Iraqi Sovereignty Clock

I have unveiled at right an Iraqi sovereignty clock, available for use by any blogs that wish! It will count down second by second, until Iraq receives national sovereignty at midnight on June 30, Baghdad time. There will be a surprise celebration at the moment of handover.

To use it, paste the following HTML code into your blog at the appropriate place:

<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.davidsj.com/iraqiclock.js">
</script>

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
  iraqiclock_title_color = "red";
  iraqiclock_clock_color = "green";
  iraqiclock_bg_color = "lightgray";
  iraqiclock_alignment = "center";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.davidsj.com/iraqiclock.js">
</script>

Do you regularly count down to significant events in the lives of others? Have counted down to your cousin's high school graduation, to your friend's wedding, or to the Chilean general election? Just wondering.

Jeff,

Are you of the opinion that Iraq regaining sovereignty is an event that has significance only for Iraqis? As the successful transition in Iraq from Baathish dictatorship to soverieign open democracy is a rather important component of the war we're fighting for the preservation of civilization, that would seem to me to be a rather odd position.

won't work on Live Journal :-(

Bill,

I'll see what I can do about LiveJournal support.

Hmm. Looks like it won't be trivial to do. Sorry, but I think I will hold off from trying to implement it unless more people ask.

Hmm... well, this is definitely a cool little script, but I guess it would only really be meaningful if there were going to be an actual transfer of sovereignty, which June 30th will clearly not bring. This is ceremonial and nothing more, which should be obvious to anyone with the slightest understanding of military reality. 150,000 foreign troops will continue to occupy Iraqi soil; until that condition changes, sovereignty is simply not logically possible. Even leaving politics aside, a country cannot be considered sovereign when de facto it is under the control of a foreign power. Of course, people would understand this if they paid attention to history: every imperial power since the beginning of time has attempted to mitigate the appearance of domination by attempting to give its subjects a false sense of independence while retaining all meaningful control. We didn't accept this from the British, and there is no reason for Iraqis to accept it from us. So maybe you should change your clock to a countdown til Bush gets unceremoniously tossed from office by an American electorate that has finally decided to wake up.

Mike,

I suppose you heard that just recently there has been talk about removing all US troops from Germany.

So have we been occupying Germany since 1946?

Mike, we didn't decide to wake up. We were waken rather forcefully on 9/11/01. If BUsh is going to be kicked out of office this fall, it'll be because we went back to sleep.

Oh, and Mike, we're still in Japan too. And do the troops in South Korea count?

I'll bet you live in a nice, secure neighborhood. Always a cop when you need one ...

um, iraq and saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Iraq is only 'a front in the war on terror' now BECAUSE we went in there for no reason (or 27 meaningless reasons, take your pick). the ends do not justify the means.

and, please look up the definition of 'sovereignty' in the dictionary. it doesn't mean what is going to happen at the end of this month.

Germany, Japan, and South Korea all have their own armies which are not under American control, and obviously the troop presence in each of those countries is far smaller than the one in Iraq. In none of those cases is the U.S. an occupying power, nor even effectively so as will be the case in Iraq after the so-called transfer. Mr q is also right that even aside from the troop presence, sovereignty has no relation to what the situation in Iraq will be after June 30. I won't go into all the other differences between the Iraq war and the three other countries cited, because they should be obvious.

Wow. A guy makes a cool little script and all the internet political nannies get on his case. Loosen your sphincters, guys. I guarantee you'll feel much better.

And -- David, I just realized this comes off your own server. That might put a drag on your server if it gets popular. Is there anyway of making the program itself available as a download?

Andrea,

I'm going to monitor traffic as the turnover date approaches, and if it looks like it could get overwhelming, I'll look into setting up mirrors. But I don't foresee any problems as I'm sharing a powerful web server, and the bandwidth usage of the clock is very low.

Thanks for your interest!

Well, one could always just do the following:

Load the URL for the clock javascript (from above) into your browser.

Do a "view source"

Copy the script source from there, and paste it into your own web page.

That's assuming David doesn't mind people doing so.

Or, Dave, you could just make the actual clock program into a .JS file, that people could copy to their own server and invoke.

Jed,

That won't actually work, as some vital parts of the code are hidden server side.

Well, yeah, I see I oversimplified. Took me a few moments to notice you're using PHP to feed the color params into (I'm assuming) the stylesheet, since I was reading the JavaScript mainly.

But, would it bother you if someone (such as myself) did copy sufficient operative pieces to their own server? Or do you want the hits to see where it's being used?

Andrea Harris:

It's a script with distinct political overtones. What exactly would you expect?

Jed,

It's more than just colors. It changes its behavior towards the end.

David

David, thanks for the script!

Mike, when the 1st plane hit the WTC my first thought was how deeply involved was the Iraqi ministry involved with Al Queda. Not "if". By then there had already been enough published reports overseas of Al Queda meetings with Iraqi officials in So. East Asia.

Let see, they attended a number of meetings in which they knew they were going to bomb us, hmmmm, in a US court that would make someone just as complicit of MURDER!!!!

Mr q, I can give you over 3,000 good reasons we're in Iraq. Specifically 7, the names of my friends/coworkers who died on 9/11. Some who as soon as I yelled for all to evaquate our floor because we were under attack, said to me, that I was over reacting, over reaching. They chose to stay and paid a dear price for their beliefs.

Michele, Your Media is destroying your Amercian Dream!
3,000 good reasons!!! HUH! What has 9/11 event to do with Iraq! :|

Even if Saddam had nothing whatever to do with 9/11, he was a supporter of terrorists who had a long-standing relationship with al Quaeda, Hamas, and most of the other bad actors in the Middle East. The information Putin recently mentioned (you *have* heard about that, haven't you?) is nothing that even the Democrats like Al Gore and John Kerry and Bill Clinton were talking about until pretending that it didn't exist became of partisan advantage to the Democrats.

The world war we're fighting isn't just a war on al Quaeda. It's a war on terror. And even, again, if Saddam had nothing to do specifically with 9/11, he was an ally of al Quaeda who had entered into an agreement with it to supply it with weapons.

Try a little intellectual honesty, guys.

Hey David,
You need to update your clock ;·). That's the good news.

Now we'll see what happens there in terms of Abu Ghraib POWs and Gitmo with regards to the Supreme Court rulings. Seems like Bush was playing several moves ahead of everyone, ACLU & terrorists included. Hehehe

Sorry, I didn't see your UPDATE. Anyway, they're celebrating on the news here in Motown

So, what was the surprise celebration in the script?

Was it turning into "CONGRATULATIONS!" ?

Or, something more?

It played the Iraqi national anthem, and flashed back and forth between the words "CONGRATULATIONS!" and the new Iraqi flag.

Cool.