Fireworks, and Lack of Same

To say last night’s BCS Championship game was a disappointment is an exercise in understatement of the most profound variety (see: great expectations).

Chris Leak humiliated Mr. Heisman. To say he won the personal matchup with Troy Smith is like saying Sitting Bull got the best of Custer. It was a massacre and a stunning reversal of fortune for a guy who was widely doubted as a big-game quarterback while Smith was universally saluted.

A Florida defense that has been excellent all year was impenetrable Monday night. The Buckeyes were held to a preposterous 82 yards of offense, which looks like a misprint unless you saw the game.

The first four minutes of the game were entertaining, the remainder much less so. All the dreary details are here. I don’t mean to take anything away from the Gators by calling the game “dreary,” but I do mean to disparage OSU. They sure as Hell didn’t look like the nation’s Number One Team.

This is most interesting: America’s Boots on the Ground in Somalia.

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

These ground forces include CIA paramilitary officers who are based out of Galkayo, in Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland, Special Operations forces, and Marine units operating out of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.

The presence of U.S. airpower in Somalia became public knowledge yesterday when CBS News reported that an AC-130 fixed-wing gunship carried out a strike against suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia. Unmanned aerial drones kept the targets under surveillance while a gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations Command flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia.

An unattributed source, but plausible, none the less. And a functionary within the Somalian transitional government has gone on the record as saying US helicopter gunships with their markings “obscured” have been supporting Ethiopian forces. Good on ‘em. Please, sir, may I have some more (dead terrorists)?

Today’s Pic: Apropos of nothing (once again—and decidedly non-seasonal), here’s a shot of last year’s Fourth of July fireworks. One of my very minor goals in life has been to take good pictures of fireworks. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m not half-bad. July 4, 2006.