swamped by quagmires
I am going to start a pledge campaign. I will not use the word 'quagmire' with respect to the invasion of Iraq. I think the war plan is a lot less than it might be and its defects will cost Iraqi and allied lives. I am not at all sure that military defeat of the Saddam tyranny followed by a Mesopotamian raj is a realistic prospect. But I will not use that word.

operational pause in front of Baghdad

Reuters

'U.S. Orders 4-6 Day Pause in Iraq Advance-Officers
Sat March 29, 2003 12:02 AM ET
CENTRAL IRAQ (Reuters) - U.S. commanders have ordered a pause of between four to six days in a northwards push toward Baghdad because of supply shortages and stiff Iraqi resistance, U.S. military officers said on Saturday.

They said the "operational pause," ordered on Friday, meant that advances would be put on hold while the military sorted out logistics problems with long supply lines from Kuwait.

The invasion force would continue to attack Iraqi forces ahead of them with heavy air strikes during the pause, softening them up ahead of any eventual attack on Baghdad, said the officers, declining to be named.

Use of gas-guzzling armored vehicles has been restricted to save fuel and food is also in short supply. In one frontline infantry unit, for instance, soldiers have had their rations cut to one meal packet a day from three.

Resistance from Iraqi militias fighting in towns along the advance lines has hampered the stretched supply convoys.'

northern Iraq
According to the Independent, the Kurdish peshmergas are now within 3 km of Kirkuk. The Ansar al-Islam pocket on the border between the Kurdish autonomy and Iran ahs been destroyed. Newsday quotes US Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad as saying the Turks have agreed not to intervene in northern Iraq.

The consensus of most reportage is that the US military presence in the north is as much about stopping a Turkish/Kurdish (Turco-Kurdish?) confrontation than opening a new front. The coalition wants to use the Kurdish forces against the Saddam dictatorship, not having them involved in a standoff with Turkey.

I'm still working on a proper analysis of the way that the Bush administration's diplomatic failure with Turkey is shaping events.

update
I've just been reading War in Iraq - a week of war. I'd planned to comment on the growing chaos in northern Iraq (apart from the reporting chaos of CNN briefly deciding that Tikrit was a southern Iranian city) and the situation with Turkey and the Kurds.

I'm going to postpone that and think very hard for a few hours about the Russian analysis.

Perhaps we could all meditate on one Eric Bush, an English guy living in France who is changing his surname to Buisson because he does not want to share it with Bush.

The Prisoner
Dunya Mikhail
Translated by Salaam Yousif and Liz Winslow

She doesn't understand
what it means to be "guilty"
She waits at the prison's door
until she sees him
to tell him "Take care"
as she used to remind him
when he was going to school
when he was going to work
when he was coming on vacation
She doesn't understand
what they are uttering now
those who are behind the bar
with their uniform
as they decided that
he should be put there
with strangers of gloomy days
It never came to her mind
when she was saying lullabies
upon his bed
during those faraway nights
that he would be put
in this cold place
without moons or windows
She doesn't understand
The mother of the prisoner doesn't understand
why should she leave him
just because "the visit has finished"!

The Guardian

The Last Iraq
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Translated by Salaam Yousif

Every night I place this creature on my table
And pull its ears,
Till tears of joy come to its eyes.
Another cold winter, penetrated by airplanes
And soldiers sitting on the edge of a hillock,
Waiting for history
To rise up from the darkness of the marshes
With a gun in its hand,
To shoot angels
Training for the revolution.
Every night I put my hand on this country,
It slips away from my fingers,
Like a soldier running from the front.

[1987]

Fadhi al-Azzawi was born in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk. He was imprisoned in Baghdad. He lives now in Germany.

The Guardian

Is Blair spending too much time with Bush?
From the BBC:

A government minister has expressed regret over any hurt caused by Tony Blair's claim that two British soldiers were executed.

The prime minister's comments were apparently at odds with what the British Army had told relatives of Sapper Luke Allsopp, 24, and Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, both from a bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers.

Sapper Allsopp's family had reportedly expressed anger after Mr Blair used the two deaths as an example of the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram took the opportunity of a news briefing for journalists in London to express his "regret" for any distress caused.

One hopes that Blair merely made a mistake or was carried away by the rush of events. One hopes he finds a better way than a second-hand apology to try and help the families deal with the grief he has added to their burden.

How silly do we think the Shi'a are?
What's happened as we reach Day 8? Reinforcements are being despatched because there are too few boots on the ground. There has been no cakewalk. No explosion of joy. No cheering crowds. No quick victory. The assumptions behind this war plan have failed utterly. Game show videos at the Pentagon do not conceal the failure of these assumptions.

Southern Iraq, where the Shi'a majority should make the regime's support weakest, has seen some of the fiercest fighting.

Much has been made of the failure to support the Shi'a revolt in 1991. I guess it was inevitable that someone would try to explain it away. William Saletan's Slate article Shia Folly says the Shi'a were not betrayed in 1991 when the coalition failed to support their revolt against Saddam.

In view of that understanding, Bush had no business promising to send troops into Iraq to assist a Shiite uprising. And in fact, he didn't. Three weeks into the war, Bush observed, "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, and then comply with the United Nations resolutions." That was a fact and a suggestion, no less true or wise than an equivalent remark about the Cuban or Serbian people. But it wasn't a promise. We couldn't promise the Shiites we would enter Iraq, since we had already promised our coalition partners we wouldn't. (boldface mine)

Okay, so there was no implicit or explicit promise to the Shi'a in 1991 and they should read the small print next time. Next time is now and the small print has been posted all over the Western media. They've read the small print and they do not want Baghdad as a stepping stone to Tehran or Mecca.

Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, on 25 February said

(:Translated): The Iraqi people will surely resist this idea. I believe that the Iraqi people and the popular and national forces inside Iraq will not accept a military governor, because this is a violation of democracy.

I do not know if the ayatollah has read any of the psyops leaflets but clearly he has read the small print. Dropping millions of leaflets is not going to persuade the Shi'a or any other Iraqis to subject themselves to a US viceroy sipping coffee in his palace while happy native subjects polish his shoes - like a scene from a bad movie. And whichever military genius laid out the line of advance on Baghdad might have taken account that Najaf and Kerbala are holy cities with a status (for Shi'a) equal to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.

The political assumptions behind this war are wrong. Saletan should rename his article: 'Neocon Folly'.

Krugman on Cheney
Paul Krugman comprehensively bags Cheney in the New York Times today. On the war? No, on his energy policy, although Krugman makes the point that in war as on energy the Bush administration suffers 'incestuous amplification.

One answer is that Mr. Cheney made sure that his task force included only like-minded men: as far as we can tell, he didn't consult with anyone except energy executives. So the task force was subject to what military types call "incestuous amplification," defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation."

Today's papers are full of reports about incestuous amplification in the Pentagon as the reason for the failed strategy that is costing coalition and Iraqi lives. Perhaps if Bush, Cheney or Wolfowitz had served in the various wars they have supported they might have taken the making of this war as more than an exercise in spin.

Perhaps if the Australian government had a higher war aim than maintaining the US alliance at all costs we might be able to take their support for the troops as more than an exercise in spin.

the strange history of the ASIO bill II
On 13 December 2002 the prime minister said:

And what I say to the Labor Party is, the nation needs a stronger ASIO bill, you remain silent in the face of what the New South Wales Labor Government has done and if this bill does not go through and we are not able to clothe our intelligence agencies with this additional authority over the summer months it will be on the head of the Australian Labor Party and on nobody else's head.

Parliament first sat after that on 4 February 2003.

The ASIO bill was reintroduced on 20 March

On 13 December failure to pass the bill was a threat to the lives of Australians and any death would be on the heads of the ALP. That argument, extreme, vicious and vacuous as it was, stood from 13 December, the last sitting day last year until 4 February. If the bill was desperately urgent on 13 December why was it not reintroduced until 20 March? On who's head would the blame have fallen during the more than a month that this allegedly vital bill was neglected? Who left the intelligence agencies naked between 4 February and 20 March? And why bring it back at this precise time when there are rumours of a double dissolution in April?

Howard, war, politics, priorities
Howard has been interviewed on Larry King Live

KING:

You were invited Mr Prime Minister to be at Camp David tonight with Mr Bush and Prime Minister Blair. You declined, why?

PRIME MINISTER:

It's not that I didn't want to talk to them, and as it happened we talked over the phone. But I felt that right at the moment the best thing for me to do was to be in Australia, bearing in mind that it only takes six and a half hours to go from London to Washington, it takes about 24 hours to go from Canberra to Washington and I took a raincheck on the invitation and I'll no doubt have the opportunity again of talking face to face. But we have had a lot of discussions, the President and I, and we have a very important commitment, we have special forces, we have a squadron of hornets, we have Naval personnel, mine clearance experts. For a country our size, our contribution is very significant and we are very committed to the objectives of the military campaign.

KING:

No causalities, but you have lost an, I understand, an Australian journalist, cameraman Paul Moran was killed by a car bomb. Is that correct?

PRIME MINISTER:

Yes, he was killed by a car bomb, and it's almost certainly the case that it was the work of a suicide bomber of an organisation associated with al-Qaeda that has, at the very least, been accommodated by elements of the Iraqi regime. But it was another demonstration of the wilful behaviour of international terrorists and how they target people without any regard for human life, including their own.

The organisation in question is Ansar al-Islam. According to Human Rights Watch Ansar is linked to al-Qa'ida. Ansar was formed shortly before 9 September 2001. It operates in Iraqi Kurdistan - a region not controlled by the Saddam dictatorship since the Kurdish safe haven was connected. There have been intermittent clashes betwen Ansar and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for years. The only power with the ability to deal with Ansar since establishment of the safe havens was the Anglo-American alliance. The PUK has claimed that Ansar is supported by Saddam.

Paul Moran's murder at the hand of an Ansar suicide bomber was tragic and awful. Spinning the PUK claim into a certainty to support an al-Qa'ida/Saddam linkage is repellent. The failure to attend the Washington summit is discussed in the posts on The strange history of the ASIO bill.

the strange history of the ASIO bill
Really, there's no choice but to post the whole article.

Brown pricks, PM deflates
By�Alan Ramsey
December 14 2002

It was Bob Brown who did it. He might well be the most impractical political leader in the business. But he sticks. Likewise his party, the Greens. They do not roll over on a policy decision. Usually that decision is as principled as it can be impolitic and implausible. The Greens live in the forests, with all the other elves and goblins. But you have to admire their resolution and their values. And increasing numbers of voters, sick to death of debauched major party behaviour and slick, prostituted political values, look to the Greens as the conscience of political life.

So what was it Brown did?

He made a speech. Parliament had been up all night, locked in a contest of wills with John Howard. The Senate sat for 25 hours straight, from 9.30am Thursday to 10.30am Friday. The last time anything like that happened was during the second Senate debate on the Telstra sale a few years ago. This time it was the new ASIO powers bill.

Now there aren't going to be any new powers. Twice the Senate sent the ASIO bill back to the House, insisting the Government accept its amendments, the great majority of them Labor's. Twice Labor, the Democrats and the Greens combined to frustrate the Government's insistent demands there be no amendments. The second time, at 10.30 yesterday morning, the Government folded.

Howard killed the bill - at least for now.

The Prime Minister decided if he couldn't have his ASIO bill, he wouldn't have any bill at all. If ASIO couldn't have the unfettered right to pick up, on special warrant, people as young as 14, anywhere, any time, detain them in secret, tell nobody, question them for as long as a week, charged with nothing, suspected of nothing, with no legal right of silence under threat of five years' jail, guilty of nothing except maybe - maybe - having information they didn't even realise they possessed, then ASIO would have no new powers at all. John Howard took his bill and went home for Christmas.

Yes, but what about Bob Brown?

The ASIO legislation has been before Parliament most of this year. The companion legislation, a package of five security bills, deals with actual acts of terrorism and suspected terrorists. This package went through the Parliament some time ago after extensive amendment by the Government itself and by the Senate opposition parties. But the ASIO bill - the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002 - has been jammed by controversy all year. The Government wouldn't give ground. Neither would the Senate.

The crunch came this week. The Senate adopted 35 amendments, 34 of them Labor's. The Government stridently opposed them all. The Greens and the Democrats voted with Labor for the amendments. And the key changes? 1) That the proposed new ASIO investigative powers automatically lapse after three years unless Parliament re-endorses the legislation; 2) That nobody under the age of 18 be subject to the legislation; 3) That denial of the right to silence be accompanied by specific civil rights protections, including protection against self-incrimination in any future charge; 4) That detention be only for the purpose of questioning and not for the purpose of detention without charge; 5) That a single detention period, under a single warrant, last no longer than a total of 20 hours of questioning, broken into three periods of four hours, eight hours and eight hours; 6) That questioning be carried out only in the presence of a "prescribed authority", ie, a judge or retired judge; 7) That any person detained under investigative warrant have the right to immediate legal representation of his or her own choice, and 8) no person can be subject to more than one session of 20 hours of questioning in a seven-day period, and only after seven days can a second warrant be sought to continue questioning. In the meantime, no person already subject to 20 hours of questioning can be held in continuous detention.

The Senate passed the amended ASIO bill, finally, at 4.33pm two days ago. It had first come before Parliament on March 21. And when at last it got through the Senate nine months later, heavily amended, the combined support of 12 hardy souls - the Greens, the Democrats and One Nation's Len Harris (Qld) - voted no, they wanted no truck of any kind with "police state" legislation. They'd supported all Labor's amendments to water down the bill. But then, to make their attitude crystal clear, they voted against the bill as a whole. Thus, ironically, the Government was left to vote with Labor to get its bill through in its highly modified form. It was a far cry from the legislation the Government had first come up with nine months earlier, under which children as young as 10 would have been strip searched and detained indefinitely.

And Bob Brown, what?

The House bounced the bill straight back to the Senate overnight. The Government made two concessions, reluctantly. One was to adopt Labor's three-year sunset clause lapsing the legislation. But it wouldn't budge on the new detention powers. And neither would the Senate be stood over.

The Liberals' Ian Campbell read out a long list of the amendments the House was refusing to accept. But the Government's bloody-mindedness did no more than incite some of the best speeches of the months of debate. Labor's Senate leader, John Faulkner, was resolute in not buckling to the Government's threats and blame game.

Then Bob Brown spoke. John Howard had just gone on early morning radio to damn the Senate for what he professed was the Senate's threat to Australian lives. Brown was appalled. He went after Howard with a baseball bat. Part of what he said: "When the Prime Minister damned the safety of Australians, he reached a new low in debate. What is uncovered here, coming from the Prime Minister's office, is a new political correctness which says, if you don't agree with the Prime Minister of this country, you're some way on the side of those who are anti-Australian or would create terror here. This is no way to facilitate a debate in a great Parliament like this.

"There is no doubt this is a very, very complex and difficult piece of legislation which demands resolution. It demands resolution today. Therefore it demands both sides listen to each other. We have the Senate leader [Defence Minister Robert Hill] saying he has been horrified by the de facto government that the Labor Party presents itself to be. In fact, what he's saying is that this Parliament does not have a role in scrutinising legislation from the executive. This idea that anything the Prime Minister puts forward in these increasingly tense and dangerous days cannot be countermanded, even by the elected Parliament of Australia, is a very dangerous mistake ...

"When legislation is brought into this Parliament by the Executive and Parliament determines there should be amendments, then the Government should listen. And when the Prime Minister and the Government won't brook amendments, then it is democracy itself that is being questioned by the Prime Minister.

"The Greens have said this is draconian legislation which we oppose. We have nevertheless, with the Democrats, supported the Labor amendments. That is proper process. Even Labor says it has come up with a tough 'compulsory, coercive, questioning regime' for ASIO to deal with terrorism. And whatever else the Government might say, that regime gives ASIO unprecedented power to take people off the street, to question them, in the first instance without legal representation, without other people knowing where they are, effectively held secretly, their usual rights taken away, and these are people not suspected of terrorism, or knowledge of terrorism, or potential involvement in terrorism. These are innocents that ASIO suspects may have information ...

"It is incumbent on the Prime Minister, if he believes there should be greater powers given to ASIO, to accept what the negotiations with the Labor Party have given him. I'm talking here about bringing this out of the Prime Minister's realm of his ownership of democracy in this country and having him accept that this is a Parliament working in the national interest. How dare he or his ministers say that the workings of this Senate is to damn the safety of Australians. How dare he say that about representatives in this place. That is the new political correctness trying to silence critics. And the Prime Minister is now in the dock on that.

"I've watched in this Senate for 18 months as the Labor Party sided up with the Government on Tampa, on legislation to bring in the army against peaceful protests before the Olympics, on a series of laws which have eaten into civil liberties and political rights in this country. But we've seen something different here today. The Labor Party has said, 'We are going to stand for something different, and we do recognise this is a difficult decision between our political rights, our democracy, on the one hand and the threat of terrorism on the other hand.' And the Prime Minister and his Government feels that in that situation where an Opposition is, for once, acting as an Opposition, as a real Opposition, they can't accept it.

"Well, they're going to have to accept that this is a democracy where the Parliament ultimately makes the decision. And if the Prime Minister walks away from that, be it on his head. It is his responsibility that where he believes there must be strong laws, he opts instead for no laws."

And that is exactly what Howard did. He behaved like an arrogant booby more interested in exploiting a political outcome where he can blame Labor than a legislative outcome to meet a threat he insists is real. And the Green Brown nailed him exquisitely.

He did not miss Labor, either.

Sydney Morning Herald

More to come...

Howard, war, politics, priorities
Prime Minister Howard was invited to the Washington coalition summit. He did not attend. There was a 20-minute phone call from Washington. Obviously Blair and Bush were deeply impressed by said phone call and it is mere oversight that they do not mention it in their communiqu�.

Australia gets one mention, on a level with Poland. It would be unkind to suggest that partisan advantage moved the prime minister to stay at home rather than join the summit. It would be equally unkind to suggest a prime minister whose first priority is supporting the troops might have questions and suggestions about the failure of Shock and Awe, the immediate future of this campaign or the tasking of Australian SAS squadrons in Iraq.

Of course it would be unkind to talk about the super-urgent ASIO bill. Remember that one? The bill whose rejection by the Senate last December was a grave threat to national security? More on the topic later...

The president's real goal in Iraq
This article has been around for a while (since long before I migrated to the blogosphere) but it's worthwhile linking it again. The gist is:

The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.

and:

This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.

The PNAC blueprint of empire can be downloaded.

Note the date Bookman wrote his article - 29 September 02 - long before the war aims started morphing from weapons of mass destruction to regime change to violation of Resolution 1441 to violation of Resolutions 678 and 687 to democratization of the Middle East.

Futility
Wilfrid Owen

Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
--O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

yikes
Courtesy of the excellent DailyKos, a terrifying article by Josh Marshal.

Amnesty International on POWs
Amnesty has called for all parties to the conflict to adhere to Geneva Convention standards in the treatment of POWs.

Serious allegations of human rights violations do not stop with the Guant�namo detainees. US soldiers are reported to have mistreated people detained during the military conflict in Afghanistan. Villagers taken into custody in 2002 alleged that they were tied up, blindfolded, hooded, kicked, punched, and subject to other ill-treatment. As far as Amnesty International is aware, no appropriate investigation has been carried out into the allegations by the US authorities.(10)

In a letter to President Bush on 10 March 2003, Amnesty International called for a full, impartial inquiry into allegations of torture and ill-treatment by US personnel against alleged al-Qa'ida and Taleban detainees held in the US Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Autopsies revealed that two prisoners who died in the Bagram detention facility in December 2002 had sustained "blunt force injuries". It has also been alleged that detainees have been subjected to "stress and duress" techniques, including hooding, prolonged standing in uncomfortable positions, sleep deprivation and 24 hour illumination. The ICRC has reportedly not been granted access to the section of the Bagram facility where this treatment has allegedly taken place.

Just as Bush was struck by lightning on the road to Baghdad and suddenly understood that chemical weapons are a bad thing, we can only hope he soon grasps that human rights are universal and apply to the US as well as Iraq. Any other position just makes human rights more tools for spin.

coalition of the thrilling
The TV coverage is disgusting. This is a war, not a special effects movie. The blood is real. When the camera moves on the extras do not get up and dust themselves off, they are still dead.

Other people will be able to put together more sophisticated analyses than I can on why TV chooses an illusory experience of being there over the causes and solutions of this war. The torrent of images displaces thought and makes it easier to sell this war.

Presumably the journalists who appear on these programs (they cannot be described as making them) know something about the conflict. Presumably they know that the weapons of mass destruction were purchased with US approval, were used with US approval and were defended against international scrutiny with US help.

What kind of denial of conscience is needed for them to participate in this charade of blood?

legality of war II
The whole article would be too didactic, even for me.

This attempt to invent a 'continuing authorisation' for war against Iraq is unconvincing. It is also disingenuous. For example, the coalition's interpretation of resolution 1441 conveniently ignores the fact - once again a matter of public record - that the US put up an initial version of that resolution, authorising the use of force if Iraq did not adequately comply with its terms, but withdrew the draft when it became clear that the proposal did not command the council?s support.

Likewise, the US and UK ambassadors to the UN said to the Security Council on November 8, 2002 that resolution 1441 contained ?no hidden trigger for war?. How it could now be seriously suggested that resolution 1441 implicitly authorises force is beyond comprehension.

As for the 1990 and 1991 resolutions, the coalition is effectively saying: ?We much prefer what the Security Council said about the first Gulf War and we?ll pretend that it applies to unforeseen events 13 years later.? This is as ludicrous as if the US President had learnt that the necessary resolution authorising this war was not going to pass both houses of Congress, but had pressed ahead undaunted, calling on congressional resolutions endorsing the 1991 war.

Chris Maxwell is a barrister in Melbourne. Hilary Charlesworth is professor and director at the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University in Canberra. This article originally appeared in The Australian.

The Sydney Morning Herald also has an opinion by Gavan Griffith QC, former solicitor-general of the Commonwealth.

I cannot characterize the advice as an opinion. The short paragraphs 14 to 18 of the brief seven page advice read as weak best arguments for the use of force. Para 34 of SCR 678, cited in para 18, denies the continued authority of that resolution to support present action by individual states, as does the entire SCR 1441.

The final sentence of the advice concluding that the authority of SCR 678 to use force "would only be negated by a Security Council Resolution requiring Member States to refrain from using force against Iraq" is a fanciful proposition, an Alice in Wonderland inversion of meaning of plain words in the resolutions themselves. It is unsupportable. The authors are making it up.

It is significant that the authors of this Advice, on the important issue of giving legal sanction to war, do not even entitle it as 'Opinion'. Its brevity and lack of force is exceeded only by the one-page 'Opinion' of the United Kingdom's Attorney-General tabled in the United Kingdom Parliament, that makes the completely untenable assertion that "all resolution 1441 requires is a report to and discussion by the Security Council of Iraq's failures, but not to express further decisions to authorize force".

shocking and awful typo
The Melbourne Age has a link to the Friedman article. Sadly, they've called it: 'The sex keys to winning in Iraq'. At first I assumed the Pentagon geniuses had managed to produce an even sillier war plan than Shock and Awe but then I realised it's just a typo.