I received two emails about cluster bombs in response to my comments on them the other day. Both of them noted a danger inherent to the use of cluster bombs that I left out — the fact that usually some of the bombs in the cluster are duds. Rather than exploding when the bomb is initially dropped, they lay on the ground waiting for some unfortunate soul to come into contact with them. These unexploded munitions remain an indefinite risk, like land mines. In fact, some cluster bombs are used to deliver land mines rather than standard bomblets. (I really hope we’re not using that type in Afghanistan, which is already one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.) The second thing is that cluster bombs are not just an anti-personnel weapon. They can be used for taking out vehicles and structures that aren’t hardened, rendering airstrips useless, and for other such tasks.

Mozilla 0.9.5 is out. Interesting new features include tabbled browsing (a la Opera), and a site navigation bar for those sites which support it using the link element. It also comes with Venkman, a debugger for JavaScript.

I’ve read a number of reports in all sorts of outlets that since yesterday, the US has been dropping cluster bombs on Afghanistan. This is interesting from the standpoint that cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons. Rather than simply destroying strategic fixed targets, we’ve started targetting people. Needless to say, if you drop cluster bombs in civilian areas, civilians are going to be killed, and since this phase of our attack has started, reports of civilian casualties are growing. Whether you’re actually “targetting” those civilians or not is a matter of semantics. This should also put to rest the myth of the “surgical strike.” War isn’t surgical.

Mozilla is really coming into its own. I’ve taken to using it as my main browser on my home computer, and it really works like a charm. Best of all, you can set a preference (there are instructions in the release notes) which enables you to disable the window.open() method in JavaScript during the page load and unload events. This strikes a real blow against pop-up ads. Supposedly there’s a new milestone release coming out today, too.

The Senate passed the so-called “USA Act” last night over the sole protestations of Russ Feingold. Tom Daschle shot down Feingold’s amendments without consideration, and Patrick Leahy (who I have earlier praised) hewed to the party line when things were said and done. The Senate passed the measure on a 96-1 vote. There’s no sunset provision in the bill, either, so this panic-driven piece of legislation is slated to be on the books permanently.

I just wanted to point out that the Federation of American Scientists web site is an amazing resource. I’ve often looked to them for information on national missile defense, but their coverage of terrorism is excellent as well. Since the 9/11 attack, they’ve been practicing some self censorship for national security reasons.

A reader sent along this link to satellite photos of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. I imagine that the topography of the camp has changed in the past week.

President Bush gave a live press conference on TV tonight. Here’s a transcript. Unfortunately, the press conference was held before the White House press corps, and in my opinion, not one really tough question was asked. Compare: Tony Blair sat down to an interview with Al-Jazeera, Bush faces the nation before the White House press corps. President Bush also mispronouis nces both “Islamic” and “Muslim.” I find that irksome. (This post marks the end of conflict-related non-partisanship at rc3.org. I’m going back to criticizing the president, although I will no longer refer to him as “Dubya.”)

Did anyone else want to join President Bush in smirking last night when he said that the United Nations can be in charge of putting Afghanistan back together again after we finish taking it apart? When you consider the fact that Bush and his fellow Republicans have absolutely no regard for the UN, you begin to see just how important he thinks it is that we put things right in Afghanistan once we finish trying to blow up Osama bin Laden and feed the Taliban to the Northern Alliance. Here’s Bush’s exact statement:

I believe that the United Nations could provide the framework necessary to help meet those conditions. It would be a useful function for the United Nations to take over the so-called nation- building — I would call it the stabilization of a future government — after our military mission is complete.

Here are a few links to some non-specific stuff:

• Falwell-Robertson-bin Laden quiz.
• Phil Agre’s latest set of attack-related links.
• Does the word skyfall mean anything to you?
• I know you already saw this: Bert is Evil turns up on a poster in a protest. Life repurposes art.

William Saletan’s makes a great argument for addressing the accusations that Osama bin Laden made in his taped statement that saw wide airplay in the United States, and even wider airplay in Muslim countries. The interviewer for Al-Jazeera gave Tony Blair a tough time in the interview that I linked to yesterday, but he was just asking the questions that many Muslims want answered. Do we have to justify ourselves before the world? No, but I think it would help.