I’m driving back down to LA. Maybe more posting tonight. In the meantime, lots of good links over there to the left.

Al Qaeda has some sage advice for Saddam.

I think he should take it. After all, they did so well in Afghanistan…

One of the young women lost in the Iraq tragedy yesterday was from Palestine, West Virginia. Like the Shuttle breaking up over Palestine, Texas (and particularly the combination), what are the odds of that?

Until either of these events, I’d never heard of any town in America by that name.

Or is the press coverage this weekend reminiscent of the coverage of Tet? It was a US victory that was reported as a disaster, because the assumption was that the Viet Cong weren’t capable of mounting an offensive.

Saddam’s regime continues to underestimate and miscalculate in his dealings with us. He (or whoever is now in charge, if anyone) still focus on the Beirut Marine barracks and Mogadishu, and the mistaken perception that Americans have no staying power–they are cowards who will turn and run when they encounter adversity. Thus, they hope that by criminally brutalizing our POWs and equally criminally advertising the act on television, they will break our morale.

They apparently don’t follow any military history outside of the region. Otherwise, they’d have realized how we treated the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and Bataan. They didn’t frighten us–they angered us. We shed shiploads of blood, and lost many thousands of brave men, over a period of years, to see that the regime that did that was ground into the dust of history.

The same will happen with this one, and the sooner they realize it, the better off the Iraqi people will be.

And now, in retrospect, we should have been much tougher when the Iranians took our hostages, even if it cost them their lives. It might have saved many more in the future.

We cannot and should not expect tyrants to like us, but after this, they had better start fearing us.

Paul Mulshine says that Natalie Maines was in over her cultural head, and doesn’t understand her fan base at all.

The only thing that would astound the typical country fan about Maines’ encounter with anti- Americanism is the fact that she didn’t slug the person expressing it. Another singer from country’s classic era, Merle Haggard, put it this way: “When you’re runnin’ down my country, man, you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”

Without knowing it, Maines tripped over a prominent divide in American life, one that became apparent in the run-up to the current war on Iraq. Some of us look up to the Europeans as the living embodiment of a higher civilization. And some of us look down on them as relics of a fading civilization.

I’ve always been bemused at the cultural divide not only between Red Country and Blue Country, but the one between the seemingly related musical genres of folk and country. I’m not that much of a country fan, but I’ve been a devotee of folk music since the sixties. I increasingly find that as such, I have to not only overlook some massively stupid political opinions of people whom I otherwise consider talented and pleasant to listen to, but to rein in my own political opinions when attending concerts. I can be almost certain that as, well, for lack of a better label, a hawkish libertarian, I’m in enemy territory, politically at such venues. It’s almost as bad as attending a Unitarian service.

I suspect that the political gap between the folk music community, and the community of its C/W offspring, is attributable to the “urban folk” boom of the sixties, in which it became heavily associated with protest, and particularly socialist and leftist protest. Fortunately, despite that stereotype, there’s a broad enough range of it, including instrumental, that I can still enjoy it, both on recorded media and live, just as long as I can hold my tongue.

What a waste of bandwidth.

What a waste of oxygen.

It reminds me a lot of the Martian leader’s speech in Mars Attacks!

As I listen to it, I’m not hearing anything that he couldn’t have planned to say before the war started. No specifics to indicate that it was made since Wednesday night. If it were really today’s Saddam, he’d be sure to mention the glorious victory in capturing the Americans today.

I write this before the end of the long harangue, but it’s clear to me that it’s simply a tape of something that he put together before the war started, in order to exhort the troops.

He’s either dead, or incapacitated.

What a waste of bandwidth.

What a waste of oxygen.

It reminds me a lot of the Martian leader’s speech in Mars Attacks!

As I listen to it, I’m not hearing anything that he couldn’t have planned to say before the war started. No specifics to indicate that it was made since Wednesday night. If it were really today’s Saddam, he’d be sure to mention the glorious victory in capturing the Americans today.

I write this before the end of the long harangue, but it’s clear to me that it’s simply a tape of something that he put together before the war started, in order to exhort the troops.

He’s either dead, or incapacitated.

What a waste of bandwidth.

What a waste of oxygen.

It reminds me a lot of the Martian leader’s speech in Mars Attacks!

As I listen to it, I’m not hearing anything that he couldn’t have planned to say before the war started. No specifics to indicate that it was made since Wednesday night. If it were really today’s Saddam, he’d be sure to mention the glorious victory in capturing the Americans today.

I write this before the end of the long harangue, but it’s clear to me that it’s simply a tape of something that he put together before the war started, in order to exhort the troops.

He’s either dead, or incapacitated.

For no particular reason, but probably prompted by the fratricidal attack that is now looking like it was the work of a newly minted Islamic terrorist in their own ranks (surprise, surprise), it occurred to me that it’s probably a good thing that Ben Franklin didn’t get his desire.

If he had, the 101st Airborne would be called the “Screaming Turkeys.”