April 6, 2004

Damn good coverage from the Washington Post of the Fallujah battle – which rather invalidates the last sentence of the last post. The US Marines have an institutional history of being rather better at political war than the Army, going back to their 19th century role in Latin America – as evidenced by this quote:…

CNN link “Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq. The source said al-Sadr’s followers controlled the governor’s office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim’s holiest shrines. Iraqi…

Thanks to the excellent Spy Blog, the blog operated by the Watching Them Watching Us campaign for the regulation of surveillance technology, I now know that the controversial Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act 2001 made it a criminal offence to “detonate a nuclear weapon in the UK without permission”. What? All these years it was…

Well, it has all finally happened. The potential for trouble represented by the Shia militias has been converted into actuality, and General Abizaid’s staff have supposedly been given 48 hours to think of possible sources of reinforcement (link). A cynic might say that Muggins Britain will be top of the begging letter list when it…