Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was recently assassinated, but won't receive condolences from the US House of Representatives despite leading his country through a series of important reforms and its reconstruction after Milosevic. Why? Last Sunday, while you were watching Six Feet Under, Ed Bradley was on 60 Minutes with documents that indicate Yugoimport, the government's arms export company, was providing equipment and services to Iraq. One memo to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense gives instructions on avoiding UN weapons inspectors. It's unclear exactly how much support was being provided, but it's probably in the neighborhood of US$1.5 billion and US$3 billion. This includes jet engines, artillery shells, and anti-aircraft technology. There's some question as to exactly how much control Djindjic had over Yugoimport, since it is still largely in the hands of the generals of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) who ran it before the war. Most agree that the Prime Minister was at least aware of the deals. This scandal has also taken down the Serb member of the ruling triumvirate in Bosnia. Do you get the feeling that the United States was the only country that honored the sanctions?

If you're under the impression that the military is a monolithic, unthinking, unquestioning bureaucracy, you'll be surprised by Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College. Think of it like Foreign Affairs for senior Army officers. Many of the articles are very relevant right now, including The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? and The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack, which discusses the moral and practical issues surrounding "noncombatant immunity" and the Pentagon's "effects-based" bombing strategies. The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq is a wonderfully candid analysis of the new National Security Strategy. This is a wonderful resource, and unbelieveably, it's free.

It turns out that this may be a war for oil after all, but not in the way that you think. The United States has made it pretty clear that it's not interested in Iraqi oil, but the opponents of the war seem awfully interested: scroll down to Section 2(b) of this Cooperative Research report on Iraqi Oil and Gas Reserves. It mentions a Department of Energy report documenting Iraqi oil contracts with "Italy (Eni), Spain (Repsol YPF), Russia (Tatneft), France (TotalFinaElf), China, India, Turkey, and others." We've hinted at this before, but now we'll come out and say it: could it be that some opposition to this war isn't high-minded internationalism, but a craven attempt to ensure these contracts pay out?

The front page of the Washington Post has a piece on how the Bush Administration completely screwed up its negotiations with Turkey. The Administration was foolish, setting a number of fictional deadlines without consequences. It was clumsy, allowing Turkey to think that they were far more important than they actually were. Finally, it was arrogant, asserting that we didn't need Turkey anyway. This screwed up the war, the UN vote, and did permanent damage to the US relationship with Turkey -- who will be desperately needed as Iraq's reconstruction begins.

"One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said."

"Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution."

It hasn't been posted yet, but one of CNN's embeds just reported from inside the city of Nasiriya, which he said was occupied by the coalition. I'm posting a summary of the report here, because it seems like it's typical of what's going on in the contested cities right now. The embed said that the mission, which was supposed to take 6 hours and has lasted six days, has been slowly winding down over the last three days. He made it sound as though the coalition had taken control of the town, and that the guerilla problem was relatively under control. This is in stark contrast to the reports from the BBC. He said militias on both sides are fighting in the streets. This is also interesting, because I haven't heard any reports of a pro-coalition militia there. These pro-Hussein militias have hidden their weapons inthe fields surrounding the cities, and the reporter described a big effort to remove the weapons caches. This part is a scary. Knowing that the coalition will not attack civilians, the pro-Hussein militia members shoot at the coalition units, and then immediately drop their weapons and disappear into the crowds. Finally, he described the friendly fire incident covered earlier today, and cited 20 injuries and no casualties. He described thefirefight between three different coalition units, all of whichthought the others were Iraqi military. The embed said he wasshot in the head, saved only by his helmet. The embed made it sound like friendly fire was a chronic problem during the five day fight for the city.

Fox News cited this article, but it's missing from their website. No coverage on CNN. A collection Russian companies shipped night-vision equipment, radar jamming, and and antitank missles to Iraq. The State Department has been talking to the Russian government about this for over a year, but the effort was complicated by the nuclear weapons treaty negotiations and their bid to get Russian help in North Korea. The Russian government said the company doesn't exist, then said they were watching the company closely, then that the goods were legal, then that they couldn't stop the shipments if they wanted to.

SKY news is reporting that the CIA is hunting six Iraqi agents in Mexico. Voice of America isn't so sure. 200 Iraqis in New York were rounded up by the FBI. Germany is holding five suspects. French police found ricin in the Metro, but it's apparently non-letal. Well, thank god for that. The French say that it may have instead been destined for Chechnya. Wha?

Orange alert hasn't really changed how you live. There are more police, maybe. You have to show your ID to get into a government building, maybe. Red alert, which appears likely when the attack on Iraq begins, is another thing altogether.

The Homeland Security Department describes it this way:

• Increasing or redirecting personnel to address critical emergency needs;
• Assigning emergency response personnel and pre-positioning and mobilizing specially trained teams or resources;
• Monitoring, redirecting, or constraining transportation systems; and
• Closing public and government facilities.

Individual state and county agencies are given a great deal of leeway in how they interpret these alerts. Sid Caspersen, the Director of the New Jersey Office of Counter-Terrorism, is pretty specific:

"Red means all noncritical functions cease... Noncritical would be almost all businesses, except health-related.
"The state police and the emergency management people would take control over the highways...
"You literally are staying home, is what happens, unless you are required to be out. No different than if you had a state of emergency with a snowstorm."

...well, a little different.

Update: Sun Mar 23 15:08:01 EST 2003
The ACLU is making themselves pretty clear on the NJ policy.

We're deluged with email from MoveOn and other activist groups encouraging us to rally when the war starts. It's hard to imagine a bigger waste of time. Any war protest right now is a waste of good human captial. A much more pressing issue, one worth protesting, is how Iraq will be treated after the United States takes stewardship of the country. It will be a long process, and we have never been very good at projects like these. The media gets bored, and our attention will inevitably turn back to domestic issues. Remember Afghanistan? They just finished a round of fundraising for their government, which is just over a year old. They shouldn't have to beg after the pledges and support they received from the West. Not the case, of course. They're desperate for US$234 million, about half the budget for the entire country. Without it, they're bankrupt. On top of that, they need US$1.7 billion in aid for reconstruction. Unless they receive immediate aid, they say, Afghanistan will return to being the largest exporter of heroin in the world -- how else will farmers pay the bills? The U.S. has pledged $820 million. This seems like a good thing, but you can't build roads with a pledge and the Bush Administration forgot to include Afghan reconstruction in the last budget, sneaking $300 million into the appropriations at the last minute. Needless to say, this can't happen in Iraq. The stakes are far too high.

"As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free."

The anti-war camp could continue tilting at windmills, but their time is much better spent ensuring that President Bush honor his promise.