I was googling something up and cam across this transcript of an on-line chat with Washington Post national security writers Vernon Loeb and Dana Priest. I thought this bit was kind of interesting:

Rochester, N.Y.: I've read that the Iraqis, Saudis, and Egyptians are doing nuclear research in Libya also that much of Saddam's WMDs have been moved to Syria (on the Debka website and others). Isn't it likely that these other governments would want Saddam's weapons for themselves?

Vernon Loeb: I don't know anything about nuclear research being done in Libya, but I would urge caution in putting too much stock in what you might read on the Debka website.

The date on that transcipt - April 2, 2003. I'm definitely a grain of salt with DEBKA guy myself, but, that's interesting that they were reporting it back when the Libyan conversations started.

Lileks:

Fact: In the middle of a war against medieval-minded foes, we decided that we should also head back into space. We’re not going to close the borders, curl up under the covers. The right hand holds the sword, the left hand holds the sextant. If you’d asked me on 9/12/01 what headline I thought I’d see on 01/14/03, I would have said something depressing like “Seattle relies on Israeli experts for help in nuke damage” or some such apocalyptic concept. Back then it all seemed ready to tumble into the deep black pit. I would have been cheered to learn that attacks on our troops in Iraq were down 22 percent. I would have been gobsmacked to learn we had decided to return to the moon as well. That's the sort of news that transcends today and defines tomorrow.

Optimism in the face of war, pestilence, death, and disease. How very American! I love it. Here's what I wrote about a year ago - Captain Kirk was an American.

Okay, I think something is going on here. I don't get it at all.

Reports now are saying that the mortars found in Iraq do not have chemical agents in them. Well, that's not exactly what is determined, but that is what is being reported. Here's what the tests really show:

But tests done by the Americans are inconclusive, although "pointing toward negative", he said, adding that the Americans were taking one of the shells for more detailed tests.

Inconclusive, and they are going to do more detailed tests at a lab in the US. Not exactly the same, but still a lot like other reports of chemicals from earlier. Initially positive tests, then inconclusive, then identification as something else. As put it in a different article:

A U.S. official, speaking Wednesday on condition of anonymity, said chemicals such as phosphorous used in some munitions can produce false positives.

....

Since the war ended, the U.S.-led coalition has found several caches that tested positive for mustard gas but later turned out to contain missile fuel or other chemicals.

Now there is no way that missile fuel was put in a mortar. Or pesticide. And phosphorus, when in a warhead, is not a liquid. If this isn't a chemical agent in these rounds, what is it? What corroded them in the desert?

I'm not just ticked because a couple of posts down I boldly predicted that these are chemical rounds. I've made my share of bold predicitons that have not borne out. But this just fails the common sense test.

Partial transcript from a press conference yesterday:

Q Mr. Secretary, I'd just like to ask you about an Army -- a report published by the Army War College last month and just to stipulate at the outset that the report reflects only the views of its author, not the Army War College itself.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah.

Q But nevertheless, it's gained some currency because of the reputation of the author, Jeffrey Record. And he says, just very briefly, that the global war -- that it was a strategic error to link the war against al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein's Iraq; that the war against Iraq was not integral to the war on terror, but rather a detour from it; and that the overall war against terror is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver and threatens to dissipate scarce U.S. military resources over too many ends.

Could I just get your general reaction to that criticism, which reflects the --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Take a wild, flying guess!

In case you are wondering what "report" is being discussed, it is a research paper published by a visiting professor at the Army War College - you can find it here. It is too long to fisk the whole thing, but the author argues that the Global War on Terror is too big an idea, that we cannot sustain it, and that we need to cut back, and make the GWOT about Al Qaeda only. Too bad for the author that he finished it before the capture of Saddam Hussein and the dramatic announcement about Libya and the announcement by Iran that it would accept IAEA inspections and North Korea's offer to freeze its nuclear program, because he argues that it is unproven that invading Iraq would have an effect on other rogue states. Also, for a scholar, he makes a lot of internal contradictions. For example, he says that Iraq is taking too many troops and costing toomuch money, but recommends increasing the troops and amount of money spent there. He argues that terrorism is too big a target to win against, and cites a terrorism expert who says that AQ is more than just a single terrorist organization, but a global insurgency instead. But his argument is that we ought to be taking on AQ alone, and not fighting a global war.

Even better, Howard Dean is running around using this research paper and saying that experts (plural) at the Army War College are saying that the war was a strategic error. I wonder if he agrees with the idea to put more troops and money into Iraq, then?

Instapundit links to a Joe Conason piece in Salon that accuses the Bush administration of pushing a mission to Mars so Halliburton can get oil. No, really! Oddly enough, the link gets you a 404, but the description is still on the opinion page:

Expanding space exploration is a fine aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for Halliburton.

Luckily Instapundit copied some choice bits before it went away. Maybe Conason got confused when he read that "Mars is averaging an output of about 21,000 barrels of oil and 25 million ft3 of natural gas per day." Then again, it's not totally farfetched (PDF)....

UPDATE: It's back. Maybe it was just overloaded. Where did that $100M go?

Yeah, I know that's Stephen Green's schtick, but stealing is the sincerest form of flattery or something. It's the NYT Magazine (so it requires registration), but a really good and really long article about Iraq.

Oh - and the main focus of the article. I know him. He's a classmate.

I have seen quite a bit of people claiming that they cannot vote for Bush now that he has proposed what he has on immigration, some even saying the y will support Dean instead. Seems like a bad tradeoff to me. Sign the US up for the ummah because you don't want Mexican workers who are already here illegally to have legal status granted to them.

I know that the "battered woman syndrome" has been brought up about conservatives and Bush before, but it doesn't apply. If we don't win the war on terror, all the rest doesn't matter. Gay marriage? Mexican immigrants? Deficit spending? School vouchers? None of that has a place for debate if we aren't winning.

Like I said, what was proposed isn't what I would do, but it doesn't leave me outraged.