Not much to say, except that being on vacation in a foreign country is an excellent way to avoid following the blow-by-blow war coverage. Finally found a good internet cafe in Prague, which is how I'm updating now. Basically we've been busy relaxing.
It's been very interesting to be here while reading Adam Smith. I understand better what Communism did to this country. They stole all the wealth -- the capital, the means of production -- and they pissed it all away over the next forty years. They ran textile mills in Central Europe! Even Warren Buffet gave up on textiles in the 1970's!
When an industry runs at a loss, that means wealth is being destroyed.
Jane Galt writes:
US Calls off UN VoteThe President will speak to the nation at 8 pm tonight.
Alea iacta est.
Can we lay off the Caesar-crossing-the-Rubicon-and-creating-an-empire quotes already, please? Even if you genuinely feel that the U.S. is going the way of Rome or (worse) George Lucas's old Republic, please, for the sake of us all, just stop. Find a different inappropriate historical analogy.
Blogging has been light because it turns out that for me, writing is incompatible with the heavy beer-drinking program I've been following here in Prague.
I can just feel your sympathy.
Anyway, a couple of quick Czech news notes follow, and then off to bed.
It looks like the Czech government hasn't decided yet about whether to commit its chemical decontamination team to the coming war in Iraq. They're pretty good, so I hope they can help us. Actually, I really hope that we don't wind up needing their help.
There was a bomb scare at the main railway station today, about three hours after I met somebody there.
And Canada won't come along without another UNSC resolution. Anyone surprised?
Got here Tuesday morning. Jetlag was mercifully light. I think it helped that we napped for a few hours on Tuesday afternoon. There's never any consistent trick to overcoming jetlag, I find. There are just better and worse trips.
We watched a Lithuanian movie -- The Lease -- part of the "Days of International Film" festival. My best irrelevant observation so far is: if that film had been made in Hollywood, they wouldn't have used the actress's feet. They'd have used a foot model.
Before the main feature there was a short claymation movie called PIRAT, which was about a pirate. He drank a lot of rum, ate fish, and shot things with his musket. Immediately before the pirate movie was a trailer for Bowling for Columbine (including the bank/gun scene that's been debunked elsewhere), and while I was watching this pirate shooting birds and octopi, I thought: Of course, the United States is the world's source of cartoon violence.
Right.
How do people pronounce "academe"? Is it ah-kah-DEM or ack-a-DEME?
It can't be the former, or else don't they'd write it properly -- italicized and with a grave mark -- acadème?
But how could well-educated (snobbish!) people slaughter French pronunciation with the latter?
And what's wrong with "academia"?
I hear a raspy voice saying, "Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark sidewarbloggerdom will be complete." But I can't stop myself:
This Mark Steyn column is a must-read!
My favorite line was
‘Containment works’ ... given what North Korea managed to accomplish under the dozy eye of UN inspectors, not for us in the long runYes, he did just say that. North Korea's not the problem. North Korea is the place. The UN inspectors are the problem.
And since I'm talking about North Korea, let me say that I was very pleased with the President's remarks touching on Clinton in Thursday's press conference:
My predecessor, in a good-faith effort, entered into a framework agreement. The United States honored its side of the agreement; North Korea didn't. While we felt the agreement was in force, North Korea was enriching uranium.That's a very polite way of saying that Clinton was snookered, without implying that Clinton screwed up.
So far, I think Bush has been successful at one of his major goals: restoring dignity to the office of the President. I hope he keeps it up. In particular, when he leaves office (whenever that will be, in 2004 or 2008), I hope he re-instates the custom of silence from former Presidents. (Yes, Mr. Carter, Mr. Clinton, I'm speaking of you.)
Although there's lots of funny stuff on the internet, this is something special. I don't remember how long it's been since I've laughed until tears stream down my face.
I used to be a self-described cat lover.
Now I'm not.
I still like our cats. Our two cats.
But the others -- our housemate's two cats, and the two cats we're watching for a friend who's living in England -- I tolerate, just barely.
They piss everywhere (into an outlet, once). They vomit everywhere. They fight through the night. They yowl and scratch the doors.
Never again am I going to have six cats in one house.
Damian Penny notes that the Observer has edited the alleged NSA message to restore the "original" spelling.
They also modified the "headers". My earlier post records what they used to have in the From: line. Now it's
From: FRANK KOZA [???] Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16More like a memo -- no "@" sign in the From: line. But why would a memo have a record of the hour and minute sent? And the Observer calls it an "email"; so why does it have a "Sent on" line instead of an Internet-standard "Date:" header with a properly formatted date (like this: Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 12:00:05 -0500)?
I wasn't really trying to start a conversation with Colby regarding the bombing of Cologne. I was just pissed off and needed to vent. But I did it publicly: that was stupid.
As Colby writes:
[UPDATE, March 2: Sam Mikes takes umbrage with my entry on the flattening of Cologne, though on frankly unclear grounds
I was irritated at his dismissal of C. David Noziglia's claim (in a letter to Virginia Postrel), that the USAAF deserves credit for the survival of the cathedral. Certainly not all the credit: Colby justly pointed out that the cathedral's survival of the 1000-bomber raid is no credit to the USAAF. But in subsequent raids when the USAAF was dropping bombs, further damage to the cathedral was minimal even though it lies quite close to several legitimate targets. So the USAAF deserves some credit.
And on losses, six bombers lost in air-to-air combat may not seem like much compared to 41 (according to this page) lost in the 1000-bomber raid. But the figures aren't directly comparable. The nominal B-17 strength of 3rd Air division was only 520, I don't know how many planes flew that day, and I only have hearsay figures (reported in 1st Air division's logs) on air-to-air losses for this day. For the 1000-bomber raid, we know that 41 of 1047 aircraft were lost but not to what cause (RAF has estimates). I haven't been able to find detailed numbers on daily aircraft losses per missions flown, and I don't care enough to go to the library over this.
Colby and I probably agree that inaccurate, self-important American grandstanding is unpleasant. Perhaps we disagree on whether this is what Mr. Noziglia was doing. But we probably agree that bombing Cologne is a stupid topic for continued discussion.
Don't really know what to make of this. The observer is reporting that the NSA put out a special tasking order on UN Security Council members' UN missions during the first few weeks of February.
They have a memo. But as Drudge points out in his inimitable style, the released text of the memo doesn't seem to be written by an American:
ALLEGED 'TOP SECRET' TEXT OF NSA EMAIL...
BUT WAIT: WOULD AMERICAN NSA EMPLOYEE SPELL FAVORABLE 'FAVOURABLE', RECOGNIZE 'RECOGNISE' AND EMPHASIZE 'EMPHASISE' IN BRITISH TONGUE?...
WOULD NSA REALLY TIME STAMP EMAILS '31/01/2003 0:16' IN EUROPEAN FORMAT?...
NAME IN ALLEGED EMAIL IS 'KOZU' AND OBSERVER STORY CLAIMS TO HAVE CONTACTED A 'KOZA'?...
The other thing I don't understand is if this is supposed to be an e-mail or a paper memo. Look at the "From:" line: From: FRANK KOZU@Chief of Staff (Regional Target) CIV/NSA on 31/01/2003 0:16 . That's not an Internet e-mail address, nor is that Internet time format. If it's supposed to be a paper memo, what's with the '@' sign? Or does the NSA use Lotus Notes?
If so, we're all in very big trouble.
And ultimately, what's so outrageous about this? Doesn't every country try to read other countries' mail? Certainly I expect that all five permanent UNSC members have ordered their intelligence services to predict the likely votes of the rotating members.
Most of all, I don't get the Observer's title. "Dirty Tricks"? How? Are we going to organize the delivery of 10,000 pizzas to Angola, COD?
Colby's just wrong on this one.
"Miraculous" indeed seems an understatement for the Cathedral's survival of the initial 1000-bomber raid. But its later survival did involve some care on the part of allied bomber crews. Here's an aerial view of Cologne, before and after the war. Note that up is approximately south in these photographs (see map of modern Cologne).
The cathedral is near the main railway station, a railway bridge, and the Duetzer bridge. These military targets were not totally destroyed in the thousand bomber raid, or were subsequently rebuilt. We know this because subsequent raids targeted them: for example, this documents a Jan 6, 1945 mission by the USAAF 92nd bomb group which targeted the Duetz briges. Here's an account (click "Missions" on the left, then "October, 1944", then "October 14") of three successive days of raids on Cologne's rail yards in late 1944:
October 14: Cologne
The marshalling yards were hit by 30 planes with unobserved results. Flak was heavy.October 15: Cologne
A return visit saw fair results on the marshalling yards. "Lady Luck" (41-29128) received severe flak damage and returned on 2 engines. Upon landing, it crashed, killing 3 crewmen.October 17: Cologne
The marshalling yards were again hit, with unobserved results.
This brings me another claim of Colby's. What did he say? Ah yes: Of course it's nice to avoid bombing churches during the day late in the war, when you have command of the skies. His sneering implication is that these raids were milk runs. Nope. There was heavy flak. Certainly the establishment of air superiority over Germany helped protect allied bombers from German fighters, but air superiority doesn't mean no enemy planes flew. Consider the report of 401st Bomb Group's mission 196 (Jan 15, 1945), which targeted the railroad bridge:
Once again the 1st Air Division was spared Luftwaffe attacks, which again were directed at B-17's of the 3rd Air Division. Six 3rd Air Division bombers were shot down, but the Luftwaffe was decimated by the guns of the bombers and by the Allied fighter escort
By the way, the cathedral is only 300m from the east side of the railroad bridge. The bridge itself is over 400m long. The report states that 96% of the bombs fell within 1000 feet (300m) of the target. High-accuracy bombing probably prevented unnecessary damage to the cathedral.
As regards daylight bombing, The Military History of WWII sums it up thus:
The USAAF suffered far greater losses than the RAF during the bombing raids, mainly due to their insistence on carrying out attacks during daylight, when the fighters and gunners found it easier to defend.The focus on daylight bombing was not because the USAAF loved German civilians (witness Dresden). USAAF command was trying to use its bombs in the most efficient way possible. But a side-effect of this was a reduction in harm to the civilian population.