Seats in the peanut gallery

Today's warfare is more observable than ever before.
Here are some web alternatives to big media:

The Command Post was born in March as a warbloggers' clearinghouse. It was an overnight success and continues to be an important primary source of what the pop media likes to call "breaking news."

As of this posting (1 August 2004,), the Command Post has registered over 4,400,000 unique visitors, and posted over 14,000 news items, and has registered over 133,500 reader comments. We've had the Iraq, GWOT, and 2004 pages added to the Library of Congress MINERVA collection.

The Green Side has intermittent emails from a Marine preparing to go in to Fallujah. Excerpt follows in the next post.

The Adventures of Chester I just came across. Excerpts:

Former Marine officer who participated in the Iraqi campaign. BA in Int'l Relations from Duke. Now work in finance in Texas.

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I would sincerely like to thank my daily readers for their patronage. I started this blog fifteen days ago and yesterday's page impressions totalled 6900 and change. I appreciate your telling your friends about me. Again for the record, I am not in Iraq. My analysis is based on my experinces there in 2003 and open-source information. I have a day-job. This is not my only gig. I appreciate the many great recommendations I have received, many of which I will pursue, including:-adding a link to a reading list on Amazon-adding BlogAds-adding a link to my email address-increasing the font size for readers who have trouble with the small print. I'll get to all of these things in time. I appreciate your patience, and so does Mrs. Adventures of Chester, who is trying to adjust to the fact that her husband's new hobby involves staring at a screen for long periods of time.

A final admin note: I have mentioned that I think the Battle of Fallujah will take place in three phases, and we are in the first, Shaping the Battlespace. The second, The Ground Assault, will begin shortly. From the day that it begins, as I determine it, until the day that it ends and phase three begins, I will donate all of my google ad revenue to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which is an organization that provides scholarships and other assistance to the children and families of Marines and Law Enforcement Personnel killed in the line of duty. [I presume phase three is a cleanup]

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. . . the insurgents could save chemical munitions for a last resort. If US troops reached certain key terrain or accomlished certain objectives that the insurgents designate, it could trigger a pre-planned chemical assault that is partially suicidal. That is to say, they would do their best to be upwind and distanced from the target points, but if they lost some of their numbers in the process it would be seen as a cost of fighting. Also, using chemical munitions rigged as IEDs could be performed in a relatively safe manner (for them) and could be used to attempt to deny us certain areas. If they have persistent chemical munitions that settle on surfaces like dust, then this is a real possibility.

Another general point about chemical munitions: they are best employed with conventional weapons, in a manner such that the conventional weapons injure a number of people, and the chemical munitions keep the injured from being saved.

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[The Brits will be backing our Marines, most recent open source info at this writing...] This is consistent with my prediction last week that the Black Watch will be servingas a blocking force, so that it can clean up any insurgents who flee to the east of the city of Fallujah. US air power will attrit them on the roads and the Black Watch will stop those that make it through. The US will leave an escape point for the insurgents, provided that they have a strong level of trust in Marine/USAF air assets and the Black Watch to then destroy them. The Black Watch will be the anvil to the MEF's hammer.

This guy's averaging over two and a half thousand hits a day after a couple of weeks. Word travels fast, doesn't it?

I think people with a military background speak about military matters with more credibility than pundits. It's hard to separate opinions from expertise. (That also goes for military experts speaking as pundits, or entertainers speaking as anything else.)

I got this info from Michelle Malkin, one of the smartest people around.

Internet content is like ostrich eggs. It doesn't take too many to make a dozen.