Thursday, September 12, 2002

Good Morning!    Your Current Nationwide Threat Level is still What Dan Rather wouldn't    In Pigdog Journal, Negative Nancy interviews Adam and Todd, who hacked and shot their way across Afghanistan for Frontline Dispatch. Send a Marine    An Unlikely Hero is an amazing story by Rebecca Liss in Slate about Marine Corps veteran Dave Karnes, who left his job in Connecticut, donned his old uniform, drove to Ground Zero, bluffed his way past Security and found two of the twelve survivors.   Wake-up call is a story in The Guardian about retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper of the U.S. Marines, who, playing the role of Saddam Hussein in Millennium Challenge ÷ the "biggest war game of all time" ÷ kicked his own country's ass. An excerpt:   Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran clearly takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, "so I decided I would attack first."   Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.   It was at this point that the generals and admirals monitoring the war game called time out.   The upshot:   The name Van Riper draws either scowls or rolling eyes at the Pentagon these days, but there are anecdotal signs that he has the quiet support of the uniformed military, who, after all, will be the first to discover whether the Iraq invasion plans work in real life.   "He can be a real pain in the ass, but that's good," a fellow retired officer told the Army Times. "He's a great guy, and he's a great patriot, and he's doing all those things for the right reasons."   Thanks for the second link goes to chrishola at .foXinternet.   Here's a New York Times op-ed about Millennium Challenge by Nicholas D. Kristof.   Beauty of Gray's Thomas Turnbull gives the op-blog treatment to the matter, citing other blogs along the way. Bracket yourself    A fine /headstone.   I still want mine to say he was almost finished. Wave hii    My other blog, Skywave, is back on the air after a 4-month hiatus. It seems to have lost all the links on the left, but otherwise it's fine. Collective memory    Digital Collection archives screen shots from 9/11/01, Lou Josephs points out. [Doc Searls Weblog] 11:06:13 AM

© Copyright 2003 Peter Loats. Last update: 2/28/03; 7:24:52 PM.