Unqualified Offerings

Am I required to have an opinion on the Peter Arnett business?

Early on, some people were titillated by the “Russian GRU site” perporting to offer inside dope on the Iraq War from contacts in Russian military intelligence. Others pooh-poohed it is likely inauthentic and of dubious accuracy. I figured the scientific thing to do was to wait awhile. Now they’ve got a track record to look [...]

From ABC News . . .

No ‘Smoking Gun’
Hit on Ansar Al-Islam Camp Finds No Signs of Chemical Weapons
. . . The site they hit was identified by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his argument for war before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 as a base for the radical group Ansar al-Islam. [...]

Virginia Postel’s weblog has a new address and a new design. You can link to a specific item by clicking on the “Printer Friendly Version” link. That’s to the good. The font size is too small for these middle-aged eyes, though, and it uses “dark” grey rather than black type for the body text, making [...]

Leonard of Unruled has a fascinating piece on the economics of the JDAM.

In which I try to make a case for the “rolling start” (if you believe it really is a rolling start and not just “oops! better send some more troops!”). Tacitus, who is doing some good analysis of the war, notes that the force levels currently in Iraq violate the principle of mass. To wit, [...]

Jay Price of McClatchy newspapers interviews refugees and prisoners in a field hospital in South-Central Iraq and gets testimony from the patients about Iraqi paramilitary units’ exploitation of civilians. Excerpt:

Ghaleb, 43, a farmer, said that Iraqi Republican Guard troops sent a note to his home demanding that he report to them. Then, Ghaleb said, he [...]

Hesiod thinks the war has about two weeks to go yet.

The reason for that is pretty obvious. We are now absolutely pulverizing Republican Guard units surrounding Baghdad.

We can certainly hope. One assumes that the current airstrikes are taking out some of those T-72s Btuce Rolston was worrying about. If the Republican Guard gets the idea [...]

184 pounds, 36 5/8″ waist. No change on the weight from last week, the final number represents an uptick from midweek figures, when the scale reached 182. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another multi-pound drop by next week’s item.
This week’s item might be called “Strike Two for Atkins.” I got my blood tests back, [...]

Brendan I. Koerner has a semi-useful article in Slate on the “thumbs-up controversy” in Iraq. The question is whether Iraqi civilians giving the thumbs up to coalition forces mean it in a nice way. In the first week of the war, hawks assumed yes, while certain doves pointed out that “many veteran travelers insist [...]