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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
An extensive LA TIMES article today discusses Salam Pax’ weblog, and also refers to the blogs Live From Kuwait, L.T. Smash, and Command Post.
It describes the efforts of journalist Paul Boutin to determine its authenticity.
A few days after the U.S.-led bombing of Baghdad began, the words of a mysterious man known as Salam Pax raced across the Internet.[.....]
In an effort to uncover obvious deception, freelance journalist Boutin, a former network manager, began a search for the real Salam Pax.
He asked the Baghdad resident by e-mail for a photo or a phone number. Salam Pax refused.
He then attempted to trace the origin of the electronic information sent by Salam Pax’s Web address.
While Boutin did not have enough information to pinpoint Salam Pax’s location, he said the computer addresses he was able to trace were in the same range as those previously used by Uruklink, Iraq’s state-run Internet provider. Another electronic trace followed Salam Pax’s postings as far as Transtrum, a unit of the Lebanese Internet provider TerraNet.
Absent any obvious ruse, the blog seemed plausible, Boutin said.
There was concern immediately prior to the war about the effect of the war on the global economy via damage to Iraqi oil fields. Per a March 16 column by James Flanigan:
...war in the Middle East could exact a heavy toll [on the world’s economy] on the petroleum front—and not just for the duration of the conflict. Many wells could be destroyed in Iraq, either by a U.S.-led bombing campaign or intentionally by Saddam Hussein’s retreating forces, and they aren’t going to return to production anytime soon.
Comparison was made to Iraq’s destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields during Desert Storm. Per the U.S. Department of State:
Iraq released over 5 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf in 1991 and set over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire as Iraqi troops retreated, according to the U.S. Defense Department. The Defense Department estimates that Iraqi destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War had an environmental impact 20 times larger than that caused by the oil spill from the tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaskan waters in 1989.Prior to the start of the current conflict, the Defense Department estimated that any effort by Saddam Hussein’s regime to again destroy Iraq’s oil fields would “have the potential to double the disastrous effects experienced in Kuwait in 1991.”
Adlai Amor of the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and policy organization in Washington, concurred. As Amor explained to the Voice of America, “Iraq has 2,000-plus oil wells. And so the potential is much greater.”
However, it appears that the damage done to date to Iraqi oil wells is not as great as that done to those in Kuwait. First, relatively few wells have been damaged.
Per the LA TIMES:
Before the war, military and industry experts worried that retreating Iraqi soldiers would blacken the horizon by torching hundreds of wells in the Rumaila field of southern Iraq, as they did to Kuwaiti oil fields during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.Instead, only nine wells and pipelines in the vast oil and gas reserve were set ablaze before U.S. and British troops arrived.
Second, the damage done to those wells was less severe. From the same article:
“I really think that the oil workers of Iraq did not want to blow up their own wells,” he said. “Their bosses might have wanted that, but they didn’t. No good oilman wants to see his wells damaged.
And, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
...with a steady supply of water brought in by tankers from Kuwait, and with the area declared safe from attack, crews said they could have the blazes extinguished in as little as 10 days.That’s different from the 1991 Gulf War, when retreating Iraqi forces set ablaze more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait, causing $50 billion in damage. The repairs took two years.
[.....]
“They light ‘em, we fight ‘em. There’s nothing they can do that we can’t control,” said [oil-well repair subcontractor Brian] Krause, who wore a bright red jumpsuit and a baseball cap.
How important is this oil to the future of Iraq? From the U.S. Department of State:
The Defense Department estimates that the potential oil income to the Iraqi people is $20 billion to $30 billion a year, and that these resources will play an important role in shaping Iraq’s economic outlook.
InstaPundit has a link to an article today by former peace activist Ken Joseph, Jr.
As a minister and due to my personal convictions I have always been against war for any and all reasons. It was precisely this moral conviction that led me to do all I could to stop the current war in Iraq.From participating in demonstrations against the war in Japan to strongly opposing it on my radio program, on television and in regular columns I did my best to stand against what I thought to be an unjust war against an innocent people – in fact my people.
[.....]
Sitting next to me [in church during a visit to Iraq] was an older man who carefully began to sound me out. Apparently feeling the freedom to talk in the midst of the mingling crowd he suddenly turned to me and said `There is something you should know.` `What` I asked surprised at the sudden comment.
`We didn’t want to be here tonight`. he continued. `When the Priest asked us to gather for a Peace Service we said we didn’t want to come`. He said.
`What do you mean` I inquired, confused. `We didn’t want to come because we don’t want peace` he replied.
`What in the world do you mean?` I asked. `How could you not want peace?` `We don’t want peace. We want the war to come` he continued.
What in the world are you talking about? I blurted back.
That was the beginning of a strange odyssey that deeply shattered my convictions and moral base but at the same time gave me hope for my people and, in fact, hope for the world.
That’s just the beginning. View the whole article here.
Dave Barry has a wonderful article about writing jokes for the Oscars. It starts like this:
About six months ago, I got an e-mail. Here's what it said:
Hi Dave, it's Steve Martin.
I'm hosting the Oscars this year and am trying to put together a team of geniuses to help me write it. Here's my question: do you know any? HA! I'm wondering if the idea appeals to you at all. You, me, Rita Rudner and a few others. Best Oscar monologue ever. California. Tickets to the show. Fame.
I know you won't do it, so go (bad word) yourself.
Steve
Needless to say, I was excited.
To read the full article - including Dave's favorite joke that didn't get on the air - click here.
Today people are asking why the Iraqi people haven’t yet risen up to welcome us. This LA TIMES story may explain it:
Phone Calls in Code Keeping Iraqi Americans in TouchFrom Basra, the brother of San Diego resident Najem Al Ekabi, 51, described a town under siege, with water and electricity cut off, schools and shops closed and constant explosions from missiles and artillery.
[.....]
Earlier in the week, relatives told him of uprisings against Saddam Hussein’s regime in at least some parts of the city, but those now appear to have been quelled, Al Ekabi said.
The regime has stationed tanks, soldiers and their weapons throughout the city—especially in the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that fostered the earlier uprising, Al Ekabi said.
“He has planted people everywhere, using schools, hospitals, spiritual and religious sites,” Al Ekabi said. “That’s why it’s very hard to rise up.”
The Scrutineer makes this observation about it:
Apparently [NY TIMES editor] Cowell finds nothing illegal, let alone “dishonorable,” in faking surrender or disguising yourself as a woman so that you can more easily kill an enemy who spares your life to avoid committing a war crime. Allied commanders may “see” such tactics as dishonorable, but I guess they’re just biased.Of course, these are pretty clear violations of the laws of war. For a quick and dirty legal analysis, check out this article at the Crimes of War Project.
Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit makes an excellent comment:
RANDOM OBSERVATION #1: Funny, isn’t it, that Osama bin Laden hasn’t released a statement—even a fuzzy tape recording—praising Saddam’s resistance and blasting the U.S. effort in Iraq. It’s like he’s not even alive, or something…
This looks really funny.
The trailer is available here.
This remarkable LA TIMES article by Johanna Neuman was buried on page 10 of the A section earlier this week, and hasn’t yet been widely noted. Excerpts (emphasis added):
WASHINGTON—As Iraqi Americans reach out to their relatives in Baghdad and Basra, in Kirkuk and Irbil, some are hearing words they never thought possible: Iraqis are speaking ill of Saddam Hussein.They’re criticizing him out loud, on the telephone, seemingly undeterred by fear of the Iraqi intelligence service and its tactics of torture for those disloyal to the Baath Party regime.
“I was shocked,” said Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., that promotes interfaith and interethnic understanding. “It’s very dangerous. All the phones are tapped. But they are so excited.”
[.....]
“I’m so disappointed with the left,” said [Escaped Iraqi] Tamara Darweesh, who considers herself a liberal. “They are in complete denial because it doesn’t fit into their equation of the Mideast. But Saddam is an Arab leader who has killed more Arabs than Israel ever has.”
The antiwar protesters, she added, are “very condescending. They are supposed to be for human rights, but the suffering of the Iraqi people just doesn’t exist for them. They deny us our stories.”
[.....]
[Escaped Iraqi Tanya] Gilly is mystified that the peace movement puts so much faith in U.N. diplomacy. “The inspectors have been in the country for 12 years,” she said.
“It wouldn’t matter if you gave [Hussein] two more weeks, a month or even 10 years. It’s in his nature to defy.”
The full text is on the LA TIMES site here, and can also be accessed through the “continue reading” link below.
James Flanigan, the excellent LA TIMES economics columnist, has some eye-opening things to say about the Mid-East economy. Some excerpts:
That the region is in desperate need of help is beyond question.The Arab countries of the Middle East contain 200 million people but not a single automobile assembly plant. Indeed, there is very little industry of any kind other than the oil-related complexes of the Persian Gulf area.
In many ways, the real story of the Middle East during the last three decades—or since the price of oil quadrupled in 1973—is that energy riches have not translated into any kind of true economic development.
Saudi Arabia is seen as a nation of wealth in many eyes, but its gross domestic product per citizen is only $6,900. Israel—with a far more modern, diverse economy—boasts a GDP per citizen of $16,300.
Trade among Middle East nations is practically stagnant—a strange fact of economic life in a place where haggling at the local souk is an art form.
The full text of the article is available at the LA TIMES site here.
jaceonline has some excellent links today, beginning with Top Ten Myths About the War in Iraq. These include:
3-The United States made a big mistake by not overthrowing Saddam in 1991. We had promised our Arab allies in 1990 that we would expel the Iraqis from Kuwait and would not invade Iraq. The Arabs said they could handle Saddam. They couldn’t, but don’t want to admit it. The U.S. waited twelve years, and then stopped waiting.
4-The United States armed Saddam. This one grew over time, but when Iraq was on it’s weapons spending spree from 1972 (when its oil revenue quadrupled) to 1990, the purchases were quite public and listed over $40 billion worth of arms sales. Russia was the largest supplier, with $25 billion. The US was the smallest, with $200,000. A similar myth, that the U.S. provided Iraq with chemical and biological weapons is equally off base. Iraq requested Anthrax samples from the US government, as do nations the world over, for the purpose of developing animal and human vaccines for local versions of Anthrax. Nerve gas doesn’t require technical help, it’s a variant of common insecticides. European nations sold Iraq the equipment to make poison gas.
ScrappleFace has some of the best humor on the web. Some recent ScrappleFace headlines:
From UPI:
A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn’t start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam’s bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill [.....]"
The full text is available here.
Update: an entry on another ex-peace-activist ( "Astonishing Article by Ex-Peace-Activist" ) is here.
Senator Tom Daschle has famously said “I’m saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war.”
The goal of Bush administration diplomacy was to line up support for a war. The notion that the failure of this diplomacy resulted in a war, appears to be a contradiction in terms.
There appears to be a possibility that France’s position on Iraq may result from a wish to lead the European Union.
Per Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post:
America goes courting Guinea, Cameroon and Angola in search of the nine Security Council votes necessary to pass our new resolution on Iraq…..for unfathomable reasons it matters to many, both at home and around the world, that the United States should have the permission of Guinea to risk the lives of American soldiers to rid the world—and the long-suffering Iraqi people—of a particularly vicious and dangerous tyrant.It is only slightly less absurd that we should require the assent of France.
[.....]
France is not doing this to contain Iraq—France spent the entire 1990s weakening sanctions and eviscerating the inspections regime as a way to end the containment of Iraq. France is doing this to contain the United States. As I wrote last week, France sees the opportunity to position itself as the leader of a bloc of former great powers challenging American supremacy.
That is a serious challenge. It requires a serious response. We need to demonstrate that there is a price to be paid for undermining the United States on a matter of supreme national interest.
First, as soon as the dust settles in Iraq, we should push for an expansion of the Security Council—with India and Japan as new permanent members—to dilute France’s disproportionate and anachronistic influence.
Second, there should be no role for France in Iraq, either during the war, should France change its mind, or after it. No peacekeeping. No oil contracts. And France should be last in line for loan repayment, after Russia. Russia, after all, simply has opposed our policy. It did not try to mobilize the world against us.
Third, we should begin laying the foundation for a new alliance to replace the now obsolete Cold War alliances. Its nucleus should be the “coalition of the willing” now forming around us. No need to abolish NATO. The grotesque performance of France, Germany and Belgium in blocking aid to Turkey marks the end of NATO’s useful life. Like the United Nations, it will simply wither of its own irrelevance.
Thanks to David Melle’s factsofisrael Weblog for pointing this article out. The full text of the article is found here.
