FACT-CHECKING PAT BUCHANAN, over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

(Buchanan: “See! I told you there was a vast conspiracy of you-know-whos out to get me!” [There’s a conspiracy of Volokhs out to get Pat Buchanan? — Ed. He’d better hope not. . . .])

THE FIRST IRAQI SURRENDERS have taken place. May there be many more.

UPDATE: This sure sounds like it:

Masses of Iraqi soldiers are deserting and senior members of President Saddam Hussein’s ruling family circle are defecting as the countdown to a British and US invasion reaches its final hours.

In northern Iraq, on the border with Kurdistan, up to three-quarters of some Iraqi regiments have already fled.

In the mainly Shia Muslim south, Kuwaiti border guards are having to turn Iraqi soldiers back – telling them that they must wait until an attack begins before they can surrender.

And in a highly significant development in Baghdad a half-brother of President Saddam, who is regarded as the dictator’s closest adviser, has fled in the past week to Syria.

Of course, you never know how much to make of these early reports. And why are we making them wait?

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Morrow writes that according to Australian TV they’re being taken prisoner, not sent back as earlier reported.

SADDAM HAS FIRED THE FIRST SHOT, according to this report from The Independent.

UPDATE: And this makes things official.

PAMELA BONE WRITES:

Yes, America is guilty of hypocrisy. But there’s a lot of it about.

In Congo an estimated three million people have been killed in the past five years of war. More are killed there every month than in the past two-and-a-half years in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But though you’ll see plenty of “Free Palestine” posters among the peace marchers, you won’t see any “Free Congo” ones.

The five permanent members of the Security Council are the five biggest weapons sellers in the world.

Let me tell you about that gently spoken peacemaker, Kofi Annan. At the time of the Rwandan genocide he was head of UN peacekeeping operations. When the killings started, urgent diplomatic cables were sent from Rwanda to his office, telling of bodies littering the streets and begging for more UN forces. He ignored them. Did not even pass them on to the Security Council. He has never explained why. . . .

Of course it would be safer and sounder legally if the action had UN backing. But let us not pretend having UN backing would mean one fewer Iraqi civilian would be killed.

The most wicked thing is not the action the US and its allies have to take now. More wicked is the neglect and hypocrisy of the past – in which we have all colluded.

She still doesn’t like Bush, though. But that’s okay. It’s not about Bush, as she seems to have realized.

(Via Oon Yeoh).

UPDATE: Adam Mersereau has more.

OF TRACTORS AND TERROR CZARS: Arthur Silber is unimpressed with the current state of homeland security.

“YOU MIGHT BE A TYRANT IF. . . .” Kris Murray has some examples.

EDWARD LEMPINEN IN SALON:

It sometimes seems that the left is so averse to war, especially war waged by America, that it is prepared to turn a blind eye to even the most ghastly realities. Perhaps it is because the left no longer sees these realities that its antiwar arguments tend to justify continuation of the status quo. . . .

The antiwar left does not mount massive protests against China, Pakistan or Egypt. Millions do not pour into the streets on behalf of the student-led democracy movement in Iran. And Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are not angrily compared to Hitler — that treatment is more often reserved for George W. Bush.

Yes, and that’s why it’s been such a marginal force despite all the groupthink among media folks who also hate George W. Bush.

BUSH DIPLOMACY: Michael Barone responds rather forcefully to Tom Daschle, likening him to a vulture.

UPDATE: This piece by Jonathan Rauch on North Korea is worth reading, too.

KOTTKE WEIGHS IN: “Summing up, Bush bad, war bad, this war not so bad even though bad Bush reasons also bad.”

LIBERTARIANS against sodomy laws, discussed in a nice article by Linda Greenhouse.

UPDATE: Here, by the way, is something that I wrote on the subject last fall.

OPEN WAR HAS BROKEN OUT — no, not in Iraq. It’s at NRO, and it’s against paleoconservatives. David Frum leads the charge.

And that’s not all. Grover Norquist is coming in for a major shellacking, too.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ON BLOGS AND WAR by Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. It suggests that weblogs have been more useful during the runup to war than they will be during the war itself. That may well be true — we’ll have to see. And here’s a quote that gets things about right:

“Cable television still reaches a relatively small audience,” he said, “and the number of people who read blogs is even smaller. But, in both cases, it’s an awfully influential audience, and the blogs in particular have helped set the tone for that influential group’s response to what’s been going on.

Yep. I said something like this at the Reason get-together this weekend.

TARIQ AZIZ: Shot while trying to defect, according to unconfirmed reports. I don’t know how much credence to give this, but it’s interesting.

UPDATE: According to this report Aziz has defected, and is alive. Stay tuned. (LATER: Now the story has been changed, and says he hasn’t defected, or been shot.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hesiod has a bunch of Aziz-related links, and suggests that the invasion is underway already.

Beats me what’s going on. The fog of disinformation should be at its thickest right now.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Diana Moon has more.

LAST ONE: Aziz is reportedly live on Baghdad TV pointing out that he’s not dead and saying that people shouldn’t believe such reports. Hmm. Maybe the whole thing was Iraqi disinformation.

BELLICOSE WOMEN UPDATE: Here’s the new face of war — the all-female crew of an Air Force KC-135.

Wendy McElroy writes that this war is redefining feminism. You know, I think she may be right.

CATCHING UP to something I’ve been reporting for weeks both here and at GlennReynolds.com, the Chicago Tribune reports on the link between talk radio and pro-liberation rallies. (But I’m also giving you the link to Howard Kurtz’s summary because the link to the Trib story produces a registration-required popup that — on my computer at least — sat there for over a minute with nothing happening.) Anyway, here’s the meat:

Some of the biggest rallies this month have endorsed President Bush’s strategy against Saddam Hussein, and the common thread linking most of them is Clear Channel Worldwide Inc., the nation’s largest owner of radio stations.

In a move that has raised eyebrows in some legal and journalistic circles, Clear Channel radio stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Antonio, Cincinnati and other cities have sponsored rallies attended by up to 20,000 people. The events have served as a loud rebuttal to the more numerous but generally smaller anti-war rallies.

Well, the “raised eyebrows” don’t have anything to do with illegality since (1) there’s a pretty clear First Amendment right to sponsor rallies; and (2) the story makes clear with a quote from Glen Robinson that there’s nothing illegal here.

At any rate, with Hollywood making “message” films for years, and with television producing “very special episodes” of sitcoms larded with political indoctrination, it seems to me that the far more aboveboard practice of sponsoring rallies constitutes an improvement in business as usual among the entertainment industries. You know, because it’s honest.

That’s more than you can say for this Courtland Milloy column, which constitutes a shocking display of dishonesty-by-omission. Here’s what he says:

Lindsay, a freshman at Howard University, is national student coordinator for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER, an international coalition of antiwar groups. The organization was formed Sept. 14, 2001, to challenge the warmongering and the racial and religious profiling that emerged after 9/11.

Nothing about A.N.S.W.E.R.’s Stalinist connections, nothing about its banning of Michael Lerner or its antisemitism. Just an innocent group of high-minded antiwar activists, that’s all. Milloy’s piece is both over-the-top to the point of self-parody and dishonest, and he should be ashamed. But we won’t read any media-critic stories about raised eyebrows where Milloy’s piece is concerned. Because it may be dishonest, but it’s a well-established form of dishonesty.

ED DRISCOLL writes about Hollywood’s fear of change. He contrasts Hollywood with Silicon Valley and notes:

For a bunch of stasists, it’s fairly amusing that the standard Hollywood cliché is that big business is stupid, rapacious and harmful to its customers (look at the films that they crank out to perpetuate this stereotype, from Norma Rae to Erin Brockovich). And yet, up north, “big business” is continually innovating, and finding solutions to problems. While back in Hollywood, those would-be champions of social reform don’t want their consumers from wandering off the plantation—or even manufacturing cotton of their own.

Indeed.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE WAR: My TechCentralStation column is up.

THERE WILL PROBABLY be a lot of warblogging today. Sorry, but that’s what happens when there’s a war starting. But to relieve the monotony, you can read this post about margarine labels, and this one about Eric Alterman’s book, in case you missed them.

UPDATE: In an arrogant show of pure mastery, James Lileks responds to my margarine-label post, and in so doing reveals himself as the undisputed and indisputable Emperor of Grocery-Blogging.

HERE’S A COMPENDIUM OF LAME PHRASES like “weapons of mass distraction.” Note to editors — none of these are original anymore. Don’t bother using them.

This translation page by Juan Gato is worth reading, too. Excerpt:

Multilateral:

Doing what the French want.

Unilateral:

Going forward without the support of the New York Times.

Read it all.

SMALL WORLD: Melissa Schwartz is blogging about a documentary by Frederick Wiseman, who’s my wife’s filmmaking role model. He’s also, I recently learned from the alumni magazine, a Yale Law School alumnus.

WELL, IT’S ALREADY A RECORD DAY for traffic.

UPDATE: Henry Copeland writes that InstaPundit is nowhere near peaking. That’s cool, I guess, though it would be cooler if I got, like, a dollar per pageview. . . .

RICK BRUNER is neither a Bush fan, nor a warblogger. But he’s got a long post on why we should go to war, and why the arguments against doing so don’t hold water.

STIX NIX BLIX TRIX: This headline deserves a Pulitzer.

“WE ARE BETTER AT HIDING WMD than bald spots.” Iraqi combover blues, courtesy of Canadian bloggers I Should Be Doing Homework.

NICK DENTON HAS A FASCINATING POST on the developing Arab case for war. Excerpt:

If the Americans enter, change the regime in Iraq, and bring in a democratic regime, it will be possible to replace the other regimes later. This is what Napoleon did. When he reached Egypt, the Mamelukes fled and a democratic movement arose, and the Egyptian people began to talk for the first time. The modern Arab renaissance began after Napoleon. But what happened is that after September 11, the Americans realized that the dictatorial regimes in the Arab region produce terrorists who attack America and Europe. The entire world lives in fear of the terrorists that these regimes produce. The Americans realized this. They do not want to establish democracy for our sake, but in order to defend themselves.

Read the whole thing, as they say.