Articles which have caught my interest. Mostly Israel stuff and other nubbins from the ongoing holy war.

 
The Arab World Reacts

Saddam and his army have gotten their asses pounded into the ground worse than anyone could have predicted. Before the war started, we had all the stories about the huge Iraqi army, and the fearsome Republican Guard, and the extra-fearsome Praetorian Guard who would fight to the death to protect Saddam.

But, when coalition forces finally rolled into Iraq, it turned out that the main resistance came from disortanized paramiltary. The vaunted Iraqi army fell apart like, well, like an Arab army, only worse.

The reaction from the Arab world has been fairly predictable. On the one hand, I'm sure a lot of people in Arab countries share the joy of seeing scenes of happiness and celebration in Baghdad. On the other hand, they once again have to deal with the blow to their sense of honor, something they seem to do with depressing regularity every time that Mr. Fantasy and Mr. Reality decide to meet for coffee.

Here's a telling paragraph in the Times article:

After all the bluster and bravado from Mr. Hussein and his officials about how they would make Iraq a graveyard for the Americans, there was much disbelief at the speed of developments in Baghdad. Arabs fantasized that the Iraqis would hold out just long enough to burnish some of the Arab honor tarnished by repeated ignominious defeats at the hands of Israel and others.

Key phrase here: "hold out just long enough". In other words, there wasn't even the expectation that Iraq's army could withstand an American assault. All the Arabs wanted was that the Republican Guard could get one punch in. That way, they could paint the current conflict as a glorious Arab victory.

(Don't laugh. In Cairo, half the streets and squares are named in honor of Egypt's glorious victory over Israel in the 1973 war. The same war which ended with a large portion of Egypt's army encircled and the IDF sitting 100 km from Cairo.)

The worst losers, of course, are the Palestinians, Saddam's most ardent fans. The Palis -- of whom it has been said many times before that they never forget and they never learn -- once again waited for Saddam to come and solve their problems. And once again they watched as a man named George Bush made Saddam his bitch.

So far, the Arab street has failed to burn and terrorist incidents (knock wood) have not gone up. The Arabs will get over this blow to their honor, just as they have with all the other blows to their honor: they'll seethe and come up with all sorts of elaborate conspiracy theories about how the Americans and the Jews bought out Saddam Hussein to make him throw the fight. Or else that Saddam was a Zionist agent the whole time.

One day, perhaps, they might actually take a cold, hard, realistic look at their societies instead of spinning fantasies about themselves and be inspired to fix their own problems.

Who knows, maybe Iraq will serve as a role model for a new type of Arab society.
posted at 9:05 PM

 
War vs. Killing

Writing in today's Slate, Will Saletan poses a question to the anti-war crowd. "Now that Baghdad has fallen, here's my question to peaceniks: Are you against killing, or are you against war? Because what happened in Iraq suggests you may have to choose."

Saletan makes the case that civilian casualties in America's conflicts have dropped from war to war as weaponry has become more accurate and the desire to avoid unnecessary killing has risen. In the current conflict with Iraq, it's estimated that some 600-1100 civilians have been killed, a third of the casualties in the first Gulf War and a fraction of those during the Vietnam conflict. At the same time he points out how many civilians were killed under the Iraqi regime: 1.5 million in the Iran-Iraq war, at least 50,000 Kurds slaughtered and gassed, 100,000-200,000 Shi'ites slaughtered in the south, not to mention the the unknown thousands who were executed as part of the day-to-day business of Saddam's dictatorship.

Simply put, the number of innocent people who are dead because we ousted Saddam is dwarfed by the number of innocent people who are dead because we didn't. The use of American force is on one side of the ledger, and mass killing is on the other. Trends in military and media technology make this dilemma increasingly likely where belligerent murderers rule. You can keep your hands clean, or you can keep many more people alive. It's up to you.

posted at 4:49 PM

 
Day 21: the Day After

Baghdad is largely subjected and the focus moves to the North. It looks like Kirkuk will fall today or tomorrow, probably joined within days by Mosul.

Wow, what a couple of days. Of all the images coming out of Baghdad yesterday, the one I like most was the crowd dragging the head of the Saddam statue through the streets with a couple of people riding on top. I also liked the man hitting a big painting of Saddam with his shoe. (Then another man walked by, lifted up his galabiyah and proceeded to fake-hump the picture. Hee hee.)

It's hard not to get carried away with the euphoria, especially since the fighting isn't over yet. There are still areas of Baghdad which are problematic. And then there's Tikrit, Saddam's home town and main power base. If we do any real fighting in this war, it will probably be there. A big if.

But still, from the pictures yesterday it's clear that this war is a done deal and the fighting will be over in the very near future. The Iraqi government has effectively gone bye bye. Mohammed Al-Douri, the regime's ambassador to the UN, is heading to France, where he'll be seeking exile and probably setting up shop for whichever Ba'athist notables manage to escape war crimes trials and/or the wrath of the masses.

Tariq Aziz is AWOL, as is the inflappable Mohammed Sa'id Al-Sahhaf. This is a shame, 'cos I'm still waiting for his explanation for yesterday's events. As for the GMO, he may or may not be alive, but it really doesn't make a difference anymore. The regime of terror is clearly over. As more than one reporter noted today, the Iraqi handlers who used to follow journalists around have now disappeared.

In short, a new day dawns. Having supported the forcible removal of Saddam for close to 13 years, I'm suppressing the urge to gloat. At least until we see what comes next.

Of course, what I'd really like to see is Martin Sheen going on television and admitting that he was wrong. Given the bitter reaction amongst the anti-war crowd, I'm not holding my breath. (Reason #493 I'm no longer a pinko: the absolute inability to accept a happy occasion without finding some other reason to point the finger.)

Now we see how the coalition forces manage to hold things together in the aftermath. A big job, for sure, but one that looks like it may well be doable.

posted at 4:49 PM

 
The Showdown Continues

The country didn't go on strike today. But it's likely to go on strike tomorrow.

Yesterday, at the last moment, Amir "The Moustache" Peretz announced a 24 hour delay in the strike in order that the Histadrut could negotiate further with the government. Which would be great if the two sides actually sat down to negotiate. They haven't done this, and it looks like the country will now shut down just in time for the weekend. Joy.

Actually, the 24-hour delay was a bunch of BS. There is no way that any substantial negotiations could have been held from one day to the next. AsNehemia Strasler points out in Haaretz today, Peretz is stretching out this strike threat in order to increase his own media profile.
The self-styled defender of the little guy has an ego which must be appeased.

Anyway, I'm off to gas up the car and pull some money before everything comes to a grinding halt.
posted at 5:59 PM

 
Another Reminder of What This War is About

US Marines liberated a prison in Northeast Baghdad. Inside, they found about 150 children who had been imprisoned by Saddam for refusing to join the Ba'ath youth wing.

With all the war and destruction going on, not to mention the new reports about Saddam's secret jails, I find myself getting borderline inured to the human suffering involved. (This is a feeling I know only too well from the ongoing violence over here).

Then along comes a story like this which really knocks the wind out of you.

For far better commentary than I can possibly muster at the moment, you must read James Lileks' piece today.
posted at 5:58 PM

 
Day 21

Wow.

Sometimes these things start gathering momentum and move a lot quicker than anyone had expected.

Remember all those predictions that Baghdad would have to be encircled and under siege for weeks? That coalition forces would have to go street to street meeting heavy, Mogadishu-style resistance at every corner? That the average Iraqi would fight tooth and nail to protect his motherland from the infidel crusaders?

Not today, my friends. The scenes out of Baghdad show crowds of people cheering the coalition and smashing statues of Saddam and looting Uday's headquarters. There is still fighting in parts of the city, but a lot of Iraqis clearly feel that the Great Moustachioed One and his regime are history.

There was some talk yesterday that trying to take out Saddam with 4 JDAMs the other day was a bad idea. Not just because no one knows if he survived or not, but because there was so much damage that even if you had killed him there'd be no evidence of it. However, either the Iraqis know more than we do, or else it doesn't matter at this point if Saddam is dead or alive.
posted at 5:58 PM

 
The Magician vs. the Moustache

If nothing changes in the next couple of hours, the country will be plunged into a general strike tomorrow. The strike has been gearing up for a week and a half or so, as government offices have remained closed and the garbage men and other municpal employees working only intermittently. If the strike goes through as planned tomorrow the country will grind to a halt: all government offices, banks, and airports will be closed. The postal authority will shut down, as will the ports. Garbage will start piling up everywhere, just in time for Passover. Public transportation will be spotty. Eventually, the gas stations will start running low since deliveries from the fuel depots will be halted. In short, higgledy piggledy.

The background for the strike is Netanyahu's economic reform plan, which the Finance Minister wants to push through the Knesset. The economic situation in the country has gone from bad to worse, and Netanyahu's plan is supposed to help alleviate some of the problems. It calls for deep cuts in government handouts to all sectors of society, from child allowances to old-age benefits. It also makes some revisions to the tax reforms which went into effect earlier this year.

But the plan's main thrust is the restructuring of Israel's public sector, which Netanyahu (rightly) believes is bloated and inefficient. Bibi has proposed a combination of pay cuts and sweeping workforce reductions for public employees. In doing so, he has come into direct conflict with Amir Peretz, the head of the Histadrut trade federation, which represents the vast majority of public employees in the country.

Peretz, who is also heads the One Nation worker's-rights party in the Knesset, objects to anything that will harm his support base. He points out that the public sector employees are employed under the terms of signed agreements between the Histadrut and the Government. In response to the Netanyahu plan, he has made a number of proposals for increasing the government's income without the pay cuts or dismissals. However, none of his proposals is particularly feasible.

The two sides have been trying to negotiate some kind of compromise in the last couple of days. Bibi proposed deferring implementation of the measures against the public sector employees until May, but Peretz was having none of it. Finally, Bibi pulled out his ultimate weapon and threatened Peretz: if you don't sit down to renegotiate the labor agreements I'll go to the Knesset and get legislation passed which will override the agreements.

This threat was the major catalyst towards the strikes. Peretz is accusing Bibi of acting like a dictator. (A ludicrous charge; getting a piece of legislation passed in a democratically elected body to override agreements made with a monolithic trade union hardly counts as totalitarianism.)

And so, like a scene out of a bad western, we find two gunslingers facing each other on a dusty street. On the one hand, we have Bibi in his business suit looking beleaguered. As Prime Minister, Netanyahu got the nickname "The Magician" for his teflon image and ability to worm out of almost all scandals. Back then, he was the darling of the country's underclass; they identified with his extreme-right views and in return he helped fan the flames of their sense of victimization. Now, the Magician's former supporters accuse him of acting in the interests of the country's wealthy.

On the other end of the street you find Peretz, a stocky little man with a big walrus moustache dressed in a short sleeved shirt, no tie. Peretz styles himself the protector of the little guy. In reality, his main interest is protecting the bureaucrats and the worker's committees who make up the core of the Histadrut. He offers no help to the tens of thousands of private-sector employees, the self-employed and the small business owners who have found themselves unemployed and out of business in recent years.

And in this case, Peretz is wrong. The Bibi plan is harsh, but so is the economic situation. In any case, now is not the time for a general strike, as Haaretz -- certainly no fan of the Finance Minister -- editorialized today.

Bibi faces a real Thatcher moment. If he manages to stand firm, he will be able to change the dynamics of government-labor relations in this country and possibly bring the Histadrut -- which has long since served its historical purpose and nowadays only hinders economic growth -- to heel. A lot of it depends on the backing he will or won't receive from the Prime Minister. In the meantime, the trash begins to pile up.

posted at 7:19 PM

 
The Ra'is vs. Abu Mazen

Meanwhile, back at the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen, the Palis' Prime Minister-designate has discovered that his plans to put together a cabinet of non-corrupt technocrats, or in fact any of his plans, may very well not come to pass.

The problem? Why it's our old friend, the leering, blood-stained 1994 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Arafat has been busy buggering up all of Abu Mazen's proposed appointments to the Palestinian cabinet and basically pushing his own yes men in there:

Abu Mazen has discovered that two key security services, the General Intelligence force under Tawfiq Tirawi and the National Security force under Haj Ismail, two of the most dedicated Arafat loyalists, will continue to operate under direct command of Arafat even after Abu Mazen forms his government.

In addition, he found that Arafat is vetoing several of the ministers that have been mentioned as members of an Abu Mazen cabinet, particularly Mohammed Dahlan, the former head of Preventive Security in Gaza, whom Abu Mazen wants as interior minister, responsible for all the security services. Various "creative" formulas meant to leave the interior ministry in Abu Mazen's hands and name Dahlan as an adviser have also been ruled out by Arafat.

In other words, Yassi is working overtime to ensure that Abu Mazen becomes nothing more than a diplomatic fig leaf for himself.

<sarcasm> Arafat not relinquishing control? The PA continuing its corrupt business as usual? I am shocked and suprised. Golly, didn't see this coming at all.</sarcasm>

Far from being an internal Palestinian matter, the current shenanigans in the PA leadership will have a direct bearing on the future of the "road map" which GWB may or may not try to shove down Sharon's throat once the coalition gets done remodelling Sadam's palaces. As long as Sharon can show that nothing has changed in the Palestinian authority, and that the same liar and terrorist who launched the current intifada is still pulling the strings, the road map will be a non-starter, despite the wishes of Tony Blair.

(For you gentle readers who have chided me in the past about Arafat and terrorism, check out the news coming from the trial of Marwan Barghouti, the head of the Tanzim who was picked up by the IDF last year. From Barghouti's own statements it turns out that Arafat is the one giving the green light to Palestinian terrorism. I am shocked and surprised. Didn't see that coming at all.)

I had hoped that the reforms in the PA would lead somewhere, that it would lead to a government that Israel could start negotiating with again. At this point, I don't see it happening. I don't know why I keep giving them the benefit of the doubt
posted at 4:57 PM

 
Day 20

Today's war developments can be neatly filed under "wait and see."

On the face of it, there's been a couple of high-caliber stories coming out of Baghdad and environs. There was the raid yesterday which dropped 4 JDAMs on a house where Saddam was supposedly staying. And then there was the discovery of what might be chemical weapons in the Karbalah area.

OK, so big stuff. But I think it's a little premature to start celebrating. As far as Saddam goes, we've been through this same story before. After all, he was supposedly hit on the first day of the war but still popped up alive later on. At this point, the only evidence to back the claim that the bunker busters got him is the fact that he was seen going in but not seen coming out. However, the man has a series of underground tunnels that he might have used to get away. Let's see the body, then we'll talk. In the meantime, we have to assume that the bastard is still alive.

As for the chemical weapons, the problem is that they might also be pesticides. Unfortunately, the same processes used to make pesticides can easily be turned to making chemical weapons, and the line between the two can get a bit blurry. Even by the Pentagon's own reckoning, the material found yesterday hadn't been "weaponized".

The US needs to find a clear-cut example of WMDs before they will be able to convince the naysayers. I suspect that this case may not cut it.

posted at 4:55 PM

 
PR Advice for Al-Sahhaf

Slate has an amusing segment where PR experts give advice to Saddam's beleaguered mouthpiece.
posted at 4:40 PM

 
Day 19

And the war continues to get increasingly serious, with coalition forces entering central Baghdad and taking over Saddam's palaces. Is it the long-promised "Battle for Baghdad?" The Pentagon insists it isn't, that the incursions are merely a show of force. But God only knows with this war. In any case, in the last couple of days there's a real sense of momentum with the allied attacks and a tentative, hesitant feeling that this might be the beginning of the end.

Of course, every prediction made in this war has turned out to be false so far, so I'm not breaking out the champale just yet. At the very least, however, all the jawjacking from a week or two about a quagmireseem particularly dated.

There are days where I wish I had a TV at work. I would have loved to have seen the press conference this morning gven by the inflappable
Muhammad "Comedian of the Year" Sa'id Al-Sahhaf . Al-Sahhaf was adamant that there were no coalition forces anywhere in the capitol: "They are sick in their minds. They say they brought 65 tanks into center of city. I say to you this talk is not true. This is part of their sick mind. There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad at all."

He insisted that the valiant Iraqi forces had turned back the enemy: "Their forces committed suicide by the hundreds. ... The battle is very fierce and God made us victorious. The fighting continues. Yesterday, we slaughtered them and we will continue to slaughter them."

Now bear in mind that Al-Sahhaf gave this press conference outside the Palestine Hotel, probably since the Ministry of Information was surrounded by the selfsame infidels who weren't in Baghdad and their tanks. You just gotta love the guy for being able to keep a straight face.

In Basra, British troops announced that they had identified the body of Chemical Ali who was taken out yesterday. It's very bad karma to cheer the death of anyone, but I'm finding it very hard not to do so in the case of this bastard who was directly responsible for the deaths of 100,000 people.
posted at 5:49 PM

 
Situation: Unconcerned

So, there's a war going on a couple of hundred kilometers away from here, one in which Israel could still theoretically get bombed by something ugly. But you really wouldn't know it from wandering around here. The only people you see carrying gas mask kits are children, who have to or else they get sent home from school. (Although my wife doubts any of the kits are complete, given the number of filters and atropine injectors she sees lying around the school where she teaches.)

In other words, everything is calm and copacetic over here. However, every now and then you come across a news item (scroll down to the second item) that brings home once again the surreal nature of our situation. It turns out that the IDF's Home Front Command recently produced a booklet entitled "My First Alarm," in order that kids can write down their experiences in case of an alert that sends them to the sealed rooms:

The first page of the booklet, which was distributed two weeks ago free of charge via the Steimatzky's chain of bookstores, carries a personal appeal: "Dear children! We are facing an unusual period. During this period, we will get to know a lot of new things: gas masks, protected spaces, alarms ... In this diary you will be able to write down all the new experiences you are undergoing. In the hope that they will be only good experiences ..."

However, the optimistic note changes later. The first three pages can be filled in by any child whose family has obeyed the instructions of Home Front Command and prepared a protected space ("The preparations began on ...," "We made sure the protected space contained ..." and so on). However, the bulk of the booklet is intended to be filled in only in case of a genuine air raid alarm. In the event, the children are asked to describe their experiences in such cases ("With me in the protected space were ..."; "The thing I missed most in the protected space was ..."; "I was most afraid of ...").

This reminds me of a classic National Lampoon bit from the early '70s called "The Vietnamese Baby Book". It's a parody of the standard baby scrapbook written by the late great Michael O'Donoghue. Under "Baby's First Word" you find "medic". The baby's handprint is missing a finger. Etc.

A different time and a different war. Here, unfortunately, the booklet isn't a joke.

posted at 5:14 PM

 
The Jews Neo-Cons Behind the War

Ari Shavit has a piece in the Ha'aretz Magazine this weekend profiling a few of the most prominent intellectual figures behind the current conflict. Shavit works from a theory -- which is rapidly approaching the status of conventional wisdom -- that the war in Iraq is the work of two dozen or so neo-conservative columnists and think-tank members who see the campaign to evict Saddam as the opening salvo in America's campaign to turn the Middle East into a liberal democracy.

He profiles The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Thomas Friedman who is not generally regarded as a neo-con and was not a big cheerleader for the war.

I have the same problem with Shavit's piece as I did last week with Josh Marshall's piece in Washington Monthly on the same subject. I still think that both articles give Kristol et al. too much credit in influencing the course of American foreign policy.

While I'm sure the neo-con outlook helps color the perspectives of GWB and those around him, saying that a bunch of intellectuals and columnists are "leading Washington to Baghdad" massively overstates the case and conveniently forgets a whole range of geopolitical considerations.

My other problem with Shavit's article is that it plays into an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory rapidly gaining currency with Pat Buchanan, Edward Said, and various other unpleasant types. According to this theory, a cabal of neo-conservative (read: Jewish) intellectuals, working in conjunction with Jews inside the administration (Paul Wolfowitz et al) has pushed the president into it in order to help Israel.

I'm not saying that a journalist should censor himself because his reporting might get used as fodder for anti-Semites. However, it strikes me as lazy journalism to make these sorts of claims without any backing (say, for instance, quotes from top officials that they've been influenced by the neo-con outlook more than anything else) to back it up.
posted at 4:55 PM

 
Arab Spin

With the Great Moustachioed One still unaccounted for with any degree of certainty, the one media star emerging out of Iraq is the GWO's non-moustachioed Information Minister, Muhammad Sa'id Al-Sahhaf.

Personally, I'm turning into an Al-Sahhaf fan, since his provides the most reliable source of entertainment value inthe war. Yesterday he gave a particularly yuck-filled press conference following the coalition incursions into Baghdad. First, he denied that the US troops had actually penetrated Baghdad (he claimed they were in an area 35km away). Then, having conceded that the Americans had at one point reached the airport, he claimed that Iraqi forces had managed to drive them back.

"We have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them in the place of Saddam International Airport," he said. "We have pushed them outside the whole area of the airport."

To drive home this claim of American desperation, he added this account of the battle: "They have done everything crazy, everything crazy, in order to lessen the pressure we have put on their troops."

One of the morning shows today took footage the news conference and added a laugh track. (I didn't catch the beginning, so I have no idea what the purpose was other than as a goof). It resembled one of Eli Yatzpan's comedy routines.

Every time I see Al-Sahhaf or one of the GMO's other flunkies going on the air telling huge, easily refuted bald-faced lies I begin to wonder what's at play here. Is it simply a matter of the dictator's lackeys unwilling or unable to present any piece of information contrary to their master's will? Or is it something deeper and -- dare I say it? -- cultural?

In an interview in the New York Review of Books a little while back, former PM Ehud Barak said that one of the main problems with the Oslo process was Arafat's inclination to lie, which Barak said was characteristic of Arab culture.

They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie...creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as "the truth."

A number of groups went up in arms over the interview, accusing Barak of cultural insensitivity and racism.

My own experience tells me that there's something to Barak's claim. Back in my days at the Hebrew University I did some research comparing Jewish and Arab newspaper accounts of the 1948 war. The newspaper accounts in Arabic, I found, were more often than not fairytales. Arab defeats were presented as victories, Jewish casualties were inflated tens and often hundreds of times. There were reports saying 400 Jewish soldiers were killed in a battle where no more than 70 participated. Arab casualties were also massively inflated, leading some Palestinians to complain that the newspaper reports helped spur Palestinians to flee their homes.

There are plenty of other accounts that show the same kind of false coverage in newspapers around the Arab world in the 1956, 1967, and 1973 wars as well. All of which led me to wonder how the average Cairene or Damascene on the street related to the news. Did they perceive it as "the truth" or as highly embellished wishful thinking?

There have been no end of articles in the Western media about how Al-Jazeera and other Arab news outlets report the war. One article of note is this piece by Mamoun Fandy about how Arabic news reporting tends to create a "narrative" based on a mixture of facts, literary images, and historical allusions instead of a purportedly objective account of events.

As far as I know, though, no one has ever researched the flip side of the coin: how the Arab audience actually relates to this coverage.(There's probably a Middle Eastern Studies doctoral thesis in this, if anyone's interested. I'd love to know the results.)

It's something that should be taken into account during all those head-scratching sessions where the US wants to improve its image in the Arab world. In the meantime, we should all sit back and enjoy the Mohammed Al-Sahaf comedy hour.
posted at 7:26 PM

 
The Poodle Backs Down

The Belgians have decided to ammend their idiotic law giving them the right to try anyone, anywhere for war crimes whether or not they were committed on Belgian nationals. The law now gives Belgium the option of referring those accused of war crimes back to their home countries, assuming that those countries are democracies with a fair justice system.

Apparently, Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was getting a little embarrassed by the prospect of his country turning into a big top for all the world's assorted legal circuses. At any rate, this should effectively bring to a close that nuisance suit against Ariel Sharon.
posted at 4:57 PM

 
Day 18

The big headline on Ha'aretz's Web site this morning read "The U.S. Forces Thrust into Baghdad, Then Withdraw."

Heh, heh, heh. He said "thrust".

So, it's time for a little sightseeing tour of the southern part of Baghdad courtesy of the US army. Tanks and infantry from the Third Infantry did a little incursion into the areas to the northeast of Saddam International Airport and south of the Abu Ghraib presidential palace. (I figure in about a week I'll be an expert on the layout of Baghdad.) The main purpose of the trip was to shoo the Republican Guard away from the roads leading to the airport. A secondary purpose was to show the Iraqi regime that they can.

Today we're seeing another set of excursions. So much for all those who predicted that coalition forces would simply encircle the city and wait.

The Great Moustachioed One: still missing. Yes, we got some fresh pictures of the GMO over the weekend, but it's still unclear when the pictures were taken and whether they are indeed of Saddam.

With all this talk of Saddam doubles running around I wonder why the US hasn't gotten its own Saddam lookalike to go on the air and tell the Iraqi army that all is lost and it's time to lay down their arms?

Down south in Basra, coalition aircraft bombed Chemical Ali's house. The house was pounded, Al-Majid's bodyguard was killed, but it's still unclear whether the man himself was home at the time.
posted at 4:57 PM