After a short hiatus due to snail mail from Basra involving wrong addresses and the usual off-line world confusions I give you the forth letter written by our illustrious ‘Man in Basra’. The following has been written partially as a response to
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August 15th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The always interesting Victor Davis Hanson chimes in this morning with a warning about the ongoing conflict with Islamist barbarians. His message: it is highly unlikely that the barbarians can win this war, unless we hand them a victory:
Like Mr. Hanson, I believe that it is a conceit, a fatal mistake, to treat a war as a court proceeding, and to try to apply peacetime norms in a wartime environment. The danger with the new era of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ is that the threat is much more nebulous, making it that much more difficult to confine the wartime dispensation. We have already seen plenty of ‘slop’ in the US, as the Justice Department is already using its ‘anti-terrorism’ powers to go after pornographers, drug dealers, and so forth. The dilemma is quite real, and I don’t see any easy answers other than eternal vigilance combined with bloody-minded realism. In other words, pretty much what has preserved the spirit of liberty through past crises. August 11th, 2003 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Steve Sailer is a name I hear now and again, every few weeks, but I know very little about the guy. Someone commented on this, which I wrote last night (about men wearing their shirts outside their trousers), to the effect that Sailer had something to say about this, about a week ago, that was relevant. I couldn’t find it, but I did find this 1995 piece about the nuances of why race relations in the US army are so much better than race relations in US colleges. It’s no surprise to me that treating people in a totally meritocratic way, regardless of race, makes for better inter-ethnic relations, or that armies can’t allow inter-ethnic rivalries to build up in the ranks, so they don’t. So it was another less than completely obvious idea that I found striking in this piece, which is that the way for an unpopular racial or ethnic group to make an admired impact on the wider society is for it to concentrate and conquer niches rather than disperse and try to do well across the board. Sailer’s point is that academic racial preference policies undermine (to name but one of their many drawbacks) this benign process, by over-dispersing the group supposedly being helped. → Continue reading: Niche achievement versus dispersed failure – Steve Sailer (and me) on race relations July 25th, 2003 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Reports are coming in that both of Saddam Hussein’s mass murderous sons may have been killed during an attack by US Forces on a house in Mosul in Northern Iraq. Early reports said ‘seized’ but SkyNews is currently (17:40 GMT) reporting live from Mosul saying US reinforcements are “pouring into the area” and bodies at the house “have a strong resemblence to Uday and Qusay”. Let’s hope the reports are confirmed soon!
…and to the US forces who did it: way to go, guys! July 22nd, 2003 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
On this day, nearly two hundred years ago, the artillery, cavalry and red coated infantry of Britain, along with their Dutch and Prussian allies, finally put an end to the tyrannical rule of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Belgian wheat fields of Waterloo, near Brussels. It was the Duke of Wellington’s greatest triumph. Given that this blog is of course, such a great fan of the French political class (heh), I trust no readers of this publication would be so vulgar and unsophisticated to point out this salient historical anniversary to their friends and colleagues today. I just thought you would like to have this titbit of historical information, gentle reader. “Up Guards, and at ’em!” 
June 18th, 2003 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
British troops injured in war are being forced to pay for private medical treatment or join the long patient lists waiting for operations on the National Health Service. A staffing crisis in the Defence Medical Services (DMS) means that more than 10,000 soldiers – the equivalent of 15 infantry battalions – are currently not fit for frontline duty. Large sections of the Army will be declared un-operational because of the number of troops waiting for surgery unless there is an emergency injection of cash. Commanding officers have been rationing the private treatment but the amount of money available to each unit for private healthcare is not enough to reduce the number of servicemen and women waiting for operations. The Telegraph reports:
In addition to the pain and inconvenience caused by the injuries, service personnel are “medically downgraded”, if the injury prevents them from carrying out their duties. They are unlikely to be able to undertake courses which are physically demanding and cannot be deployed on military operations. Their pay can decrease and they may be passed over for promotion until fully fit. This is just one example of how Blair’s government is treating the armed forces. The undermining of the British military is a result of a profound distrust of it by the New Labour establishment, despite the fact that the armed forces are the only state entity that has consistently bailed the government out of its botched policies (foot and mouth crisis) and allowed Tony to play a world statesman (Afghanistan, Iraq). Blair achieved a measure of uncritical popularity with the American public, due to his support of Bush’s determination to depose Saddam. He risked his job and support of his voters at home in order to do that. It may be commendable and we wholeheartedly supported his efforts that resulted in the liberation of Iraq. We did so without any delusions as to his statist convictions, in which near messianic zeal mixes with autocratic tendencies. However, those on the other side of the Atlantic harbouring inflated opinions about Blair, and occassionally making preposterous comparisons of Blair to Winston Churchill or other great British statesmen, should examine the way their pet foreign leader behaves on the domestic scene. Let the Telegraph article be an eye opener to the true nature of the valiant Prime Minister Blair and his tightly led pack of ministers. We at Samizdata.net do not trust the man further than we can throw him. So watch this space, we will be reporting on the latest development in Blair’s successful dismantling of other worthwhile British institutions.  
Churchill Not Churchill June 15th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Ministry of Defence is leaving no stone unturned in its investigations of the allegations against Colonel Tim Collins:
Say it isn’t so!! A ‘military culture’ in the British Army? Has the world gone stark raving mad? ‘Military culture’ has no place in our armed forces and it must be rooted out forthwith. May 24th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
To all intents and purposes, the war has been over for a few days now, bar the shouting. Oh sure, incidents like the sabotage of the arms dump earlier today are going to be a problem for quite some time to come, so it is not exactly ‘Miller Time’ just yet, and I fully expect a few ‘messy days’ ahead. The war, however, is over and the police action is beginning. What I am interested in is, from a purely military point of view, what went right and what went wrong? Which weapons performed as advertised and which did not? Which systems and organisations did better than expected and which did worse? Was ‘shock and awe’ a Terrible Swift Sword or a damp squib… or bit of artful misdirection? Can we start trying to pick through the propaganda and extract the signal from the noise, or is it still too soon? In short… it is time for those who are interested in such things to start trying to figure out what the text books are going to say about this war in 5 years time. For example, there is some interesting stuff on Intel Dump, such as some discussion of the 11th Aviation Regiment’s repulse near Baghdad. As significant military set backs like that were so rare, the ones that happened will no doubts be analyzed to the point of obsession. Similarly there have been some spectacular images of just how tough the A-10 Warthog proved to be even after a severe pounding. 
Hard as nails… the aircraft is pretty tough too So… who has some good links to reports to contribute? Leave a comment! April 26th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Once again Australians are celebrating ANZAC Day. It seems only yesterday I was writing about it here on this blog but another year goes by and yet again, British and Australian soldiers are on Middle Eastern soil together.   April 25th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
There will be no ticker-tape parades for the returning heroes of Gulf War II and, given the current political and cultural climate, I suppose that is understandable. However, one would have thought that Mr.Blair might at least see the benefit of a suitably discreet pause before publicly shafting them:
So it appears as if the Royal Irish Regiment, whose members fought with such gallantry and tenacity in the Battle for Basra as far back as…ooh, let’s see…a few days ago, are to be issued with a whole new set of marching orders. Thanks very much, chaps, now fuck off! The irony can surely only be desribed as breath-taking. Whilst neither Saddam’s Ba’athist thugs nor his Republican Guards could put so much as a dent in them, their very existance as a fighting unit is about to be sacrificed by a government that will stop at nothing in a (vain) attempt to appease the brooding war-dogs of Sinn Fein/IRA. April 22nd, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
In British military vernacular they are called ‘bumpy jumpers’, but they are a sight more chilling to the very hearts of Islamic fundamentalist extremists than an approaching squadron of B-52s wheeling in for an attack run. Women without veils… Good looking blonde women without veils… Good looking blonde women without veils with guns!  April 18th, 2003 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
The news that Kirkuk, centre of the northern Iraqi oil industry, has fallen not to the coalition, but to US backed Kurdish Peshmerga has electrified the Kurds and horrified the Turks. I suspect that the Jash (pro-Saddam Kurds) are going to be cut to pieces unless they manage to find the few coalition troops in that part of Iraq to surrender to. The Turkish foreign ministry has said any attempt by Kurdish forces to take permanent control of Kirkuk would be unacceptable to them. They are claiming on domestic Turkish TV that the US has promised remove the Peshmerga from Kirkuk once order has been restored, and that Turkish military observers will be going there to make sure this happens. Firstly I do not for one minute believe a word the Turks are saying: I would be astonished if the USA was idiotic enough to make such a rash promise to the Turks, who frankly do not have all that much political capital to call on in Washington D.C. at the moment. The US would be insane to alienate the highly motivated Peshmerga, who it must be remembered have made great efforts to assist the lightly armed US forces in the north. What possible motivation does the US have to get in the middle of this? Secondly, what Turkey finds ‘unacceptable’ in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan is unlikely to impress or intimidate the Kurds any more. The usual internal Kurdish squabbles have been replaced by the PDK and PUK actually fighting along side each other in displays of uncharacteristic unity (yesterday on TV I saw a veteran BBC reporter marvel to see soldiers from the two groups coming out of the same bus!). The Peshmerga are not only better situated politically than any time in the last 25 years, they are also better armed, better organised and thanks to the US Special Forces, better trained. Once the Ba’athists are gone, the Kurds will be able to turn their undivided attention towards any Turkish incursions into Iraq and no prize for guessing who is scooping up all the heavy weapons and ammunition abandoned by the defeated Iraqi forces around Kirkuk. The facts on the ground are strongly in the Kurds’ favour. This problem was entirely predictable and is entirely of the Turkish state’s own making. As I have written before, I have no sympathy for them and it is hard to see how it would be in the interests of the US or UK to try and crush the legitimate desires of Kurds for self determination. April 10th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
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Yes! it is being confirmed that Uday and Qusay are dead. Good riddance to two of the most evil psychopaths to walk the earth in recent times…