] Dear America: This is a difficult letter to write,
] because I'm no longer sure who you are.

From north of the 49th parallel

] The people I spoke with at Umm Qasr said they were happy
] about the removal of Saddam, as he had held them in
] terror for years. They took me to see the local Baath
] Party headquarters. They told me that many bad things
] happened there and that most of those picked up in the
] middle of the night and taken to that building were never
] seen again.
]
] I entered the building and walked around. I couldn't
] help noticing the excitement in the people's voices
] as they pointed out the bullet holes and the charred
] remains of where the building burned.
]
] That was when I first got the sense that these people
] were really eager to see Saddam and Baath gone.
]
] I asked several what they thought of the US/UK plan to
] remove Saddam. They told me: "Now that they have
] started to remove him, they cannot stop. If they do, then
] we are all as good as dead. He still has informants in
] Umm Qasr and he knows who is against him and who
] isn't."

ArabNews: Exclusive: 'If They Stop Now We're As Good As Dead'

] THE light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was
] coming up, the beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence
] felt almost eerie after a night of shooting so intense
] it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My
] footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I
] walked slowly towards the bridge at Nasiriya. A
] horrific scene lay ahead.

US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death

] Firewalls, packet filters, intrusion detection systems,
] and the like often have difficulty distinguishing between
] packets that have malicious intent and those that are
] merely unusual. We define a security flag in the IPv4
] header as a means of distinguishing the two cases.

:)

Who knows the evil that lurks in the buffers of men? The Stack knows!

Various statistics from the war.

IRAQ-O-METER

] That winter, it finally began to rain again in
] California. The rain came in torrents, in sheets. Streets
] flooded, and houses slid off oceanside hills. On San
] Francisco's Second Street, in a large, drafty office, a
] half-dozen editors were putting together the first issue
] of Wired. The staff had a strange confidence, even a
] fanaticism, and soon after the turn of the year, the
] first fluorescent and brightly metallic pages came off
] the printer. They had made a magazine in the form of a
] manifesto.
]
] In early 1993, as Communism collapsed and the terrors of
] the Cold War era vanished in the rearview mirror, a new
] magazine startled its readers with the proclamation that
] governments were obsolete, technology was benevolent, and
] the future was going to be great. Nearly 100,000 readers
] signed up in the first 12 months. The mood had changed.

Too bad its changed back.

The Way We Were - Wired turns 10

] For three straight days in recent weeks, something
] remarkable happened to the oil pipeline running through
] northeast China to North Korea - the oil stopped flowing,
] according to diplomatic sources, temporarily cutting off
] a vital lifeline for North Korea.
]
] The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical
] problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by
] China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in
] Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your
] provocations about the possible development of nuclear
] weapons, China warned its neighbor, or face Chinese
] support for economic sanctions against the regime.
]
] Such tough tactics show an unexpected resolve in
] Beijing's policy toward Pyongyang, and hint at the
] nervousness of Chinese leaders about North Korea's
] nuclear ambitions and North Korea's tensions with the
] United States.

From Beijing, stern words for an uneasy ally

] A word of advice to future Oscar winners: Don't begin
] Oscar day by going to church.
]
] That is where I found myself this past Sunday morning, at
] the Church of the Good Shepherd on Santa Monica
] Boulevard, at Mass with my sister and my dad. My problem
] with the Catholic Mass is that sometimes I find my mind
] wandering after I hear something the priest says, and I
] start thinking all these crazy thoughts like how it is
] wrong to kill people and that you are not allowed to use
] violence upon another human being unless it is in true
] self-defense.
]
] The pope even came right out and said it: This war in
] Iraq is not a just war and, thus, it is a sin.
]
] Those thoughts were with me the rest of the day, from the
] moment I left the church and passed by the homeless
] begging for change (one in six American children living
] in poverty is another form of violence), to the streets
] around the Kodak Theater where antiwar protesters were
] being arrested as I drove by in my studio-sponsored limo.

Michael Moore's website oped on his comments at the Oscars..

I'd Like to Thank the Vatican...

NSN: 1440-01-500-8595AO
P/N: 704AS10896
NOUN: Launcher, Aircraft Guided Missile
CAGE: 30003
APPLICABLE: LAU-118 Launcher used on the F-16 Aircraft

Tim Blair - Bomb in Baghdad Market Kills 50

] A shuddering sense of outrage at President Bush and the
] United States fell over the Arab world today as
] television networks and newspapers reported a U.S. air
] assault that Iraqi officials said killed 58 people at a
] vegetable market in Baghdad.
]
] "Monstrous martyrdom in Baghdad," said a huge headline in
] al-Dustur, a newspaper in Amman, Jordan.
]
] "Dreadful massacre in Baghdad," read a banner headline in
] Egypt's mass circulation Akhbar al-Yawm newspaper. Photos
] of two young victims of the blast covered half its front
] page.
]
] "Yet another massacre by the coalition of invaders," read
] the main headline in Saudi Arabia's popular al-Riyadh
] daily.
]
] "Mr. Bush has lost us. We are gone. Enough. That's the
] end," said Diaa Rashwan, head of the comparative politics
] unit at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic
] Studies in Cairo. "If America starts winning tomorrow,
] there will be suicide bombing that will start in America
] the next day. It is a whole new level now."

Also see, http://timblair.blogspot.com/2003_03_30_timblair_archive.html#91637531

Look like attack was a stray bomb. HARM anti radiation missile.

Its worth making note that I remember seeing an article somewhere saying that it was believed that Iraq might have equipment to attract these anti-radiation missiles. Can't find a link for it though.

Outrage Spreads in Arab World (washingtonpost.com)