CNN's War Web Cams

[Anonymous]

Anybody else watching the really pixelly live footage CNN is airing? They've got a camera with the 7th Cav while it's rolling across southern Iraq. They just stopped in the middle of a Bedouin camp and the Bedouins just woke up to find themselves in the middle of a gigantic armored formation. And the satellite feed is so grainy that it looks ike a web cam.

Talk about Surreal.

[Menzo]

I'm watching it right now. It's so unbelievably compelling, and they're just sitting next to some goats.

The idea that we are getting live footage of a war in progress, from the front lines, is just amazing to me.

While the going's good, this must be awesome for the families of soldiers - I can't imagine what it's like to have a loved one so far away and have so little information. I'd like to think that they are happy just to get this grainy web-cam style footage of their son's or husband's (or wife/daughter) unit in action.

[Supertanker]

Did you see it while they had the night vision on it? Dark green blobs on a pixelated slightly lighter green background. Pretty useless, though the daytime stuff is nice.

[Bub, Andrew]

I keep looking at it and thinking about posterity. There's never been a war this rigorously documented. We'll get reports, articles, and maybe books from journalists from several nations and we'll get hours upon hours of actual video future historians can pore over.

[wumpus]

Except perhaps for Steve Bauman, who will instead pour over them.

[milo]

And then in thirty or forty years, Fox News can run a documentary on how the entire war was faked for the cameras by a clever government conspiracy. It's all good.

[DennyA]

It's amazing, but creepy in a way as well. "War as entertainment."

[chet]

If they can do that - why couldn't they stick a camera to the nose of any of the missiles we launched? I need my smart bomb movies!!!

Chet

[Anonymous]

Oh My Fucking God.

Just when it couldn't get any more surreal, they get the wife of the Company Commander leading the 7th Cavalry's charge across the desert to talk about her husband while we're watching live "vehicle-cam" video of his troop racing across the fucking desert.

And Aaron "Aarogant" Brown wants his reporter to somehow get Captain Lyle on the phone so he can talk to his wife. Nevermind the fact that Captain Lyle is probably got his hands full at the moment, leading the charge into enemy territory and all that.

[Linoleum]

Can I picket outside CNN headquarters with a giant sign saying "No Blood for Ratings!"?

[Anonymous]

This is reality TV, not that other crap.

[Bullhajj]

It seems to me that both MSNBC and FOX have better quality feeds than CNN.

[Mark Bussman]

If they can do that - why couldn't they stick a camera to the nose of any of the missiles we launched? I need my smart bomb movies!!!

Chet

Because most of the missiles and bombs aren't optically guided anymore, and it would add extra weight to the bomb. Oh, you were just kidding weren't you. :)

[Jack]

I agree. Last night, I got out a bag of chips, put my feet up on the couch and decided to "watch the war" for a little while. Incredibly surreal. It reminds me of a Civil War story where, in one of the early battles, people set up chairs on a hillside to watch a battle in a valley below.

I feel like I'm waiting to watch people get murdered and since I can't do anything about it, I might as well enjoy the spectacle. Bizarre.

[Erik]

Suddenly, it's even more like a reality-TV game show: Saddam is offering cash prizes (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81765,00.html) for killing various types of U.S. and British soldiers. Capturing one alive is even more lucrative.

[Erik]

I forgot to mention the 200 Polish soldiers. They may even be worth more, since they're so rare.

[Jack]

I heard about that. Crazy, huh? As if keeping the enemy out isn't motivation enough. Maybe he should throw in a free trip to the French Riveria.

[Anonymous]

I agree. Last night, I got out a bag of chips, put my feet up on the couch and decided to "watch the war" for a little while. Incredibly surreal. It reminds me of a Civil War story where, in one of the early battles, people set up chairs on a hillside to watch a battle in a valley below.

I feel like I'm waiting to watch people get murdered and since I can't do anything about it, I might as well enjoy the spectacle. Bizarre.

That was Manassas - not far from my hometown. And things didn't quite go the way those spectators thought they would. I contemplated that as well as the fact that this charge was being lead by the 7th Cavalry - Custer's old unit.

I've definitely got mixed feelings, at best, about this war but if it keeps on going this smoothly maybe we will see the 'happy Iraqi' after all. That would turn world opinion back to our side. How can you be furious at folks who've liberated rather than conquered somebody? If we're really living up to our own hype, which any rational person has reason to be skeptical about given our track record as a country and this administration in particular, than - boo-yah. Let's help these local folks fix the neighborhood up and the rest of the world can shape up and join us when they get around to it.

I'm a pretty hardened cynical case but I have to admit watching CNN and the BBC (on CSPAN-2) last night I was pretty inspired. Still, this is one thing and reconstruction is another. If we really let the UN get back on board and handle reconstruction as well as administer the oil industry for the Iraqis (rather than handing it off as spoils to American corporations) we could really pull this out. I almost hate to say it, I'm almost elated to say it, but I coulda been wrong about this one.

Still, I'll wait and see how it goes.

[Brian Rucker]

That was me.

[Desslock]

I forgot to mention the 200 Polish soldiers. They may even be worth more, since they're so rare.

The French have already turned them all in.

[chet]

Mark Bussman, no, sadly I was not kidding. This is my tax dollars being flushed away. Granted we are making some cuts against Lazy No Good Bastards (http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/national/3_18_03vets.html), but if you are going to flush my money down the toilet at $1 million a pop (if you notice they are now great strategic weapons, but for Clinton they were pussy weapons), you could at least entertain me.

I would not have thought this in the previous gulfwar, but since this war is definitely being sold to the American Public as entertainment, don't do a half-ass job. I want my smart bomb videos.

Chet

[Menzo]

I think it's only a matter of time until CNN springs for its own predator drone and feeds us live aerial shots of a warzone.

The technology is amazing, but it did get old last night listening to Aaron Brown be constantly amazed by it, too. It's really all he talked about.

[Jack]

Because not much else is going on. Twenty-four hour coverage is a bit much. To quote some sock-puppet from NBC: "Here we are, looking at the skies of Baghdad. All is quiet, as it has been for the last few hours."

Can we not cover every minute of nothing?

[Tyjenks]

I had to turn it off this morning when they talked of an "Imminent Centcom briefing". Then it was downgraded to just British and Austrilian briefing. Then the Austrailians were going to talk to Austrailian media only in a "meet-n-greet" session. Then they said, "Well, it looks like it might be sorta likely that maybe a briefing could occur sometime in the next few hours. We hope. Maybe."

It's O.K. You can show other news people. You are not going to miss the entire war if you turn the cameras away for 10 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Tune back in. CNN just reported that the Pentagon has told them Shock and Awe is starting now.

[DennyA]

Holy crap.

I am indeed shocked and awed.

My initial thought was "well, perhaps seeing war live will make it seem less attractive to the hawks in the masses."

Then I realized that the big explosions look just like something from a Bruckheimer film. People are too desensitized to this. You're not seeing the blood and the bodies.

[Anonymous]

Looks like we just totally leveled Saddam's megapalace.

British ITN news says that US intelligence has a eyewitness report of Saddam being carried out on a hospital stretcher with an oxygen mask on his face after the decapitation attack on that bunker.

Haven't heard anything like that from US news sources yet.

[Ben Sones]

Those were pretty big blasts. MSNBC had Stormin' Norman Schwartzkopf on, and even he seemsed a bit taken aback by the scale of the explosions. I don't think they've used the MOAB yet, though. Given the size of that weapon, I'm guessing it would look a lot like a tactical nuclear strike.

[Anonymous]

They would never dare use MOAB in a city. It would just shatter several city blocks, with mass collateral damage.

Ideal situation would be a large minefield. The overpressure air blast would actually detonate all the mines. Instant mine clearing.

Or if they had a large formation of hostile Iraqi forces in the open. Drop MOAB in the middle of them, and bye-bye.

There was an incident in Gulf War I where we dropped a Daisy Cutter on Iraqi forces in Kuwait, and a nearby unit of British special forces reported in that they thought a nuclear weapon had been used. A MOAB is much bigger than a Daisy Cutter, so think just how powerful a blast that must be.

[Tyjenks]

Could they lay off the liberal use of "shock and awe"? For fuck's sake!

And Dan Rather....I just do not know what to say. I hate to say melodramatic since this is a truly awesome occurrence in our history.....but I will.

[Jason Becker]

"I hate to say melodramatic since this is a truly awesome occurrence in our history.....but I will"

He wants to be the thought of like Walter Cronkite and the other "old school" news guys covering stuff like WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

[Anonymous]

Oh dear God.

They actually got Captain Lyle of the 7th Cavalry to get on the camera and have an on-air converation with his wife.

I hope the reports of that Iraqi unit of unknown size to the 7th Cav's immediate north were checked out, otherwise I'd hate to think that we're wasting precious time for this Hallmark Moment.

[Anonymous]

And not five minutes after I typed the previous post, CNN breaks back to the 7th Cav because it was exchanging fire with the enemy.

[Anonymous]

Anyone listening to the Iraqi Information Minister's rant? This is the best guy they can come up with? To hear him say it, they've kicked our asses back to the States. War's almost won for them.

[Brad Grenz]

Maybe they're pulling a Rocky IV. Let the foreigner beat the shit out of you until he's too tired to fight back, then turn it on! Actually, I think that was the tactic Rocky used in all the movies.

[wumpus]

I MUST BREAK YOU.

[DennyA]

2:03 AM EST: Live firefightes in Umm Quasr on CNN. Been going for the last half-hour or so. Tanks and machine guns peppering a small group of apparently suicidal Iraqi soldiers.

And Aaron Brown lamenting that they didn't turn off the cameras when the shooting started because people would start perceiving this as just another reality tv show.

[Anonymous]

Turns out the Marines ran into about 100 Republican Guardsman in the port city. The commander of the Republican Guard surrendered, and may be negotiating the surrender of his troops.

But in a scene right out of Three Kings, the 7th Cav engaged a small Iraqi force, and they captured several Iraqis who were driving around in a pink (pink!) pickup truck with a light machine gun on it and an NYPD bumper sticker of all things on the bumper.

Bee-zare. Sur-real.