April 7, 2003

CNN - Material found at paramilitary camp in Hindiyah, Iraq, tests positive for chemical-warfare agents in preliminary testing, Pentagon sources tell CNN. Samples being flown to U.S. for confirmation. 1:01:30 PM

The Anglo-American alliance wins again UPI - Martin Walker, UPI Chief International Correspondent, writes: "Their war plan vindicated, their critics at least briefly silenced, the two English-speaking leaders who had defied so much of world opinion and conventional wisdom enjoyed another extraordinary bonus as their predictions of a liberator's welcome by the Iraqi people finally came true. Confounding the Arab media and the pundits who had talked darkly of a new spirit of Iraqi patriotism resisting the invaders, the people of Basra braved gunfire to dance in the streets and cheer for the British troops who finally broke the grip Saddam's dreadful regime had exerted on Iraq for so long. This reporter saw one Basra citizen even kiss a British tank." 11:25:32 AM

"Pay no attention to American gangsters breaking into the room behind me. They are not really there." If you would like a smile, and maybe even a laugh read Robert Kirby here. 11:12:03 AM

US Say It May Have Found Iraqi WMD Storage Site Reuters, UK - US radio station National Public Radio has reported that US troops have found several missiles with chemical weapons heads just outside Baghdad.  NPR quoted a senior marine official who said the rockets were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and "ready to fire."  Iraq has denied having such weapons. 10:48:25 AM

ATI unveils All-in-Wonder 9800 PRO TV-on-PC card The Register - ATI will release its latest All-in-Wonder graphics card, the 9800 Pro, this Spring, the company said today. Beyond upgrading its family of TV-on-a-PC cards to its top-end Radeon 9800 Pro graphics chip, the new All-in-Wonder will feature an on-screen home cinema configuration system, EazyLook. The Radeon 9800 sports a 256-bit memory interface, capable of connecting to 256MB of DDR SDRAM video memory. The chip supports eight parallel pixel pipelines, and a host of ATI technologies all with trademark signs. Trademark signs abound in the All-in-Wonder card, which will retail in the US for $449. The 9800 PRO supports translucent video playback (what for?), programme recording and time-shift viewing, picture enhancement, closed captions, a 125-channel stereo TV tuner, and full-screen (TV) MPEG-2 video capture. 9:33:18 AM

AndrewSullivan.com: NO U.N. CONTROL: The Pentagon and the British military liberated Iraq. They should both now govern it for the short-term. The notion that the U.N. should become immediately involved - except as a humanitarian adjunt to U.S.-U.K. forces - is a joke. I agree with William Rees Mogg in the Times of London this morning: The Americans know that M Chirac double-crossed them over Resolution 1441; they know every detail of how and why he did it; they know what it has cost them in money and in lives. They will shake hands at photo opportunities; they will play the Marseillaise; they will drink toasts in mediocre champagne at diplomatic dinners; but they will be slow to forgive and they will never forget. That is, indeed, the message that must be sent to Chirac, the Iraqi dictator's chief sponsor. And if I'm not very much mistaken, it already has. 8:02:27 AM

'POSSIBLE WMD SITE FOUND' Sky News - A possible weapons of mass destruction storage site has been found near Baghdad, according to a US military official. There are unconfirmed reports there could be Sarin - a chemical agent that causes death by suffocation -at the site south of the central Iraqi town of Hindiyah, a US military officer said. "Our detectors have indicated something," said Major Ros Coffman, public affairs officer with the US 3rd Infantry. 7:57:39 AM

Adobe updates Acrobat for the XML era The Register -Adobe has melded its Portable Document Format (PDF) and XML, updating its Acrobat family of PDF creation tools to version 6.0 in the process. The move encourages organisations to use XML to encode their business information which retaining the popular PDF format to ensure that information can, where appropriate, be shared and published. 7:49:39 AM

A British Thrust in Basra, Door to Door in Baghdad, and a Deadly Mistake New York Times - British forces struck deep into the southern port of Basra, and by nightfall were in control of half of Iraq's second city. American troops encountered heavy resistance on the outskirts of Baghdad, and while flanking moves to encircle the city were incomplete, Iraq's capital was in a stranglehold. 12:38:46 AM