04 March 2003

Madmen

I am up this morning early and at the keyboard just after 0530. I will not have the time to do a Socotra piece, but I can write a little as I listen to the cascade of the world's events. Saddam is at his consumate best today, destroying a few missiles and digging up some ancient shells, and issuing bold statements on Baghdad TV. He is a madman, but a clever one. His real stuff is someplace else, and the decision to go must be coming soon. I would calculate it on the cruising time from the Nimitz Battle Group to the Gulf from their homeport in San Diego, though of course they could join a work in progress. It is likely to be SRO out there.

Vicki Barker is on a family emergency. Sitting in for her is a pleasant-voiced lady named Judy Swallow.

I do not make these things up, I swear.

It is a pretty good day to showcase the regional madmen. I'm glad I am not Khalid Sheikh Mohamed this morning. I don't imagine he has slept much. They say he is only reciting lines from the Koran at the moment, but we all have our limits and he will reach his sooner or later. I think what it flowing off his laptop will do for now, and the "pocket litter" of scraps of paper and phone numbers and contacts will eventually yield all the other fish in his sea. And they all know that, so it is moving day for al Qaida. Osama and all the rest need to relocate, clear datum, as we used to say in the anti-submarine warfare business. Get as far away from the last point where we knew where they were. Scuttle to new safe houses. They must feel a cold wind on the back of their necks.

I'm glad.

So at a minimum our enemies are inconvenienced, either losing their leases or having to destroy some of their toys. Khalid's capture may force some plans into execution before they are fully ready, use them or lose them. Others may be deferred or cancelled and that is all to the good. Meanwhile, the rest of the world lurches on. Tony Blair spent 24 hours in Belfast, taking a break from the Iraq crisis, and Kim Chong Il is hurling his fighters into the air to intercept our lumbering reconnaissance aircraft. One of the fighters locked it up with his fire control radar, edging toward something like the terrifying miscalculation that happened off Hainan Island last year.

But it won't be like that, and the RC-135 won't limp in to crash land. It will be a replay of what happened over the sea of Japan thirty years ago, when the North shot down the EC-121 and thirty of our kids just died in the cold water. Jesus. The dictator in Pyongyang is nuts, and the dictator in Baghdad is nuts, and Osama and his merry band of angry men are all nuts, too. And some times I'm not so sure about us, either.

I am down to four minutes discretionary time here before the shower must roar. My new job requires a coordination meeting at 0700 downtown. I will get used to this new schedule, in time, and maybe Socotra gets cut back to a weekend schedule until I figure out some better time management. First things first.

We need to deal with some madmen.