From CBS News: At the United Nations, Iraq’s ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, acknowledged the regime’s demise: “The game is over and I hope peace will prevail.”

UPDATE: Reaction from the Arab media. Interesting. (Thanks, Instapundit.)

But Gandalf lifted up his arms and called once more in a clear voice: “Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.”

And even as he spoke the earth rocked beneath their feet. Then rising swiftly up, far above the Towers of the Black Gate, high above the mountains, a vast soaring darkness sprang into the sky, flickering with fire. The earth groaned and quaked. The Towers of the Teeth swayed, tottered, and fell down; the mighty rampart crumbled; the Black Gate was hurled in ruin; and from far away, now dim, now growing, now mounting to the clouds, there came a drumming rumble, a roar, a long echoing roll of ruinous noise.

“The realm of Sauron is ended!” said Gandalf. “The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest!”

(Translation: “Joy to the world, Saddam is dead.” Or, at the very least, he’s not in power anymore.)

Sorry guys, but I need to sleep. I have class tomorrow morning at 10:00, and I’m busy pretty much all day. So, no full pool update yet, I’m afraid. Maybe tomorrow night.

But, the bottom line is, Rick Boeckler wins, and breaks the record with 421 points out of a possible 477.

British intelligence sources believe Saddam Hussein survived yesterday’s airstrike, according to the Guardian, Sky News, and Agence France-Press.

That’s twice now that we’ve killed him, only to see him live.

There’s a blatant antiwar-propaganda site called Iraq Body Count which purports to compile an accurate and up-to-date count of the number of Iraqi civilians killed thus far in the war. I’m thinking about setting up a site called “Saddam Body Count” which compiles an accurate and up-to-date count of the number of times we’ve killed Saddam thus far in the war.

Of course, our domestic shorthair kitten Toby already got him long ago, so I don’t know what the problem is.

UConn wins national title!! Rick Boeckler, a Maryland resident and Becky Zak’s uncle, sets all-time Living Room Times pool points record with 421 out of a possible 477 points!

Full upate coming later tonight.

…is this guy.

He does have quite a rhetorical flair, though.

[He] has dug deep into the lexicon of Arabic insults for verbal salvoes to lob at the “evil invaders.”

He calls the U.S. and British forces flocks of sheep doomed to die in Iraq or likens them to a snake slithering through the desert that will be chopped into pieces.

His press conferences are rather amusing to watch, I must say.

In other news, I can’t find my Saddam Hussein voodoo doll. Dammit, I want to hang it from my backback by a string!

The New York Post has an article about the on-air expletive uttered by Roy Williams, the usually polite-speaking, aw-shucks Kansas coach, last night after the Jayhawks lost to Syracuse. Its quotation of his remarks fits well with my memory.

USA Today has an article about it, too.

United Press International’s article quotes him less accurately, I think, but it does give a full account of what he said later, in the interview room after the game:

Williams said he was sorry he had used a curse word and said he did not know at the time the interview was being shown live. He admitted his action would not sit well with former North Carolina Coach Dean Smith.

“Coach Smith will be disappointed in my ‘blankety-blank,’ but he understands.”

CBS Sportsline has a little more of what Williams said in the interview room.

(Thank you, Google News.)

From CNN:

The journalists who died in the hotel blast were British news agency Reuters’ cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw, Poland; and Spanish TV network Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso, according to their employers.

Jeez. If we’re going to kill journalists, do they have to be from our staunchest allies… Britain, Spain, and the Eastern European countries?

Not that I wish death upon French journalists or anything, but still.

Coverage of Syracuse’s national-championship victory…

Front page of the Syracuse Post-Standard. Note that the U.S. attempt to kill Saddam Hussein is relegated to page A3. Heh.

Front page (above) and Sports page (below) of the Syracuse University student newspaper, the Daily Orange.

See also pages 3, 4, 6, and 14, or view the entire newspaper as a PDF file (1.4 MB), or simply visit the Daily Orange website.

Front page of the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle, Rochester, New York.

Front page of the Topeka Capital-Journal, Topeka, Kansas.

Front page of the Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kansas.

Front page of the Kansas City Star, Kansas City, Missouri.

Washington Post Sports page.

And that’s the way it is, April 8, 2003.

Webmaster’s note: My sources for these newspaper front pages are the Newseum, the Daily Orange website, and the Washington Post website. These graphics have been posted here for educational and informative purposes only, and are not intended for any commercial or other copyright-infringing use. If you are a copyright owner of a graphic on this page and wish it to be removed, please e-mail me.

SYRACUSE WINS, DENIES VALE POOL POINTS RECORD,
BUT HE’S STILL THE CHAMPION WITH 352 OF POSSIBLE 477;
RUBIN, STONE, STIGLIANO, PETERS ROUND OUT TOP FIVE

Only contestants to pick ‘Cuse: Buffalo students Wagner, in 16th, and Maier, in last place

Well, he had to be wrong about something.

After clinching a pool victory on the first day of the Elite Eight, securing the largest margin of victory in Living Room Times history, and correctly predicting — apparently by “accident” — a totally unexpected Marquette run to the Final Four, Justin Vale fell just short of the Times men’s pool points record Monday as Syracuse defeated Kansas, 81-78, for the national championship. Vale had picked the Jayhawks.

The youngest champion in Times pool history finishes with 352 points out of a possible 477. Vale, a 14-year-old freshman at Rockville High School in Vernon, Connecticut, would have finished with 377 points if Kansas had won, and thus would have shattered 1996 pool champion Lou Ruggiero’s record men’s pool point total of 354.

Ironically, Ruggiero achieved that score because of a Syracuse championship-game loss — he picked Kentucky as the 1996 champ, and the Wildcats beat the ‘Cuse in the title game that year — and now his record has been preserved because of a Syracuse championship-game win.

Yet even with Syracuse’s victory, Vale ends the pool with the largest margin of victory in Times history: 47 points over his nearest competitor, Josh Rubin.

Rubin, a first-year doctoral student at the University of Maryland and a 13-time participant in Times pools, scored 305 points to finish second. Kim Stone, a Newington High School sophomore and pool administrator Brendan Loy’s “honorary sister,” was close behind with 304. Todd Stigliano, a Providence College senior and the 2001 women’s pool champion, came in fourth with 300 points. 25-year-old Wisconsin farmer James Peters rounded out the top five with 299 points.

Larry Caplin, a resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan and an uncle of Loy’s girlfriend Becky Zak, finished sixth with 297 points. Caplin and Vale tied Ruggiero’s record for the best first-round predictions with 28-for-32 records, and they were still tied going into the Sweet Sixteen, but Caplin correctly predicted two fewer games than Vale did in that round, then picked only two Final Four teams and neither finalist.

Next come Northeastern University senior Ryan McBride, in seventh place with 289, followed by Union College senior Sara Hamilton with 278, University of New Haven senior Matt Thomsen with 270, and USC senior Dan Port with 269.

Becky Zak’s father Ted is part of a four-way tie for 11th place, along with Martin Kellogg Middle School eighth grader Danny Pilz, UConn senior Kevin Hauschulz, and USC senior Mike Wiser. Each has 267 points. Cam McLachlan, a friend of the Zaks and resident of East Amherst, New York, is 15th with 259 points.

Victoria Wagner, a University at Buffalo junior, is 16th with 258 points, having jumped all the way from 28th because she was one of just two contestants out of 43 in the pool to correctly pick Syracuse to win the title. The other contestant who picked Syracuse, fellow UB junior Barbara Maier, nevertheless finished in last place, 43rd, with 119 points. Still, that’s a relatively impressive total for a contestant who picked only one #1 or #2 seed to survive the first round. Eighty-two of Maier’s 119 points — nearly 70 percent — were the direct result of Syracuse victories. They were one of just two teams who she correctly picked to reach the Sweet 16, and the only correct Elite 8 pick. Yet they won the title, just as she predicted.

UConn junior Kristen Everson and Southern New Hampshire University senior Matt Kagan tied for 17th with 257 points. Nick Sowers and pool administrator Brendan Loy, both USC seniors, tied for 19th with 256 points.

Other noteworthy contestants and their finishes: 2001 men’s champion and 2002 women’s champion Jenn Castelhano finished 21nd with 251 points; defending men’s champion Tom Greca finished 29th with 228 points; this year’s women’s pool champion, Rick Boeckler, finished 36th in the men’s pool with 210 points; and the kitten Toby Zak, the first-ever non-human contestant in a Times pool, finished 42nd with 142 points.

The full final standings are available on Pick65’s website.

During the first Gulf War, when I was an obnoxious little fourth grader (as opposed to an obnoxious big, uh, sixteenth grader), I was filled with gung-ho enthusiasm for the war, and was very anxious to see Saddam get his eternal reward — so much so that I bought a “Saddam Insane” voodoo doll, who recently made an appearance on this website battling Toby.

I also, at that time, had a habit of taking popular songs and writing “satire” versions of them (usually not very funny) with current-events-related lyrics. Christmas carols were by no means immune from this butchery. Thus, during Operation Desert Shield, in my eager anticipation of Saddam’s possible demise, I rather sacriligeously composed a little ditty that began:

Joy to the world,
Saddam is dead…

I’m sure it had additional lyrics, but that’s all I remember.

I never got to sing it for real in 1991. I wonder if now is my chance?

The ‘Cuse reigns victorious! Syracuse 81, Kansas 78.

I rushed home from class (leaving at the mid-class break) just in time to catch the exciting final 24 seconds of the men’s national championship. Hakim Warrick’s game-winning shot block was awesome!!

I had been following the score of the game on ESPN.com during class, using Becky’s laptop and the USC wireless network. (The wireless connection is also the reason I found out during class about the strike on Saddam and posted about it here, as seen below.) But when I saw that the score was getting close in the final minutes, I figured I’d better get to a TV for the ending. Luckily, our professor let us take a break just in time. I bolted.

I’m excited for the Orangemen, who I was rooting for (anti-Catholic as that may seem, hehe), but at the same time, I feel bad for Kansas and Roy Williams. At some level, it would have been nice to see the Jayhawks win, since they are an older team, whereas young Syracuse will be right back in top form next year, probably competing with Texas for the preseason #1 ranking. But still, I have my regional loyalties. UConn fans gotta root for Big East teams, and besides, my cousins used to live in Syracuse, and my girlfriend is from western New York. So, yeah — go ‘Cuse!!

Kudos to Roy Williams, though, for his statement, “I don’t give a sh*t about North Carolina,” when asked not once, but twice, about the potential Tar Heel job opporunity by a CBS reporter after losing the national title game. Of course, technically it’s inappropriate for Williams to swear on national TV, and I’m sure he’ll have to apologize for it, but I was with him. As a journalist, I fully understand asking the question once (I even said, not 15 seconds before she asked it, “Get ready, here comes the obligatory North Carolina question — she has to ask it”), but no way should she have asked again, on live national TV, after he made it exceedingly clear that he was not going to answer. CBS richly deserved Williams’s bitch-slap. And besides, it was kinda funny to see someone say the “s” word on national TV. :)

Pool update coming shortly.

Did we kill him again?

I’m in class right now (blogging via Becky’s laptop’s wireless connection). More later.

UPDATE: Back from class now. The Command Post, which is an excellent blogger-run website containing very up-to-date news on Iraq, is all over this story, not surprisingly. A blogger on the site just posted this:

Fox News…reporting that Pentagon has confirmed that the attack on the residential complex was based on information provided by the CIA and visual confirmation from two special ops personnel on the ground. Once they got a second visual confirmation, the order was given and the bombs struck “within minutes” of such order. Says that they know that the target personnel were in a “restaurant” (or “below the restaurant”) just prior to the attack. Officials in various agencies are very confident that Saddam and his two sons were present (”sense of optimism”) and that they will be able to confirm whether or not he was there (based, presumably, on signals intelligence) “very soon” (”senses” that this is very different than the first “decapitation” strike).

The Sun in Britain has its front page online with a “5AM news flash: BLITZ ON SADDAM BUNKER; ‘Tyrant and sons inside’ ”

UPDATE: The target was the Al-Saa Restaurant, which is where Saddam and sons were reportedly meeting, according to the Washington Times. According to this travel agency website, Al-Saa is a four-star restaurant. Er, was.

CNN: “Material found at paramilitary camp in Hindiyah, Iraq, tests positive for chemical-warfare agents in preliminary testing, Pentagon sources tell CNN. Samples being flown to U.S. for confirmation.”

ABC News: “In what may prove to be the elusive ’smoking gun’ on Iraq’s alleged deceptions about its weapons development program, U.S. officials told ABCNEWS they believed they had found evidence of the nerve agent sarin at one site and a ‘blister agent’ at another.”

MSNBC: “Embedded journalists in Iraq reported instances where banned weaponry was found, including on some 20 rockets armed with warheads containing deadly sarin and mustard gas that were apparently ready to fire.”

(MSNBC also asserts that “the discovery of such weapons of mass destruction could mute international criticism of the war.” I doubt that. The hard left — which, at present, controls the “peace” movement — will always find some reason to oppose whatever America does, evidence and truth be damned.)

Reuters: “U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio reported on Monday.

NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were ‘ready to fire.’ It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were ‘not just trace elements.’ ”

Wait… Saddam Hussein was lying when he denied having WMD?!?!?! And here, all my liberal friends told me George W. Bush with the lying villain! I’m so confused…

UPDATE: Here, straight from the horse’s mouth, is NPR’s report.