The Dutch embassy in Baghdad exploded into flames in a rocket strike late on Friday and three Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in the northern city of Mosul amid warnings from US generals that violence could escalate...

The unoccupied Dutch mission was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, sparking a major alert in the capital, the US military said.

"The grenade started a fire that was quickly extinguished by the Baghdad fire department," a US military spokesman said.

The concept of pre-emption, hitting an enemy before he hits you, has been integral to U.S. foreign policy for four decades. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy said: "We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril."...

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi figured out that having WMD posed a greater danger to him than not having them. Bush's national security doctrine and the threat of pre-emption it contains are warnings to dictators and terrorists: WMD will not protect you. They could make you an intolerable risk to the international community. Think twice and avail yourself of diplomatic and political options while you have a chance.

U.S. soldiers riding in convoys in Iraq are relying on electronic "jammers" to help protect against the roadside bombs insurgents have used to deadly effect.

The anti-bomb technology isn't perfect, however. In some cases it only delays a bomb from detonating, so it can still explode and kill bystanders.

It's unclear how widely the jammers — the same technology that saved Pakistan's leader from a recent assassination attempt — are being used in Iraq.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, acknowledged their use in testimony this week before the House Armed Services Committee, but he declined to discuss the bomb defenses in detail. The military does not want to provide useful information to Iraqi insurgents, officials say.

Jeff Hammond was using the phone, and as I was waiting on him, I overheard a conversation. A young troop was talking to his son on the phone and was asking him if he was bored and ready to return to school from his holiday vacation. All I could think about was this soldier missing time with his son.

These troops are missing Christmas and birthdays. They’re missing all the fun times with their children. Over at the bar, the NASCAR guys gave $500 to the bartender and told him to serve beer until he run out of money. I’m sure they made some fans with that gesture! One troop told me our visit meant more to the troops than we could imagine. These guys are mingling with the troops, not just up on a stage.

Everyone kept saying how much it meant for us to come over. What they don’t understand is how we were the ones receiving all of the benefit. I have never been so proud to be an American. These troops are the most professional people I have ever met.

“Now, I’m going to give you an order,” he said.

“You will spend quality time with your families, and you will get your lives back in order.”

After engineers form carbon into long chains, using a process called “gel spinning,” the strands can be packed and stacked with virtually no space in between, Wagner said — in effect, like a “net” with no holes for anything, such as a bullet, to sneak through.

Honeywell engineers are now working on the next generation of Spectra, which they hope will be “a quantum leap forward” in stopping power, Wagner said.

Similarly, Kerry snapped at Brokaw for raising the recent controversy over comments Kerry made about the political importance of the South. Kerry had pointed out that it was not mathematically necessary for a Democrat to win Southern states to beat a Republican in the general election -- a point that went over very badly among Southerners who are afraid the Democratic Party is ceding the region to Republicans.

''How can you come South given what you said about the Democrats making a mistake in spending too much time worrying about the South?'' Brokaw asked.

''I never said that,'' Kerry interjected. ''I never said Democrats made a mistake. I never said that at all.'' He went on to pledge that he will campaign in the region, both as a Democratic candidate and a nominee.

The best example was reported by The New Republic in 1991, which obtained two letters, both signed by John Kerry to the same constituent. The first read: "Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the U.S. against Iraq. I share your concerns. On Jan. 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war."

The second letter - again, to the same constituent - came nine days later on Jan. 31: "Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf."

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean criticized Vice President Dick Cheney for berating CIA operatives because he did not like their intelligence reports. "It seems to me that the vice president of the United States therefore influenced the very reports that the president then used to decide to go to war and to ask Congress for permission to go to war," Dean said.

One of Dr. Kay's most important observations cut the legs out from under those who insist the president and his subordinates — in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney — manipulated the intelligence they received from the CIA and other agencies.

"In the course of [his work in Iraq], I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated.

Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never — not in a single case — was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.' The explanation was very often, 'The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it.'"

An air force general landed his MiG fighter jet on its belly after having forgotten to put its landing gear down and ejected to safety when the aircraft scraped the airstrip, officials said Wednesday.

"The pilot forgot to put the landing gear down," air force chief Colonel-General Vladimir Mikhailov said Wednesday on NTV television.

"We have a variety of intelligence and we're sure we're going to catch Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar this year," Hilferty said, referring to the ousted Taliban's leader. "We've learned lessons from Iraq and we're getting improved intelligence from the Afghan people."

At a radio phone-in program the other day I was taken to task by some listeners for what they believed is Iraq’s “slide into chaos.” “You campaigned for the liberation of Iraq and now look what has happened!”

This was followed by a “what has happened” list of events that included Shiites demonstrating, Kurds asking for autonomy, Sunnis sulking, and various political parties and groups tearing each other apart in the Iraqi media over the shape of the future constitution.

The truth, however, is that, far from sliding into chaos or heading toward civil war, Iraq is beginning to become a normal society. And all normal societies face uncertainties just as do all normal human beings.

One should welcome the gradual emergence of a normal political life in Iraq after nearly half a century of brutal despotism, including 35 years of exceptionally murderous Baathist rule...

If anything, the Iraqi political fight is taking place with an unusual degree of courtesy in which the Marques of Queensbury’ rule applies, which is not the case even in some mature democracies. The new Iraq, as it is emerging, will be full of uncertainties. But that is precisely why the liberation war was justified. Under Saddam the Iraqis faced only the certainty of concentration camps and mass graves.

The Iraqis are now free to debate all aspects of their individual and national life. The fact that different, often conflicting views are now expressed without fear should be seen as a positive achievement of the liberation. Democracy includes the freedom to demonstrate, especially against those in charge, and to “tear each other apart” in the media and town-hall political debates. It also includes the difficulty of reaching a consensus on major issues. Those who follow Iraqi politics would know that Iraq today is the only Arab country where all shades of opinion are now free to express themselves and to compete for influence and power in a free market of ideas...

The US-led coalition should accept that the road ahead will be bumpy. But that is not necessarily bad news. For democracy is nothing but a journey on constantly bumpy roads.

When inbound units arrive in the theater, they will spend two weeks in Kuwait to link up with equipment and to acclimatize. When they arrive at their Iraqi "battle stations," there will be a two-week handoff between the units. This will make sure all personnel get the benefit of the experience of the departing unit.

The attacks and the bombings, together with rampant crime, have left Baghdadis living in fear. Through all this, however, there are signs of hope. Many Iraqis are looking to the future and seeking to play a role in rebuilding their country.

At the Palestine Hotel, more than 100 Iraqis took part Wednesday in a three-hour, coalition-sponsored debate on their country's future.

Under tight security, they let two members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, including current president and Sunni politician Adnan Pachachi, know what they expected...

Pachachi, who met President Bush in Washington last week, said an interim constitution will ensure women get at least 25 percent of the 250 seats proposed for the transitional legislature. There was a near consensus that Iraq will have a three-man presidency to rule until a government is elected by the end of 2005, he added.

Isra'a Abdel-Razeq, a 27-year-old mother of three, was upbeat.

''The most important thing is that we are free,'' she said. ''The fact that I am here now is a first step,'' said Abdel-Razeq, a Sunni civil engineer married to a Shiite.

Listening to all the aspiring commanders and chief (except for Joe Lieberman), I don't hear any campaign promises related to winning the war on terrorism. They make a few obligatory references to getting bin Laden rather than wasting our time with Saddam, and then they get on to their real campaign message, which is the conventional, peacetime Democratic argument to tax the rich and give the proceeds to their likely voters. I am tempted to respond to these candidates with the snappy WWII era retort to complainers: "Don't you know there's a war on?"...

In nine months, one of these men could be elected president. It doesn't particularly surprise or worry me that the candidates are just making what they judge to be useful political chatter. But I don't get the feeling that any of them (again, except for Joe Lieberman) sit up at night worrying how they will protect America from the terrorist threat if they get elected president. It would show in at least the tone, if not the words of their public oratory.

Rather, I get the sense that, as Raoul de Salles described too many Americans 60 years ago at the beginning of WWII, today's candidates for commander in chief still think the war is optional. They still think they can select "how much war they would accept." They let the confusion of the situation "serve as an excuse for recommending a policy of aloofness."

The intelligence failure is quite spectacular, but its history is quite prosaic. When the U.N. inspectors left in 1998, they assumed that the huge stockpiles of unaccounted-for weapons still existed.

What other assumption could they make? That Hussein had destroyed them and not reported that to the very agency that could have then vindicated him and gotten sanctions lifted?

“No one will want to know more than the president the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in,” Rice said on NBC television’s Today show...

“I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground,” Rice said...

I think you hit the nail on the head - our intel analysts did not have the information needed to make the call on weapons of mass destruction. However - I doubt there were many analysts that really tried to get new and relevant information to analyze. I'm kind of scared about the whole intelligence community. I believe that stagnation and specialization is a real problem.

I believe the Intel estimates that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction came from information that was the best they had to work with - However, I'd be willing to bet that some of the information was as much as 10 years old. - you know why? Because we had a great lack of spys before 9/11. Hopefully they are working on that problem - but an analyst sitting behind a desk at Langley or DIA has little chance of creating a intel estimate on a program the Iraqis were trying to keep secret using only standoff
technical means.

The intelligence community relies on technology (and old technology at that) to gather information. What they need is HUMINT. (Spys - there is a major shortage). If relying on technology they may have missed the destruction - or hiding - of WMD then the estimate may never change ... eventually the "estimate" becomes "truth" because everyone is quoting someone else as a "verified source".

One of my intel failure theories goes like this --- A US intelligence organization (Say the NSA) makes an estimate on WMD - this is given to a lot of US Agencies (DIA, CIA, etc.) and the UK. The UK use the US information in a report. The DIA sees the NSA information uses the information in a report. CIA uses DIA information based on NSA information and uses that information in their own report. And finally the NSA looks at a CIA report (based on the DIA report that came from the NSA Report .).. get the picture? - full circle - Any mistakes become fact because each agency sometimes uses another as a source. Lastly someone in the US reads the UK report ( that may have used the US estimate to verify their suspicions) and concludes - ah ha! this is verification and validation of our estimate - I've seen it happen (really). That is why you need people on the ground - to get new and pertinent information.

(The press has the same problem ... ever notice how often you see reporters interviewing reporters or CNN quoting Reuters)

The bigger problem though is that there is no HUMINT in the mid east. Troops on the ground are getting good info but are not trained for the task - you really need some guy willing to go undercover to get really great info.

Kay has now offered the most novel and convincing explanation for why U.S. intelligence -- and, for that matter, U.N. inspectors and the intelligence agencies of every country that mattered -- misjudged what Iraq possessed.

It was a combination of Iraqi bluff, deceit and corruption far more bizarre than heretofore suspected. Kay discovered that an increasingly erratic Saddam Hussein had taken over personal direction of WMD programs. But because there was no real oversight, the scientists would go to Hussein, exaggerate or invent their activities, then pocket the funds.

Scientists were bluffing Hussein. Hussein was bluffing the world. The Iraqis were all bluffing each other. Special Republican Guard commanders had no WMDs, but they told investigators that they were sure other guard units did. It was this internal disinformation that the whole outside world missed.

Iraq took a big leap forward in an effort to have its athletes compete at this year's Summer Games in Athens, as the country elected a new National Olympic Committee on Thursday.

The new NOC replaces the one led by Saddam Hussein's son, Odai, who was killed in a battle with United States forces in Mosul on July 22. Odai was accused of torturing, jailing and even killing athletes who did not perform to his standards. There were even reports that Odai used Iraq's Olympic center as a torture site, until the building was destroyed by U.S. led warplanes and missiles.

A suicide bomber killed three people and injured 17 Wednesday when he drove a van disguised as an ambulance through a security barrier and exploded it in front of a hotel in the heart of Baghdad...

The bombing at the Shaheen - a hotel frequented by Westerners - confirmed intelligence warn ings that insurgents might use ambulances to evade security checks.

The crews bought lunch at an outdoor Burger King stand -- the receipt cheerfully reads, ``Welcome to Iraq,'' -- and eat while sitting in a circle on the tarmac near their vehicles. After reloading, they taxied back to the runway, waited their turn and dashed again into the sky.

Below, the afternoon sun cast long shadows as boys played soccer in a dirt field, shepherds waved from near muddy brown water canals, and a house flashed by with a satellite dish atop. Just one sight catches the crews' attention.

A man is standing in the back of a moving pickup truck. Sgt. Knieriemen swivels the machine gun at him as the helicopters pass over. The truck drove on, the man did not move, and the gunners didn't fire.

Within 18 minutes of leaving Baghdad, the helicopters are back at Camp Anaconda and safely on the ground. This time, there were few tense moments in half day's worth of flying.

In Iraq, that's never something to take for granted.

More than 40 Russian companies, including entities linked to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, allegedly took part in an illegal kickback scheme for trading Iraqi oil under Saddam Hussein's regime, according to documents obtained by Baghdad-based newspaper al-Mada.

"Almost all Russian companies that worked in Iraq [were involved in this]," said Fakhri Karim, the editor of the recently created newspaper, in an interview with Vremya Novostei published Thursday.

"There are Russian diplomats of a very high level, too," he said.

Vremya Novostei published last weekend a list of more than 270 people and organizations from 46 countries including Russia, France, China, Italy, Austria, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, who allegedly took part in a scheme to trade contraband Iraqi oil in breach of the United Nations regulated oil-for-food deal.

The newspaper says it based its list on documents obtained from the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

U.S. forces defused a car bomb on a major oil route, hours after the commander of coalition forces in Iraq warned that al-Qaida is trying to "gain a foothold" in Iraq, citing the recent arrest of a key operative.

Iraq's foreign minister said he was confident Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) would still be found in the country, despite testimony from the former US chief weapons inspector that no such munitions exist.

Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said he was sure Saddam's regime had acquired chemical and biological arms, but said they had not been found because they were so well hidden.

The Baghdad suburb of Hai Tarek is an unusually harsh place, and conditions here - muddy roads covered with garbage, no sewage system, the deleterious effects of sickness and trauma - underline the continued importance for humanitarian assistance in Iraq.

As Mazen Mohsen, an Iraqi physician, said recently: "Humanitarian work is still needed here."

It's also welcome, if the boisterous -- and predominately youthful -- crowds that greeted the daily delivery of water in this predominately Shi'ite area was any indication.

The delivery was made possible by the support of U.S. churches - specifically by Church World Service and other U.S. church agencies working together on the "All Our Children" (AOC) campaign, an inter-agency effort to meet critical ongoing medical and health needs of Iraqi children and their families...

The AOC-funded water project in Hai Tarek - including daily delivery of water and distribution of jerry cans to some 55,000 people (some 5,000 families) - is improving lives in one of Baghdad's poorest areas, an area where most residents don't have jobs and where eight out of 10 residents are children.

The Iraqi Governing Council says it has asked authorities to investigate allegations an illegal prison is being run by a top Shiite cleric.

Moqtada al-Sadr is suspected of operating an unlawful prison in Iraq, said Safaa Al-Rasool, deputy of the Governing Council member Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who is a Shiite Muslim.

With funding secured and contracting processes completed, the Army is starting to move ever-larger quantities of both armoring kits and newly built armored Humvees into Iraq, Army officials said.

There are now more than 2,000 up-armored Humvees “in theater” in Southwest Asia, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the House Armed Services Committee in testimony on Wednesday...

Humvee maker American Motors General is building a new factory specifically for up-armored Humvees that is nearly completed, Tallman said.

By spring, the manufacturer will be producing at “the maximum rate of 220” armored Humvees per month, he said.

In addition to new vehicles, the Army also has contracts to purchase 6,000 armor kits that can be installed by soldier mechanics in Iraq, Tallman said.

The kits are destined to upgrade not only many of the 8,000 conventional Humvees now in Iraq, but other vehicles as well, such as heavy transports and trucks used in convoy operations, he said.

The armor kits don’t substitute for a fully armored vehicle, Tallman said, “but it’s something we can do right now.”

In the second group are the "undecided" independents.

These are the people we hear from the most in the final weeks of any presidential campaign, largely because politicians are going to hunt where the ducks are and, duh, the undecideds haven't decided yet. After every presidential debate of the general election, there's a focus group filled with undecideds; they're treated like Olympic judges rather than astoundingly uninformed citizens. They complain that they didn't get enough information from the candidates, or they didn't get enough "details" on this or that policy. They ape Rodin's Thinker over whether to choose George W. Bush or Al Gore, Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, Poppy Bush or Michael Dukakis.

Here's how one undecided explained her thinking in 2000 to the Boston Globe: "One day I'm for Gore (her mother called from California to say he'd protect the environment), the next day it's Bush (she thinks he's funny). . . . If I had to go out to dinner with one of them, I'd choose Bush. . . . But here's what goes through my mind. Let's say a meteorite was coming toward Earth. Who has the better judgment?... I wish I could decide.'"

Now, I am all for taking civic responsibilities seriously, particularly voting. I'd greatly prefer very low voter turnout among serious-minded people to high voter turnout among people who saunter into the voting booths between trips to the mall and the face-piercing spa. But let me make one thing very clear: Being undecided, in and of itself, is not a mark of seriousness or intelligence. If you really are undecided between having a bowl of strawberry ice cream and being smacked in the forehead with a garden rake, you're not very intelligent; you're just very, very stoopid.

"Thanks... without you no one would be following this important series of events, But I'm curious whether anyone has tried to play beach volleyball in a burka?? I'll be interested to see the first match. (I'm assuming the middle eastern women might forgo the Bikinis with their names on the rear) ...

RE: News of the Weird (or News of the Wayne as the case may be) I just want to know why they (who ever "they" are - the press or something more sinister) use the middle name for serial killers, murderers, assassins (John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman, and all those guys with the middle name Wayne) and not for Bank Robbers and White Collar Criminals? Maybe its because when Mom used your middle name you knew you had done something REALLY BAD! I can hear her now "John-Wilkes-Booth what have you done now!?

and on a slightly different tack I wish I could figure out why some dictators are "Strongmen" others are "Tyrants" while others are "Despots" and "Oppressors" and some are simply "Dictators". Somehow the media makes some sort of choice and goes with it. (Manuel Noreaga was a "strongman" Saddam Hussein was a "tyrant")

Wait a second...they were the ones that DID NOT WANT too much US protection - had the US military stay AWAY from the UN compound. It just seemed too militaristic...they did not want to make themselves a target (until they got blown up that is.)

The Army's top general told Congress he is planning for the possibility of being required to rotate a large force in and out of Iraq for another three years.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that ''for planning purposes'' he told his staff to consider how the Army would replace the force now rotating into Iraq with another force of similar size in 2005 and again in 2006.

The U.S. Army wants 30,000 more soldiers on active duty than it is allowed to have for the next four years, the Army chief of staff told Congress.

It was the first acknowledgement from the military that it is shorthanded for the tasks at hand. However, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker stopped short of asking for a permanent increase in end strength in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

"There is no question the Army is stressed. The degree to which we are engaged today ... can not be debated," he said.

Weak human intelligence-gathering capability and limited data prevented U.S. intelligence analysts from figuring out that Iraq did not have large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, the CIA's former chief arms inspector told Congress yesterday.

"It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment, and that is most disturbing," David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee...

Iraq was found to be working on chemical, biological and nuclear arms "on a large scale," Mr. Warner said.

Mr. Kay said the Iraqi government's cheating and lying to United Nations contributed to the intelligence failure because it led analysts to jump to false conclusions.

None of the intelligence analysts involved in producing estimates on Iraq's arms told him they were pressured to skew analyses to support policy, Mr. Kay said.

Instead, analysts told him that they had limited information on the arms programs.

U.S. intelligence also lacked human agents on the ground and relied too much on information from foreign intelligence services, he said.

An overemphasis on the use of electronic and photographic intelligence resulted in bad intelligence, he noted.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify going to war.

Mr. Kay, in his testimony, said it was not the president who had misused intelligence. Intelligence analysts got their assessments wrong and, as a result, "abused" the president.

A senior appeals judge castigated the British Broadcasting Corp. yesterday for reporting that the government had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraqi weapons, vindicating Prime Minister Tony Blair and prompting the resignation of BBC chief Gavyn Davies.

The 700-page independent report by senior judge Brian Hutton also cleared Mr. Blair and his administration of responsibility in the death of David Kelly, a government expert on Iraqi weapons who committed suicide after being exposed as the source of the BBC story.

The document, so bulky that each copy was delivered in a large cardboard box, hammered the publicly funded national broadcaster's standards of reporting and ? most damagingly ? its governors' decision to support the charges made by a senior radio reporter.

"The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on [Iraqi weapons of mass destruction] is itself the real lie," a clearly relieved and upbeat Mr. Blair said to huge applause.

Wednesday night the United Press International news agency reported from Baghdad that the Iraqi oil ministry documents show some of the money was used to pay top French government officials to oppose the war.

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao began a two-day trip to Iraq to highlight continuing democratization efforts by the Iraqi people.

Her first visit was to inaugurate the opening of the Baghdad Employment and Training Center. The center is operated by the restored Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and provides services and benefits to Iraq's most vulnerable citizens.

Under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, the Ministry operated the prison system. Now, for the first time, the Ministry is establishing employment and training centers throughout Iraq, charged with providing services to displaced workers in the nation's largest populated cities.

A fatal bombing in Baghdad is the latest suicide attack that has the U.S. military concerned. Officials fear radical Islamic groups, including al Qaeda, may be behind the attacks.

The Army cautiously moved a massive 300-ton generator through the Iraqi capital Monday night.

The $30 million generator will produce about 157 megawatts of power, enough to add 30 minutes of power each day to the whole city, said Brig. Gen. Steve Hawkins, who heads the Restore Iraqi Electricity program...

Built in France, the mammoth generator was bought for Iraq under the U.N. Oil For Food program. Army engineers found it in a neighboring Arab country, which Army officials asked not be named for security reasons.

Series-4 gas coupons, used in Germany and the Netherlands, with an expiration date of Sept. 30 of last year will not be accepted at off-post gas stations after Saturday.

However, Army and Air Force Exchange Service Europe filling stations will continue to accept expired coupons for an entire year past the expiration date, according to a statement issued by AAFES.

Also, expired fuel coupons can be refunded at any AAFES-Europe coupon sales point. Expired coupons must still be attached to the coupon booklet with the booklet cover intact, according to the AAFES statement.

A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years...

The genetically modified weed has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil.

Within three to six weeks from being sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant, a Thale Cress, will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.