Backup Link: (Use if CNN.com is slammed)
http://robots.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/war.tracker/index.html

The "War Tracker" has CNN's current news on the battles, air strikes, etc. Not too much information there right now.

CNN.com | War Tracker

If you need a laugh during all of this...

The Gulf War Drinking Game

Multi-layered interactive map of Iraq from the BBC, showing locations of UK forces, Iraqi bases, oilfields, weapons sites, Presidential sites, dissident areas, Iraq missile range, a map of Baghdad, and a ton of other info.

BBC: Maps of Attack Strategies

] To the person (or persons) who finds it funny to
] repeatedly position my star wars figurines in
] inappropriate positions, please stop.

Star Wars figurines

] Masses of Iraqi soldiers are deserting and senior members
] of President Saddam Hussein's ruling family circle are
] defecting as the countdown to a British and US invasion
] reaches its final hours.
]
] In northern Iraq, on the border with Kurdistan, up to
] three-quarters of some Iraqi regiments have already fled.
]
] In the mainly Shia Muslim south, Kuwaiti border guards
] are having to turn Iraqi soldiers back - telling them
] that they must wait until an attack begins before they
] can surrender.

Mass desertions weaken Iraqi defences

] Two Iraqi helicopters fired machine guns and rockets into
] three Kurdish villages on the front line north of Kirkuk
] yesterday, in the first shots intended to kill in the
] coming war.
]
] ''There were two of them, one an attack helicopter and
] the other normally used for transport, attacking the
] villages where people herding cattle live," Mohammed
] Fateh, a local Kurdish military commander, said.
]
] Kurdish officers believe that the Iraqi helicopter attack
] on the three impoverished and half-ruined villages of
] Bashtapa, Girdalanka and Sherawa in the hills south-east
] of Qush Tappa was a desperate effort by the Iraqi army to
] raise the morale of its men and prove that its firepower
] is still to be reckoned with.

Saddam's troops fire the first shots of the conflict

] As one watches protest marches, antiwar advertising and
] local arts events, one has to wonder whether the left has
] really weighed the moral issues posed by the horrors of
] Saddam's regime -- weighed life by life the repression of
] the 24 million Iraqis who live in a ruthless police
] state, not to mention the thousands or tens of thousands
] who have been imprisoned without trial, tortured, exiled
] or killed. It sometimes seems that the left is so averse
] to war, especially war waged by America, that it is
] prepared to turn a blind eye to even the most ghastly
] realities. Perhaps it is because the left no longer sees
] these realities that its antiwar arguments tend to
] justify continuation of the status quo.
]
] That, too, is a form of paralysis. But it is emblematic
] of an evolution in leftist values that has occurred so
] gradually over a period of decades that the profound
] nature of the shift is often not noticed. Today, the
] political counterculture and the antiwar movement in the
] West often seem to be one and the same. Instead of
] fighting fascists or other genocidal tyrants as it might
] have during the Spanish Civil War or World War II or even
] during the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, the
] modern left fights war; because the United States is the
] world's most significant military agent, and because it
] has so often used military power to support
] anti-democratic governments, the left understandably fights the
]United States. Such opposition to war is reflexive, and too often
]outweighs its outrage on behalf of the oppressed. Its capacity for
]the kind of muscular empathy that leads to action has atrophied,
]leaving only the possibility of reaction, of opposition. The
]antiwar left does not mount massive protests against China,
]Pakistan or Egypt. Millions do not pour into the streets on behalf
]of the student-led democracy movement in Iran. And Saddam Hussein
]and Osama bin Laden are not angrily compared to Hitler -- that
]treatment is more often reserved for George W. Bush.

Salon.com | See no evil

Nano recommended that I meme this site. I'm sure some of you know it but it is still one of my faves. It's the website of James Lileks, author and newspaper columnist. It contains hours of retro parody entertainment as well as his blog, The Bleat.

Be sure to check out the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

LILEKS (James)

] The number for a phone sex operation was mistakenly
] listed as a BellSouth customer service line in most of
] the 50 million residential phone books the company sent
] out in the past year.

Fark's quote:
"BellSouth now offers phone sex. Usually it's BellSouth screwing you and not the other way around"

AP Wire | 03/18/2003 | Phone sex number mistakenly listed as BellSouth service line

] Fear not, Canada. Our finest female speed skater,
] two-time Olympic gold medalist Catriona Le May Doan, may
] be leaning toward retirement but her replacement is
] already under construction. And let me be the first to
] say that our next Le May Doan looks an awful lot like a
] giant cockroach.
]
] Of course, that's just an early version. Within a year or
] two, we may see a speed skater that looks like a toaster
] oven and moves like Paul Kariya. A lot will depend on
] what happens this Sunday at the Olympic Oval, where 600
] first-year engineering design students at the University
] of Calgary have been asked to match programmable logic
] controllers and proximity sensors and go head-to-head in
] what is being billed as Skatebot Races: the Oval Finale.
] (Batteries not included.)

Robots crash speed skating's future