zenpundit.com

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Please examine the relative behavior of the British and the Americans and the Iraqis. Any suggestion of moral equivalence between the coalition and the Iraqis on this occasion, I totally reject.”

Australian Prime Minister John Howard

CHEMICAL WEAPONS SUSPECTED:

From the Boston Globe, courtesy of Drudge.

Also yesterday, US military officials reported that two Iraqi rockets, seized by American troops Tuesday southeast of Najaf, were suspected of containing chemical munitions. It was unlear whether they had been fired or where they were found. The rockets were undergoing testing in a military lab, said Lieutenant Christopher Pike, an intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division.

In Washington, a spokesman said the Pentagon could offer no immediate comment on the suspected chemical munitions.

SLATE’S TAKE ON ” SHOCK AND AWE ” go here . I think we need to be careful about second guessing the effectiveness because the media is missing much of the integrated picture available to the generals that we observers will not hear about until after the conflict is resolved, sometimes until years later. Saddam has been reduced to the Mayor of Baghdad but allowing Iraqi TV to function has kept potential fence-sitting units loyal to him the way the Waffen SS kept fighting so long as Hitler was alive in his Fuhrerbunker ( Hitler even made a radio broadcast a few days prior to his death to condemn Goering ). There will be no more easy surrenders unless Saddam’s loyalists believe him to be dead or finished. As a historian I’m curious to know if we backed away from our own plan out of fear that ” Shock and Awe ” would be too devastating on the region politically if implemented as designed because the apparent image of the American invasion of Iraq presented is one of piecemeal rather than simultaneous action.

BRITS CAPTURE CHEMICAL WEAPON COMPONENTS ! according to the Scotsman

EMPIREWATCH: I found Fareed Zakaria’s critique of the Bush administration diplomacy on Iraq – ” Arrogant Empire ” – to be more or less a venture in hairsplitting. No amount of sweet charm or handholding by Colin Powell will get another nation to react positively to an American challenge to it’s national interests though such finesse is helpful with tertiary and marginal disagreements.

France has staked all its chips upon becoming the leader of an anti-American adversarial bloc and Chirac sees forcing America to accept continuing and accelerated nuclear proliferation as key to a strategy of containing the hyperpowerful hegemon. Bush is bent upon rolling back the coming nuclear anarchy in the Third World starting with Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Nations that profit from proliferation – Russia and China- will be unhappy at their unsavory business dealings being revealed to the world. Diplomatic friction and Euro-pouting is a small price for securing major security objectives. It is also inevitable.