] It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German
] Embassy and threw the ambassador's desk into the yard. I
] rescued the European Union flag - flung into a puddle of
] water outside the visa section - as a mob of middle-aged
] men, chadored women and screaming children rifled through
] the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German
] history books from a window.
]
] The Slovakian Embassy was broken into a few hours later.

US blind to looters' fury

digitalreporter wrote:
] ] An action-packed trailer for the long-awaited sequel to
] ] The Matrix has been released by Warner Bros.
] ]
] ] The minute-long series of clips from The Matrix Reloaded
] ] offers a glimpse of the action sci-fi feature, due for
] ] release on 23 May.
] ]
] ] It mirrors the first film's combination of acrobatic
] ] martial arts fight scenes, high-octane car chases and
] ] spectacular special effects.

Here's a link to a full-screen Quicktime version of the trailer:
http://progressive1.stream.aol.com/wb/gl/wbonline/progressive/thematrix/us/med/trailer_final_1000_dl.zip

RE: Matrix sequel trailer released

] Many of Iraq's military tunnels are believed to have been
] built by Aeroinzenjering, a Serbian engineering firm once
] run by the military of the former Yugoslavia. Hussein
] maintained a close relationship with Communist leader
] Tito (Josip Broz), and with Slobodan Milosevic, whose
] underground tunnels and bunkers bedeviled U.S. and NATO
] commanders during the 1999 Kosovo air war.
 . . .
] A batch of technological innovations is allowing the U.S.
] government to better understand what's below the surface.
 . . .
] Among them are seismic devices akin to big hammers that
] pound the ground and bounce back a signature like radar.
] Experts also use gravimeters, which measure the variations
] in the gravitational field between two or more points to
] help pinpoint underground installations. Special high-flying
] spy cameras that measure thermal energy and chemical releases
] are used to find clues that may indicate the presence of
] underground activity.

As things settle down in Baghdad, I look forward to learning more about the tunnels. In February, "60 Minutes" reported that some of these tunnels were designed by "a Pasadena firm," and that the blueprints were now "in the hands of government officials," but I've never been able to find out *which* firm (one would hope that they kept their own copies of the blueprints, rather than handing over all copies to the government). More info on the 60 Minutes story is here:

 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/21/60minutes/main541565.shtml

Closing In on Baghdad Will Push War Underground

BBC Field reporter about the US Flag that was temporarily placed on the face of the Saddam statue yesterday:

] We've just learned from the US marines that the US flag
] that was put on the face of Saddam yesterday - it was
] replaced by an Iraqi flag when the people shouted for
] that - was the flag that was flying over the Pentagon on
] September 11.
]
] For a lot of the American marines, they think this war is
] all about defeating terrorism, they will tell you that
] over and over again. There is also a connection in the
] minds of the American public between the regime of Saddam
] and what happened on September 11, and apparently the
] flag that was draped over this face was flying over the
] pentagon when the plane crashed into it.

Note: I haven't been able to find any confirmation of this story aside from the BBC report.

Update: ABCNews is confirming this, in an interview with the soldier who put the flag up, Corporal Chin from New York:
"And the flag — it was on the Pentagon when it got hit on 9/11. That was the same flag, and me being from New York, it kind of all goes together a little bit. It was a team effort, which made it even better, you know," he said.

ABCNews article here:

 http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Primetime/Iraq030410USFlagStatue.html

Further update: Other news agencies are confirming that it was Marine Corporal Chin up there, but are not mentioning the origin of the flag.

(unconfirmed) US Flag on Saddam statue was the one that was flying over the Pentagon on September 11th

] Most Iraqis have been unable to access the Internet since
] March 31, when cruise missiles hit servers and satellite
] dishes at the Information Ministry in Baghdad. Repeated
] strikes on telephone switching centers have also disabled
] much of the phone service in the city, rendering dial-up
] modems -- Iraqis' predominant means of connecting to the
] Internet -- useless. Additionally, the war has knocked
] out almost all of the websites operated by the Iraqi
] government and state-controlled media.
]
] Meanwhile, the U.S. government's plans for repairing
] Iraq's IT infrastructure are still unclear. The Bush
] administration has charged the Agency for International
] Development with rebuilding the infrastructure and public
] facilities in post-war Iraq. But none of the agency's
] eight projects currently out for bid includes repairing
] Iraq's telecommunications or information technology.

I'm particularly interested in this too, to find out what happened to Salam Pax, the "Where Is Raed" blogger. According to a 3/31/2003 article in Salon, his IP was hit hard:

From http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/31/iraq_offline/index.html

] Meanwhile, two primary Internet access points for Iraqi
] citizens -- among them a high-profile blogger using the
] alias "Salam Pax" -- have been unreachable since the weekend.
]
] A Cisco switch that connected Baghdad residents to the Internet
] stopped responding Saturday morning, Iraq time. The device,
] located at Internet protocol address 62.145.94.250, served as a
] Web gateway for many citizens.
]
] The headers of a March 19 e-mail message from Salam Pax, author
] of Where Is Raed? a popular blog chronicling life in Baghdad,
] showed he connected to the Internet using the switch. Pax's
] electronic journal has not been updated since early last week.

Salam Pax's blog, last updated March 24, is here:
 http://dearraed.blogspot.com

Wired News: IQ Test for Rebuilding Iraqi Net

jfeil wrote:
] Elonka wrote:
] ] ] U.S. officials have pointed to Khazraji, widely respected
] ] ] among the Iraqi armed forces for his role in the
] ] ] Iran-Iraq war, as a candidate for a leadership position
] ] ] in an Iraq without Saddam.
] ]
] ] The ex-Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army (1987-1990) goes for a
] ] walk near his current home in Denmark, and disappears. Was he
] ] kidnapped (or worse) by Iraqi Intelligence? Did he flee the
] ] country from fear of a war crimes trial, or did something else
] ] happen? Stay tuned...
]
] It looks like this guy might have been spirited away by the
] CIA and killed in Iraq along with the Shiite cleric. From Arab
] News
]
] http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25014
]

This is starting to sound like the plot of a Clancy novel! Slate MSN says something similar about the Denmark disappearance, that Khazraji may have been spirited out of Denmark by the CIA, so that they could offer him as an alternative to Chalabi, who they very much dislike:

 http://slate.msn.com/id/2081329/

More background on Chalabi and various entities' dislike of him here:
 http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid6142/

If Khazraji was indeed killed along with the Grand Shiite Ayatollah's son al-Khoei, then it makes the story kind of moot, but the reports that I've been hearing are that the two people killed today were instead al-Khoei and al-Kadar. I haven't been able to quite make sense yet about why both these guys were killed, since they seem to have been on opposite sides of the figurative fence: Khoei was anti-Saddam and had been living in exile for years, while Kadar was pro-Saddam and much hated because of his association with Saddam's "Ministry of Religion." They were also both Shiite, and seem to have been attacked by other Shiites, so if anything, this seems to underscore the bitter divisions within the Iraqi Shiite community.

Getting back to Khazraji's status though, while I was surfing the news streams on this, I did see a *lot* of reports that Khazraji has been seen in the Kuwait/Iraq region, so the assassinations do indeed bring more attention to his own story: How did he get out of Denmark? Was the CIA involved, as a couple reports suggest? And is Khazraji going to be presented as a potential leader in the new Iraqi government?

The plot thickens . . .

RE: Top Iraqi defector disappears

What appears to be the Interz0ne II Code Challenge has been released... ;)

SETI message to Interz0ne-II

] There will be no new target because Iraq was a unique
] case. Although most regional regimes have varying records
] of brutality, Saddam Hussein's regime was the only
] regime that tried to wipe a member state of the United
] Nations off the map. It was also the only regime since
] World War I to use chemical weapons not only against
] adversaries in a war but also against its own people.
]
] The key reason why Saddam's regime was unique, however,
] lies elsewhere.
]
] His was a regime that could not develop any mechanism for
] change. He could play in only two registers: absolute
] defiance or full capitulation.

Interesting editorial in Arab News by Amir Taheri.

ArabNews: Who's Next? No One and Everyone

France became a major military supplier to Iraq after 1975 as the two countries improved their political relations. In order to obtain petroleum imports from the Middle East and strengthen its traditional ties with Arab and Muslim countries, France wanted a politico-military bridge between Paris and Baghdad.

Between 1977 and 1987, Paris contracted to sell a total of 133 Mirage F-1 fighters to Iraq. The first transfer occurred in 1978, when France supplied eighteen Mirage F-1 interceptors and thirty helicopters, and even agreed to an Iraqi share in the production of the Mirage 2000 in a US$2 billion arms deal. In 1983 another twenty-nine Mirage F-1s were exported to Baghdad. And in an unprecedented move, France "loaned" Iraq five SuperEtendard attack aircraft, equipped with Exocet AM39 air-to- surface missiles, from its own naval inventory.

...

Iraqi debts to France were estimated at US$3 billion in 1987.

1Up Info | Iraq | Arms from France | Iraqi Information Resource

] As a gesture of reconciliation, he arrived with Haider
] al-Kadar, the man who had previously held the
] responsibility for the shrine. Mr al-Kadar is widely
] disliked in Najaf because of his connection to Saddam
] Hussein's Ministry of Religion.
]
] "Mr al-Khoei's appearance with such as reviled figure
] appears to have inflamed one of the factions loyal to a
] different mullah, Mohammed Braga al-Saddar, which appears
] to have led to his death

Majid al-Khoei Stabbed to Death