Tuesday, April 8

Pray for the people of Basra, where there is great relief that the horrid threat of the Baath secret police and their torture prisons have gone, but where other matters are are going from bad to worse, and need to be fixed...soon.

In Basra, growing resentment, little aid:

By far the most common complaint -- voiced here repeatedly to any foreigner who stops a car and attracts a crowd -- is that Basra has descended into anarchy and British forces have done little to establish security.The looting frenzy has touched nearly everything. Government offices, banks, shops, hotels and homes have been stripped bare. Carjackings have begun as well. Tahrir Hospital, in the port area, reported one of its vehicles was taken at gunpoint this morning, a few hundred yards from the main gate. Another hospital reportedly had an ambulance stolen. Looters were later seen using the ambulance to load looted furniture from another house."Now that the British have military control, there's no law and order," said Andres Kruesi, the delegate here of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "People steal everything. They even steal fire trucks."


The first battle for Hilla

..or so the Post says in this excellent-as-usual embed report, but there was action around Hilla last week, as I recall.

A report on the same battle from the NYTimes embed. What - how many embeds do each of these units have to haul around with them?

Those of you who follow this blog may have noticed one of many themes - me looking at different accounts of the same event. It's just the way I do things, and what feeds my mind. It's easy and satisfying to simply rely on accounts that are going to confirm your opinions, but where's the growth in that? What's interesting in that?

When I was in graduate school, I did a paper for a historiography seminar (for those of you who don't know - historiography is the study of the study of history. Got it?) examing the issue of female deacons in early Christianity. As you might expect, there aren't many primary sources to work with, so it's a good, narrow topic to use while examining certain issues in doing history. I read several studies that all used exactly the same primary documents and examined how they used these same sources and managed to come up with totally opposite conclusions about the existence and function of female deacons. I mean - totally opposite using the exact same sources.

I'm not saying, of course, that truth is relative. Not at all. I'm saying that in order to find truth we have to look at it from all sides. To do anything else would be boring, constricting and dishonest. At least that's the way I see it.

Knights of Columbus sending rosaries, prayer books to troops

Tim Goodman says that the networks are doing a better job covering the war than the cable news joints.

A reminder:

Don't just come around here posting links in the comments boxes, with no comment. That's not what the comments are for. Post a link in the context of a comment, yes, but if you just throw up a link without even saying what it's about, I'll delete it forthwith.