We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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There are no real surprises to the graph this month. It is bad but it has been obvious from the day of the Chinook shootdown that would be so. As I noted last month, I felt it best to delay comments until these numbers were in.
D.Amon, all rights reserved. Permission granted for use with attribution to Samizdata
It is rather obvious to me there has been significant re-organization and re-grouping of the Baathists. They have gone from utterly ineffective to being at least capable of co-ordinating attacks which inflict some damage.
A problem they face is their numbers, while large, are limited. Saddam’s loyal core forces which vanished ‘into the woodwork’ in mid-April numbered perhaps 15-20 thousand. They are at present expending those numbers at an horrendous rate. True, they are doing some damage to the Coalition – but not major damage in any tactical, let alone strategic sense. They attack and they kill some of the Coalition forces… and promptly get their own arses handed back to them on a platter.
It is not as if the Baath have an unlimited pool of personnel and cash. There is no superpower backing them behind the scenes; there is no huge mass of conscripts to fill in the holes left by the fallen. If they fight a war of attrition they will lose unless the populace backs them. Given what the Baathists did to that very same populace for three decades, such a turn about seems unlikely. You cannot turn a butcher into a folk hero in less than a generation.
My crystal ball is rather hazy this month. I expect the casualty rates to drop off a little bit but to remain high for at least several months. The major factor in how long they remain high depends on things for which I do not have the information on which to base a ‘WAG’ let alone a reasoned judgement. I can only say the numbers will stay up until either the reformed Baath command structure is shattered or attrition in the ranks erodes their ability and will to fight.
In the best of worlds, that could take several months.
I read a lot of Iraqi blogs and journalism. The reason? I don’t believe anything Western journalists have to say any more. If the New York Times printed a headline saying “Sun Slated to Rise Tomorrow Morning”, I’d fact check them with one of my astronomer friends – just to be sure our planet hadn’t recently stopped rotating.
Many Iraqis have made it clear the US isn’t brutal enough in rooting out the old regime. I’m not sure it is always understood over there that we simply cannot act as violently as they would wish. Now that the enemy is dug in behind a screen of civilians we face fairly stiff limits of ‘acceptable behavior’. We are constantly under the scrutiny of the western allies of the deposed butcher. We face terrorist embedded Paris Match ‘reporters’ filming the firing of anti-aircraft missiles at civilian aircraft. We have Reuters reporters digging for any concievable anti-american angle they can find.
The Iraqis themselves have no such constraints. I agree with Alaa in principle. We have to push the control of security into Iraqi hands as fast as we possibly can… but we do have to balance this with progress in the creation of a civil society. That is the gift we wish to leave behind us. It will have far more lasting effects than the burial of Saddam’s spawn.
The day will come when Iraqi police and government take over everything… and very soon afterwards a large number of Baathists will turn up dead.
Problem finis.
According to a report by The Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), there will be two conferences held on the situation in Iran during the first week of December. One will be sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC and aired over free Iranian radio and TV; the other will be held Cagliari, Italy with support of various Italian organizations.
If you are near either city you may wish to attend and file a report with us.
The Opinion Journal has an excellent article by Saad Eddin Ibrahim of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Egypt. Saad not only speaks of liberty; he has spent his time in the hell of an Egyptian prison for promoting it.
I agree with him. The Arab world is no more incapable of living in peace and liberty than anywhere else. As Saad points out, Egypt has been there before and still retains shreds of a once vibrant civil society. The world has forgotten the century of Egyptian history prior to Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 coup.
We of Samizdata wish him and the many others like him success and good fortune in their efforts to bring the blessings of liberty to their homelands.
Brian just posted one of my favorite shots of the Scaled Composites spaceship and wondered how large the windmills in the background windfarm are.
The answer is: big. Here are two of my non-telephoto photos of roughly the same area as seen from within the confines of the Mojave Civilian Test Flight Facility (a couple hours travel north and east of Los Angeles, California):
Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Photo: Dale Amon, all rights reserved
Yes, those are the same mountains you see in the photo on Brian’s blog. The windfarm was actually just barely visible in the top image before I cut it down to blog-size. I am far less certain of the direction of the bottom photo, but I think it shows the mountains in the opposite direction as I can see the control tower in it. (There is also an F4 Phantom. Can you find it?)
Things tend to be very big and very far away in that part of the world!
Meanwhile, Armadillo Aerospace has solved their H202 supply problems, has run a test engine at better than 1000lbf and good ISP and is working on vehicle modifications to deal with the new engine design.
You can watch them testing the modified landing shock absorbers of their VTVL spaceship.
Scaled Composites flew their sixth drop test on November 19th, less than a week after the previous flight on the fourteenth. Tests prior to this have been at roughly one month intervals so I assume they are entering a new phase of testing.
Objectives: The sixth glide flight of SpaceShipOne. Test pilot Mike Melvill’s first flight with the enlarged tails. Emergency aft CG handling qualities eval and simulated landing exercise with the new tail configuration. Airspeed and G envelop expansion and dynamic feather evaluation.
Results: Launch conditions were 48,300 feet and 115 knots. Satisfactory vehicle handling characteristics at the emergency CG limit. Melvill reported improved stability, improved control powers and improved stick forces throughout the flight profile. The feather was extended after a 3G pull-up to the vertical at 30,000 feet. The vehicle recovered to a stable attitude and descent after a few mild oscillations. The landing pattern was flown at a higher airspeed than previous flights which allowed for a more controlled flare and landing at the nominal touchdown point.
The odds for an in-flight engine ignition on December 17th are getting better again. It may now be a matter of how satisfactory the ground tests of the SpaceDev hybrid engine have been.
I did not see the spectacular solar storm last month. It turns out I was wrong inferring from my failure that there was no auroral display visible in Belfast. A week or so ago I was chatting with a fellow who worked for me in two different companies over the course of perhaps eight years… and found that not only did he see an auroral display – he photographed it!
I hope for the sake of his server the Samizdata effect is not quite so dire as the Reynolds Effect…
As always, Glenn Reynolds is the first one on to a fascinating new blog.
The Counter Revolutionary is posting a series of New York Times articles from the period of months after the end of WWII. I suggest starting at the bottom and reading your way up to the top as he is posting them roughly in time sequence.
I think you will agree it sounds very, very familiar.
Scaled Composites completed the fifth test flight of SpaceShipOne on November 14th at the Mojave Civilian Test Flight Facility.
Objectives: The fifth glide flight of SpaceShipOne. New pilot checkout flight. Stability and control testing with the new extended horizontal tails. Tests included stall performance at aft limit CG and evaluation of the increased pitch and roll control authority. Other objectives included additional testing of the motor controller (MCS) and handling qualities in feathered flight.
Results: Launch conditions were 47,300 feet and 115 knots. Satisfactory stability and control at aft limit CG. A notable improvement in control power, particularly in roll. Handling qualities into and out of feather remained excellent with good nose pointing ability. Adjusted landing pattern altitudes resulted in a touchdown at the targeted runway aim-point.
There is as yet no indication when they will be ready for the first in-flight engine ignition test. It is conceivable this might be carried out next month on the date of the First Flight anniversary. As for the first suborbital flight, I certainly expect to see it before next summer. I do not know the status of their launch license filing beyond the gossip of last summer when they most likely decided to start the process, and that is likely a limiting factor on the launch date.
I think you will find this DOD transcript a fascinating entree into the current situation in Iraq. Major General Charles H. Swannack, Jr., the Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, is high enough to have a fairly global view but not too high. He’s still close to the combat and day to day reality.
It is well worth a read.
Okay, I finally found a couple hours free to count and double check the data, relearn how to use an app I used once before, find where I’d left the input data files… So here it is:
Dale Amon, all rights reserved. May be used with attribution to Samizdata.
All raw data is publicly available.
I’ll leave my discussion for the update in December because the October numbers do not really tell a story unless taken in conjunction with the already striking but incomplete November numbers. I will only comment that a brief look at the data to date speaks very loudly that the enemy forces have recreated a command structure.
Note that I updated the September figures to include some fatalities that were not announced until several days into October.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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