Thoughts on an ugly war weekend: US has not in fact taken Al Nasiriya, though they've secured several bridges across the Euphrates, so no more tongue-in-cheek Bible references. (Though I read most of Genesis over the weekend -- more on that later.) Turns out US/UK hasn't even secured Umm Qasr, the port on the Kuwaiti border which had supposedly fallen last week. No mass surrenders (initial reports of an entire division surrendering turned out to be false when the Iraqi general appeared on Al Jazeera and said he was still defending Basra -- DUH) and almost zero celebrations in the streets. This might be largely because the cities haven't been secured, and Saddam has (surprisingly) deployed Fedayeen amongst the regular troops and civilian population to prevent mass surrenders and maintain pockets of resistance in the south, rather than saving them for the defense of Baghdad. Whether this means the attack on Baghdad will be any easier remains to be seen -- probably wishful thinking.

Once again, must recommend Agonist web site -- far better than any Big Media in its coverage of the war. For background on how to gauge progress, read Fred Kaplan's (outdated yet prescient) Slate piece cited below. But those standards, the war is definitely going badly. For visuals, see Nick Denton's map. For gruesome pictures of the the captured (and dead) American GI's, click here. Geneva code violation? Just over the line, I think. If these were Al Qaeda guys, it would be much, much worse. (PS to the Beeb anchor whose name escapes me: There is abolutely no link between this and the treatment of Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Asshole. Grrr.) Notable that Al Jazeera's web site (can't dig up the exact link, because I can't read Arabic) did not run the picture of the black American woman in its original web post; their pictures of the bodies were far more gruesome, too.

Despite the unexpected casualties, the most disturbing news (for me, anyway) was in fact posted and commented on by the blogger Tacitus, who comments on ABC News reports about hostility and suspicion among the locals of Safwan (here's the transcript of the report). This is a southern town -- you know, where they're supposed to be throwing candy at the liberating troops, or vice versa. Tacitus posts some excellent suggestions for urgent countermeasures, but I'm skeptical the Bush Administration will follow through, now or in the long run. I hope I'm wrong, but this is a president who ran his campaign against the idea of nation-building. His base constituency (minus the interventionist hawks at the Pentagon) is essentially isolationist, and would rather pull out of Iraq as soon as the war is over and simply drain the swamp (more likely, bomb the swamp) when it gets ugly again; and unlike Clinton, Bush has no history of appropriating the opposing camp's shibboleths and touting them as his own. After coming around to the necessity of war, this is the main reason I turned against it when Bush and Blair made clear they were no longer interested in a UN compromise. (Lack of interest in a compromise was the second reason: If you don't believe it was still possible for the UN to approve the war, note that Chirac proposed a 30-day deadline at the last minute -- ignored as too little, too late. Sorry, but I really don't think an additional 30 days would have been so horrible for the sake of a more united international front. But let bygones be bygones. PS My newest wacky theory is that Blair is looking ahead to the 2004 US elections, which he'll theoretically be in a position to influence, though in reality I doubt he'd be so impolite.)

Tacitus also cites a NYTimes piece quoting a surrendered Iraqi colonel saying Saddam is an American agent. This is not an aberration. CNBC did a report from Dearborn, Michican (or was it Detroit) talking to a gathered group of Iraqi exiles living in the US celebrating the onset of war. The general consensus was that the West put him there, and the West should take him out, and one exile concluding by saying, "Saddam Hussein is a agent of the West." This was on TV; I can't find a link.

Bottom line: Iraq will be far better off after the war than it was before, but don't expect a wave of pro-American feeling.