] Second, sometimes smashing someone in the face is
] necessary to signal others that they will be held
] accountable for the intolerance they incubate. Removing
] the Taliban and Saddam sent that message to every
] government in the area.

This is a good series. This article offers a sound bitey version of why we went to War in Iraq.

War of Ideas, Part 5

The name says it all, just play it.

Escape From Neverland

] Working with experts at the Lawrence Livermore National
] Laboratory, the FBI traced trails of a broader
] reconnaissance. A forensic summary of the investigation,
] prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found
] "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through
] telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia
] and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone
] systems, electrical generation and transmission, water
] storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas
] facilities.

] "We were underestimating the amount of attention [al
] Qaeda was] paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey,
] a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of
] staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure
] Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as
] a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time
] mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we
] previously thought. An attack is a question of when,
] not if."

] What they do know is that "Red Teams" of mock intruders
] from the Energy Department's four national laboratories
] have devised what one government document listed as
] "eight scenarios for SCADA attack on an electrical power
] grid" -- and all of them work. Eighteen such exercises
] have been conducted to date against large regional
] utilities, and Richard A. Clarke, Bush's cyber-security
] adviser, said the intruders "have always, always succeeded."

Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared (TechNews.com)

] 'Salam Pax" is rising as one of the media stars in
] postwar Iraq. He began blogging from Baghdad well before
] the war, and has come back sporadically since. (He calls
] his blog "Where is Raed?") He is the darling of fellow
] bloggers in the West, who light up with links whenever he
] appears on the Web. He has been written about in the New
] Yorker magazine and elsewhere, and his jottings copied
] into the Guardian in the Britain. Not bad for a person
] whose very existence has been skeptically queried. And
] who does a superb job of covering his traces, creating
] fresh firewalls around himself in the very moments when
] he appears to be giving his identity away.

Here is another take on Salam Pax..

canada.com | 'Salam Pax' plays Americans for fools in Iraq

] The Iraq invasion is the first major war on the Web. Now
] that the tanks have started rolling, millions of
] Americans are crowding the Internet to catch up on the
] latest news, see pictures, and send e-mail to loved ones
] in danger. After you've checked out Slate -- it was your
] first stop, right? -- here's where you should you go for
] updates, speculation, on-the-ground blogging, official
] statements, and even war comedy.

Link-o-rama from Slate.

The War on the Web - Sites to see on the road to Baghdad. By Avi Zenilman

Opinion roundup.

United Kingdom, Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian
Saudi Arabia, Nicolas Buchele in the Arab News
Philippines, Adrian E. Cristobal in the Manila Bulletin
Australia, Editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald
Ghana, Editorial from Accra Mail
Israel, Editorial from Haaretz
Russia, Boris Kagarlitsky in the Moscow Times
News Iran, Parviz Esmaeili in the Tehran Times

Salon.com | The world on the war

] On one extreme is the title of an editorial in the Syrian
] government daily "Teshreen," which characterizes the
] tripartite meeting in the Azores on Sunday as "The Summit
] of the Bloodthirsty." On the other extreme is an
] editorial in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan which calls on
] Saddam Hussein to "Leave or You Will be Dragged," a
] reference to a known event in Iraq's modern history when
] its leader's (Nuri Sa'id) corpse was dragged behind a car
] in the streets of Baghdad amongst the enthusiastic cheers
] of the crowds.

Translated excerpts of editorials about the war, pro and con, from daily newspapers in Kuwait, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.

MEMRI: '[Saddam] Leave or You Will Be Dragged' - Editorials in the Arab Press

] Open acts of defiance by opponents of Saddam Hussein's
] regime have intensified in the past week, with saboteurs
] carrying out attacks against Iraq's railway system and
] protesters openly calling for the overthrow of the Iraqi
] dictator.
]
] The most blatant act of sabotage took place 20 miles
] south of the north Iraqi city of Mosul when members of
] the Iraqi opposition blew up a stretch of track on the
] Mosul-Baghdad railway, causing the derailment of a train.
]
] Before fleeing back to their base in Kurdistan, they left
] piles of leaflets by the side of the track urging the
] Iraqi soldiers who were sent to investigate the explosion
] to join the "international alliance to liberate Iraq"
] from "Saddam the criminal". In a separate incident, a
] rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a train illegally
] transporting fuel from Baghdad to Syria.

Telegraph | News | Iraqis launch campaign of sabotage and defiance to undermine Saddam

] A country’s potential to warrant a U.S. military response
] is inversely related to its globalization connectivity.

There are some excellent observations in this article about the way that 911 focused the US military establishment on real problems and the way that military organization is changing. However, I'm not sure if I buy the primary premise, that lack of connectivity produces threats. The guy lists Yemen as an "end of the earth" from a globalisation perspective. I'm not expert on the middle east, but I'm pretty sure that observation is about 180 degress from correct. If I recall correctly, Yemen is one of the most cosmopolitain places in the Middle East, where immigrants outnumber naturalized citizens like 10 to 1. They are really really well connected.

So why are they a threat? Because, and really he does get to this in the essay but I think this point deserves much more emphasis, telecommunications and transportation technology have ended the relationship between ideology and geography. To be sure, if you grow up in a place that is poor, oppressed, and war torn, you are more likely to consider violence as an option then someone who grows up comfortable. However, is it really possible to remove right wing militia or left wing black blocs from the global security equation? Are these people less dangerous then Al'Q?

The lines will be drawn idealogically and not in terms of nationality, whether we like it or not. I think the fact that this guy is still leaning toward drawing lines on a map is evidence that he hasn't fully groked what is going on.

To paraphrase the Matrix, "There is no map."

The Pentagon's New Map

] The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks'
] campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New
] York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war
] against Iraq.
]
] Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which
] involves interception of the home and office telephones
] and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed
] in a document leaked to The Observer.

The Observer | Special reports | Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war