Don't Look Back
 The Iraqi people are giving us a hand in rooting out the remaining members of the fedayeen. The fellow shown here wanted to drop his pistol but was afraid the pursuing mob behind him would pick it up and use it on him.
- "Fedayeen," the crowd screamed. "Death to the fedayeen."
As Western Daily Press photographer Jon Mills came within metres of one suspect, the man pulled out a pistol. Mills said: "I could see immediately, from the look in his eyes, he was not going to use it. He thought he was going to die.
As it turned out, he made it into a car just in time but one of his comrades wasn't so lucky and only the timely intervention of British troops prevented curbside justice from prevailing.
Speaking of the British, the Rightpondian Press has been rather critical of the American approach to war. Here's a report that terms our strategy of "pre-softening" the enemy with long-range shelling as being heavy-handed. A captain in the Royal Marines is quoted as saying, "The Americans are still behaving like invaders, not liberators. They behave as if they hate these people." We've found all kinds of ways to baffle our British friends:
- Royal Marine officers watched incredulously as their US compatriots bombed and shelled the [Umm Qasr] for five days. The experience of nearly 30 years policing Ulster has taught British forces that the only way to root out gunmen is to patrol on foot, searching house by house.
They're also nonplussed by the way our Army and Marine troops tend to "whoop it up" exuberantly, treating war as if it were a game. The UK Mirror has been strongly critical of the U.S., and is getting some mileage out of the remarks of Marine Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, who said last Saturday, "We had a great day. We killed a lot of people."
- He added: "We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" He said there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. "I'm sorry," said Sgt Schrumpf, "but the chick was in the way".
This kind of thing looks really bad in print, and we ought to be advising our people in the field to remember that the world is watching. While the remarks of one solider should in no way be presumed to speak for our entire armed services, they can certainly be made to look that way.
Confounding the Greatest Number
Of investors that is. Our stock market is fiendishly clever at thwarted conventional wisdom. Everyone was anticipating a huge run-up following the capture of Baghdad, an event that had been pre-labeled a Victory Rally.
Since investors positioned themselves accordingly, the Dow fell 1.2% yesterday.
- The swift U.S. military campaign to topple Hussein "proved all the naysayers wrong," said Alan Skrainka, investment strategist at brokerage Edward Jones in St. Louis.
"This is positive—I mean, come on!" he said, expressing dismay at the day's losses.
There was no explanation for it. Some said the lackluster trading stemmed from the distraction of that damned statue being pulled down, but the indexes are likewise falling this morning, because the true culprit is our domestic outlook. I don't know about you, but I'd be willing to endure another year of this financial carnage if it would guarantee a purge in Washington. Europe would respond favorably, too.
Now I'm Really Scared
Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse: German Professors Declare War on English Terms. Adding insult to injury, they're turning to French alternatives. For instance, instead of using our "okay," "T-shirt" and "party," they're looking to switch to "d'accord," "tricot" and "fete," respectively.
- The German linguists have so far come up with 33 French substitutes for the thousands of English terms used by Germans and have called for further French replacements.
The reason for this, of course, is to protest American bellicosity with a linguistic refusenikism, not unlike our own "freedom fries" nonsense. In a way, you know, it's really the ultimate affrontary to tell an entire nation, "We hate you so much, we won't even use your words! Then again, will we sleep any less better knowing that the Germans have stopped saying "computer" in favor of "ordinateur"? Far as I'm concerned, if they want to deal with French spelling and pronunciation, they can knock themselves out.
Keep Your Day Job
We finally nailed down the details of Pepsi's upcoming Billion-Dollar Giveaway. That's right, one lucky winner could walk away with a billion smackers, but there's just one catch...The winning number will be chosen by a monkey.
To collect your cash, first you'll need to get your sweepstakes entry code from the inside of the cap of a bottle of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, or Sierra Mist.
Next, Pepsi will generate "a billion numbers," of which a million will be "instant winners." This is a $15 prize. You could redeem that, or keep it and go for the big money.
You're the adventurous sort, so you keep your "lucky million" cap and go to a soon-to-be-created Website, where you enter your number.
Pepsi anticipates "15 to 20 percent" of the insta-winners going this route, so from the list of 200,000 names they'll pick 1,000 at random.
- Through a somewhat complicated process of elimination, the thousand entrants will be pared down to a list of 10 finalists, who will then compete for a guaranteed $1 million prize.
No, you don't get the money yet. Now, let's say it's really your lucky day, and you are one of the 10 chosen finalists. You'll then enter "successive, numbers-based games of chance," which will whittle the group down to one last survivor, who gets a million dollars.
 Let's say, by some miracle, that this is you. You'll be in possession, thanks to those pesky games of chance mentioned earlier, of a "multi-digit number." Figure it's going to be a long number, too. Next, Pepsi will hold a live TV broadcast in which "an unusually dexterous monkey" will draw a number from a barrel or a hat or something.
Finally, you check the monkey's number with your rather lengthy span of digits, and should they match, bingo! A billion dollars. It's just that easy. And who said this wasn't the land of opportunity.
11:45:14 AM 
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Thursday, April 10, 2003
