A REVEALING POST from the BBC reporters’ blog:

The prime minister has just delivered a speech which he’s wanted to give for a long time. Tony Blair is pleased not just with what’s happened-Saddam’s capture-but also how. We all imagined that if the Americans got a tip off they would just bomb somewhere off the face of the earth.

But he was captured without a shot being fired. He’s looking healthy, he’s not been tortured, he’s being handed over to Iraqi justice.

(Emphasis added.) Not tortured! And no mindless bombing! Imagine that!

Revealing, as I say. Read the whole blog, though, which has a lot of useful information about Iraq, as well as revealing evidence of the BBC worldview.

UPDATE: Major Sean Bannion emails from Baghdad:

Being no friend of the media I can confirm what some of your readers have already told you when they say “you can hear the dejection in their voices” from the media.

In the case of the CPA press conference you could see the disappointment on their faces and in their mien even if they asked a reasonable question. They were at least polite enough not to openly pooh-pooh Ambassador Bremer, LTG Sanchez and Dr. Pachachi.

But you can REALLY get a sense of the media’s tone when you read Reuters’ cutline from the photo of a captured Saddam:

“A photo of Saddam Hussein after his capture is shown during a press conference in Baghdad, December 14, 2003. U.S. troops captured Saddam Hussein near his home town of Tikrit announced U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer on Sunday, in a major coup for Washington’s beleaguered occupation force in Iraq. Photo by Reuters”

I’m actually HERE and I don’t consider ANY of us “beleaguered.”

No, Major, but they’d like for you to be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Merde In France reports: “Baghdad Celebrates, Paris Frowns.”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Rosen emails that we shouldn’t put credence in reports of reporters being dejected about Saddam’s capture.

Well, I’m just relaying others’ reports, but I have no reason to doubt their sincerity.

Possibly they’re misinterpreting the nature of the response, of course — but if I were one of those reporters, I’d wonder what I was doing to make such misinterpretations so widespread. Here’s a longish blog essay on the subject.

MORE: Rosen emails back: “Journalists are as happy as other Americans. Their problem is that they don’t quite know how to express that.”

THE CORNER has a lot of posts on the Saddam capture, including a lot of reader comments on how disappointed the media folks look. But Joe Biden is hitting a different note:

On with Dan Rather a few minutes ago, Joe Biden said (when asked about how this affects the Dem race)that if we can capture Osama and Mullah Omar and stabilize Iraq and the president gets re-elected, that’s just fine with him, and best for the country.

The BBC, on the other hand, seems worried that Saddam was “humiliated” by his capture. Expect this meme to spread throughout the Coalition Of The Pissy. That’s not a bug — it’s a feature!

Er, depending, of course, on whose side you’re on.

UPDATE: Tim Blair has found some more people who aren’t that happy about Saddam’s capture.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Porphyrogenitus has numerous observations — just keep scrolling.

THE COMMAND POST is all over the Saddam-capture story, and is probably your single best place to go for links and developments.

Meanwhile Eric Scheie ties together the Saddam capture and the Atta story with an interesting observation.

WELL, THIS IS EVEN BIGGER NEWS, and it seems to be confirmed:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 (UPI) — U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein without firing a shot after learning he was hiding at a farm house near Tikrit, Iraq, officials said.

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said members of the Fourth Infantry Division found Saddam hiding in a “spider hole” about six to eight feet deep. Troops also recovered various small arms, a taxicab nearby and $750,000 in cash, just south of Tikrit.

There were no injuries, and Sanchez described Saddam as “talkative and cooperative.”

Hmm. Let’s ask him about the Atta thing, and see how cooperative he really is.

UPDATE: So, on the one hand, he’s caught (I assume by now it’s clearly not one of those doubles), and that’s likely to be a rather major blow to the “insurgents” — though I rather suspect that some of that has been supported by Syria, Iran, and Saudi elements in the hopes of keeping the United States busy. With Saddam gone, though, it’ll be harder for them to escape responsibility, which is likely to cause them to reduce their exposure in this area. That’s unalloyed good news, unless we’re looking for an excuse to invade Syria.

On the other hand, we’re confronted with the question of what to do with Saddam. I’ve thought about this before, and the options seemed to break down this way: (1) Shoot him out of hand. Appealing for a variety of reasons, but not really our style, and obviously we decided against it. (2) Try him for war crimes ourselves. Potentially messy, and perhaps looking a bit imperialistic to some. (3) Turn him over to the Iraqis and let them try him.

The last is the most appealing for a variety of reasons, as long as we make sure that the process isn’t in the hands of covert Saddam loyalists, which shouldn’t be hard. On the other hand, he’s likely to have some value in terms of information and cooperation, which might encourage people to want to cut a deal with him. That’s tricky: He’s a dreadful guy who deserves to be executed, probably via a plastic-shredder or some similar method, in light of his crimes. (A Mussolini-style ending probably would have been best, in my opinion). But he may offer enough to make his cooperation worthwhile, though letting him live, or go into exile (where would he go?) seems troublesome too, and offers him the possibility for future mischief.

I imagine that this has been given a lot of thought at the highest levels. It’ll be interesting to see what they do.

Meanwhile, Josh Chafetz predicts: “Guerilla attacks will intensify for about a month before they start melting away.” That’s probably right. Oxblog also links to video clips of Iraqi reactions, which are along the “Death to Saddam!” line.

Jeff Jarvis has a roundup of Iraqi bloggers’ reactions, and lots of other information. Human Rights Watch wants an “international tribunal,” which is reason enough to seriously consider turning Saddam over to the Iraqis. Jarvis also Fisks the “coalition of the pissy” that is already spinning this negatively.

Pejman Yousefzadeh has much more including a not-to-be-missed set of “before” and “after” shots that should be circulated around the Arab world. Tacitus has comments, too. N.Z. Bear is rounding up reaction from a lot of blogs.

And several readers have emailed to say that “you can hear the dejection in their voices” at the BBC and NPR. I wish I could discount this, but I can’t.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s another roundup of blog reactions. And Winds of Change has a post up on this.

Tim Blair has more, including more reaction from the Coalition Of The Pissy. It appears that George Galloway is remaining loyal to Saddam, to the bitter end. Hey, at least he’s capable of loyalty!

STILL MORE: Just read the entire Atrios post that Jeff Jarvis Fisks above. How very lame. But here’s the part, not included in Jarvis’s post, that I found most pathetic — and revealing: “And, cynical me just has to ask – who’s the enemy now? The base needs one. Did they really call it ‘operation Red Dawn?’ oy.”

Oy, indeed.

WELL THIS IS BIG NEWS if it pans out:

Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.

Interesting. Stay tuned.

“GRAY GOO” MAKES THE NEW YORK TIMES — which reminds me that I promised to write more about the EPA Science Advisory Board meeting and nanotechnology. It’ll have to be later, though: I’m off to see Master and Commander.

HEROMILES offers a way to help out by donating your frequent flier miles to returning troops.

THE NATION DIVIDED: Military blogger Iraq Now offers a mixed review.

DAVID BROOKS: “I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush’s administration has allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs.”

JUST GOT THE WEEKLY STANDARD’S PDF EDITION (it’s for the issue that comes out Monday), and a whole page (actually the better part of two) has been turned over to Zeyad’s photos and reports from the Iraqi antiterror marches. That’s quite an accomplishment for a previously unknown blogger. And congratulations to Jeff Jarvis for sending the digital camera that arrived just in time to make this possible!

And speaking of the advantages of digital over film, the camera that Jeff sent will also record web-quality video with sound. I hope that Zeyad will take advantage of that. I’ve offered to provide hosting if bandwidth is an issue. You can argue about film for art photography, but for photojournalism, digital rules — and the capacity to do tv news via the web is an awfully cool thing to have, especially when it comes with a camera that costs a couple of hundred bucks.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has posted the Weekly Standard page. And he’s asking for help on how to get support to Iraqi bloggers.

STEVEN DEN BESTE is savagely Fisking Human Rights Watch, which seems determined to destroy its own credibility. Den Beste’s conclusion: “Their behavior is disgraceful. Sadly, it is also consistent. The world could use a high-profile non-partisan group willing to shine a spotlight on the worst abuses of human rights around the world. It’s too bad Human Rights Watch isn’t it.”

WOULD ANSEL ADAMS HAVE GONE DIGITAL? Interesting question, which sets off an interesting discussion on Slashdot.

I’m skeptical, myself. I’m very enthusiastic about digital cameras, and they’re especially great for the web, but film is still a lot better in terms of quality. In fact, I was recently looking at these pictures by photographer Naomi Harris, and I noticed that pictures taken with film look better, even on the web. Harris is a purist — she uses medium-format film, and no photoshop — but even on the web the colors and detail in these pictures are striking. (She told me that a number of magazine people she works with think that scans from film look better than native digital images in the same resolution, though they’re not sure why, exactly).

Back when I was a photographer (and, briefly, a professional one) we told ourselves that 35mm film was as good as medium- and large-format in most applications. I believed it until I did some large-format work. When you see the kind of detail in an 8×10 contact print — or even an 8×10 print from a 4×5 negative — you realize how untrue that is. Now we’re telling ourselves that the newer breed of high quality digital SLR cameras produces pictures that are as good as 35mm. I don’t think that’s true, either, and I’m sure that the quality can’t touch medium-format film. (Nonetheless, I have my eye on this one).

That’s not a knock against digital, which has its place — and an expanding one. But I think that film is a long way from being obsolete in applications where quality matters, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gain the kind of appreciation that vintage analog gear has gotten in the sound-engineering world. I suspect that Ansel Adams, who enjoyed experimenting with Polaroid, would have enjoyed experimenting with digital cameras. But I don’t think he would have given up on film.

On the other hand, gigapixel digital images just might do the trick. . . .

UPDATE: By the way, if you didn’t check it out when I linked it earlier, the Smoky Mountain Journal is a pretty cool digital photoblog that, er, focuses on the Smoky Mountains.

ANOTHER UPDATE: PhotoDude Reid Stott weighs in in defense of digital imaging. As for Ansel, we get mixed reports. Reader Doug Plager emails:

There are few things in life I claim to be an expert, but…I believe I can confidently answer the question of Ansel Adams’opinion of the digital photography revolution. I quote from his introduction of volume two “The Negative” from his “The New Ansel Adams Photography Series” 1981, wherein he states “I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.”

Proof that Adams would have devoted much time and attention to creating images via digital media. Back when it mattered, I claimed that when pixel density approached grain density in conventional film the debate would end. In retropspect I was being very pessimistic. With present day edge detection alogrithms pixel density need not be anywhere close to grain density to produce equal image quality.

To quote the great, if self-effacing, photojournalist Gerry Winogrand “light on a surface, that’s all it is, light on a surface.” With elegant simplicity, Winogrand puts these technical debates in their proper perspective.

On the other hand, reader G. Hogan emails:

Not a chance. I attended one if his lectures/presentations, during the Q&A he was asked what kind of camera he preferred, the answer: “Any thing that will create a negative.” His work was done more in the darkroom than in the camera. His picture of Mt. McKinley was the result of three days of waiting for the clouds to clear and then he exposed one negative in an 8X10 camera and went home to create the photograph in the darkroom. The reproductions of his prints look good until you see the actual prints. The man was a true artist.

His description of the “Moonrise, Hernandez” picture taking was most memorable: “We were driving along when I saw the scene, stopped the car and mounted the camera on top of the car. I had forgotten my light meter but I knew that the moon was F8 and 125th. The print required a lot of dodging in order to bring out the town in the foreground.”

This is from nearly thirty years ago, but I still remember his words.

I’ve seen quite a few genuine Adams prints, and I agree that they’re a whole different experience from even the best reproductions. The one thing I feel pretty confident about is that Adams, if he did digital, would use Photoshop. . . .

Finally, reader Louis Rossetto points to photographer Stephen Johnson and suggests that if Ansel Adams were around today, this is the kind of work he’d be doing. Could be. Here’s one other thing that’s for sure: Though I’m a huge admirer of Adams, my personal photographer-hero is Walker Evans, and he would definitely be shooting digital.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis reports that Newsweek is 80% digital.

HERE’S MORE on the media’s selective attention.

SOME MIGHT SAY THAT IT REALLY SHOULD BE “thalatta, thalatta!” But I’m not such a pedant.

THEY’RE NOT ANTI-WAR — they’re just on the other side:

Just when you thought the German “peace” movement couldn’t get much more hypocritical they take things to a whole new level. Last week the unbelievable lack of protest at the German government’s plutonium and arms deal with Communist China made it seem as the peace freaks had all rolled up into a big ball for a long winter hibernation.

Not so! The German TV news program “Panorama” uncovered some of the wonderful activities that particularly dedicated cadres of the German peace movement are currently engaged in. In the spirit of peace, a number of groups have started a fund-raising campaign entitled “10 Euros for the Iraqi Resistance”. The money will be provided to the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) a group dedicated to carrying out attacks against US soldiers in Iraq in collaboration with Saddam loyalists. The common goal is to “liberate” the Iraqi people from the evil imperialist American occupiers. On their website these groups gush with enthusiasm about turning Iraq into another Vietnam for the USA.

I think that one reason so many lefties have gone crazy regarding the war is that it is exposing their hypocrisy — and even more damaging to their self-image, their lack of moral stature — so clearly.

UPDATE: Bill Herbert has more on this.

MARK STEYN IS DISSING SALAM PAX:

At the beginning of this year Salam Pax was just another typical oppressed Baghdadi, four of whose relatives had ‘gone missing’ (according to his Guardian biog.). But a couple of weeks in the company of Guardian editors and he’s been transformed into a note-perfect, sneering, metropolitan poseur, right down to the two-decade-old Rambo putdown. He sounds like a Channel 4 commissioning editor. Now you might think this is a tad ungrateful of Salam: some of that tomato juice on the rug is from his four missing relatives and, given that the Americans have seen to it that his own juice is no longer in danger of hitting the shagpile, it might be nice if he understood that, in the end, it’s in his interest to clean up the room more than Rambo’s. But personally I find it heartening: if the Americans can’t transform Iraq into New Hampshire, this snotty little twerp is living proof that you can at least turn it into Islington.

Harsh, but Salam was snotty. No sooner did I post this than a reader noted that he’s actually back in Baghdad as of a couple of weeks ago, though he wasn’t there when he was dissing Bush. Sadly, I don’t read Salam’s blog much any more — I find Zeyad, Omar,and the other, second-wave Iraqi bloggers far more interesting and useful these days. Perhaps now that Salam is back in Iraq his blog will become more interesting.

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT ORCS AND ELVES, I know a troll when I see one. . . .

A RESERVIST GOING TO IRAQ is soliciting advice. If you can help, do.

THANK YOU ANDREW! In response to my earlier post noting more donations than usual, reader Patrick Anders emails:

Or maybe Andrew Sullivan should perform his beg-a-thon more often. I hit your tipjar when I hit his, or the Corner’s, or Lileks’s. All are more aggressive than you about asking for help, You should thank them. I’m one of many whose browser “favorites” buttons link all four sites.

Thanks to The Corner and Lileks, too!

UPDATE: Reader Paul Havemann emails:

I, too, was inspired by Andrew Sullivan to hit your tip jar as well. And as I did so, it hit me just how much weblogs have changed the world:

For the first time, I’ve donated money to a lawyer *willingly.* Yikes! Who knows where this can lead?

It’s another Internet miracle!

IT’S BLOG CUBA DAY over at the wonderfully-named BabaluBlog. It’s kind of like the “Carnival of the Vanities” with better weather. . .

QUICK-THINKING AND HEROIC ACTION BY TIME’S MICHAEL WEISSKOPF:

Michael Weisskopf, a Washington-based senior correspondent for Time magazine, was seriously wounded in Baghdad late Wednesday when a grenade exploded in the U.S. Army Humvee in which he was a passenger. James Nachtwey, a Time contributing photographer, was also in the vehicle and was injured by the blast.

Weisskopf, 57, a former Washington Post reporter, likely saved the lives of his companions, including two U.S. soldiers, by attempting to toss the grenade from the vehicle before it exploded, said several people familiar with the incident.

Weisskopf lost his right hand, but is now in stable condition. Please join me in offering him thanks for his bravery and quick response, and a speedy recovery.

LEE HARRIS offers an assessment of Howard Dean’s military policy.

UPDATE: Alex Bensky emails:

I’m sorry in a way to have followed your link to the article on this topic. I have voted Democratic in every election in which I’ve been eligible. I wish I could take back the one for McGovern. If there was ever a year to vote Prohibitionist that was it.

But despite Bush’s economic and financial policies, which I think do verge on class warfare, I may wind up voting for him. Certainly I never heretofore even considered the possibility of voting Republican for president.

Elmer Davis once wrote that “the first requirement of any society is that it win its war.” I don’t think Dean understands that we are at war. I don’t think he knows much about foreign and defense policy, and I deeply distrust his instincts. Nor would I have any confidence in the advisors he’d likely choose.

There are very few issues which alone would determine my vote for president. This is one of them. I think it has to be.

Well, Dean is, I think, still feeling his way, and there’s always the possibility that he’ll improve.

HEY, HERE’S an Iraqi protest that the Washington Post deigns to cover. It’s a lot smaller than the one Wednesday, but it’s against an American action, so it must be news!

Susanna Cornett offers some thoughts on the protest coverage that seem applicable here:

I think you’re correct to a degree that the lack of coverage has to do with the media’s conscious or unconscious preference on how the reconstruction goes in Iraq. However, I also think the media reflexively thinks that anti-establishment protest is more “honest” and newsworthy than anything supporting the establishment – and in their view, anything conservative or associated with a conservative administration is by definition “establishment”. I also think they’re suspicious of demonstrations supporting the US or at least tracking a parallel position because they assume the US had some role in setting it up. So it’s what you said, but it’s also part process as well as ideology because they’re lazily activating their frames rather than critically assessing the situation.

I’m reading up on research on media framing right now, which is why this leapt to my mind. Essentially, for the most efficient production of news the media as a whole has developed frames, pigeonholes for news, that quickly organize raw information that comes in. They assess a situation, associate it with an established theme, and file it away there. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but what happens is that journalists either become lazy and mentally assign a situation to a theme or frame without critical assessment of it, or they don’t examine the ideological foundations of their themes and assume the theme/frame is based on some objective reality when in fact it’s a subjective categorization. Like any categorization method, this means that some aspects of the situation are ignored and others emphasized in the process of making the decision.

A CNN reporter hearing about this may see “support for US interests” and mentally file it under “administration hype” (shorthand: ignore) rather than seeing “Iraqis freely demonstrating” and “Iraqis rising up against terrorists” and filing it under “Important changes” (shorthand: cover).

Frames are passed along as part of the culture of journalism. Not always bad, but like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when they’re bad they’re horrid.

Just some thoughts on what’s going on. I think the media is in part ideologically hostile to the administration, but I also think some of this is just lazy pigeonholing. Which doesn’t diminish the harm, just shifts the bias from a wholly thoughted partisanship to lazy perpetuation of faulty themes.

I think this is largely right, though it’s interesting how often “mere laziness” conveniently leads to the same result as “outright bias,” isn’t it?

Meanwhile Gerard Van der Leun offers a media psychoanalysis of his own.

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Schwartz comments on Cornett’s take:

Frankly, I have difficulty even believing the “laziness” excuse. This was an anti-terror demonstration, by and large, not a pro-American demonstration. When thousands of Iraqis take to the streets to condemn terror, it’s quite a stretch to file that under “American propaganda — safe to ignore”. I’d say, rather, that this is an unconscious ideological bias, unwilling to acknowledge details that don’t fit a particular worldview.

That doesn’t sound like professional journalism, does it? And if we assume that it’s NOT necessarily ‘unconscious’ bias, then it’s even worse.

There’s no way this works out to make them look good, that’s for sure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dennis Culkin emails:

Just FYI, was listening to C-SPAN on the radio this morning, and Philip Taubman of the NYT said, in reaction to a caller’s question, that HE HADN’T HEARD ABOUT THE IRAQ DEMONSTRATIONS. Wasn’t aware they had occurred. Too lazy to look it up, but Taubman’s a bureau chief for the NYT now. And he was literally unaware of the events.

I was a journalist way-back-when. Susanna Cornett’s “laziness/frameworking” analysis explains much of the plain mediocrity or incompetence of much media coverage on many different topics. But it’s gone way beyond that. If a NYT bureau chief hasn’t heard of a significant event that’s part of the current leading global story, it’s confirmation that major media in Iraq are literally not covering the story, in the most basic sense.

Well, it’s pretty embarrassing.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Sink emails:

I saw where your reader Janice Brown discusses “Demonstrationgate” and suggests that we explore this issue. I personally think that what we are witnessing goes beyond the Demonstration, to a much more fundamental change. My feeling is that this is a time where the bulk of the American public is becoming more likely to trust the Government for news than the news media itself. I do not have much to base this on, except people I know keep saying that “I can’t trust the news anymore”( not that we totally trust everything the Government tells us either). However, it reflects what I feel: that the major news media organizations are simply to ingrained to provide anything close to a balanced content within the news casts.

If true, this is a revolutionary issue with the American public not seen since the opposite happened during the Vietnam war. In both cases one side was putting out information that is clearly in contrast to the actual situation on the ground. So, in this case, maybe Iraqi is like Vietnam.

Interesting. There certainly does seem to be a “credibility gap” developing.

IRAN’S PRESIDENT WEIGHS IN ON WEBLOGS: Nice to see that they’re noticing.

AUSTIN BAY ISSUES an Iraq war and post-war report card. Grades are mixed.