Y'know, it's a little odd that the Coalition -- meaning essentially the United States -- has the presumption of guilt assigned to it regarding the apparent destruction of a neighborhood in Iraq as a result of an aimed missile. When the United States presented its case to the United Nations regarding evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the international community, the international media, the Muslim media, some of the Muslim population, and Good Ole Days Radical Media in the United States shouted that the case hadn't been made, there was no proof of such weapons still in Iraq.

Today, much of the world's news focus is on reports that those darn bloodthirsty Americans have killed innocents again, implying that the current war is wholly unjustified, despite loud protests to the contrary. Why is it that Iraq, a country run by a leader repeatedly accused of atrocious acts of barbarism, is given the benefit-of-the-doubt when accused of posessing weapons of mass destruction but the United States, while information and evidence is censored by the Iraqi government, is accused of murdering civilians when the evidence is incomplete?

The logical answer says that media outlets are not interested in proper analysis or the truth, but, rather, in anticipating where public sympathy will come out, irrespective of who orchestrated that sympathy. They are after the advertising dollars. They are after the money.

Regarding the accusations of killing innocent civilians, here's my take. There are several possibilities.

First, it is entirely possible a target was selected and the attack went awry. Indeed, the weather of that day was unusual and extreme and, while planners try to compensate, their compensations may not be perfect. There is no moral fault in this. In the execution of any plan, nature forcibly varies some implementations, causing them to go other than in the direction desired. The loss of life is tragic. But that loss of life is one-to-one with the voluntary risks and loss of life experienced by Coalition forces. As one common Iraqi observer commented prior to the outbreak of hostitilies, yes, there is a chance, even a probability of civilian casualties, but the soldiers doing this are also taking risks.

Second, placement of Iraqi defenses by Iraqi authorities imposes significant risk upon the Baghdad population. It is well known that anti-aircraft fire, known as "AA", if missing its target, will invariably descend to the ground and has, prior to impact, sufficient kinetic energy to damage and kill anyone unlucky enough to be beneath it. Moreover, should a "Low Blow" SA-2 or SA-3 Soviet-vintage missile be launched against an attacking Coalition aircraft and should that missile miss its target, that missile will continue in a ballistic trajectory and impact somewhere . These devices, equipped with high explosives, cannot distinguish between a successful intercept and an unsuccessful one. So, when they impact, they explode. I cannot understand how responsibility for this can be assigned to Coalition actions.

Third, and being my personal most plausible explanation, the impact of missiles in this innocent neighborhood may be a consequence of targeting something in Baghdad with cruise missiles. This happened in the first Persian Gulf War as well. In short, a cruise missile poses almost no risk to non-combatants and civilians if it is allowed to complete its trajectory to its target. The target is at risk, and that is all. However, should Iraqi or whatever opposition attack such missiles, which are travelling at subsonic speeds, with conventional anti-aircraft fire, it is possible they may be damaged and affected. If the cruise missiles are so affected, there is no guarantee where they will land. Also, these missiles are equipped with a ton or more of high explosive which is armed to detonate upon impact, irrespective of where that impact occurs, whether it is a military target or a civilian marketplace. After all, missiles cannot think.

Americans deserve more than half-baked news reporting. Americans will get more than half-baked news reporting.

Ars Technica reports al-Jazeera is under a sustained cracker or denial-of-service ("DoS") attack.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys, IMO. (;-)}

I didn't always support a nearly unilateral war in Iraq to topple the Saddam regime. In early February of 2003, I felt going after Iraq's regime was necessary but I strongly preferred the multilateral, UN route. As the final resolution approached the Security Council and before France threatened use of veto, I studied the question since the pro-war and anti-war camps were forming up. My stance is pro-war, particularly a unilateral or nearly unilateral war in contrast to my earlier belief. Five things changed my mind.

First, the UN and the Security Council made a joke of themselves between resolution 1441 and the lead-up to the implicit rejection of the UK-US resolution. I feel if that body is to be of any use, significant reforms should be made in its governance. People forget, as I did, that the UN has rarely been of use in international crises, the most recent being those in the former Yugoslavia and Africa.

Second, I listened to almost the entire UK House of Commons debate on the war question, from all sides. This convinced me that war prosecuted by the US and the UK was the only option, and it accounts for most of my conviction.

Third, I heard CNN's Larry King interview former UK PM John Major on his show and learned that, in his view, the reason why Saddam wasn't pursued in the first Persian Gulf war was because the coalition was then strongly multilateral. Indeed, Mr Major implied a unilateral approach had many advantages.

Fourth, the unqualified commitment and skill which the US Armed Services bring to the conflict to protect civilians, using intelligence, knowledge, skill, and technology wins huge respect from me. It is quite probably the single most ethical and moral war campaign ever waged. It is not surprising to me that the same decision makers who have committed themselves to this kind of war accepted the idea of embedding reporters along with units conducting it. I cannot understand how anyone who pays anything but the most casual attention to these reports can get things as wrong some media do. If the public does not understand what war involves, it seems to me the duty of news media is to educate them that loss of less than 100 lives out of hundreds of thousands in a war this intense for this time is remarkable. Some of them do achieve that education, in my opinion, but those who don't spin and select play to the most fundamental fears of their listeners rather than serving them. This kind of education has applicability beyond the immediate war, to educating public expectations regarding numbers of casualties in the aftermath of a terrorist attack with bioweapons.

Fifth, I also read and listened to the history of the Iraqi Kurds. This is a highly persecuted people who have, with the air protection of the UK and US, managed to erect a democratic government which shows great promise serving as a model for other ethnic groups in Iraq, despite their disadvantages and while being mostly Muslim. I saw a CNN interview in one Kurdish town where, after women, children, and most men left, fleeing to the mountains, one guy remained behind, explaining that he was elected alderman and it was his responsibility and duty to do that until the next election. That is what I call democratic commitment.

The Kurdish story moved my wife and I a good deal and we have made donations to the Kurdish PUK to help their people until our success in Iraq. I have also urged my Congressional representatives and President Bush to be sure Turkey does not send forces into Iraq of any kind. (Besides protecting the Kurds, what the hell do we owe Turkey? They stuck it to us during preparations for this war repeatedly and passed on $30 billion in aid.)

Finally, I am really disappointed with the rhetoric of the anti-war movement, even if I disagree with them. Their perspective and their arguments pretend nothing has happened in 30 years, being from that Noam Chomsky sort of anarchist tradition. I heard good arguments against the war in the UK House of Commons. I don't agree with them, but they were quality. This US anti-war stuff is really tired, forgetting that the world and the US has changed a lot in thirty years, completely unaware of what concerns people today.

There's a lot been written and said about spin various media are applying to news from the war in Iraq. Some observers interpret this focus to political and editorial agendas on the part of the media. Obviously, media outlets like Al-jazeera and Democracy Now have their axes to grind, and I wonder if they feel any journalistic limits to their practice, but it may be that most media are simply following the money trail.

Perhaps some media think that the low ground occupied by the anti-war folks is unconquered and that they'll garner a greater and repeat readership if things don't seem to be going as well as they are in the war. I've often thought that the biggest challenge for any news media is facing the question "What am I going to write about today?" This is why media is so fond of stories like O.J.Simpson, the D.C. area snipers, and wars. To allow that to distort reporting, of course, is simply bad journalism. The tendency of some American news sources to do that is why I like to read some of the British press instead, notably The Economist.

But it's hard to assign the systematic distortion, censorship, and presenting opinion as news practiced by Democracy Now and The Village Voice to seeking profit or merely appealing to a particular audience and constituency.

There are commentators who accuse CNN and the BBC of presenting biased coverage. But compared to these others, their presentations are very balanced, in my opinion.

Concern regarding GPS jamming capabilities procured by the Iraqis noted in this journal a couple of days ago has been apparently relieved.

This morning's military briefing from Coalition campaign headquarters in Qatar noted, in response to a reporter's question on the point, that 6 GPS jammers were detected and all six have been destroyed. In a neat indication of the potency of Coalition countermeasures, one of the GPS jammers was destroyed by a GPS-guided weapon.

CNN, among other sources, is reporting that, according to Coalition intelligence, Iraqi Republican Guards have been given orders to use chemical weapons should Coalition troops approach Baghdad closer than some predetermined distance.

My personal concern is whether or not this is a setup for a fairly standard response of a megalomaniac in his pre-death throes, typified by sordid events like Jonestown. Specifically, why wouldn't Saddam order his most trustworthy troops to "gas" his own population rather than allowing it to pass uncontestedly to opponents in a conflict.

There is a technical concern being voiced by the United States to the Russian Federation regarding GPS jamming equipment which they, allegedly, have provided to Iraq. In fact I believe a formal diplomatic protest has been filed with Russia. Russia denies it ever did such a thing.

The U.S. Air Force is playing down the significance of this jamming, whereas the manufacturer is claiming they can achieve complete inhibition of GPS transmissions.

Whether or not Russia is providing these units, they might be available on the open market. Also, this capability was apparently anticipated because field tests of such jamming were conducted, and awareness of such navigational countermeasures has been alive for some time.

CNN is reporting that the Pentagon is concerned Iraq may have more advanced radar than they thought . Specifically, Iraq seems to have known what direction the stealthy F-117A Fighter Bombers which took part in last night's "decapitation raid" were coming from. The concern, presumably, is based upon a report from quite some time back that advanced Tamara radars stolen from the Czech Republic. These radar have stealth detection ability.

Of course, the U.S. still has quite a bit of reserve firepower which can be applied, stealth or not. But such a capability is of concern because this stealth technology, used on the F-117A and the B-2A Advanced Technology Bomber, is expensive, difficult to develop, and important, and could be a weakness if a more robust and sophisticated opponent were faced.

One problem with ezine-like blogs is that sometimes, a body just wants to rant or comment and, like Michael Swaine and Hypercard, to do it properly with a topical blog, it has to be bent to fit. Hence, a Slashdot blog.

My other blogs are On Middle-earth and Visiting the SAS zoo. The former is about Tolkien-related fantasy and the latter is ostensibly about SAS, the overpriced statistical, business intelligence, and data mining package. That blog actually covers a lot of ground, principally through a loophole where I interpret gawk to be a "poor man's SAS data step". (See also another explanation.)

Although like a lot of people doing software and information technology, I've been short of work in the last year, I have realized once again that programming and coding is a true love, something far more organic than was satisfied by a lot of the artsy software engineering fluff practiced during my final days with the IBM Federal Systems Division in Owego, NY, after we had been sold to Loral which later sold the facility to Lockheed-Martin. The need now is for lightweight code, applications and utilities written without formal specifications or requirements, done quickly, cheaply, smartly, and and reliably. Deflation and international competition demand these of businesses today, even of governments and universities.

So, I've been doing scripting languages, ANSI C, PERL, and gawk, primarily to support embedded software development and data warehouse development.