HMM:

EXPERTS are examining suspected Scud missiles discovered by British soldiers searching a chemical plant outside Basra.

A number of the grey-painted rockets, about 23ft long, were found in the Dirhamiyah petro-chemical plant close to Iraq’s second city.

The discovery has raised suspicions that Saddam Hussein was planning to arm the missiles with chemical warheads. British officers say it is difficult to find an innocent explanation for storing missiles in a chemical plant.

The find comes a day after soldiers with the Black Watch discovered a cache of weapons, including two Russian al-Harith anti-ship cruise missiles, at the Az Zubayr civilian heliport south of Basra.

No doubt Blix will be on the case, as soon as the war is over.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Perron emails that these aren’t likely to be Scuds, because they’re too short. Here’s a link to a paper on Scuds that shows all the variants are considerably longer. He suggests that they’re likely Frogs. Such weapons would, I believe, be within the range limitations of the sanctions, though of course the chemical-weaponry aspects would be a violation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile the chemical weapons plant reported in Najaf, mentioned earlier, turns out to be a bust.

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN:

SO now an Australian cameraman has been killed by people most Australian commentators and many politicians said did not exist – members of Iraq’s al-Qa’ida connection. . . .

The revelation of the war is the extent to which the US-led coalition forces will go to avoid Iraqi civilian and even military casualties. Instead of relentlessly pounding a position with air power before they approach it, US-led forces, emphasising mobility and the psychological dimension of what they are doing, go near to a town and then try their hardest to convince the Iraqi forces to surrender, which spares their lives and their futures.

On the road to Baghdad the allies simply swept past many towns, leaving relatively small forces behind to isolate the town and negotiate the Iraqi surrender.

This is unlike any previous war and involves the coalition forces putting themselves at extra risk to try to avoid killing Iraqi soldiers unnecessarily, or destroying infrastructure that will later be needed for reconstruction.

It shows how different this is from total war and even from the first Gulf War.

There are real dangers in this approach, but no one can now doubt the real efforts of coalition forces to avoid civilian and military casualties.

(Via Tim Blair).

JUST HEARD A STORY ON NPR — rather a lot like this one from the Los Angeles Times — about Iraqi-Americans calling their relatives in Iraq and being asked “when are you (meaning American troops) coming?” As in the LAT article, the story noted that Iraqis were previously afraid to say anything that might be construed as critical of Saddam, but that now they aren’t.

RALPH PETERS WRITES that the war is going well:

March 25, 2003 — THE war in Iraq yesterday was a story of the dog – or many dogs – that didn’t bark. Iraqi forces remained unable to launch significant counterattacks. Irregular forces failed to mount serious threats to our rear area. Regime officals continued to wave their arms and tell us that now we’ve really made them mad. And allied forces continued to move toward Baghdad.

We lost at least one Apache attack helicopter, probably to an aircraft malfunction. But what no one at home got to see was the destruction our strikes left amidst the Medina Division of the Republican Guards – despite the Iraqis positioning many of their combat vehicles in civilian neighborhoods. . . .

Yeah, I’m being cocky today. Because I’m sick of being told how brilliant our enemies are and how our troops are going to get whupped up on by some Kmart Hitler. Might I pause in my literary endeavors to point out that, while our troops are approaching Baghdad, Iraq’s Republican Guards are still quite a distance from Washington, D.C.?

He’s not cocky throughout, and offers some legitimate worries, but he also offers a lot of useful perspective. Meanwhile John Keegan writes:

Wars do not usually obey Hollywood timetables. Progress can be slow and setbacks frequent. The Falklands, a short war by historical standards, lasted a month from the first landings to the Argentine surrender.

In Iraq the allies have done astonishingly well, having advanced nearly 300 miles since crossing the start line. This is one of the fastest advances ever achieved, surpassing that of the British liberation army in the dash from the Seine to Brussels in 1944. They have also secured the vital bridges at Nasiriyah, taken the Faw peninsula, captured Umm Qasr and isolated Basra.

Keegan is, however, worried that we don’t have enough troops on the ground, for which he blames the Turks, whose on-again off-again intransigence has produced the troop shortage as the Fourth Infantry has to go through the Suez and around to the Gulf before it can do any good. (Unless this is the mother of all deception operations. . . nah. Though it would explain otherwise somewhat incoherent behavior of the Turks.) I can’t help but think, though, that Tommy Franks knows how many troops he has, and what he faces, better than the rest of us do. And the rap on him has always been that he’s too conservative, not that he’s some hell-for-leather adventurer. I’ll spare you any armchair-generalship on my part. We’ll see, soon enough.

UPDATE: This analysis by Austin Bay is — as always — worth reading.

JAMES MILLER WRITES on America’s free rider problem.

WHY THE RUSH TO BAGHDAD? I’ve been wondering about this. There are obvious advantages to speed, of course, but we’re moving very, very fast. I wonder if part of the reason is that we don’t think that the Iraqis — burned, as I note here by the failure of the United States to go on to Baghdad in 1991 — will trust us to go the distance unless we, well, go the distance.

Remember the old saying: if you strike at a king, you must kill him. You certainly can’t leave him as king. That’s something we need to keep in mind.

THIS ARTICLE says that Americans are likely to support the war more in response to casualties, as long as they think President Bush means to stick it out. That does seem to be what the polls are showing.

“A few years ago, it was conventional wisdom that the American people would tolerate no casualties in war,” said James Burk, a sociologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. “My own research and the research of others has pretty well demonstrated that the American public is tolerant of casualties as long as the casualties are incurred in pursuit of a mission that they think is reasonable. The public will be patient as long as the casualties don’t seem to be the result of carelessness or incompetence.”

The public did not support, for example, President Jimmy Carter’s botched attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran because it was seen as ill-conceived and halfhearted, Burk said.

The Bush administration clearly understands that the American people are more “defeat phobic than casualty phobic,” said Peter D. Feaver, associate professor of political science at Duke University.

The article also includes the obligatory quote from Charles Moskos, who immediately makes clear that he doesn’t know what’s going on:

Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University, said support could start to dissipate quickly unless the nation’s elite are also sending their children to war.

If Moskos had read this piece instead of recycling Vietnam-era quote-mongering, he’d know he’s behind the curve:

Here’s a report about the earlier casualties.

The first is the U.S. pilot killed in the mid-air collision of the two helicopters, U.S. Navy Lt. Thomas M. Adams.

“He’s one of these amazingly clean-cut, all-American kids,” said his aunt, Elizabeth Hansen of La Jolla. “He’s the kind of kid that if you had a very special daughter, you would hope that she could snag him. He was just amazingly bright, funny and kind.”

Adams’ lineage can be traced to Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, his aunt said.

* * *

Adams’ late grandfather, Richard Croxton Adams, helped found Grossmont Bank and Heartland Savings and Loan. His grandfather, who moved to San Diego from Cleveland in 1948, helped rebuild the Old Globe Theatre and the Aerospace Museum after they were destroyed by arson.

Of course, you won’t find this on CNN. But isn’t an expert like Moskos supposed to know things that aren’t on CNN?

DAGH NIELSEN has a roundup of U.K. front pages. I favor the Daily Star’s. . .

LOTS OF STUFF AT WINDS OF CHANGE — and via email I hear that Tom Holsinger thinks that the “Fedayeen Saddam” are really Al Qaeda in drag. He notes that their M.O. of phony surrenders, suicide attacks, and murder of prisoners sounds like Al Qaeda. Interesting theory. (And this Mark Steyn column compares the P.O.W. footage to the Danny Pearl video).

Daniel Drezner thinks that Ba’athist resistance is a good thing, even if it drags out the war.

CNN MENTIONED SALAM PAX — and gave his URL. This isn’t cool.

More reason to hope the troops get to Baghdad soon, and keep Saddam’s goons busy in the meantime.

RAND SIMBERG WONDERS:

Is It Just Me?

Or is the press coverage this weekend reminiscent of the coverage of Tet? It was a US victory that was reported as a disaster, because the assumption was that the Viet Cong weren’t capable of mounting an offensive.

It’s not just you, Rand. I wonder why they’re spinning it this way. I mean, it shouldn’t be beyond the resources of Big Media to do the sort of comparison with Gulf War I casualties that we humble bloggers can do.

THIS STORY from the Financial Times says that “no chemical weapons have been found” at the plant in Najaf. Meanwhile this more recent story from Deutsche Welle says that UN inspectors are going to go inspect it as soon as possible. Huh?

Among the possibilities: The absence of chemical weapons onsite doesn’t mean it’s not a chemical weapons plant. Or, the UN inspectors, as usual, are going where the weapons aren’t. Or the reports are just confused — somewhere I saw a suggestion that the U.S. is deliberately downplaying it for obscure tactical reasons having to do with Saddam’s greater willingness to use chemical weapons once he’s proven to have them. Beats me. As I said originally, stay tuned.

UPDATE: A reader notes a tidbit in this story:

On the least visible front of the war, in western Iraq where no journalists are “embedded” with the U.S. Special Forces who parachuted in and took control of two airfields, Myers said the troops “found a huge arms cache, millions of rounds of ammunition and some documentation that needs to be exploited.”

This was “some papers” that will be examined by units looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, he said. “We have people set up to do that very, very quickly, because it might save thousands of lives if we can find out exactly where and what they have.”

Hmm. I can imagine a connection here, but, well, stay tuned.

UPDATE: And while you’re tuned, this post is worth reading. Then there’s this report, which should only be read after the prior link.

READER DANIEL MCCARTHY SENDS THIS LINK to a table showing aircraft losses in Gulf War I. And these are fixed-wing aircraft (of which, I believe, we’ve lost none to enemy action), not helicopters. He notes:

According to this site, by day 6 of Gulf War I, we had lost 19 fixed wing aircraft. My back of the envelope calculations puts that at 29 aircrewmen POW/KIA through 6 days. As of day 6 of the Iraq War, we had lost 1 aircraft to enemy fire,1 to friendly fire and 3 to accidents. All but one are helos.

Interesting. The one fixed-wing aircraft was the British Tornado lost to friendly fire. Tragic, but not enemy action.

ASPARAGIRL IS PROFILED IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: It’s a great piece, entitled A feminist decries pacifists’ ‘rubbish’.

OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA. . . .

THIS NBC POLL shows increasing support for Bush and the war:

Sixty-two percent of those questioned said the war was proceeding about as expected, while 25 percent said it was going better than expected. Only 10 percent said it was going worse than expected, though the poll was conducted just as reports about the fiercest day of fighting in Iraq were just beginning to reach viewers in the United States.

Fifty-four percent of respondents also said that resistance from Iraq’s military force was “about as expected,” while 31 percent said it was not as tough as expected and 10 percent said it was tougher than expected.

That’s consistent with the poll below, though not with the tone of the TV coverage. I guess Americans have developed an immunity to media hysteria. (Remember the shark-attack hype from Summer 2001?) As Ralph Peters wrote this morning:

As long as the American people keep their perspective – which they will – it really doesn’t matter how many journalists lose theirs.

Indeed.

YOU’D THINK that interest in the Dixie Chicks fiasco would have died down by now. But this BlogCritics item has over 200 comments, and they just keep coming.

Will the Dixie Chicks become the symbols of friviledge for the decade?

JOE LIEBERMAN says that the United Nations hasn’t earned the right to have a say about Iraq reconstruction.

Keep it up, Joe, and I might vote Democratic next time.

LISTENING TO NPR on the way home, it occurred to me that when the big war story is that one, count ’em, one helicopter was shot down, the war can’t be going that badly, despite the efforts of some to spin it that way.

UPDATE: From Sgt.Stryker.com:

Just a little context on the opposition. Really, they are just a bunch of armed thugs. The only reason the Fedayeen is able to cause the trouble they are is because our troops are being so careful to not harm innocents. Understand, the Fedayeen’s tactics are designed to take advantage of our superior morality. Saddam’s evil will lose out, the clock is ticking.

Yep. Will our efforts to spare Iraqi soldiers’ and civilians’ lives win us more respect, or less? Interesting question.

AT THE OSCARS, it was suggested that we should look to Frida Kahlo as a guide on the war. Eugene Volokh delves into what that would mean.

AND THE GOOD-TIMING AWARD IN PUBLISHING GOES TO. . . The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for its People, the Middle East, and the World, by Joseph Braude. It just showed up in my mailbox today, and it’s supposed to be out this week.

I haven’t read it yet, but it’s got blurbs from James Woolsey, Nat Hentoff, and David Landes, among others.

WHAT DO IRAQIS THINK OF THE WAR? Call them on the phone and ask!

As Iraqi Americans reach out to their relatives in Baghdad and Basra, in Kirkuk and Irbil, some are hearing words they never thought possible: Iraqis are speaking ill of Saddam Hussein.

They’re criticizing him out loud, on the telephone, seemingly undeterred by fear of the Iraqi intelligence service and its tactics of torture for those disloyal to the Baath Party regime. . . .

“I was shocked,” said Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., that promotes interfaith and interethnic understanding. “It’s very dangerous. All the phones are tapped. But they are so excited.” . . .

As war unfolds, Iraqis who came to the United States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are glued to the news, some staying up until nearly dawn to watch the latest developments. Some are thinking about returning to Baghdad to help in the country’s reconstruction.

Others are upset by antiwar protesters they believe have been duped by Iraqi propaganda. They are eager to celebrate the end of a regime whose abuses they recount with personal grief and pained memories.

Read the whole story, which is very consistent with what former human shields are reporting about Iraqi sentiment. Then there’s this, from an Iraqi-American who escaped Saddam:

“I’m so disappointed with the left,” said Darweesh, who considers herself a liberal. “They are in complete denial because it doesn’t fit into their equation of the Mideast. But Saddam is an Arab leader who has killed more Arabs than Israel ever has.”

The antiwar protesters, she added, are “very condescending. They are supposed to be for human rights, but the suffering of the Iraqi people just doesn’t exist for them. They deny us our stories.”

Yes, they do.

HERE’S ANOTHER INTERESTING BIT from the poll I mention below:

The survey found that the protests at home and abroad have done little to affect public opinion on the war-if anything, they have deepened support among those who already favored using military force against Iraq.

Seven in 10 said the anti-war rallies have not changed their opinion on the conflict. One in five-20 percent-said the protests have made them more likely to back the war, while 7 percent said it has increased their opposition to the conflict.

But not much sign of a move to “crush dissent:”

Six in 10 agreed that the demonstrations were a sign of a healthy democracy, while fewer than four in 10 said opponents should not demonstrate against the war because it was better for the country to appear united. Only one in six said such protests should not be permitted. . . .

Overall the survey suggests that few Americans have attended anti-war demonstrations (2 percent) or rallies in support of the war effort (1 percent).

Interesting stuff.

UDAY HUSSEIN, torturer of Olympic athletes? Well, yeah. TalkLeft notes that a complaint to the International Olympic Committee has brought no action (um, aren’t the French influential there?) and suggests bringing Uday before the International Criminal Court.

I think, however, that you’ll need a spatula to do that.

THESE MUSLIM TERRORISTS in India just killed more people than the entire Iraqi Army has managed since the war began.

Yeah, I know, they’re not strictly comparable, but it does add some perspective. Here’s more.

And James Morrow has some other comparison numbers, and points to this poll suggesting that Americans aren’t as easily panicked as the media:

More than seven in 10 Americans currently back the president’s decision to go to war, unchanged from the start of the campaign. Seven in 10-71 percent-approve of the way he is handling the situation in Iraq, up six percentage points from three days ago and higher than at any time in the past seven months. And Bush’s overall job approval rating was unchanged at 68 percent.

The survey found that eight in 10 Americans believe the campaign is going well, although only about a third said it was going “very well” for the United States. Even opponents acknowledged that the invasion seemed to be accomplishing its goals: 63 percent of those against the war also said it was going well for allied forces.

Overall, two in three said the war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was progressing about as they had expected-and more Americans (19 percent) said the conflict was going better than they anticipated than those who thought it was going worse (10 percent). . . .

Despite reports Sunday of fierce fighting and growing allied dead or wounded, half of those interviewed said that the number of U.S. military dead and wounded so far in the war were about what they expected them to be. One in four said casualties were greater than they initially thought and an equal proportion said the losses were smaller than they had anticipated.

Interesting. They must read Lileks.