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Monday, May 10, 2004 |
 The only question now is when (not if) John Kerry will announce his 200-day plan to withdraw from Iraq. My guess is it will be on July 1, just after the change-over in power. Note: Once announced, Nader will evaporate.
5:59:24 PM 
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Field report: The Invisible Acrobat has actually tried out pocket Skype on an 802.11b wireless connection and thought it was excellent. Wardrive with this and give the FBI fits.
5:51:07 PM
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Mikel likes my post 9/11 analysis (complete with spelling errors and a completely fatuous casualty number).
5:40:51 PM
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ArabTimes. The United States embassy in Japan issued an e-mail warning to U.S. citizens on Monday about a possible bomb attack against the mission this week, but added that it was unable to determine whether the threat was credible. This is probably in response to the Sumitomo announcement.
2:34:10 PM
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Sad if true. Halliburton's KBR, which supplies connectivity to soldiers in Iraq, has been told to block all inessential (ie. anything that isn't gov't business) e-mail from troops in the field for the next 90 days.
Think about this in the context of Boyd's view of grand strategy. Disruption of internal communications is a form of physical isolation that contributes to erratic behavior.
2:25:02 PM
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Army recruitment (regulars, reserve, and guard) is holding up so far. However, the worsening situation in Iraq and a growing job market (finally!) is going to test the concept of an all-volunteer military over the next year. There should be some visibility on this by early fall.
10:08:26 AM
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CACI interrogator's weblog (in Google cache).
On the firepower intensive tactics:
Our LRS guys went on a road clearing mission again today. More than 8,000 rounds of ammunition were expended on their little excursion and the only casualty for the LRS was one of their guys received a grazing on his arm from a bullet that only required a band-aid. He did not even realize that he was hurt until they got back.
High quality analysts (am I the only one that thinks counter-terrorism analysts should be qualified?):
Todd Preston is a retired Navy diver who spent the majority of his career in the Marine Corps. He is here as an analyst and sends me daily clips about Special Forces activities via secure e-mail.
Sense of urgency:
We are pushing hard to get everything we can out of these guys because the situation in Al Fallujah is going to boil over shortly and we know it is due to the foreign fighters that have moved into the city.
Cooperation with the IGC:
There were six of us that had to come in early and conduct long interrogations to ensure that certain detainees were only able to be seen, but not talked to. The Iraqi Governing Council came and looked through our mirrors into the booths to see some of the foreign fighters we have detained. They wanted to talk to them and film to show the international media, but we refused, due to not being able to interrupt interrogations. They were much more patient than we thought they would be so they tried to wait us out. Five and a half hours in the booth was a long time, but we finally outlasted them. The IGC left with only the satisfaction that we have foreign fighters from Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and other countries detained here. To be clear, they are not sponsored by their respective countries to come here, but it is due to their individual choices, be it religious or stupidity.
9:11:20 AM
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Another note to Evan. Livejournal, supports both RSS and Atom. So does Typepad. Are these small companies more technically adept than Google/Blogger?
8:19:49 AM
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A new blogger interface is out. Of course, Evan's anti-customer stance on RSS forces users of his product to jump through hoops to enhance their weblogs with the world's standard syndication format. Note to Evan: nobody cares that you have some "grand strategy" to gain platform dominance. They want a product that works in accord with industry standards.
8:06:39 AM
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Rajesh continues to noodle on ways to stop Microsoft's encroachment into emerging markets before it gets lock-in. Shhh, but one of the secrets to doing this isn't through productivity apps. It's through games.
7:15:13 AM
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I have a field report that Google's "search appliance" supports creating RSS feeds for search output. This feature is not listed the Google site. This is an excellent way to create synthetic feeds from Intranet weblogs (K-Logs) and other items. I guess it's possible that Google does respond to market demand under the right circumstances.
6:02:06 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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