I SPENT THE AFTERNOON buying a new (environmentally friendly!) lawn mower and mowing my lawn. Then I read a book and had a nice dinner. I’m taking the rest of the evening off in an effort to stay sane amid all the war hysteria. I’m also taking a moment to think of our troops, who don’t have that luxury.

I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the Command Post, which should be here now (at least, the new URL of www.command-post.org is working for me; if it doesn’t work for you try this one instead), and the many fine blogs linked below. Oh, and don’t miss this piece by Howard Kurtz on weblogs and war.

And if you want to help out some service people, Operation Uplink lets you donate calling cards so that they can stay in touch with the folks at home.

See you tomorrow.

WHEN YOU HEAR CLAIMS OF “CIVILIAN DEATHS” keep in mind this post from the BBC Warblog:

One of the problems in the fighting in Umm Qasr has been that some of the conscript army appeared to surrender, but then disappeared.

It’s thought they then took off their uniforms, became civilians, but kept their guns. And so they were effectively acting as a guerrilla force which makes it very hard for conventional armies to fight that because they don’t want to risk killing civilians.

Soldiers out of uniform, of course, are war criminals. I eagerly await the European protest marches regarding this practice.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Iraqis have executed American prisoners of war. I eagerly await the demonstrations over that, too.

ANGRY CLAM NOTES THAT IT’S NOT THE POOR WHO ARE DYING in this war, despite Rep. Rangel’s claims.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS REPORT, HANS?

About 30 Iraqi troops, including a general, surrendered today to US forces of the 3rd Infantry Division as they overtook huge installation apparently used to produce chemical weapons in An Najaf, some 250 kilometers south of Baghdad. . . .

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly which chemicals were being produced here, but clearly the Iraqis tried to camouflage the facility so it could not be photographed aerially, by swathing it in sand-cast walls to make it look like the surrounding desert.

Stay tuned, but this looks like another Blix embarrassment, following upon the Scuds that weren’t supposed to be there.

UPDATE: A couple of readers say that MSNBC is reporting (on TV) that this story is false. I can’t find anything about it on the website at the moment. As I said, stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This story from Fox, this story from ABC news, and this story from Agence France Presse say that there was a chemical weapons factory found. I suppose that could change, but for now the story seems reasonably credible.

LOTS OF STUFF AT THE COMMAND POST. Also, I’ve been remiss in not mentioning The Agonist earlier, but when I tried to visit his site it was down.

UPDATE: Note: The Command Post is now here instead of at the above link, because of — hold your breath at this improbability — some sort of Blogger/Blogspot glitch.

JAMES RUMMEL thinks I’ve blacklisted him. I haven’t. Has anyone else had this problem?

THE ANGLOSPHERE MEME continues to spread. I think that this article confuses the term — at least as Jim Bennett and others have used it — with British-style imperialism, though.

MAX BOOT ON DIPLOMACY AND “UNILATERALISM:”

Bush has gotten the most flak for, in essence, placing too much stock in the U.N., not too little. Like his father, he thought it could become an effective collective-security organization once it was freed of Cold War constraints. This approach worked in the first Persian Gulf War, because his father was confronting a clear-cut case of aggression — Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But not even Bush père could have gotten U.N. approval for regime change in Baghdad.

That’s why he didn’t try. His son did — and nearly succeeded. His mistake was becoming a little too ambitious. Not satisfied with U.N. Resolution 1441, which passed unanimously in November, Bush unsuccessfully sought a second resolution (or, more accurately, an 18th). Now, like every U.S. president since 1945, he has embarked on military action without explicit U.N. authorization. . . .

It’s true that acting “unilaterally” — actually with a substantial “coalition of the willing,” in Bush’s words — increases distrust of U.S. power. But it’s far from clear what the consequences are. Will France and Germany stop fighting al Qaeda? Refuse to continue helping to rebuild Afghanistan? Torpedo the free-trade treaties they have supported? All possible, but all unlikely, because they didn’t undertake these actions as a favor to Washington — it’s in their self-interest to promote trade, stamp out terrorism and foster peaceful development in war-torn lands.

Political scientists warn of “bandwagoning” against a hegemon, and they might see some evidence of this in the U.N. debate, where France, Russia and China ganged up on the United States. But only one of these nations — China — is making an effort to challenge U.S. power, and then only in one region. France and Russia, along with the rest of Europe, are doing little or nothing to build up their military capabilities. If they were serious about taking on America, they would be forming a military alliance against us. No one imagines this will happen.

Why not? Because for all their griping about the “hyperpower,” our fair-weather friends realize that America is not Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany.

Indeed.

THEY’RE NOT PEACE PROTESTERS:

Two Jewish youths were hospitalized Saturday afternoon after being stabbed in Paris by individuals who had taken part in an anti-war demonstration. . . .

One young man was stabbed and lightly wounded after a group of men noticed his yarmulke. He was taken to the hospital for treatment. The attackers are believed to have been immigrants from North Africa.

They’re just the enemy.

UPDATE: Reader Khalid Yukub emails from Britain and sends this link, with the suggestion that it somehow parallels the story above. I can’t read the Arabic, but it has a picture of what I assume is supposed to be a dead Iraqi civilian killed by Americans. After the Baby Milk Factory episode in the last war, I can hardly swear to its accuracy — and, statistically, a dead Iraqi civilian is far more likely to have been killed by Saddam than by Americans. But assume it’s what it purports to be, a dead Iraqi civilian.

War is hell. Civilians get killed. The United States is trying hard — far, far harder than any Arab nation ever has — to avoid killing civilians in the course of war. Nonetheless, it still happens. To suggest that somehow that sort of thing is the same as deliberately targeting someone for stabbing because of his religion is — well, it’s typical, is what it is.

UPDATE: Khalid emails:

I’m not suggesting that there is a direct parallel between the attack on the Jewish youth and the killing of the Iraqi civilian, although both attacks are on innocent people and are indeed illegal and immoral. I’m suggesting that your coverage, in general, focuses more on the suffering (or jubilation) of some people more than others. Violence you agree with is downplayed and/or justified, while violence you (often rightly) disagree with is highlighted to bolster your black-and-white view of the world.

Uh, no. “Both attacks” are not illegal and immoral. Collateral damage in a war is neither, though it is unfortunate and the United States has made unprecedented efforts to avoid it — far more than against Germany in World War II despite lame claims that this is a “racist” war. It’s not remotely comparable to deliberately stabbing someone because he’s wearing a Yarmulke. (And the original email sure seemed to suggest that to me).

As to whether my presentation reflect my beliefs — you bet it does. I also go out of my way to offset the biases of mainstream media, who swallow Iraqi propaganda rather uncritically (as with the “Baby Milk Factory” episode).

What I find interesting is that any act of violence by the United States seems always to be condemned, while almost any act of violence by third world thugocracies is excused. If recognizing that is a “black and white view” then so be it.

If Saddam, or Osama, had the power that the United States enjoys, how would they be exercising it? And yet that difference is seldom recognized.

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish thinks I’m giving Khalid too much credit here:

It’s Jew-hatred, plain and simple, Glenn. Don’t let him distract you with trying to get you into moral arguments. These two young Jewish men did nothing. “Immigrants from North Africa” stabbed one, tried to break into a Jewish building to stab more, and instead beat the hell out of the next Jew to exit the building.

She goes on to say that Khalid’s guilty of the same kind of sentiments. Well, I don’t know Khalid. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt here. The war has everyone on edge, and his comments may reflect that. I don’t want to see innocent people killed, and I don’t see any evidence that Khalid does, either. I think it’s worth making clear, however, that although some Muslims seem determined to see this as a war against Islam, it’s not. I don’t want it to be, and I don’t think anyone much in America does. Certainly Bush has gone out of his way to make that clear, as he did with his visit to a mosque right after 9/11. And those Muslims who want to turn it into one don’t have the best interests of Muslims, or anyone else besides themselves, at heart.

Anyway, for more on civilian casualties, etc., read this lengthy and thorough post by Jacob Levy.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Another email from Khalid makes clear that he condemns the stabbing above, as I thought. Unlike rather a lot of my anti-war emailers, he has managed to be quite civil, too, which I appreciate. The email from the “peace” movement has never been especially pacific, and it’s gotten a lot worse lately.

JEFF JARVIS REPORTS:

DENVILLE — Holding signs that read “Honk if you hate Saddam” and “Honk if you support our troops,” about 50 boisterous but orderly Denville middle school students held a pro-war rally Friday on Main Street.

The spontaneous demonstration began when students, on their way home from Valleyview School after a half-day, picked up cardboard and started scrolling their feelings on the makeshift signs.

Slowly, more children joined in and, by 1:30 p.m., the students had seized the corner of Broadway and East Main Street — to the delight of the multitude of passing motorists honking horns around them.

“Too many people are against the war,” said 14-year-old Zac Walsh, one of three students who organized the rally. “We wanted to show our support for it.”

Here’s a list of pro-liberation rallies, most with pictures. I haven’t seen much reporting on these, though I understand that Ashleigh Banfield covered one yesterday.

UPDATE: Here are pictures from a pro-America demonstration in Knoxville. Looks roughly comparable to the anti-war demos here in terms of size, but I didn’t see it.

AMITAI ETZIONI reflects on journalistic values.

ANNA WRITES on the failures of the peacemongers. There are quite a few on her list. Meanwhile Russell Wardlow says in my name but not yours, all right.

ON TO BAGHDAD: Friendly fire seems to be the biggest danger so far, and I suspect that there’s a systematic problem in communications involved — though it may be just that the absence of other fire makes it seem so conspicuous. Here’s a UPI story too.

UPDATE on Friendly Fire: Apparently, the British plane didn’t have a working IFF system. Why the hell not?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Gerald Hanner emails:

Sometimes the IFF/SIF goes out in-flight. There are no backups. In addition, there are times when you want to turn off your IFF/SIF to avoid giving the enemy a chance to interogate it themselves. I don’t know what they’re doing in Iraq. In many cases, most of them peacetime, IFF/SIF is not strictly needed. In this case it was sorely needed. I’m wondering what AWACS was doing during all of this.

Me, too.

BILL HERBERT HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON PRESS FREEDOM, and he wonders why Reporters Sans Frontieres aren’t complaining about Baghdad’s expulsion of journalists.

Meanwhile Susanna Cornett points out security issues with embedded journalists — and, surprise, the French are involved.

UPDATE: Randy Paul sends this link indicating that they’re at least criticizing Castro for his crackdown on journalists in Cuba.

“I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam.” Why yes, yes, you were. But at least he’s learned:

I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad – a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, “Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good”. He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.

As he realised I was serious, he slowed down and started to speak in broken English about the evils of Saddam’s regime. Until then I had only heard the President spoken of with respect, but now this guy was telling me how all of Iraq’s oil money went into Saddam’s pocket and that if you opposed him politically he would kill your whole family.

It scared the hell out of me. First I was thinking that maybe it was the secret police trying to trick me but later I got the impression that he wanted me to help him escape. I felt so bad. I told him: “Listen, I am just a schmuck from the United States, I am not with the UN, I’m not with the CIA – I just can’t help you.”

Of course I had read reports that Iraqis hated Saddam Hussein, but this was the real thing. Someone had explained it to me face to face. I told a few journalists who I knew. They said that this sort of thing often happened – spontaneous, emotional, and secretive outbursts imploring visitors to free them from Saddam’s tyrannical Iraq.

I wonder why they haven’t been reporting on that more? Here’s my favorite part, though:

The driver’s most emphatic statement was: “All Iraqi people want this war.” He seemed convinced that civilian casualties would be small; he had such enormous faith in the American war machine to follow through on its promises. Certainly more faith than any of us had.

Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don’t think he believed us. Later he asked me: “Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?”

Heh.

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE? “Kurds hemmed in by Turds”? Eew. I wonder if any of those defecating San Francisco protesters were involved.

From The Telegraph:

Thanks to reader Eric Williams for the screenshot.

HOW ARE THINGS GOING? Well, pretty well so far. Iraqis are surrendering, the biggest casualties seem to be from accident and friendly fire, not enemy action, and Iraqi leaders seem demoralized while Iraqi citizens seem pleased. Still, it’s too early to say, really. Steven Den Beste is happy with how things are going, but has a list of things he’s worried about.