouny, 19, a Syrian computer science student who lives in Beirut.

Someone on the radio just said, "Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle." Well, ours was nice, wasn't it?.

UPDATE: This is pretty interesting:

"And following the name was the fascination of the flag. The Reverend Slaughter happened to come across a February 25, 1776, copy of the London 'Morning Chronicle,' and in it he saw, as he called it, 'a remarkable article in these words': 'The Americans have a flag with a snake with 13 rattles on it, in the attitude to strike, and with the motto, "Don't tread on me." It is a rule in heraldry that the worthy properties of an animal on a crest should alone be considered. The rattlesnake is an emblem of America, being found in no other part of the world. The eye excels in brightness. It has no eye-lids, and is therefore an emblem of vigilance. She never begins an attack, and never surrenders, and is therefore an emblem of magnanimity. She never wounds until she has given warning. Her weapons are not displayed until drawn for defence. Her power of fascination resembles America - those who look steadily on her are involuntarily drawn towards, and having once approached, never leave her. She is beautiful in youth, and her beauty increases with age. Her tongue is forked as lightning.'"

Whether history shows we've lived up to this or not, it's still a striking ideal.

(Sorry.)

• I Hate the French Vanilla
• Iraqi Road
• Smaller GovernMint
• Nutty Environmentalist

`Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. 12 years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now`

Coming back to family members and telling them of progress in the talks at the United Nations on working some sort of compromise with Iraq I was welcomed not with joy but anger. `No, there is no other way! We want the war! It is the only way he will get out of our lives`

. . .

From a former member of the Army to a person working with the police to taxi drivers to store owners to mothers to government officials without exception when allowed to speak freely the message was the same - `Please bring on the war. We are ready. We have suffered long enough. We may lose our lives but some of us will survive and for our children's sake please,, please end our misery.

. . .

But what of their feelings towards the United States and Britain? Those feelings are clearly mixed. They have no love for the British or the Americans but they trust them.

`We are not afraid of the American bombing. They will bomb carefully and not purposely target the people. What we are afraid of is Saddam Hussein and what he and the Baath Party will do when the war begins. But even then we want the war. It is the only way to escape our hell. Please tell them to hurry. We have been through war so many times,but this time it will give us hope`.

Oh, and another thing. One might be forgiven for discounting the opinions of those who have been pro-war from the start, and who have never themselves been to Iraq. Well, since these people were anti-war until they went to Iraq, upon which they changed their minds... doesn't that make them the most worthy sources of all, except for the Iraqis themselves?

...Okay, fine.

Look, I'm not some zealous patriot that thinks the U.S. is always right, or that you can't criticize the Government, and so on. Before this war is started, you can criticize all you want, when this war is over we can discuss/evaluate the tradeoffs of what was accomplished. During this war, stay the hell out of the way, and watch what you say. Indecisiveness in war is a way to get more people killed, so it should be treated as the life threatening mamby-pambyisms that it is.

I enjoy looking at problems from many sides, sometimes I even enjoy diplomacy and debate. But war is what happens when diplomacy and debate have failed; and they have failed. Our armies are trained to take land, kill people and break things; that's their job. When it is time for them to do their job, all else pales. Warriors understand this, some other people don't. This isn't the 60s sit-in, and is not a time for us all to remember our youths. Frankly, the peaceniks got many more killed than they helped anyways. If you don't like this war, so what? I don't like tax & spend policies, economic mugging that is a progressive tax system, and so on. There's a time and place to talk about it, and a time not to. This is the time to shut up. When the doves come out in a time of war, you don't get your hymnal, you get your shotgun.

For the record, no, I don't endorse statements like "watch what you say"-- particularly taken out of context. I agree with Every's primary point, that a lack of commitment to the objective will make the war take longer and cost more lives; that supporting the troops ought to take precedence over trying to sway the government from the course we've taken. I don't agree that everybody should just shut up if they have a dissenting opinion during wartime for fear of jackboots at the door. And I don't think that's what he was saying in any case.

Disagree with the war's circumstances or motives, sure. Wave signs, fine, if you have to, if you don't mind the thought of the troops seeing you on TV and wondering whether the country is behind them or what. But don't throw rocks at National Guardsmen.

Dear IRAQ ! What can I do to Help?

1. Hope: At this critical juncture when war is the buzz word of the War Mongers, many Muslims are left in despair and in a state of hopelessness. It may seem that the death of millions of innocents is now inevitable, but we must continue to strive our utmost to defend them and to spread the truth about this immoral war. Above all, we must remember that Allah Ta'ala has control over all things and can provide help in ways we do not even understand. Not even the 'greatest' superpower can overpower Him! No falsehood is to remain forever. No oppression is to remain forever. After hardship comes ease. The bitter reality of the Muslim nation will come to an end, and tomorrow will be definitely better than today. We should have HOPE in the ALL encompassing MERCY and HELP of Allah Ta'ala under all circumstances, whether it be in victory, defeat, happiness or sadness.
   Hadhrat Ibn Abbaas(radhiyallahu anhu) reported that : " I was(once) behind Nabi(sallallahu alaiyhi wassallam) when he said to me: 'O son ! I shall inform of a few things: Remember Allah, and He will protect you. Remember Allah, and you will find Him close to you. When you have to ask for something, ask of Allah Ta'ala. When you require aid, seek His aid. Believe firmly that if all the creation desires to benefit you in anything, they can never benefit you, but, that which Allah has decreed for you. If they ALL unite to harm you, they will not be able to harm you in anything, but that which Allah has decreed for you." (Tirmizi)
2. Duaa: Make ernest, sincere duaa. Try to shed tears and beg Allah Ta'ala to alleviate the suffering of the Muslims in Iraq; and other places where Muslims are oppressed, not forgetting to make duaa for the brave "Human shields ". Beg Allah Ta'ala with sincerity.(like a child begging his mother). Also, conscientise the family and the children at home to also make duaa.
3. Nafl Salaat: Even if;one is not a regular performer of Tahajjud salaat; atleast for the sake of the lives of the innocents; get up at the time of Tahajjud and perform two rakaats of salaah; contemplate on the sufferings,that the Ummah is facing today; beg Allah Ta'ala for His Divine Help and assisstance.Shed some tears; Ask for Forgiveness and help for the Abstention from sin and for Allah Ta'ala's Divine Solution.
4. Participate in Peace Rallies and Anti -war campaigns: keeping in mind the shariah injunctions of good character, proper conduct, hijab, peace etc.
5. Charity(Sadaqah): Give some charity(sadaqah) on behalf of the Muslims in Iraq; on behalf of the orphans; the widows;the martyrs and those that are the victims of oppression. This sadaqah may even be a loaf of bread or bottle of milk to a needy person in your area.
6. Fast: Keep a nafl fast on any day of one's choice. At the time of breaking one's fast ;Beg Almighty Allah Ta'ala, to alleviate the sufferings of the Muslim Ummah in Iraq and other parts of the world where Muslims are unjustly being oppressed.
7. Relief and Financial Aid: The lives;homes and infra-structure of the people of Iraq have been devastated over the last 12-15 years. Assist by aiding financially to a legitimate Relief agency in your area. Spare ourselves from over indulgences and financially aid our Brothers and sisters in this hour of need.
8. Make News outlets Aware: Keep a vigilant eye on the news outlets; magazines etc. and respond timeously to their bias comments and views. Participate in phone-in sessions on the Radio. If one is unable to do so; make those who are able to do so; aware of such comments; articles etc. so that timeous responses are made. Forward pertinent and relevant articles you come across to the International and local media outlets.

Call out Gouranga be happy.
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga.
Say Gouranga my friend..
Gouranga.......That which brings the highest happiness.

UPDATE: Ah.

The plane's logo and coloring resembled that of Iraqi Airlines, said Getty Images News Service executive Brian Felber, based in New York.

The photograph, showing two rifle-toting Marines in front of the mural, was shot by staff photographer Joe Raedle, who is accompanying the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from Task Force Tarawa.

U.S. forces in Iraq are using specially trained dolphins to help look for anti-ship mines in the waters off the key southern port of Umm Qasr. But it's not the first time such creatures have been used by the military.

The U.S. military has used intelligent sea creatures for three decades, including sea lions brought to the Persian Gulf to guard against attack by providing early warning of enemy saboteurs. Many sea lions have been trained to come to the surface to signal an intruder.

For the U.S.-led war in Iraq, having dolphins locate the mines would make it easier for troops to clear them. That would make it safer for military and humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Umm Qasr or another port city.

I was not impressed. The video was introduced by the Minister of Information, who told us to wait for an important and "historic" speech from Saddam. It then cuts to the - what's it called - station ID playing the national anthem for a least a couple of minutes. Only then do we get to the actual video.

A couple of things struck me about it. If the translation was right, Saddam refers to the invasion starting "today"; of course, the video was being shown several days after the start of the invasion. Also, lots of names were thrown out, but nothing specific. He did mention Umm Qasr and there has been strong resistance there, but he made no specific reference to that. Finally, he made no mention of the American POWs, a sure way to alert the world that he was alive and in control.

The CNN pundit (with one of those sneering British accents Lileks has been talking about) seemed overly impressed. She was certain that this proved Saddam was alive. After all, he mentioned Umm Qasr and Mosul! (Though nothing specific about Mosul.)

A different idea sprung into my mind: This was a tape created before the start of the war. A number of different tapes were created at that time, each with a different set of names and places. After the start of the war, the tapes with the most relevant names could be played. It would be kind of a propaganda mix tape. In a few days we'll probably get another tape full of vague references to current events but nothing specific.

"Led his country in confrontation the aggression launched by 33 countries led by US. which waged war against Iraq, the Iraqis' confrontation of which is called by Arabs and Iraqis as the Battle of Battles (Um Al-Ma' arik) , where Iraq stood fast against the invasion, maintaining its sovereignty and political system. "

I can't believe I stayed up for the "historic speech from Saddam". It looked like another file piece. There was no way to put a date on it. It was intorduced by the Minister of Information who I increasingly suspect of running the country since he is the only official we really hear from. I want the last hour of my life back.

"Don't you listen to Powell on Voice of America radio?" [the Iraqi driver] said. "Of course the Americans don't want to bomb civilians. They want to bomb government and Saddam's palaces. We want America to bomb Saddam."


We just sat, listening, our mouths open wide. Jake, one of the others, just kept saying, "Oh my God" as the driver described the horrors of the regime. Jake was so shocked at how naive he had been. We all were. It hadn't occurred to anyone that the Iraqis might actually be pro-war.


The driver's most emphatic statement was: "All Iraqi people want this war." He seemed convinced that civilian casualties would be small; he had such enormous faith in the American war machine to follow through on its promises. Certainly more faith than any of us had.

Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don't think he believed us. Later he asked me: "Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?"

• The US' national security
• The Iraqi civilian population
• Iraqi troops willing to surrender
• The UK and other nations in the "coalition of the willing"

• Saddam Hussein and his sons
• Iraqi troops loyal to Saddam
• Islamic terrorists operating out of Iraq or anticipating Iraqi assistance
• France
• The anti-war protesters

Yes, I know I'm being kinda hypocritical here; I've never been one to stick to pure fact and reason in the things I write here, and-- let's be frank-- ad-hominem attacks and pleasing ironies are fun, which is why I do them. Indeed, it's hard to reconcile this call to logic with my defense of the Mac; to advocate Apple is to advocate what is essentially a liberal cause (the Mac's superiority is based on ideals, anecdotes, entitlements, community mentality, etc), and the arguments I've used more often than not fall squarely into the categories I've described here. Facts and logic and reason would tend to dismiss Apple as irrelevant.

I'm not saying we all should avoid using these kinds of tactics at all times, or anything like that; and I doubt I'll be practicing what I preach anytime soon either. The whole reason I blog is that I like posting bits of out-of-context information that I can spin in a way that's to my liking. My point is that we're all entitled to use whatever underhanded tactics and biases we like; that's our right and what makes blogging fun. But let's just not kid ourselves that that's not what we're doing.

UPDATE: Various people have been ahem-ing and mailing me URLs about depleted uranium, and how it's really nasty stuff, the likely causative of Gulf War Syndrome, etc, etc. One scientific resource in particular that was brought to my attention was this study by Vladimir S. Zajic, which seems rather exhaustive. However, Zjonni and I pored over it for some time, and found that while it detailed a lot of the direness of risk entailed by being in the line of fire or scooping up DU-tainted dirt, the paper a) did a lot of speculative math about the DU dust contamination by a hypothetical projectile (followed by radiation readings taken by the Christian Science Monitor and Iraqi officials, as reliable as we know those to be); b) claimed that DU dust would be spread by weather effects (not true-- it's heavier than gold dust); and c) made no attempt to claim that DU had a link to birth defects-- except once, in which he admits that "the cause of these birth defects is unknown". And check out his list of references. "Nukes of the Gulf War"? "Swords to Plowshares"? "Metal of Dishonor"? The Independent? He's got a lot of actual scientific papers in the mix, but these other nuggets make them poor company. He then goes on to praise "respected British journalist" Robert Fisk.

We then did a Google search on "depleted uranium" "birth defects", and in the first five pages of links found nothing resembling a scientific paper that linked DU to birth defects. (After five pages we gave up.) And given the nature of Google, you'd think that at least some groups would have done a lot of linking to such a paper, kicking it up toward the top of the result list, perhaps? You'd think that those groups whose websites did fill those five pages of results would have had it as their flagship supporting evidence. But there was nothing. Plenty of resources which agree that DU is nasty stuff, responsible for plenty of health problems if ingested, but not the culprit in any way that can be proven for those birth defects (the pictures of which, gathered as they usually are into a group, show vastly differing symptoms which can be easily attributed to a variety of much more likely and present causes in Iraq at the time-- for one, no people had ever before been exposed to crude oil smoke in anywhere near that quantity before).

The upshot would seem to be that depleted uranium certainly isn't something you'd want to stir into your cereal, but I remain to be convinced that those waving signs with pictures of deformed babies are motivated by fact rather than the desire to kick the viewer's mind right in the nads.

Yet another UPDATE: Zjonni has dug up the following two sources which seem to do a pretty good job of refuting the claims in the Zajic study:

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm

This past weekend I had another desultory encounter with what some still believe is Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) interest in the "content" business. While trying to hook up to the Net a friend's ultralite laptop running Windows XP Professional, and bereft of the ubiquitous AOL (NYSE: AOL) software, I was taken on a tour of frustration as the preloaded Microsoft Network tried first to use a username it hijacked from another dial-up connection, then led me on a tedious and insanely slow walk through utterly irrelevant shopping and news links, none of which had anything to do with the Internet. I ultimately toasted the MSN connection and set up a third-party ISP account I had in my back pocket.

MSN won't make most people's experience of connecting to the Net very special. This is a network that doesn't care about being a network, like a supposedly hip restaurant that secretly yearns to be a car wash. And so it comes as no surprise that IDC has recently concluded MSN may soon give up on being an Internet access player. What is left after you jettison the dial-up part, the so-called "content" business, would leave MSN in the position of being a re-tread of C/Net's failed "Snap!" online service from five years ago.

This was just devastating. We use Macs here at the EIB Network. We're an entire Mac shop, and Algore, who probably wouldn't know the Internet if he was on the computer, is now a member of the Apple board of directors.

I have to see if one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Gosh, I hope not, and I hope he doesn't have anything to do, other than ceremonial duties, with this outfit. If they start letting him reinvent Apple like he reinvented government, oh boy... I just ordered a couple of new G4 Power Mac towers, and this is the way I get paid back? Geez.

Some customers have reported that over time their iPod's battery life has declined. This update enables the iPod to more accurately monitor its battery charge, thus using the entire battery capacity and regaining long battery life. The result is longer playback time and extended standby time. After updating the iPod, customers can expect at least 10 days of standby battery life on a full charge.

Prior to this update, the iPod would sometimes mistake a temporary low voltage condition as an indication that the battery was discharged. This resulted in the iPod shutting down prematurely, even though the battery was still capable of powering the iPod.

"I got a letter from a general at the Pentagon when the name change went through and he says it was great to have the employ of the commander of the Autobots in the National Guard."

Al Gore ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Gore is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through his innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.

One more thing. Our words and our behavior will be scrutinized more than ever this morning. Those who are hostile towards us will lie in wait to seize on a soundbite out of context, ever searching for an embarrassing moment to ridicule us. So, let us be mindful. The eyes of the nation are upon us today.

A few weeks ago I wrote a poem that I didn't even realize would end up being so appropriate to the times... [he'd previously mentioned that he'd thought the chance of war, even just weeks ago, was very remote] ... it was about waking up to a very peaceful morning, very early, while it was still dark... and hearing the rain down in the valley, and being so thankful for this peaceful moment... and yet at the same time as this placid scene was taking place, there was this war being planned in my name by people who I had nothing to do with them being in the position they're in. And I thought, what part of me... [losing coherence] is represented by this war?

Al Qaeda wouldn't collaborate with Saddam because they're religious zealots and he's a secular tyrant. Gimme a break. Al Qaeda demonstrated clearly in their planning for September 11th they'll do whatever it takes to smite their enemy, even if that means suffering through lapdances in the strip clubs of the Great Satan. If they can buy box cutters in our Wal-Marts, I'm sure they could suck it up to borrow a few kilos of anthrax from Saddam.

What Clwyd says - clearly, unforgettably, indelibly - is something that some people think is unsophisticated or crude or manipulative. What she says is that the Saddam regime is evil. I'm aware of the argument that there are many evil regimes in the world and we aren't invading to destroy all of them. But there comes a point at which such arguments say less about the world and more about the people making them. Saddam's regime is certainly one of the vilest on earth. Its malevolence and brutality is documented beyond dispute. In a world in which morality matters, the leading theologians and moralists and politicians would not be bending over backwards to find arguments to leave this regime alone, to lend credence to its lies, and to appease its poisons. They would be casting about for reasons to end it. I think that is what has given Blair his strength these past few months. He knows he's right.

UPDATE: CapLion thinks so. Although in response to his "But don't take my word for it, just spend a few days in San Francisco..." I'd have to say that I don't have to take his word for it-- I live here. :) I just bought a house here. I signed the bleedin' papers this morning.

And while I know most of the population of California is concentrated in the cities, one shouldn't discount the massive numbers of people who live in rural areas or small towns throughout the state. I grew up in one. You're as likely to find Young Republicans or Harley dudes in any of these places as hippies-- hell, I grew up behind the Redwood Curtain, and it wasn't until I moved to Pasadena and lived next to Dabney House that I first smelled marijuana.

This may be the state that saw to Jerry Garcia's ascendancy; but it's also the state that gave us Ronald Reagan.

And with 75% of the public supporting the war (a record in recent memory!), even in the face of more-strident-than-ever protests, we would do well to remember that just because the few are louder here than elsewhere, it doesn't mean that the many deserve to be flushed. There are still a lot more of us than there are of them. Even here.

I have a better idea. Shoulder-to-shoulder block, yes. Non-violent, no. Beat them into frigging pulp.

Well, yes. I have no doubt that that's what it would come to-- these are peace activists, after all. Hardly the least violent of nature's beasts. But what I mean is, non-violently is at least how the blockade ought to start. Even if just to play out everybody's scripted role.

9-point Monaco is the last surviving masterpiece of the original Macintosh?s painstakingly hand-tuned set of pixel-perfect bitmap fonts, and deservedly so. Sure, it?s been tweaked in recent years (for example, to distinguish the lowercase L from the digit one, the zero from the capital O, and to enlarge certain punctuation characters, like the period, which originally was just a single pixel), but today?s Monaco 9 would look very familiar to a circa-1986 Mac programmer. Mac OS X introduced a newly refined 10-point counterpart, which feels much larger than the ostensible one-point difference from Monaco 9 would imply. Monaco 10 is also eminently readable, perhaps quite a bit more so than Monaco 9 on today?s high-resolution displays, and yet is very true to Monaco 9?s spirit.

We have been able to confirm with Apple sources that the company is indeed planning to introduce a 30-inch Cinema Display this summer, and will be dropping the price of its already impressive 23-inch model at that time.

        "We go out of our way to avoid targeting civilians".

        It's not just "not our style", it's the reason why we've been spending
billions and *billions* of dollars over the past decades to develop
weapons which take out not just the target *building*, but the target
*person*. We have missiles that can fly into an individual person's
house's *window* and leave the adjoining buildings on either side
completely intact. We have Predator drones that target terrorists in
their cars where they're as isolated as possible from innocent
civilians. We even have EMP weapons designed to disable electronics so
enemy weapons systems become useless, without even a single *military*
life having to be lost.

        Why the heck would a country that has nuclear weapons capable of
leveling cities devote all its attention to creating weapons that cause
*less and less* damage, with more and more specific and targeted
results? It's because minimizing civilian casualties is the paramount
goal of American military development, and we've achieved more toward
that goal than any other country in history.

        People who whine about "killing innocent civilians is wrong" will get
no argument whatsoever from US military leaders; however, they *might*
get a frustrated punch in the mouth.

Q253912: Out of Memory Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM Installed
"WORKAROUND: Reduce the amount of memory that is installed in your computer to 512 MB or less."

Q149525: Poor Performance May Occur During FTP File Transfers
"If a send request occurs that is less than one segment, Silly Window Syndrome (SWS) can occur."

Q175362: January 1 May Appear as February 1 in a Date
"When you enter or fill dates in a worksheet in Microsoft Excel 97, a date that should appear as January 1 may instead appear as February." Hope you, like, didn't need that date for anything.

Universal Soldier receives a near perfect Van Dammeter score because of its massive clash of JCVD clichés where a sassy female reporter shows up during the splits-filled muddy fight scene in the rain. During the fight she's hit by an exploding grenade, but through what must have been the filmmakers' lack of knowledge of what a grenade is, she gets right up a few minutes later.

UPDATE: CapLion is considerably less put out by "freedom fries" than I am. (I'm trying to come up with a pun that involves "put out" and "put in" or perhaps "poutine", but failing.) But J Greely suggests a better name for them would be New York fries. It's not terribly inaccurate, considering that New York has always been such a hotbed of newly imported foods brought by immigrants or cultural exchange; and besides it's got plenty of WoT cachet. (Whoah-- perhaps I should avoid using French words like cachet... much as the British deliberately pronounced words like fillet and ballet with a hard T and the emphasis on the first syllable, so as to de-Francify such words.)

Well, either way, I like the sound of New York fries... pending legal clearance with the food-court restaurant of the same name. Somehow I doubt they'd mind much.

The decision to break with tradition and not have a Jobs keynote reportedly was made by Jobs himself. When exhibitors asked why he wouldn't be doing a keynote, many were told it was because Jobs felt it was getting tougher every year to produce the same amount of innovative products and excitement for a keynote. "Apple feels they have to pull a rabbit out of a hat at every keynote and it was getting tough for Jobs to live up to the hype," said one exhibitor.

On a more minor front, I was walking the beagle on Saturday in my local D.C. park and stumbled across the pretty-in-pink "Women For Peace" demo. The demonization of the president was far more evident than any criticism of Saddam Hussein. In the few conversations I managed to have without losing my cool, I asked some of the demonstrators whether they were aware of how many people Saddam Hussein had killed in his short time on earth. "Not as many as Bush," came one reply. "America is the true terrorist nation," another opined. Now I am second to no-one in defending these people's right to say whatever they believe, and it was a beautiful day for a feisty demonstration. But what can one make of the arguments one hears? Maybe it's because I'm surrounded by these sentiments, but it's hard not to wonder what these people will say or do once this particular phase of the war actually gets under way.

If I live long enough, I will see some sort of national healthcare service implemented. It will be the same sort of tangled mess that all such systems are. I will see more destructive tinkering with the economy by muddle-headed politicans and government bureaucracies intent on making socialism actually work this time. I will see more gun-control legislation implemented, and eventually a ban on private ownership of firearms, and for all the tough talk from gun supporters (including myself), none of us will do a damned thing about it. The vision of jackbooted thugs knocking on individual doors to seize the guns, and gun-owners massing in the streets to resist, will never come to pass. Legislation will be passed over the vociferous objections of gun owners, and they will be required to turn in their guns to police-run collection agencies by a certain stated date or face criminal prosecution, and most of them will do just that. Some will hide their guns, bury them in the backyard or whatever, and they'd be better off just turning them in, because to use the gun to protect your home or your family will land you in jail. Just as has already happened in Britain, just as is happening right now in Brooklyn with Ronald Dixon and plenty of other less-publicized people who dared to think they had a right to self-defense. The Leftists are winning. Dixon will go to jail, probably for as little time as Brooklyn ADA Charles Hynes can get away with getting for him and still hope to get elected to the Senate, but go to jail he most assuredly will. And a small part of the Great American Experiment will get locked away with him. The difference is, Dixon will get out eventually; the American dream of individual liberty will be in for life plus twenty. Freedom has a funny sort of inverse relationship to taxation: in the same way that all temporary taxes are actually permanent, freedoms lost are never regained. The Great American Experiment had a good run, but we're nearing the bottom of the downhill slide. And you can't fight gravity.

When I was a kid, my dad and uncle would take the neighborhood kids out for a ride through the countryside in the back of my dad's '59 Chevy Apache pickup truck on summer Sunday afternoons. We always had a ball, and looked forward to it every week. We'd take along water pistols and squirt each other and passing cars with 'em. We'd laugh and laugh, and my dad and my uncle thought it was all just great. And it was.

But that little corner of America died a long time ago. It was pulled off life support by the nanny-staters; it's been illegal for kids to ride around in the back of pickups in North Carolina for years now, and even water pistols are frowned upon these days. Too dangerous, don't you know. Someone could get hurt or killed. Someone might grow up to think that guns are okay because of those water pistols. So now the kids are reduced to Playstation 2's, Xbox's, and MtV for their kicks, instead of being out in the sunshine and interacting with their neighbors and families. And something precious has been lost. Lost, or thrown away. Why, with all the dangers and horrors my childhood was fraught with, it's a miracle anyone from my generation managed to survive to adulthood at all. Or so some would have us think anyway.

When RCMP and paramedics arrived, McAulay learned she was going to be held up for another few hours because she had to give police a statement. She called Frank's Pizza and asked a co-worker to phone her supervisor and fill him in.

When McAulay finished with investigators and returned to the restaurant about 10:30 p.m., Boyd was there to deliver the bad news.

"He said, 'What the hell were you doing there?'" she said. "He told me I was fired because I was a threat to the business."

McAulay said she tried to explain, but Boyd told her he "didn't care."

"I was shocked. Actually, disgusted," she said. "I'm not an EMT and I know that, but ... I wouldn't want anyone to turn away from me. It's a person's life that's at stake."

Boyd told The Selkirk Journal he didn't fire McAulay because she helped the gunshot victim.

"She wasn't dismissed because she was at the shooting scene," he said. "She was away from her job for no good reason."

It reminds you that a truth, repeated enough times, becomes a cliché. Once the smart set identifies something as a cliché, it?s stripped of its truth and regarded simply as a trick - regardless of how true the cliché may actually be.

Clear moonlight beckons.
Requiem mors pacem pkg-comment,
And be calm ports tree.

A British Army source in Kuwait contacted me to explain how the extraordinary surrender bid unfolded. The source said: "The British guys on the front-line could not believe what was happening. They were on pre-war exercises when all of a sudden these Iraqis turned up out of nowhere, with their hands in the air, saying they wanted to surrender.

"They had heard firing and thought it was the start of the war.

"The Paras are a tough, battle-hardened lot but were moved by the plight of the Iraqis. There was nothing they could do other than send them back.

"They were a motley bunch and you could barely describe them as soldiers - they were poorly equipped and didn't even have proper boots. Their physical condition was dreadful and they had obviously not had a square meal for ages. No one has ever known a group of so-called soldiers surrender before a shot has been fired in anger."

UPDATE: Then again, the British troops may not be the best-equipped force in the world either:

Not all the Challenger II tanks, which broke down on exercised in Oman last year, have been adapted for desert use.

And the replacement of the SA80 rifle, which showed a tendency to jam in dusty conditions, is not complete so some troops are likely to still be armed with it.

But what is less well known is that soldiers are also short of even the most basic of kit - their boots.

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Paul Keetch is in Kuwait where some British troops are already stationed.

He says he has been shocked to learn how short of equipment the British are.

They have acquired, he says, the nickname "The Borrowers" because the borrow so much from the Americans.

Yikes.

"It is the only one out here in the desert," said Weed. "The problem with computers in the Army is they are bought by the gross and not necessarily purchased to accomplish certain functions. The Army doles out laptops in the same way we dole out boots, tents or any other class of supply."

According to Weed, he was issued the rugged Panasonic Toughbook, but it didn't work fast enough. Weed declined to specify what he does exactly, but said he works with giant satellite and reconnaissance images, presumably for battlefield planning. When he opened these giant image files on the Toughbook, it would slow to an excruciating crawl, he said.

"Frankly, lives are in the balance here, so the quicker I can get stuff done accurately, the better," Weed said. "The Mac makes this work simple, quick and efficient. The other laptops either can't open the files or lock up halfway through, losing whatever I was working on at the time, and then (I have) to restart the computer and start over."

Weed's PowerBook has a 1-GHz chip and runs Mac OS X. He had to write a special requisition order to get it, he said.

The UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, currently the man who has a great deal of saying wether there should be an "American" invasion of Iraq - judging to if he believes Iraq has "satisfied" his inquires or not - is a man of Jewish ancestry and has a background in Zionist circles of his native country, Sweden.

Williams, who has worked in security at the mall for more than nine years, said he signed the complaint on the orders of his boss, assistant director of security Fred Tallman. Those orders came after Tallman told the Guilderland police officer working the case that he (Tallman) was too busy to come to the police station and that Williams represented the company and should sign.

"I just followed directions of management of that mall to the letter," Williams said Friday evening. "And I get fired for doing my job."