Mark Steyn Mega PING!!!
Posted on 03/21/2003 3:20:09 PM PST by Pokey78
Back in Baghdad, the Independent's Robert Fisk told his readers on Thursday: "At the Alastrabak grocery store, I bought 25 loo rolls."
Ah, the bog of war. When we Bush poodles say, "Let's roll!", this is definitely not the kind of roll we have in mind. Fisk is either settling in for a long siege or padding his expenses, but I can't say this strikes me as a 25-roll war.
On the television, the network pretty boys are riding on the backs of tanks going full throttle through the southern desert, hour after hour. Will it all be over before the Independent's man is halfway through the first roll?
Or will he be like those elderly Japanese holed up in the jungle decades after the Second World War, refusing to come out of his Baghdad bathroom even after the last Andrex has gone and he's reduced to using all those old columns mocking the very idea of any link between Iraq and terrorism?
It's interesting how much was clarified in the first hours of the war. On Thursday, the Palestine Liberation Front released a statement announcing the identity of the first verified casualty: PLF "1st Lieutenant" Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz was killed in Baghdad, "while confronting the treacherous US air bombardment on Iraq".
The PLF is the terrorist group that, among other triumphs, hijacked the Achille Lauro back in the 1980s and pushed Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, into the Mediterranean.
What was a PLF terrorist doing attending a war council of Saddam's inner circle in Baghdad? Well, I leave that to all the experts who've assured us that Baghdad has no ties to terror groups.
That was just the first of several myths to fall in the opening shots. If Hans Blix and Jacques Chirac are really interested in continuing with inspections, some of those missiles the Iraqis insisted they no longer have are now available for inspection in the sand on the Kuwaiti side of the border.
Last September, in an interview just before the 9/11 anniversary, I was asked what I reckoned the strategy in Iraq would be. I had no idea, but I thought of Afghanistan, when men in traditional Uzbek garb rode in on horses and used GPS technology to guide USAF bombers to their targets.
So I replied that it seemed reasonable to expect the unexpected. That's what we got on Thursday morning. Mr Fisk and the anti-war movement appear to have been anticipating the usual month-long Kosovo-style air war, with the inevitable stray bombs landing on hospitals, orphanages, wedding parties, etc. Instead, there was either an intelligence tip (or a set-up), a well-aimed bunker buster, and boots on the ground following almost immediately.
Is Saddam dead? Some analysts say the guy in the video isn't him - his moustache isn't the right size, and the specs give him the vague air of a pantomime dame. Other analysts say it is him: if the video was a fake, they'd have done a less amateurish job. On the other hand, everything on Iraqi television looks amateurish: maybe that video is their idea of a good job.
The ex-mistress says it definitely isn't the real Saddam. But who knows? Maybe she was never a top-rank mistress and he farmed her out to one of the lookalikes to sleep with. But, if it's the real Saddam, why did he need to read from a script when it's stuff he has said a thousand times? Or perhaps it is.
The best thing is to ignore the various scenarios and look at patterns of behaviour. Whatever happened in that bunker on Thursday morning, the Iraqis are certainly acting as if they're headless. In a tyranny such as Saddam's, local commanders are careful not to show initiative. They do what they're told and, if they're not told, they do nothing. That seems to be what's happening in much of Iraq.
War is never a risk-free activity: the loss of 12 British and American Servicemen in a Sea Knight helicopter accident surely reminds us of that.
But the predictions of "hundreds of thousands" if not "millions" of deaths are so far off the mark that already several embarrassed Lefties are spinning the apparent ease of this campaign as proof that Saddam was never any threat at all.
It's not over yet. Several experts said all along that the old butcher would squirrel his forces away in the capital in preparation for a siege of Saddamgrad that will exhaust even Robert Fisk's supplies. So perhaps he's just lying low. Or perhaps he's lying low in the sense that Osama is (six feet under). And, incidentally, wasn't the latest ETA for the new Osama video supposed to be the start of the Iraqi campaign?
It's enough to make an anti-American weep. There isn't enough loo roll in Baghdad to dry your tears.
The great weakness of dictatorships.
Heh heh.
He'll always have Berkeley. I heard him talking to his number 1 fan Dennis Bernstein on KPFA just the other night. Those two really steam up the studio when they get together.
LOL!
Thanks, King, enjoyed the read.
Thanks for the post, Pokey.
LOL ! Yep . . .
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Regards,
L
It's interesting how much was clarified in the first hours of the war. On Thursday, the Palestine Liberation Front released a statement announcing the identity of the first verified casualty: PLF "1st Lieutenant" Ahmed Walid Raguib al-Baz was killed in Baghdad, "while confronting the treacherous US air bombardment on Iraq".
The PLF is the terrorist group that, among other triumphs, hijacked the Achille Lauro back in the 1980s and pushed Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew, into the Mediterranean.
What was a PLF terrorist doing attending a war council of Saddam's inner circle in Baghdad? Well, I leave that to all the experts who've assured us that Baghdad has no ties to terror groups.
That was just the first of several myths to fall in the opening shots. If Hans Blix and Jacques Chirac are really interested in continuing with inspections, some of those missiles the Iraqis insisted they no longer have are now available for inspection in the sand on the Kuwaiti side of the border.
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