Saturday, 1 March

GEEK-SHEIKH: Spotlighting Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashed Al-Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister.

Sheikh Mohamed is known as a man with a special interest in promoting electronic technology in the Islamic world. He owns a multimedia company which is involved in web development and design, e-learning and also runs a number of other web sites.

In April 2000, Sheikh Mohamed visited Al-Azhar University and spoke with Grand Iman Tantawi there about initiating a project to preserve manuscripts using electronic methods and a database. They are establishing a portal called www.azharonline.com which is expected to open next April with the motto: Bringing Islamic Civilisation to the World.

The project is expected to take three years to complete with the first phase being managed by www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae.

The events surrounding 9/11 contributed to the motivation for the project.

From a story by Sherine Bahaa in Al-Ahram Weekly Online in the 27 Feb - 5 March issue.

Friday, 28 February

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS: Ahead of the Arab summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, Jordan’s Mahmoud Rimawi, writing in the semi-official Amman daily Al-Rai, calls on Arab leaders to use the meeting to demand Saddam Hussein’s resignation as the surest way of preventing war. —From the Arab Press Review in Lebanon's Daily Star Online.

Friday, 28 February

CIRCLE OF FIRE: Iraqi soldiers have allegedly dug trenches on the outskirts of Baghdad with the intention of filling them with oil and setting fire to them. The smoke is intended to foil the use of laser-guided bombs, an important part of the US arsenal. [SNIP] The Pentagon said that although smoke would disrupt the use of laser-guided bombs, US warplanes also have a significant arsenal of satellite guided bombs which would be unaffected. —From a story by Julian Borger in today's Guardian.

The Pentagon warned journalists yesterday that they should consider getting out of Baghdad.

''If there is military action, it is going to be a really, really bad place to be,'' said chief Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.

—From a story by Thomas M. DeFrank in the NY Daily News.

Thursday, 27 February

RUMMY AND SADDAM-- Two TV Interviews: While we were watching Saddam Hussein on CBS TV, Secretary Rumsfeld was being interviewed by Jamil Azer on Al Jazeera TV. Here's a link to the DOD transcript for anyone with the time and curiosity to read it.

SADDAM TV: I am left with essentially two impressions of the Dan Rather interview. First, I am sorry to say that this encounter reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And second, there's the issue of the overall cut of his jib. I think he went to great lengths in trying to present himself as a suave, sanguine and cultured gentleman. But if he really were a gentleman, he would do the honorable thing and take a ''vacation'' in Switzerland or the Maghreb. In other words, he would do ''a Marcos'' and bow out gracefully. But he insists that he will not go into exile. I think it is safe to say that many of us intensely wish he would. And even Secretary Rumsfeld expressed this idea in his TV interview captioned above. Only a very deluded soul could believe that Saddam Hussein could win in a military confrontation with the Allied Coalition. The other prospective scenario would remind us of how General Noriega ended up, and there would be no dignity in that for Saddam Hussein. Going on ''vacation'' would at least leave him with his dignity intact.

Thursday, 27 February

THE GEEK NEXT DOOR: An indictment yesterday involved Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a citizen of Saudi Arabia who is a graduate student at the University of Idaho who is charged with supplying money and computer expertise to the Islamic Assembly of North America.

The mujahid (warrior) must kill himself if he knows that this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies. In the new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.

The foregoing was an excerpt from one article on the Assembly's web site, courtesy of the AP's Jonathan D. Salant.

Wednesday, 26 February

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF: People went about their business normally in Baghdad. Traffic was heavy, stores did bustling business and intercity buses arrived from and departed for remote Iraqi provinces. But police in green uniforms and black berets patrolled around the Foreign Ministry with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. A pile of sandbags was erected on one of Baghdad's main shopping streets. Two policemen in camouflage stood atop the minaret of a downtown mosque.

According to the official Iraqi News Agency, Saddam Hussein told the 18 provincial governors that citizens of Iraq have to dig deep trenches in their gardens that they should get into if there are air raids.

--From a story by Niko Price for AP.

Wednesday, 26 February

IF YOU READ ONLY ONE ARTICLE TODAY . . . set aside this one for a quiet quarter hour when convenient later this evening. It's not a short piece, but it's short enough to copy for reading offline if you have to. A couple of brief excerpts follow.

Fadel Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden books down their throats until they choked.

''These people are mad,'' said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous modernist poets. ''They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant's death machine.''

This compelling op-ed essay was written by Amir Taheri.

Wednesday, 26 February

COMMAND DIRECTOR: Associated Press is reporting that General Franks has flown to the Persian Gulf and is at his command post there for meetings with the various branches of the military services in the area. It is his first visit since mid-December when he supervised a computer exercise called Internal Look designed to test the military's new communications network.

Wednesday, 26 February

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Thursday through Sunday in the Baghdad area will be partly cloudy with haze; High - 60 to 65 (F), Low - 34 to 40 (F); moon in last quarter with new moon on March 3rd; Sunrise 6:36 am / Sunset 5:57 pm.

Tuesday, 25 February

IRAQ HACK: Yale's LawMeme reports that IRAQ DAILY was hacked apparently over the weekend and its website defaced with Anti-Saddam messages. Screenshots are included here. The screen captures may be on an Israeli website which may not be accessible to readers who surf under censorship.

Tuesday, 25 February

''IRAQ IS TOAST'' Being reported now in the Australian media and linked via Instapundit: Richard Butler, former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, has predicted the crisis over Iraq could come to a head within days. I suspect he's right.

Tuesday, 25 February

NEW FLOW-CHART: The BBC reports that the UK has released a new flow-chart ''likely to lead to war against Saddam Hussein:''

24 Feb onwards: US-UK new resolution due

28 Feb or soon after: Blix written report to Security Council

1 Mar: Missile destruction must start

7 Mar (around): Inspectors oral report to Security Council

10 Mar: US-UK will force UN vote on resolution

Prime Minister Tony Blair says that ''peace is not a lost cause,'' but this flow-chart establishes a clearly defined window which is Saddam Hussein's last opportunity to disarm in compliance with the UN resolutions.

The BBC also now has an-easy-to-understand description of Iraq's Al-Samoud 2 missile explaining how and why it is in violation of the UN established rules.

''The Al Samoud is a scaled-down version of the scud-- but not scaled-down enough.''

Despite the commendable clarity of the flow-chart, it seems to me that if these missiles are in clear-cut violation, General Franks is well within his bailiwick to destroy them just as he has been regularly destroying other armaments. So, it wouldn't surprise me too much if one day in the not-so-distant future, we wake up to the news that he has done so. The only question then is whether the Iraqi Military responds with a violent reaction.

Tuesday, 25 February

GROUCHO'S DUCK: I suppose it was inevitable that guys who are in the habit of betting on football games would start betting pools on Iraq invasion dates. Via Buzz Machine we learn that there are several of these pools now. Fortune Magazine, of all places, has an article about it. And that doesn't even take into account the Brits who are famous for their bookies and odds makers. Or maybe it only seems inevitable because Sports Illustrated has just distributed their annual Swimsuit Issue. But I don't think the Pentagon is going to go by a standard formula.

Currently, General Franks sends out regular bombing sorties and then announces publicly on his website what was hit along with the details. They have been bombing missile launcher accoutrements and cable relays and such over the Southern No-Fly Zone. It seems strange but no matter how many times General Franks bombs this stuff, the Iraqis persist in moving more prohibited materials in this zone. You would think that after a few times they would learn that they can't succeed in this, but they keep doing it.

I'm no military expert by any means, but here's what I think is going to happen. When you drive an airplane or a car and you're out tooling around, it doesn't take much to hook a left. One of these days (sooner rather than later) while they're out on one of these sorties, General Franks is going to tell them to hook a left, and they're going to demolish those prohibited Samoud misiles. Then if the Iraqis are foolish enough to respond, the Pentagon will react with full, devastating force, while probably using the Samoud incident as a diversion away from the rest of their entrance into the theater of engagement.

The way most of the guys seem to be calculating, they're going by the book according to a pretty standard formula with their bets. But we know that the military is loathe to relinquish the element of surprise, so I don't think they're going to approach this project the way they've done it a couple of times before. The guys who are expecting to see the cable TV studs talking on the roof doing a standup during the 6:30 pm news when tracers start to fly and big booms start sounding off in the background, I think are going to be disappointed.

But that's just my humble opinion.

Monday, 24 February

BRITISH WAR REPORTING: The UK's MediaGuardian profiles the journalists and others who would be covering a military campaign against the current Iraqi regime.

And the BBC's Iraq Questions Panel will include Rageh Omaar's View from Baghdad to whom one can send in questions.

Sunday, 23 February

ORDERLY TRANSITION: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spoke to a Sunday town-hall meeting of Iraqi-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, asking for their help should the U.S. oust Saddam Hussein. Attendees who included the Iraqi Forum for Democracy were recruited as interpreters and asked to coordinate plans for building a peaceful and democratic society after the current regime is gone. --From a story by Sarah Freeman, AP via Yahoo!News.

NEW FLOW-CHART DATE: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States will push for action on a new U.N. resolution on Iraq shortly after arms inspector Hans Blix reports to the U.N. Security Council on March 7. --From a story by Doug Struck in the Washington Post Foreign Service.

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