Will Saddam reveal secrets?

The official is doubtful that the U.S. will get a significant amount of intelligence from Saddam�s interrogations. “I would be surprised if he gave any info,” he said.

I’d say probably not, if this is an indication of how things will go:

When asked “How are you?” said the official, Saddam responded, “I am sad because my people are in bondage.” When offered a glass of water by his interrogators, Saddam replied, “If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?”

Come to think of it, I didn’t notice a toilet in his spider hole.

The bad Redskins season reached a new low with the 27-0 home loss to Dallas. I’m not the only one wondering if the $5 million/year Spurrier experiment investment is paying off:

Spurrier came into the NFL with the reputation of being an “offensive genius” in college, yet the Redskins (5-9) entered ranked 22nd in offense and this was their worst performance yet.

Worse yet, looking ahead there isn’t very strong evidence that things are headed in the right direction.
By the way, whoever had this guy on their fantasy team probably wishes they didn’t:
PASSING ATT YDS INT TDS
T Hasselbeck 6-26 56 4 0
That’s one of the lines I recall seeing.

Okay, so that doesn’t work quite as well as Chunnel. But planning is in the works for another big dig:

Plans for a rail tunnel between Africa and Europe have taken a step forward with the agreement by Spain and Morocco on a programme of engineering tests. Machines could be digging under the Strait of Gibraltar in five years.
The Spanish transport ministry said �27m (�19m) would be invested over the next three years in a geological survey of the rocks between Punta Paloma, on the south-western coast of Spain near Tarifa, and Punta Malabata, near the Moroccan city of Tangier.
A decision whether to start digging will be made in 2008.
The tunnel would be 24 miles long, of which 17 miles would lie under the fast-moving waters of the strait.

The world continues to grow smaller.

Some government officials and and other leaders experience a taste of their own medicine:

Officials who attended a world Internet and technology summit in Switzerland last week were unknowingly bugged, said researchers who attended the forum.
Badges assigned to attendees of the World Summit on the Information Society were affixed with radio-frequency identification chips (RFIDs), said Alberto Escudero-Pascual, Stephane Koch and George Danezis in a report issued after the conference ended Friday in Geneva. The badges were handed out to more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries, including the United States.
. . .
RFID chips track a person’s movement in “real time.” U.S. groups have called for a voluntary moratorium on using the chips in consumer items until the technology and its effects on privacy and civil liberties are addressed.

Guess what goes around, comes around. I don’t know if in this instance any kind of individual data was actually collected. But if the attendees were unaware of the chips, this kind of episode should make them more sensitive to privacy concerns.
Via Slashdot.

“Saddam Hussein Captured“

Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s deposed leader, was last night found by US forces at the bottom of a hole near his home town of Tikrit, it was announced today.
Without a shot being fired, members of the US army’s 4th infantry division and special forces closed in at 8.30pm yesterday local time (1730 GMT) on a small walled farming compound 10 miles south of the city where they discovered the hiding place.
Video footage of Saddam’s medical inspection after he was pulled from the hole showed a dishevelled figure with unkempt dark hair and a thick beard that had become grey.

The T.V. talking heads, and those that play Iraqi experts in the blogoshere, are all speculating what it means now on the ground. Clearly, this changes the atmosphere in Iraq. But Saddam’s appearance and the manner he was captured suggest that lately he’s been much more of a symbolic rather than operational leader. So this may or may not have a direct impact on the insurgency.
The drama continues.