House of the rising Moonglum

Check out Bush using Letterman’s manager’s shirt to clean his glasses.

Wow. I’d like to think this is out of context, but damned if I can see how.

Much like the 200+ soldiers that have died in Iraq “not in combat” some 749 Americans were drowned in a training accident in WWII 60 years ago yesterday. There were 4000 troops loaded up on landing craft on a top secret mission to practice the D-Day invasion. LSTs are not meant for naval warfare, and were chewed up when some uninvited German torpedo boats showed up. By way of comparison, that is more American soldiers in a single operation, in under two hours, than in the entire war in Iraq up til now. And since is was a training mission for D-day, it was kept strictly secret. Fortunately now, 60 years later, they are getting some recognition.

It is especially odd that the disaster was kept secret even after the war. It sounds like one of those situations where the entire operation was so secret, that when they radioed for help no one knew what was going on, so the landing ships were left at the mercy of the german torpedo boats. It is the only known time where LSTs battled combat ships on their own. After having lost 1/4 of their soldiers, they completed the training operation. One possible reason that it was kept secret even after the war was that it was simply completely overshadowed by the 2,500+ American KIAs on D-Day. But still… What does this tell us? That you need a massive war like WWII to keep something like this secret? Or that it is easier than we thought and we may have no idea how many are dying now.

You have to love it when the dictator of your country who came to power though a military coup is pushing for a peacful solution to your countries problems more than the religious leaders. I have a hard time seeing Musharraf giving everything over to India. But it is nice to see a leader there willing to try to talk things through.

Why is Jesus Day my birthday??? I suppose this is some sort of spinoff of the WWJD movement.

I’ve always liked my Grandpa’s take on that whole thing… “I don’t know what Jesus would do, but I know one thing he wouldn’t do, and that’s buy some stupid hat for $10!”

Here is another, perhaps more accurate, suggestion for a new flag for Iraq from my buddy Ayman.

Too much violence today, so how about a story about a life saving Roo! This story is very lassie. “Roo? Did dad get hit by a tree? Oh no!”

Have you seen the new Iraqi flag?

Ug-ly. I literally thought it was a joke when I first saw it. (And I really mean literally. Literally!)) I used to be pretty into flags, but this is just… ugh. I figured they would just take the takbir off and be done with it. From the 1991 attempt by Saddam to get the support of the Muslum world:

to the original Iraqi (Baathist) flag:

The more I think about it thogh, the more it makes sense to get a new flag. That flag was introduced in 1963 after the violent Baathist overthrow of the populist (and communist) Qasim who was considered a hero to millions of Iraqi poor. His republican flag takes us back to the prior, slightly less bloody revolution that he led with his army buddies. (They ended up breaking up over the decision of wether or not to join the Arab union. Egypt and Syria had joined into a pan arab state, and the military (sunni bathists) wanted to join and Qasim did not, as a communist nationalist. This is not the first time that the Baathists had pandered to pan arab nationalism to serve their own purposes.)

Another idea could be the flag of the hashemite kingdom (installed in 1939) which they overthrew. This flag in turn hearkens back to the old mesopotamian flag from the 20s:

But really who likes a king that the British give you. So maybe a new flag isn’t a bad idea after all. Especailly since this one will probably just exist until there is an elected body in office to make a new one anyway.

You know, I know that u-turns are illegal in the city of Chicago, but I guess I just never really thought that hard about it. 14 years of perfect driving record, smashed with a stupid u-turn. *sigh* Well at least I can do driver’s school online. 14 years. Ugh. And I can see the insurance company already… “What have you done for me lately?”

(If you do the driver’s ed to get it wiped from your record, they don’t even find out about it right?)

Ayman Zarqawi. He is a bad man. And a raving lunatic. Unfortunately a lot of people listen very carefully to him, since he is the inheritor of al Queda in the Middle East. He probably funded the foiled bomb plot in Jordan that I talked about yesterday (though CNN didn’t mention it until today, why?) and is now claiming the blasts in Basrah and Um Qasr. It also looks like he may even be the organization and funding behind the “revolt” in Falluja (though not the muscle. That whole getting martyred part he leaves to the poor and disillusioned Iraqis. Oh yeah, and those who get caught in the crossfire. (It also looks like they have been shooting a mosques and ambulances and showing the pictures to the press and claiming that it was the Americans.)

In any case, I finally saw some writings of his from February about the coming fight. The specifics about what he is going to do line up so well with what is happening that it is horrifying. The thing that I want to know is that if he is doing all these things why can’t we catch him? He is not Iraqi and it seems like someone along the line would turn him in.

This sort of thing often makes me question the overall value of religion. It is so crucial for holding lives together, and giving direction and meaning to many lost of our world, and yet because of that very nature, it is so easy to turn it to evil purposes. If someone comes to you looking for direction, you can twist religion to give them a poor direction. I suppose the answer is that anything can be twisted like that, e.g. Nazis or Stalinists, it doesn’t have to be religion, but religion does have a long history of causing strife rather than healing it.

In any case, his document starts out with all the religous drivel, but gets to the specifics of the operations at the bottom. If you look at where the bombs have been going off it follows his ravings quite closely.

One more thing, why does Al Jazeera always leave out this part when quoting this document:

[The Shi`a] the insurmountable obstacle, the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom.

This man hates the Shi’a more than he hates the Americans. What a lunatic. We need to capture him more than anyone elst right now. IMHO.

After receiving a license for expanded launch envelopes from the FAA (the first of it’s kind) a few weeks ago, scaled has successfully expanded that envelope. They have now successfully burned to 1.6 times the speed of sound, and broken 100,000 feet. For those keeping score “space” is at about 325,000 depending on who you ask, in any case that is what the prize is shooting for. So they are getting there, and looking good doing it too. At least they land on their wheels, unlike some of the competitors.

This one was huge, and in Jordan. It looks like in addition to being a massive explosion, it was laced with chemicals that could have killed up to 20,000 people. There is a point at which you really have to wonder what the point is? Just kill everyone?

http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com/

Now that is a link and a message.

This quiz is pretty lame, though I did get a 98. Did a few typos or would have gotten more. From both Pam and Mike. I found the format of the answers truly annoying. There were a couple I didn’t know, and want to know who the artist is, but they didn’t have it there. Oh well.

So, I’ve been reading all of these reports coming out of Fallujah from people who went there and were talking to doctors. The number being touted everywhere was 700 iraqis killed (I have seen numbers up to 1000 reported elsewhere with claims of US snipers killing ambulance drivers and pregnant women etc…). Well it is looking like the number is much lower. The Iraqi health minister announced that the total number of Iraqis killed in Fallujah since the siege began was actually 271. It turns out that the doctors were being pressed to lie about the numbers by the insurgents, freedom fighters, what have you. The truly amazing thing is that the nationwide total since the uprisings began this month are much lower than even the American estimate. Only 576 from 1000. Mind you, that is still an unfortunate amount of killing (any amount that is) but it does take some of the wind out of the sails of the people who claim that the US soldiers are indiscriminately killing Iraqis. What it does show is just how hard it is to know what is happening in the fog of war, and how easy it is to convince people of your story.

One interesting note, a common theme I hear is that the streets were lined with burning M1A1s. This struck me as highly unlikely, since I had never heard of one of those being blown up. A little research and I found the actual BDR list of US combat vehicles in Iraq:

M1 - 151 Hit, 3 Destroyed.
Bradleys - 16
M-113 - 23

And now they want to put our boys in those Strykers with even less armor?

Music: iTunes on random playing only songs with 5 stars. Did you know that Brittany and Rammstein are the same person? Du Hast -> Oops…. They both have that same gravelly trail off in their voices, and they both have a huge amount of post processing and some serious electronics giving the beat. And speaking of gravel in your voice -> Back in Black. Though AC/DC uses real drums. -> Blowing in the Wind. Oh yeah.

So, I play with the hedgehog. Well I like to think that I play with it. At least I can sit there really still so that it isn’t scared to move around. And then she runs all over the sofa. And me. And I begin to wonder if it is not that she is “happy playing with me” but rather simply exploring the new space that is the sofa. And I am part of that sofa. And in fact all she really cares about it running. And mealworms. She will stop to eat mealworms. With a most impressive and loud crunch I might add. But then its back to running. And if I put my hand in front of her she will run onto it and not mind when I put her back into her cage. And then more of the running. The wheel is critical. It is the only thing in her life that brings her joy. I am starting to think that even eating is just that thing that takes time away from running. As I sit here typing, she just put a good three hundred yards on the wheel. She runs so much she is actually starting to wear the wheel out!

There she goes. Running. Why am I reminded of Conan? Running running we are running. Thanks, Erin for teaching me the running song. Now it is stuck in my head every night when I hear Stella running. Speaking of which, if I am up all night talking about running, I won’t be able to get up tomorrow morning for my run. Of course I run less than a four inch animal. *sigh*

The Shuttle might be grounded, but the space station goes on. It is sad that the station has 5 people on board with a visiting crew there as well. I remember when I was looking forward to a time when we would have 12 people in space at once. I hope they are making progress on that new vehicle, but the way these things work, that won’t be ready for decades, and between now and then the shuttle will be permanently grounded.

But for now at least the station is still being manned, and that third slot on the transfer missions is actually being filled by a scientific cargo. And bringing the russians on board is looking like it was smarter and smarter.

There has been a whole bunch of bad news lately, I decided that we needed some good news. Last week there were a whole slew of terrorist plots that were interdicted. Looks like this “war on terror” has gotten agencies working well enough together that some of these things can be stopped.

The Phillipines stopped a major attack on their transportation network. They have been making a lot of headway on Abu Saayaf.

A small chemical bomb was interdicted in the chemical acquisition phase. This bodes well for those new checks put in on chemical purchases. (They were always there, but now they actually do something with them.)

Hungary stopped a group from blowing up the holocaust museum.

The UK stopped a HUGE bomb (half a ton!) from being built by some UK nationals. This was a very McVeigh type operation, local nationals using ammonium nitrate even. Any safeguard that is worth it should provide protection from both local terrorists as well as the foreign variety. This seems to have put the Aussies on alert as well. Good to see some international cooperation there.

This could be seen as “oh no there are a lot of bomb plots out there”. I prefer to see it as, none of them went off last week.

The problem with having a war is that it means that you end up ignoring other things. Take for instance the possibility of genocide in the Sudan. On the other hand, our lack or presence and a little negotiation seem to have settled things down, and maybe the initial reports were exaggerated. Still it is odd that something of this magnitude can slip by mostly unnoticed.

I’ve been reading a lot of different blogs lately, mostly Iraqi but some soldier’s ones as well. In particular there was one woman who got trapped in Kut. She is an MP I believe and guarding an Iraqi civil building in Kut with the insurgents hit. They put an RPG sniper at the top of every high building in town and pinned the soldiers and their Iraqi charges down in the building for 21 hours. They were in constant radio contact with the rest of their unit, but they were unable to rescue them. Finally the helicopters showed up and started clearing rooftops (interestingly the request for air support was actually turned down by the mayor of the town…? wtf?), and after driving all day and night a tank company rolled into town and rescued them. While this is all amazing, the truly depressing thing is that after they were rescued, the tank company convoyed back to their base, and lost three soldiers in a random event. The minute you let down your guard.

Which all makes today’s doonbury all the more meaningful.