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Interesting Reuters piece: A retired Yugoslavian army officer who claims to have helped construct Saddam's underground bunkers, says they can withstand a 20 kiloton blast.
Fazlic said underground concrete fortresses were built by the former Yugoslav military in the cities of Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, Basra and Nassiriya after Iraqi officials toured similar facilities in former Yugoslavia.
"We also built the so-called "zero," "P" and "C" types of bunkers which were smaller and meant for the military, communications centers and so on but can also resist heavy bombardment and longer isolation," he said.
Fazlic said he took part in the building of more than a dozen underground bunkers in former Yugoslavia which was then led by late President Josip Broz Tito, who had warm relations with Saddam Hussein.
"We built all of these facilities in Iraq because they liked what they saw here," Fazlic said, citing a large bunker dug into a mountain near the southern Bosnian town of Konjic that was meant for the former Yugoslav government in case of war.
NJ Governor James E. McGreevey and Sid Caspersen, New Jersey's director of the office of counter-terrorism, indicated in a press conference that if the U.S. moves to code red citizens will be required to stay inside their houses.
This according to the Courier Post Online.
If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the state's anti-terror czar says.In addition, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia recently said, in public, that the government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. "The Constitution just sets minimums," Scalia said. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."
Supposedly Tom Brokaw will have a 'blogs and war' segment in first half of NBC nightly news this evening.
I'm dedicated to not watching the world so closely today.
Especially the super scary stuff about North Korea cutting off contact with the U.S. and U.N., and also threatening to nuke Japan if the Japanese go ahead with their planned launch of a spy satellite this week.
Iraq continues to put up resistence. Sean-Paul at the agonist is reporting (unsourced) that CENTCOM (U.S. central command) is reporting that the Iraqis mounted a counter offensive on U.S. armored divisions south of Baghdad. This attack was - again, of course, supposedly - quickly repelled. But still, that's some crazy shit to try.
Possibly they are emboldened by the destruction of 2 M1/A1 Abrams main battle tanks. This is a much bigger deal then the number (2) would indicate. In fact, it's the first time this tank has ever been destroyed by enemy fire. The Israelis went through something similar this passed year when 2 of their "invincible" tanks were destroyed in the West Bank. Two tanks (out of hundreds) doesn't matter, but psychologically it's got to hurt. We didn't think they had weapons that could do it - and quite obviously they do. Some speculate the Russian connection, but I don't think there is any evidence at this point.
Still no word from Basra, but I'll be surprised if the British don't go in, in force, sometime today.