Charlie Company Task Force 1-64 of the 3rd ID faces the feared ‘Arab Street’ in downtown BAGHDAD.
Maybe the fear-mongerers and those saying the war was going poorly were talking about something else.
Archives for 2003
Bad Legislation
A friend of mine alerted me to some horrible legislation working its way through numerous statehouses:
The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.
Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that “conceal from a communication service provider … the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication”. Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal — with no exceptions.
If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you’re in violation, because the “To” and “From” lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)
Go read the whole thing, and check to see if your state has any legislation pending. Make sure you read the comments to the site I linked.
Command Post
Remember, the authoritative source for war information and links is the Command Post, the best web collaborative available.
RIP, Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed while traveling with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division.
Kelly, the first American journalist killed in the war, had also served as editor of the New Republic and National Journal. But his decision to join up with U.S. forces marked a return to his reporting roots, since he covered the first Persian Gulf War as a magazine freelancer and turned his observations into a book, “Martyrs’ Day.” While one Australian and two British journalists have been killed covering the war, Kelly’s death is the first among the 600 correspondents participating in the Pentagon’s embedding program.
*** Update ***
Edited to remove a tasteless comment I wrote about another member of the press, which does nothing to honor the memory of Michael Kelly, and was, well, tasteless and wrong.
*** Update #2 ***
From Atrios, a remarkably classy post about Michael Kelly (although still branding people who are in favor of prosecuting this war as ‘war-mongering’).
The sewer trout who comment on Atrios’s comments sections ( I call them Atriettes) are rather disgusting, ranging from muted glee to outright celebration. Losers.
*** Update #3 ***
Atrios’s commenters were so disgusting and over the top that he had to pull the thread out of respect to Kelly’s family. You will just have to trust me- Atrios did the right thing.
Media Irregularities
Mac Diva has spent a while trying to detail all the misreported information regarding the capture and imprisonment of PFC Lynch. In the process, she decides to take a swipe at me:
Stories such as the Chronicle’s were, in turn, used to support the claims of biased Right Wing bloggers, such as this one.
“Such as this one?” I wonder who that might be? Oh… Me.
I watched him single-handedly transform the hospital where Lynch was treated into a military headquarters pretending to be a hospital. He has yet to acknowledge that the latest, apparently accurate information, contradicts his claim of subhuman Iraqis torturing Pfc. Lynch in a torture chamber there because ‘that’s what Iraqis are like.’
Presto, watch me transform hospitals into torture chambers, torture chambers. It’s like, ummm, magic? Except I never did that. In fact, here are my words:
Mac also seems to want to believe the Iraqi propoganda over reality, and thinks that Jessica is being held in a hospital for treatment. This, despite all the evidence of Iraqi perfidy, despite the Saddamite thugs using hospitals as command posts for the duration of this conflict. It is mind-boggling, and as the evidence has shown today, there were maps, mortar rounds, car batteries (for torture), terrain mock-ups, and other various weapons in this command post in the basement of the hospital.
Note to the discerning reader- Mac agrees with methat all of the above is true- she cites it in the piece I linked to. The hospital was being used as a bunker/command post, as have previous hospitals, mosques, and Red Crescent vehicles.
Nowhere did I write that it can be stated without pause that PFC Lynch was tortured. In fact, here are my words:
She was in the hospital because it was the best place to hide her, and she had numerous broken bones and was reported to have been tortured.
She was reported to have been tortured- and that is still the case, as far as we know it. Nowehere have I stated that Iraqi’s torture people simply because ‘that is how they are.’ I am not a xenophobic, racist nitwit- I don’t think like that. Everyday Iraqis are probably very much like every other person in the world. However, the shock troops, the paramilitary leaders, the Ba’ath Party leaders- they are, in my opinion, subhuman. They have conducted numerous atrocities, and they are scum. It would not surprise me at all if they tortured her, as they have executed other Americans, and they have tortured in the past. What is so irresponsible about speculating that past behavior is a good indication of future behavior?
When Mac Diva can show me proof that she was not tortured, I will admit it and be relieved (for goodness sake, I hope to God I am wrong). Until then- I will base my speculation that she probably was tortured on the past behavior of the Hussein regime and the reports I read in the media. What else do I have to go on?
A New American Hero
And perhaps one day a new American:
New heroes have surfaced in the rescue of U.S. Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.
Under the watchful eyes of more than 40 murderous gunmen, the 19-year-old supply clerk laid in Saddam Hussein Hospital suffering from at least one gunshot wound and several broken bones.
As her captors discussed amputating her leg, an Iraqi man leaned to her ear and whispered, “Don’t worry.” Lynch replied with a warm smile.
The man was already working with U.S. Marines to gain the critical information needed to rescue one of the first American prisoners of war in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Just a day earlier, the lawyer from An Nasiryah had walked 10 kilometers to inform American forces he knew where Lynch was being held.
Go read the whole story about how this brave Iraqi helped to save PFC Lynch’s life. I’d vote for him before I would vote for Kerry.
Jackass, The Candidate
I just rented and watched Jackass, the Movie. In other words, I watched grown men set firecrackers off from the crack of their asses, I watched a guy box Butterbean in the middle of a department store, and I saw a guy wrap a toy car in a condom, insert it into his anus, and then go to the doctor for an x-ray.
When the movie was over, I turned the television to MSNBC, where I found out that Sen. John F. Kerry (D- MA) had this to say:
“In a speech Wednesday in Peterborough, N.H., Kerry said President Bush so alienated allies prior to the U.S.-led war against Iraq that only a new president can rebuild damaged relationships with other countries.
“What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States,” said Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
Congratulations, Democrats. Your leading candidate is someone more disgusting than a group of people who light their farts. Well done.