licentious radio

Monday, April 7, 2003
[11:29:32 PM]

It's like everyone thinks the war is over, now that American tanks drive around in Baghdad.

I hope the Iraqis just give up, too.

But it seems like fighting in Baghdad was always the Iraqi strategy. They might abandon the strategy, but they might give it a shot.

Earlier, I believed the US wouldn't want to take the number of casualties that would be required to conquer Iraq. Lucky for us, the Iraqis have no weapons that can reasonably attack our tanks, or even our armored personnel carriers, and our soldiers' body armor saves their lives most of the time.

There were just a few days when twenty or so Americans were dying each day. That was when they adjusted -- not the plan, of course -- the tactics and deployments. Thanks to superior armor, the number of US deaths per day went down, not up.

The other part of the equation is how many civilians we'd be willing to kill. In Nassiriya and Najaf, and probably Karbala, Americans called in helicopters to pump bullets and rockets wholesale. The few embedded journalists who wrote about fighting they witnessed were pretty clear that a lot of civilians were being killed. Fortunately, they died away from TV cameras.

We'll soon see what happens in Baghdad.

[9:55:30 PM]
A Qatar-based journalist thinks Iraqis are beaten:

"We can see by the limited and fragmented nature of the opposition directed at US forces that removing the command and structures seems to have been quite effective.

"Essentially the Iraqi forces don't seem to have any command and control in place. So you just get small groups of 20 or 30 fighters battling away, but no real coordinated approach to defending Baghdad or some of the other major cities like Basra or Karbala."

A Baghdad-based Marine has a slightly different story:

"McCoy said the Iraqis were employing "Chechen-style" guerrilla tactics. Much like the fighters opposing the Russian Army, these militia forces appeared to gather in seven-to-10 man "hunter-killer" teams. Armed with RPGs and machine guns, they tried to set up ambushes, striking quickly and then disappear into the houses.

"The Marine response was to shoot pretty much anything that moved. They put infantry and snipers on the roofs as they moved along, to keep the high ground."

An Iraqi civilian's perspective:

"I only saw the Americans at the last moment. They opened fire and hit me and I managed to stay on the cycle. Then their second shell sent bits of shrapnel into the bike and I fell off." -- Mohammed Abdullah Alwani

[2:31:54 PM]
A little problem with the tabs at the Google search engine....

Problem: mouse cursor changes over the tabs, but only the text is clickable.

This is actually *very* bad usability... needlessly tricking people. (This affects Gecko -- Netscape/Mozilla...-- browsers, and at least IE 5 -- windows and Mac.)

Solution: Add to the .q styles (the 'a' tags in the tabs):

width: 100%; display: block

With the width at 100% of the table cell, the entire tab is clickable. Gecko browsers need "display:block", though IE5win doesn't.

When the entire tab is clickable, you don't need the cursor style in 'td' tag for each tab:

style=cursor:pointer;cursor:hand;

That way you even save a few bytes. (Even if you don't add the CSS for the "q" class, you should take out the cursor styles.)

You could also add "width: 100%; display: block" to the style for tabs on the news page (.d).

[10:23:21 AM]
McGovern [thenation.com].

[10:19:51 AM]
Why so few American deaths? Body armor and kevlar helmets. Apparently US and British soldiers wear armor that completely stops shrapnel and even a lot of rifle bullets. The wounded tend to be hit in arms and legs -- places that aren't so lethal. Not that you want to be shot anywhere.

Too bad they don't issue that stuff to Iraqi civilians.

[9:51:31 AM]
"[W]hy should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it's, not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" -- Barbara Bush

Family values....

[9:05:42 AM]
Donald Rumsfeld: "The issue here is weapons of mass-destruction. The United States is not interested in the sweet, lovely, delectable, delicious, luscious, splendorous, ravishing oil that Iraq has." [a cartoon, of course]

[9:02:51 AM]
Boondocks:

"A new poll shows that everyone, including you, supports President [sic] Bush and supports this war. Everyone except French-lovin' commie scum. You're not French-lovin' commie scum, are you?

"Another poll says everyone supports our troops. We love our troops. And that's why we let them go and risk their lives without asking questions. Questions are for French-lovin' commie scum, got it?

"This is CNN. I'm Aaron Brown."