Here’s the deal: I’m going to blog this Islamabad blast every day for a while, try to talk honestly about how to sift through the crap to try to figure out what’s really going on.

It should be a good case study, because there are all sorts of rumors flying around, and I’ve already learned some surprising stuff, found out I was wrong in the guesses I made from the first reports.

Of course, if you’re really slow anything’s a surprise. There was a headline today, “Al Qaeda suspected in Islamabad Blast.” No, ya think? Sure it wasn’t the Basques? Maybe the Corsican Liberation Front?

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BREAKING WARNEWS!

You’ve probably heard by now that Al Qaeda just zapped the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. A truck blew up while security was going over it with sniffer dogs. At least the dogs died happy, I suppose. Those sniffer dogs aren’t the furious anti-drug or anti-explosive types like you might think. They get a Milk Bone every time they find cocaine or fertilizer bombs, so the last sound heard by the tired foreigners bedding down at the Marriott last night would have been excited yipping and yapping, “Oh boy, this thing is so big they better give me a kennel-full of Liva Treats!”

The early reports are that these Teamster jihadis were looking for the Prime Minister’s house, where everybody who’s anybody in Pakistan was having a big hands-on feast. But they were “discouraged” by heavy security around the mansion and decided to head for the Marriott instead. (more…)

America’s chickenhawks are ready to turn Georgia into a nation of missing-relative-seeking refugees.

I’d hate to be Georgia right now. So many American pundits have plans for the Georgians, brilliant schemes designed to get Georgia into a big war with the Russians. “Here’s what you oughta do….” It’s like listening in on bar talk—some drunk trying to talk a 98-pound weakling into a rematch with the hulking thug who just put him on the floor. Funny thing, they never want to prove their theory themselves.

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It’s been tons of funs watching the dust settle over South Ossetia, watching everybody go crazy and do their best to avoid the fact that Putin kicked our proxy ass. If you’ve ever wondered how countries deal with military defeat, wonder no more, because you’ve just lived through it, and if you watched any tv, you saw loser propaganda in action 24/7.

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Here’s some more cool combat vids for you desk casualties. This time it’s Georgian troops shooting the Hell out of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, on the day they rolled in to retake the province after Bush and Cheney promised them the Russians wouldn’t dare do a thing. So it didn’t work out all that great, but on that first day, when it was Georgian upgraded T-72s vs. Ossetian civvies with AK-47s, our little allies had themselves a real barnburner of a time, and luckily, one of them took these vids to show his little Facebook friends. (more…)

There are three basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1. The Georgians started it.
2. They lost.
3. What a beautiful little war!

For me, the most important is #3, the sheer beauty of the video clips that have already come out of this war. I’m in heaven right now.

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In honor of today’s coup in Mauritania, EXILED ONLINE is reprinting a War Nerd classic about a previous Mauritanian coup in 2005, one of scores of coups that this War Nerd-friendly nation has been churning out since independence. (more…)