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THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

View 250 March 24 - 30, 2003

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Monday  March 24, 2003

The war continues. Apparently we are being protected from the Al Jazeera pictures of dead US troopers. The links I had seem no longer to work. Neither Google nor AltaVista seems to have any idea that such pictures ever existed. Interesting. Searches on the word Al-Jazeera produces old sites, Arab apologists, but nothing whatever about the atrocity pictures. It may be I am insufficiently ingenious at manipulating web searches.

The war continues. The progress is ast0nishing: much of a country has fallen in days with fewer than a hundred US casualties. And there are Iraqi war criminals who will never be safe, anywhere on this Earth.


I am told that the Al Jazeera site was hacked and that's why the porno pictures now. I am not convinced that was the right thing to do.

A reader has sent this link. I warn you, it is very unpleasant:

http://www.aljazeera.net/news/arabic/2003/3/3-23-23.htm 

 

Back to more enduring subjects.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2003/02/27/33401-cp.html 

Have a look and think about it.

 

Eric sends this:

Subject: Adam Osborne, dead at 64

 

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=2440018

 

I knew Adam Osborne fairly well at one time although I haven't seen him in 20 years. He had a good shot at being the first computer billionaire, but his timing was bad, and his management wasn't all that good either. But he was a pioneer. 

And from Roland:

Subject: As near as I can tell 

this guy is for real (I've been following and cross-checking what I can since last week):

http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/ 

---------------------------- Roland Dobbins

Indeed. It does look authentic.

and

 

RIP Adam Osborne 1939-2003

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/29921.html 

You might also want to read a bit about Michael Moore:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/
defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-032503B
 

 

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Tuesday, March 25, 2003

The war continues. As I suspected, most of the information we get has to be revised at frequent intervals. Even with all the high tech war equipment the fog of battle remains, no war plan survives contact with the enemy, and there is the incredible friction to overcome. The outstanding fact is that with fewer than a hundred casualties half a major country has effectively fallen into our hands in about a week. 

It is pointless for me to carry on a running commentary, because there's nothing to say about the day to day operations, criticisms are inappropriate while battles go on, and the long term implications of this action are ambiguous. I wasn't in favor of this war.  Now that it is on, it is well to get it over with.

It does become probable that Saddam is alive but not well: he isn't appearing on TV promising the mother of all battles, exhorting his people to fight, or indeed saying much of anything. I find it inconceivable that he wouldn't be out front in a heroic pose if he were capable of it. If he were dead I think there would be more confusion than we have seen, and more defections among the hierarchy. At least some of the security apparatus, the Ba'ath equivalent of the SS, remains minimally effective, and that certainly has a chilling effect on the population.

What we are seeing in the south is the Bush I chickens coming home to roost: encouraging those people to rise up, then abandoning them, was worse than immoral, it was a blunder. I have no idea why that was done; but then we did much the same thing to the Hungarians in 1956, and with much the same result. Eisenhower had far better reasons in 1956 not to send in US help to the Hungarians. That would have been a Central War, and the heart-wrenching broadcasts from Buda Pesth didn't go on deaf ears: it was decided that we weren't ready for war in Europe, and that is what would happen if we went in. It is not clear even today that Eisenhower made the wrong decision there (although it is becoming clear that he was wrong about Suez; we would have expanded our sphere of influence and the Russians would not have intervened for the same reasons we didn't intervene in Buda Pesth).

But these observations are very general, and in general very obvious; which is my long winded way of saying I don't think it very useful to offer detailed day to day observations on the war. There will be plenty to talk about when it is over. I have mail indicating some good war news sources.

I will keep looking for trends in other matters, but the war news tends to drown out everything else... One point made by a reader: It's astonishing how few Iraqi casualties in Baghdad, given all the AAA they are throwing skyward.

And we have an excellent comment in mail on Buda Pest.

 

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Wednesday, March 26, 2003

General Franks decides to consolidate what he holds. He doesn't say so, but it's pretty clear that the reason we are thin on the ground is that the 4th Infantry, in many ways our best division, is still on ships sailing down through the Suez rather than marching on Baghdad from the North and diverting the enemy from shooting our troops.

 

That requires a new war plan.

Meanwhile,

BBC denounced by its own war correspondents. 

Martin Sheen duct tapes his mouth shut and marches with a cross in Los Angeles. 

Hans Blix says they haven't found a smoking gun.

News sometime later.

 

 

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Thursday, March 27, 2003

Dr. Huth, on SARS:

For your readers who want to keep up with the latest information:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/ 

Mark Huth mhuthATcoldswim.com Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. twain

And see below


Some random thoughts Scaramouch might have held ("He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad...")

Fifteen people are killed by a stray bomb and the world is outraged. Saddam Hussein's party thugs mortar their own population and no one gives a damn.

And there are those gleefully awaiting the casualties of a house by house urban battle. Makes for great news. If instead the US simply sits outside and lays siege to the cities, we will be accused of withholding aid.

And the arab young men fight to get at the good supplies, leaving the women and children to stand around wistfully, hoping something may be left for them. But then the young men throw the labels down because the supplies come from Kuwait and they don't like Kuwaitis. 

We have taken a northern airfield, but this is not the same as the 4th Infantry sweeping down from the North. The Turks will now try to bargain to get the money anyway. The have probably doubled the length of the war, and the casualties on both sides. Should they be charged for this? Should we take the money from what we are giving them, or from other sources?


When we have a secure port, we can begin moving in the 4th. It would have landed in Turkey in secure ports and rolled in; now they have to go through heavily mined waters, or else through Kuwait. The Turks have much to answer for here. When one of those ships hits a mine they may have more.

The ships will have been loaded for landing in a secure place, not in a hostile environment. There's no place to unload and reload. Getting those troops and their equipment into action -- the 4th is our best division and was clearly intended for a major role in the first week -- is tricky.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, or with the Middle East even if they are supposed to be friends.

On other matters in the war, see mail.

 

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Friday, March 28, 2003

I have this from several sources, but nothing direct:

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

It became very quiet in the room.

This morning during the briefing I made two notes.

Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that the 100 hour war took place after 38 days of air war bombardment. General Meyer added that this time we had moved quickly into Iraq itself, with an entirely different war plan. Asked why we did that, he said "Because we could."

The answer was made humorously but it wasn't flippant. Had we begun with 38 days of bombardment, what would have happened?

First, there would have been a lot of destruction. There would have been a lot of dead conscripts in the desert. 

Second, there would have been daily cries to stop, "missions" and emissaries to Baghdad, UN Security Council meetings, and a constant media blitz, not on the progress of the war, but on "Stop the madness."

Finally, when it was done, we would have had 95 degree heat, more sandstorms, and our forces would have moved several hundred miles in a few days with under 100 US casualties. Add to those the casualties from 38 days of air war, which would not have been zero.

At the end of 45 day we would have had:

  • Our forces about where they are now.
  • A lot more destroyed infrastructure.
  • A lot more dead Iraqis.
    • A lot more pictures of dead Iraqis
    • A lot more discussion of dead Iraqis
  • About the same number of US casualties, mostly to aircraft accidents and general traffic.

Is there a flaw in that analysis? I admit to being distracted. But it does seem to me that we have moved about as far and as fast as it is possible to go.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In our case a major part of the battle plan was upset by the Turks. We needed the 4th in the north. Despite that, half the country is in our hands, the oil fields will be productive within months if not sooner, and the cradle of Arab power has been taken. With under 100 casualties on our side, and probably under 2,000 on theirs. I do not think of another precedent.


"Not the enemy we wargamed against" is an unfortunate, if absolutely true, statement...

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." I have n0w been hearing that from senior US officers. I do not recall it ever being used before in the US.

 

The best way out is still the establishment of a reasonably democratic regime friendly to the US in particular and the West in general. Can that be done?


A well known writer, former colonel, says "It's like Viet Nam, where they tried to fight the wrong kind of war, and it wasn't until Abrams got there and we stopped trying to fight the last war..."

No, Colonel, it's not. First, none of the senior commanders here were in WW II, and not all that many were in Viet Nam. For that matter, the Viet Nam war was not a guerrilla war after Tet, and treating it like one was a drastic mistake. 

Viet Nam ended when we stabilized the area, and in 1972 an army of 150,000 marched south. That army had more armor than the Wehrmacht in the biggest battles of WW II. That army was defeated by ARVN, aided by US Air power, with fewer than 500 US casualties. That is a great victory. A great victory that no one pays any attention to. But note that it was the defeat of an invading army, armed with armor and artillery, fighting a relatively "conventional war".

The Iraqi war is against a well armed conventional power with a lot of armor, some artillery, and not a lot of air power. They are aided by "guerrilla" fighters who can harass and delay, but who can't make much actual difference in the outcome. Changing tactics to deal with those is either trivial or a vast mistake: that is, changing our deployment to deal with irregulars would be a very stupid thing to do, and the fact that a former colonel who now has out a new book "hears directly from the grunts on the ground and they are not saying what the brass is saying" -- a nearly direct quote as I heard him on the radio a few minutes ago -- is interesting, but irrelevant. Allowing the grand tactics of a war to be decided on the basis of some phone calls from junior troops on the ground to a retired colonel is the kind of stuff one might find in a bad novel, but it's not realistic.

There has never been a war in which the commanders had better information; and that information is that we have fewer than 100 casualties, many of those from accidents and our own weapons; the friction is about what was expected; we have adjusted to the non-deployment of our best division, but now we have it to deploy; and I doubt that junior officers or senior NCO's already in the field are the right people to tell us where it should be deployed.

And changing our tactics to deal with irregulars when there are fully armed enemy divisions not yet defeated would be a very stupid thing to do. Since I don't think the colonel is stupid, I do think he badly misstated his position; and he probably ought to correct that.

We do not seem to be caught in a "quagmire". We do not seem to be in a battalion a day, or a company a day, or a platoon a day, or even a section a day meatgrinder. We do seem to be taking large amounts of territory, and we do need to consolidate our supply lines, and I much doubt that General Franks and his people are unaware of any of this.

Are we there yet? 


A SARS Alert

Here in Ontario we had broadcasting interrupted to show President Bush And Prime Minister Blair talking in Camp David. They then interrupted President Bush's speech to go to the Ontario Minister of Health ordering everyone who had visited a particular hospital since 16 March to stay in their houses for 10 days and wear masks when in contact with others in their houses. One person is openly defying this order because he needs to keep working at his company - of all things a courier business. Customs agents at airports are now being given the option to wear masks and gloves.

Stephen Hart


And now an important announcement:

Subject: Microsoft abandons NT4.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/29985.html

 Roland Dobbins

 

 

 

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Saturday,March 29, 2003

Cures worse than the disease:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30003.html 


Sources of the suppressed videos. Warning: you do not really want to look at these. Believe me.

 http://www.random-abstract.com/archives-gm/00001629.html 

http://nationalreview.com/babbin/babbin.asp 

And I have this:

Hi, I have been searching the web for the pictures and I accidentally stumbled upon something a little different. I have actually gotten the video of the POWs. I am very upset with the video and it is a very gruesome video. If you decide to show this, Plz. with all respect let everyone know how bad it is before hand and ask them to pray for the families of the fallen soldiers of war. I myself am a spouse of a marine and I can't imagine how the families are feeling right now. If you wish to respond to my email my address is... The link is as follows: 

http://www.laosearch.net/freedom/modules.php?
op=modload&name=News&file
=article&sid=106&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
  

You have to look carefully and you have to right click on it and download the video's.

These locations change often. And you don't really want to go look at these. But do understand they were broadcast continually for a day in the Middle East.

 

I was always skeptical about the prospect that we would be welcomed into Iraq. Most of the Iraqi people, other than Kurds, will see us as invaders to be resisted.  In the South those who were willing to rise up and fight against the Ba'athist regime were pretty well used up and killed in the ill-advised "information war" following the ill-advised 100-hour termination of the Gulf War. 

In 1991 we should have said we would hang war criminals, and we would not leave until we had accomplished that; and as part of that we could have liberated the southern region of Iraq with many of the oil fields, and some of the northern oil fields as well. We had enough troops in the area that no one could have prevented that. Iraq's loyalists had withdrawn to defend Baghdad. 

But encouraging people to rise in rebellion and then leaving them to be killed was not wise; and we will pay a price for that for a long time.


  A high priority warning:

Subject: Sendmail local root, fix 

Please post ASAP, thanks!

> http://www.netsys.com/library/alerts/sendmail-2003-03-29.txt

- Roland Dobbins

And a source:

 

--> SEEING THE WAR WITH SATELLITE IMAGES Satellite pictures taken from space are very telling. We see them often on the Central Command television reports and on news Web sites. Space Imaging is one company that takes satellite pictures from around the world. Its site has posted some photos of Baghdad and more that you will find here:

http://www.spaceimaging.com/gallery/default.htm 

Equally impressive is DigitalGlobe. Its site shows views of before and after some bombing locations in Iraq. http://www.digitalglobe.com/gallery/baghdad/ 

In case you want to look at the images shown by Central Command, some of the images and transcripts are located here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/imint/iraqi-freedom.htm 

Tracy Walters


A friend has suggested that any Russian made Cornet missiles found in Iraq be returned to Chechnya.

 

 

 

 

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Sunday, March 30, 2003

I have a long and well reasoned letter from a reader in Istanbul regarding the Turkish situation. I have asked him to do a bit of editing for length, but length only, and I will post the next iteration.

He reminds us of a long and not always symmetrical friendship between US and Turkey; for me that was a reminder, and in fact I needed no reminder of the help the Turks gave us at Kunu-Ri and other places in Korea. I am astonished that any of our military units would need that reminder.

I will let him present his views before my commentary; but I do want it understood, my phrase "The Turks have much to answer for" was chosen to convey the possibility that there can be an answer; and was predictive rather than personal. I do believe that encouraging the US to believe that our troops would be able to unload in Turkish ports and roll south, with enough encouragement that it was clearly part of the war plan, then when it was too late forbidding them to land, was significant in hindering the progress of the war. I also think that the US had, until then, not planned to use armed Kurds and Special Forces in the kinds of operations we had in Afghanistan, precisely because an independent Kurdistan in Iraq is the Turkish worst nightmare. I am not privy to the US deliberations, but my guess is that Powell at least, and I would hope many more, in the US establishment understand that Turkey has long been a friend, has the only stable semi-democracy in the Muslim world, and has legitimate national interests that are not in conflict with our own.

Our situation is complicated by a large and vocal Armenian minority in the US, some of whom are fixated on events dating back to Abdul Hamid The Damned and later the post World War I period of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

All this is part of the many reasons I never wanted to be involved in Mesopotamia and the whole Middle East. There are no simple solutions to the area. There are hostilities dating back to the time of The Old Man of the Mountain and the Assassins. There are legitimate conflicts among racial groups made more complex by the intricate conflict between Sunni "orthodoxy" (itself divided in intricate ways) and the Shi'ite's -- a division dating from the days of the post-Prophet Caliphate and understood by few westerners, including me. The Turks established the ruling pattern in Mesopotamia of rule by the Sunni minority and submission by the Shi'ite majority. Our incursion will probably upset that. We may regret doing it: the Turks governed that ungovernable area for a very long time.

But we are there now. We are arming the Kurds as the only army we can put in the North. We are encouraging the revolt of the Shi'ites in the south. This will be good in the short run. The long term implications are  something else, and to me are frightening.

The Afghan War leaves us with Pakistan as an ally. This seems to be working far better than I would have predicted.

I had in fact hoped that the end of the Iraqi matter would end with a firmer alliance with the Turks, and more attention on our part to dishonored promises made to them long ago.

I never wanted into that place. We are there now. And anyone who sees simple solutions to the Iraqi mess hasn't looked at the problem.

Partition of Iraq? Where? Into what parts? A wealthy Kurdistan on Turkey's southern border? That plants seeds for a hundred years of bitter warfare and instability all the way to the Caspian Sea and beyond. Unification of Iraq? Under whom? And what measures will be needed to hold that mishmash together? Elections? Will genocide be a democratic option? Vote on which minority will be slaughtered tomorrow, the elections to be conducted with UN inspectors to assure fairness?

But we are there now, and I do not think we can declare victory and go home. Now we need a way out.


There is a lot of interesting mail today. I haven't time to comment on all of it, but it's worth reading, and I have managed to put up several contrasting views.

And this courtesy of Tracy Walters:

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