Friday, January 02, 2004

PREACH IT, COLONEL!. David Hackworth: Almost daily we're told that another American soldier has sacrificed life or limb in Iraq. For way too many of us -- unless we have a white flag with a blue star in our window -- these casualty reports have become as big a yawn as a TV forecast of the weather in Baghdad. Even I -- and I deal with that beleaguered land seven days a week -- was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me a copy of a Nov. 30 dispatch showing that since George W. Bush unleashed the dogs of... [The Light of Reason] From Hackworth's article: Congress should get with the program and lift a page from the U.S. Army handbook on how to learn from a military operation. When an Army-training or actual-combat op is concluded, all the key players assemble for an honest, no-holds-barred critique of everything that's gone down -- the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the participants might walk away black and blue, but everyone learns from the mistakes. Unfortunately one characteristic shared by every Crusader I've encountered, from the neocons to the mindless Republican drones, is a complete and total refusal to even acknowledge the lessons of history, let alone learn anything from them. 5:38:23 PM    comment () It's almost libertarian.... Iraqis are not just depending on government to protect their new liberty. According to this report from the Coalition Provisional Authority, they are armed and dangerous... to terrorists: Elsewhere in Baghdad, individuals inside a white Opel fired small arms at ICDC personnel at the Al-Amil gas station. The Civil Defense Corps soldiers returned fire, and Iraqi customers waiting for fuel also fired at the Opel. The assailants broke contact, and a search of the area... [Samizdata.net] Of course those armed Iraqi customers must be on of the following: members of our puppet government's private terrorist armies (except that we can't call them terrorists, because they're on our side), or ordinary Iraqis carrying weapons for self-defense in defiance of the orders of their conquerers (in which case they would be considered "terrorists" by the Feds), or actual resistance fighters. Perhaps it might even have been a combination of all three. The last two groups are indeed rather libertarian, but I suspect that the folks at a Crusader site like Samizdata.net wouldn't like it so much if they stopped to think about it. 5:22:45 PM    comment () There's a list of the top 100 RSS feeds, at least among the people who have submitted their subscription list to the site. I did, and twelve of the 65 sources I subscribe to are somewhere on the list. 2:22:46 PM    comment () California Bans Front-Seat Computer Use [Slashdot] Every police car I've seen in California for years has had a computer installed in the front seat. I wonder if the idiots who thought this up bothered to include an exception for our lords and masters, or if they'll just go around breaking this law every time they drive? 9:23:55 AM    comment () Name Mixup Behind Air France Groundings [AP World News] Six cases of mistaken identity were behind the pre-Christmas grounding of six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles over terrorism fears, a police official said Friday. The names of six passengers were similar to those of terrorist suspects provided by the FBI, prompting the French government to halt the flights, the official said on condition of anonymity. Pierre Debue, director of the French border police, said one name on the list turned out to be that of a 5-year-old child. The Wall Street Journal on Friday said two other suspected terrorists turned out to be an elderly Chinese woman and a Welsh insurance agent. Another fine example of how governments "protect" us. I'm sure any terrorists who were flying over the holidays (under assumed names, of course) are quaking in their boots. 9:18:49 AM    comment ()

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