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Wednesday, April 02, 2003 |
AP says, re Baghdad:
U.S. forces are about 20 miles outside Baghdad, where they will start to form a cordon around the city and press Saddam Hussein's regime to give up, a senior military official said Wednesday.
"Our guys are able to see the skyline. That's how close we've gotten," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
One might note that once the ity is in range of the guns, that airpower is supplemented by some more muscle. And the 'elite' guards are going to be knocked for six, quite methodically.
This piece then worries about the 'Special Republican Guards' -- presumably even more elite? No, just a gang of murderous crowd control thugs! -- something I wouldn't give a lot of concern to, personally, under the circumstances.
5:34:04 PM 
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Part of the slight mystery about how the Iraqi 'Baghdad' division (those 'elites' again!) were totally steamrollered by the Marines at Al Qut last night is that they were pasted with 'daisycutters.' As I've said often: you can't stand and fight, and you can't run when the Coalition has control of the air with warplanes and Apaches. And digging a hole ... forget it ... you're just digging your own grave, basically.
This is turning into a rout. And, naysayers, this is what the 'plan' was, all along. Pin them down and dish it out ...
1:17:09 PM
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I'm not sure it was Vermont Coffee Roasters policy -- in fact, I suspect not -- but our local Mobil station in Yarmouth. ME made the nice gesture today of renaming their 'French Vanilla' coffee 'Northeastern Vanilla.'
It may seem trivial, but the depth of feeling against the Frogs is turning into quite something ...
12:53:02 PM
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The London Times has this:
"....a second poll, in Le Monde, showing that only a third of the French felt that they were on the same side as the Americans and British, and that another third desired outright Iraqi victory over “les anglo-saxons”.
Well, you sniveling shits, just wait and see what this means for the French economy, or your position in the world. You're finished ... made totally irrelevant. And when you start feeling captive to your unruly Mahgreb hordes, breeding like flies in the Banlieu, don't look to us for sympathy.
12:50:13 PM
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What was the most notable thing about the 'Saddam jihad' call of yesterday?
[Thanks, Pink Floyd, for the header]
Here's a guy invoking a religious crusade on behalf of Islam against infidels ... a guy whose secular Ba'athist Party has shown endless contempt for the religion over two decades? A guy whose thugs have killed more Moslems and fellow-citizens in this war alone than the Coalition? And generously, I won't count in his police state repression, the campaign against the Kurds, the purge of the Shiites in 1991, or the war against Shiite Iran in this calculation.
Here's a guy -- or people using his name -- who skulk in bunkers, cower in fear from the bombings, who wants other people to strap on explosives and otherwise sacrifice themselves, to save the wretched hides of this disreputable gang? Let's see Tariq Aziz or Ramadan, or the bottlenosed Goebbelsian blusterer of the 'information' ministry strap on some dynamite and hop into their chauffeured Mercedes and head out for Paradise, huh? It's their cause! And as Dirty Harry would say: "make our day." I'm sure they'd be a welcome sight in the crosshairs, or pasted to the tracks of an Abrams in Hanna-Barbera style ...
Intelligent Iraqis -- or intelligent Moslems everywhere -- should be saying: "what's wrong with this picture?" Who benefits? Just a self-serving clique of thugs, racists, crooks and terrorism supporters who need to be swept away for the good of the Iraqi people, the region, and world peace. The misguided fanatics who are flooding into Damascus, hoping to volunteer, need to look in a mirror ... what does Islam, 'the religion of peace' have to do with this idea? Infidels we might be, but fanatics or intolerant we most surely are not ...
12:23:07 PM
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Highspots of the tongue-tied on CNN last night:
- The endless flubbing of where CentCom is! We've heard it's "at 'Cutter', in Doha" so many times. No, folks. It's in Doha, major city of Qatar. That's: '{clear throat}.at.arr' or 'Gat'ar' ... Listen to how the Arab journalists pronounce it
- One of the befuddled Pentagon CNN guys last night called Jessica Lynch 'Jessica Lang'!
- I enjoyed the 75 minute prelude -- any minute now! -- to the Vince Brooks one-minute brefing on the rescue!
- Wolf Blitzer -- with all the data-retrieval power of CNN right in front of his nose! -- was flubbing like an amateur on Ms. Lynch. If I could remember, instantly, that she was 'MIA' not 'POW', that she was from West Virginia and that she was a 19 y-o PFC with the 507th Maintenance group, so should he!
- Why won't they come out and just say it: "there's no worthwhile evidence that Saddam is still alive"? Instead of obfuscating around the point? The guy didn't make his own speech! And for Nic Robertson to describe this nutty rambling, with no exhortational power, by a flack, as 'tightly focused'? Well, really!
11:45:14 AM
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The Iraq war is by no means over, but I think we can draw some strong lessons from media coverage to date:
- The 'embedding' process has been a success, in the sense that we have been kept informed on human interest issues along with the somewhat cryptic -- necessarily so -- CentCom and Pentagon briefings
- As Don Rumsfeld and others have said, quite strongly, the US media, at least, owes some service to the forces, now that we are committed. It has been very annoying to see various anchors and their talking heads 'showboating' on themes of their own choosing and devising: I think of the POWs, the 'undermanning,' the 'shock and awe' triumphalism and its letdown right after, the activities of 'paramilitaries' or armed gangs, and the highly theoretical concept of a 'pause' by land forces. All non-issues, in hindsight.
- As we can see, there has been little pause: the leapfrogging strategy and the reliance on air power has been a success. When you leapfrog, you leave pockets of enemy resistance behind. They are being dealt with!
- The military significance of the paramilitaries has been greatly exaggerated. They are 'straw men,' in every sense
- The constant threats of jihad and 'suicide bombers' are empty rhetoric by the Iraqi regime, repeated as if they are gospel. They are of little military significance to the land offensive
- The 'elite' Republican Guards are merely average troops with so-so equipment and better uniforms, who probably get paid and fed more regularly. And that's about all.
- The Iraqi army can neither maneuver, nor hold out in entrenched positions. If they advance or run, they die. If they stand and fight, they die.
- The Iraqi airforce might as well not exist, for all the good it has done.
- Baghdad by the weekend! And where does that leave the nervous Nellies of the NYT? And their quagmire philosophies?
- We keep hearing how tough 'street fighting' is. And, it's no picnic. But the Marines are trained for it, and the Brits are showing us that they remember the lessons of Northern Ireland, quite well.
11:31:35 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Peter Savage.
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