I'm becoming ever more convinced that Osama is taking a dirtnap somewhere.

How else to explain the fact that he's made no announcement, no video, no nada on the subject of the coalition invasion of Iraq?

Similarly, Saddam published another tape today. It is entirely devoid of any reference to current events, and contains no other infornmation that could prove it was not taped weeks ago.

Furthermore, and more strikingly, there was an odd fellow present in the background durin Tariq Assiz's live press conference last week. That fellow was Saddam's personal bodyguard. He has never, not once, in over a decade, been seen guarding anyone other than Saddam.

My conclusion: Saddam is either dead, or severely wounded.

Disclaimer: I am sometimes wrong, but never uncertain. :-)

Speekina the deceased, there are reports that Hamas is sending over trained suicide bombers to aid the Iraqis. I say, good for them. Bring it on. I can't think of any better way for them to get their asses killed than trying to take on the US troops. They will soon find that wary infantrymen are going to be orders of magnitude more difficult to effectively bomb than civilians.

CORRECTION: The official I mentioned earlier was not Tariq Assiz, but the Iraqi Minister of Defense. I "misremembered." :-)

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I guess I just don't have what it takes to be a truly creative Evile Genius.

When I said, after hearing reports that Saddam had been buying up sone US militay uniforms, that we could expect to see trumped up videos on Al-Jazeera of US troops murdering unarmed civilians, I thought that was a pretty safe and, as it turns out, an obvious conjecture.

I'm not even surprised at the fake surrender ambushes.

But to send out his special security forces to take the surrender of Iraqi conscripts, and then promptly shoot them all after they've surrendered, that, my freinds, is the mark of a true Evile Genius.

I bow to the work of a true master.

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Henry V, Act IV, Scene VII - Henry V, on learning that the boys guarding the baggage train had been slaughtered, by French fighters that had previously surrendered.

Anyone that has read this site since 9/11 knows that I've been beating the drum for war pretty hard, with my main casus belli the liberation of the people of Iraq from the tyrant that is Saddam.

Today, though, it got a bit more personal.

It seems that a few Army troopers of the 507th Maintenance Battalion made a wrong turn in the trail of the III Infantry Division and managed to get themselves captured by the Iraqis. Some news reports say that they were taken by troops that had previously surrendered, only to reappear as militia fighters. (We do not, at this time, know that for sure)

In any case, whether they were taken by honorable or dishonorable means, their display and interrogation on Iraqi National TV, and Al-Jezeera, is clearly outside the bounds of the Geneva Convention.

Who that knows anything about the current Iraqi regime expected anything else?

Would that were the worst of it.

It is also said by those that have seen the tapes, (the US networks are so far refusing to air them, as they are "disturbing" - they'll be coming soon to an internet site near you, without a doubt) that several of the dead US soldiers look to have wounds that were inflected execution style.

I do not agree with that decision, - I think we can handle the Truth, straight, no soda. But in a way, I understand it. To broadcast to the US public this tape would very likely unleash a grassroots storm of "Kill 'em all, and let Allah sort them out," and I don't think that is in our best interest.

Or is it?

While watching the remarkably precise and blood-free precision bombing campaign of the war so far, in which the major targets have been huge monumental buildings of Saddam's regime, long deserted by anyone with a double digit IQ, I noticed that many of the Iraqi people seemed to learn that they would not be harmed, and that life could and would go on during our air assault. Cars began again to appear on the streets, etc.

Machiavelli wrote that it is good to be loved, and good to be feared, but that it was only very rarely possible to be both. If one had to choose one or the other, then it was better to be feared than loved.

One of the ways that we have hoped the war would end was for the Iraqis to throw out Saddam on their own. Many anti-war advocates have made this argument. Does our humanitarian way of war, in which we try to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, contribute to this? Or is it prolonging the war?

If the Iraqi people can be allowed to sit back, and let us spill American, Brit, and Aussie blood to liberate them, why should they put life and limb on the line to dislodge him?

Do we need to light a fire under them by inflicting some damage and suffering on them, too, to get them to be more pro-active in their liberation - use both the carrot and the stick? Will some widespread bombing to cut off power and other utilities, destroy bridges, or any of the other things we've so far avoided, make them pick up an AK, or a pitchfork, or whatever, and kill that Ba'athist party member, or Special Republican Guard trooper manning that AA gun in downtown Baghdad?

It that a moral thing to do? I do not know, I confess.

I once read on the net somewhere, it was either on the Reverend General Donald Sensing's site, or Steven den Beste's, I forget which, that sometimes an neccesary requirement to build a lasting peace is for the enemy to well and truly know that he had been beat to a pulp. The reformation of Germany and Japan after WWII would not have been possible unless they had been compleatly destroyed. Saddam himself proclaimed GWI a victory, and many in the Arab world agreed, simply because he had survived.

Maybe it's time to take the gloves off.

Right now, I'm all for giving the Nebuchanezzar and Hamnurabi divisions of the Republican Guard one last chance to surrender. Then I want about five B-52 ArcLights dropped on them if they refuse. Then drop that MOAB on them just to bounce the rubble around. I want them begging to surrender before the III ID get to them.

Why should this bother me more than any of the other myriad atrocities Saddam has comitted? It shouldn't, but it does. Maybe it is just enraged bloodlust talking. Ask me again tomorrow, or the next day.

With apologies to the Bard, perhaps a message from Gen. Franks could be rewritten like this...

"I was not angry since I came to Iraq Until this act. Take a message, sergeant; Broadcast it from our C-130's, Drop leaflets by the ton. If they want a fight with us, we'll give them one, They must go home, and make it quick: Their way of war makes me sick. Tell them I say if they delay We'll kill every one of them, Reaping both lives and limb. BoneMakers, DeathBringers, Swifter than the Tomahawks Of old Iriquois slingers: Not a man of them shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so."

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