[posted by charles dodgson at 10:17 AM]:

It's one of the stock science-fiction nightmares, from dystopian futures where massive populations are ground under the heel of an unfeeling bureaucracy, stamped, filed, numbered, and cut down if they get out of line: people getting chips implanted, broadcasting their identities to hidden equipment that they might not even be aware of.

Kids in Spain are getting them implanted to pay for drinks.

via slashdot, which also has their usual semi-reliable debate about technical attacks on the system

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:16 AM]:

In the New York Times today, David Brooks outlines what he sees as Dubya's plan -- through the wondrous workings of democracy, "the solution to chaos is liberty". Including, it appears, the right to bear arms in militias, which according to a separate hard news report, we are now encouraging in Iraq, having ceased even trying to disarm them.

That starts to sound at least vaguely like the exit strategy we pursued in Afghanistan, in somewhat different forms, both times we intervened: leave the militias in place, and hope they can work something out -- possibly with a "national government" in place whose sole practical power is to mediate between the factions (as in the more recent instance), but in any case, with a lasting peace ultimately dependant on the good will of all the parties. The first time around, we got the Taliban. It remains to be seen what will ultimately come of the second.

And, having griped about it, I must add again that something like this might be our least worst option -- given how badly our screwups have destroyed our credibility and even ability to achieve anything better. Let's hope for credible mediators; at this point, they're our last, best hope.

On which point, by the way, see Laura Rozen's speculation that interference with UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi's work trying to form a credible governing coalition may have been the hammer stroke by which Chalabi put the last nail in his own coffin -- her blog has been Chalabi central since the raid, if you have an interest in the story generally. And dealing with another, vaguely related mystery, the Times has a news story and an op-ed which offer different sets of clues to a different mystery -- why have the Saudis' concerted efforts to lower oil prices been such a failure?

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:37 AM]:

That was mykeru's response to hearing that after we shot up a wedding party in Northern Iraq, our generals went blustering for days about the number of "military-age males" that were dead amid all the wounded and dying children. (There was more to say in an accompanying essay. There is very little reasonable doubt that the incident took place as described; for unreasonable doubt, see "Wretchard" here -- Update: to give him credit, he's backtracked a bit).

via Riverbend.

Note: edited late to be mindful of the legitimate point made by Atrios here, where he also links to photos of the dead kids who, our military claims, do not exist...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:36 AM]:

Every once in a while, somebody proposes an American national ID card -- generally to have the idea shot down. So we don't (yet) have any statutory requirement for people to carry IDs. Which makes it a little strange that our local Boston subway cops are about to start checking them anyway. Boiled frog, anybody?

In unrelated news, the New York police are considering banning photographs in the subways -- a policy that has already been reportedly in place here for a while now...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:35 AM]:

Stanley Fish argues here, in a New York Times op-ed that people from the academy should stay out of politics:

Marx famously said that our job is not to interpret the world, but to change it. In the academy, however, it is exactly the reverse: our job is not to change the world, but to interpret it. While academic labors might in some instances play a role in real-world politics -- if, say, the Supreme Court cites your book on the way to a decision -- it should not be the design or aim of academics to play that role. ...

My point is not that academics should refrain from being political in an absolute sense -- that is impossible -- but that they should engage in politics appropriate to the enterprise they signed onto. And that means arguing about (and voting on) things like curriculum, department leadership, the direction of research, the content and manner of teaching, establishing standards ? everything that is relevant to the responsibilities we take on when we accept a paycheck. These responsibilities include meeting classes, keeping up in the discipline, assigning and correcting papers, opening up new areas of scholarship, and so on.

For example:

Analyzing welfare reform in an academic context is a political action in the sense that any conclusion a scholar might reach will be one another scholar might dispute. (That, after all, is what political means: subject to dispute.) But such a dispute between scholars will not be political in the everyday sense of the word, because each side will represent different academic approaches, not different partisan agendas.

But analyzing welfare reform, if done properly, involves analyzing the consequences -- it will lead to the conclusion that some approaches work well, and others don't. Else, why do it at all? And those conclusions will necessarily feed directly into political debates -- at least if the political debates themselves have any integrity (which, these days, is open to doubt).

Now, there is still a difference between academic studies of an issue, and pure policy advocacy -- between studies that test whether something works, and polemics that start from the premise that it does, and proceed from there. But Fish goes farther than pointing out that difference; he advocates complete disengagement from the political process. It should not be the "design or aim", he says, of academics to "play a role in real-world politics" -- any role, not even the role of keeping politicians honest.

Even the task of educating kids to be good citizens is too political for Fish:

The idea that universities should be in the business of forming character and fashioning citizens is often supported by the claim that academic work should not be hermetically sealed or kept separate from the realm of values. But the search for truth is its own value, and fidelity to it mandates the accompanying values of responsibility in pedagogy and scholarship.

This, then, is Fish's view on "why we built the Ivory Tower": as a place to search for pure truth. And, as a place where truths can be kept in splendid isolation, lest someone in the grubby real world actually benefit.

And this is a particularly odd thing to read coming from a Dean of the University of Chicago -- a school whose faculty, particularly the Straussians, are hardly shy about dabbling in politics. Though they certainly do make a practice of holding their particular ideas about truth very close to the vest... Oops! Got my Chicago schools confused -- Fish was a dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is a different school. Darn. I hate when that happens; thanks to my email correspondant for the correction.

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:51 AM]:

Well, it seems the neocon love affair with Chalabi may have genuinely hit the rocks -- reports from official Washington about Chalabi getting cozy with Iranian intelligence can hardly be calculated to win him friends on the Iraqi street (which is full to bursting with veterans of the Iran-Iraq war). Although you wonder -- was it really the Iranian intelligence that ruined Chalabi with American officials? We on the left have been hearing rumors about that for months. Did his new political coalition with Hezbollah really mean nothing to these people? Ah, well.

At any rate, it was a long and fruitful relationship, having given rise to a splendid little war with much blood and diversion of funds. And there were happier days, when Chalabi and Dubya himself were the best of pals -- now all they have left, I guess, are the photographs. So it only seems appropriate to give find the right sentimental song to give it a proper send-off. Perhaps this (mp3, lyrics here). For old time's sake.

Just looked over at Instapundit, to see how he was handling the emotional situation. He must be all choked up. The only thing he's got so far is a post which suggests that Chalabi may have been linked to the scandal which has gripped him obsessively for the last week, as I'm sure it has you, casting an entirely new light on the entire situation before and after the war -- the reports of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program

(Links via Atrios, of course).

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:44 AM]:

Maybe thirty years ago, looking for something to do on a dead night, Bob Zmuda found himself at a club that was showing a comedy act. The headliner was terrible. Absolutely dreadful. Some guy from... well, he couldn't place the accent, from maybe Romania, doing one horrid celebrity impression -- he seemed to call them "ementations" -- after another, to the point that the hapless audience was, despite themselves, all laughing at the guy, not with him.

"And now," he announced, "I will do de Elbis Presley". This one had a prop -- a guitar. And a spotlight. And the trademark stare, and the lip curl -- absolutely perfect. And just the right syrupy Southern Memphis accent on the "Thankyewverymuch." And an animated, spot-on rendition of -- well, perhaps it was "Hound Dog." And then in a flash, the guitar was gone, and back was the Eastern European nebbish -- a character sometimes known as "Foreign Man" -- stammering his way off the stage. "Tenk you veddy much."

The performer was Andy Kaufman. Zmuda was hooked, and wound up becoming Kaufman's constant collaborator. Not just on stage -- Kaufman would frequently think up some bit, set on, say, an airliner or in a convenience store, and then just walk into a real convenience store (or onto an airliner) and start doing it; the people around generally took him for just some jerk, having no idea that they were actually looking at a performance. I've heard tell that Kaufman's "Tony Clifton" character -- a talent-free lounge singer who taunted the audiences that spurned his butchery of songs that weren't that great in the first place -- actually premeired at some unsuspecting couple's wedding recpetion. Clifton grew to be a very big deal. Kaufman actually acted as if they were different people, but eventually, most people knew the score -- that a "Tony Clifton" performance was actually Kaufman. And so, Clifton was once booked in a week in Nevada, for crowds cheering "Kaufman" on -- not realizing the guy in the suit and the makeup, insisting on being called "Tony Clifton" on and off stage, eating as Clifton, sleeping as Clifton, making passes at female tourists as Clifton, having signed all of the contracts in the name "Tony Clifton", wasn't Kaufman at all, but Zmuda.

The guy even joked about faking his own death.

Kaufman is sometimes regarded as a talented performer with a taste for offstage pranks. It might be better to see him as a talented prankster who did good work -- though probably not his best -- on stage.

And so it was that when he was dying of cancer, going through a desperate search through faith healers and quacks of every description looking for a possible cure, rumors were flying around that he was faking it -- which, of course, continued on after Kaufman's death... was announced. For his part, Zmuda has consistently insisted that Kaufman was genuinely sick, and is genuinely dead. But he would say that. Wouldn't he?

And now, somebody is posting a blog in character as Kaufman, claiming to have been hiding out for twenty years, just to make it a nice, round number (the statute of limitations on associated crimes, he is quick to point out, runs out after only seven). He has even announced a new national tour -- of Starbucks and Wal-Mart locations. In entirely new characters, in performances that will, no doubt, be completely unannounced.

Is it true? Who demands such certainty? Might it not be better, instead, to say that like Tyrone Slothrop at the end of Gravity's Rainbow, Kaufman's characters have split up and dispersed, growing into consistent personae of their own? The next time someone at Starbucks is a little too public with that cell phone conversation about his girlfriend's collection of toilet seats, and the various problems associated therewith -- or, for that matter, just a little more inquisitive about what language "venti" is a word in than common courtesy might otherwise suggest -- treat it as Kaufman, putting on a show. Your life will be the richer for it.

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[posted by charles dodgson at 6:13 PM]:

In 1966, as it was starting to become apparent that the whole Vietnam thing was something of a problem, Senator George Aiken proposed that the United States' best way out of the mess was to declare victory and, well... he talked about "de-escalation" and "gradual redeployment of forces", but it's usually glossed as "declare victory and withdraw."

I've suggested myself a couple of times now that we might want to consider that idea in our current fight -- but last week, the (conservative) David Brooks did me one better, arguing that it would be irresponsible of us to withdraw before we have arranged a political, if not a military, defeat:

Now, looking ahead, we face another irony. To earn their own freedom, the Iraqis need a victory. And since it is too late for the Iraqis to have a victory over Saddam, it is imperative that they have a victory over us. If the future textbooks of a free Iraq get written, the toppling of Saddam will be vaguely mentioned in one clause in one sentence. But the heroic Iraqi resistance against the American occupation will be lavishly described, page after page. For us to succeed in Iraq, we have to lose.

That means the good Iraqis, the ones who support democracy, have to have a forum in which they can defy us. If the insurgents are the only anti-Americans, then there will always be a soft spot for them in the hearts of Iraqi patriots.

Now fast-forward to today's news of police raids on the home of former neocon pet Ahmad Chalabi, and even some of Josh Marshall's well-connected sources are apparently wondering whether this isn't some kind of slick neocon plot to put the plan Brooks described into effect, setting up Chalabi to lead the resistance against us. (Brooks does have access to at least some of the thinking of the administration's neocon faction, through personal connections; I'd describe him as a neoconservative himself -- he's coauthored articles with William Kristol -- except that in another widely lampooned Times column, he tried to deny that neoconservatives exist).

Marshall's gut says that it's not a likely theory:

Something quite that orchestrated would, I suspect, be far too difficult to pull-off. And are we dealing here with smooth operators? Answers itself, doesn't it?

To which I might add that the neocon Project for a New American Century is about more than just conquering establishing a friendly regime in Iraq, though they were plotting that much in the late '90s -- it's about establishing America as the globe's unique hegemon, unchallenged and impregnable. It's about our reputation as much as anything we actually do. And so it's hard to imagine these guys actually choosing to deliberately drop trou and get our butts kicked -- even if that would leave the Iraqis better off.

And as to the factions in the administration other than the neocons, well, by all reliable accounts they hate Chalabi's guts.

In the end, I'm somewhat reminded of a time a couple of years ago (my, how time flies) when Dubya had kind of embarassed himself by first calling Ariel Sharon a "man of peace", enraging the Saudis, then took a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, emerging with praise for him and a few sharp words for the Israelis. As I noted at the time:

It would be easy to lampoon this as the Rodney King school of foreign policy --- "We're all men of peace here. We're all good folks. Can't we all just get along?"

But Bush's defenders on the net say this would be misleading. The true Bush diplomatic strategy, they claim, is deep and complex, and cannot be understood by simply taking the administration's public positions at face value. It is an elaborate series of bluffs, feints, and jabs, a kind of diplomatic blindfold chess, at once treacherous and Machiavellian in its methods, and nobly Jeffersonian in its outlook and aspirations --- which just happens to require, at this point in time, in service of its recondite tactics, that the President appear to be a dim-witted rube who agrees with whatever he most recently heard from anyone with a manly voice and a firm handshake.

It's still the same bunch.

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:38 AM]:

You can learn a lot about an institution by what kicks up a fuss and what doesn't. Take, for instance, the administration's diversion of $700 million from Afghan aid in the summer of 2002 to prepare for the war in Iraq (at a time, you may recall, when Dubya's national security staff left a meeting in Crawford denying that Iraq had even been a subject of discussion).

In any prior administration, Congress and particularly the House would have made this a major scandal, regardless of party affiliation -- not just because it involves breaking a solemn promise we'd made to the Afghans, but because it undercuts one of the main bastions of Congressional power itself, the power of the purse. This is how the Federalist Papers describe the process of checks and balances -- one of the checks on an overreaching executive is supposed to be the Congress guarding its own institutional interests. Not nowadays, though; Congressional Republicans aren't bothered, saying that Congress was happy to allow the White House "unprecedented flexibility" in the post-Sept. 11 environment.

Which is not to say that the House leadership has failed completely to guard its institutional interests, as they perceive them. They're apparently very, very upset that Dubya's crew is allowing their is knocking some of their activities off newspaper front pages. They want limelight, dammit. And worse -- he's threatening to veto a pork-laden highlight bill. So "flexibility" still has its limits. Good to know.

And speaking of what gets coverage and what doesn't, a former commander of Centcom apparently testified to the Senate yesterday that "... we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss." He was backed up by Larry Diamond from the Hoover Institution, who spoke of a "perilous situation" and a "quagmire". That's all according to the Guardian; like Atrios, I can't find a thing about this in domestic media, using Google News. (The only other mention as I write in anything that approaches domestic media is a VOA story that quotes these guys on involving the UN, but leaves out the money quotes).

But then again, there's the stuff that does get coverage. I've been wanting to comment on this for a couple of days, but I'm honestly not able to force myself to read to the end of it...

More: Ted Barlow has a bit to say about Hastert's views on sacrifice and fiscal rectitude, as contrasted to John McCain's...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 2:03 PM]:

Administrative note: permalinks should be fixed...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:35 AM]:

A while ago, I speculated on what a certain kind of Christian,

...the kind that expects the world to end soon, and doesn't much mind --- the buyers of books like "The Late Great Planet Earth", and more recently, the "Left Behind" series of novels by LaHaye and Jenkins, which can only be described as apocalypse porn

might favor in terms of policy, with the goal of doing what they see as G-d's work by bringing about the apocalypse. The answers had a disturbingly familiar look.

Now, it turns out that the Apocalypse Nerds have actually been getting detailed briefings from Dubya's crew:

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Why they'd take Abrams's word about the second coming is a bit of a poser -- last I checked, he was Jewish, and so wasn't much expecting it to happen in the first place. Or so one presumes.

But perhaps one shouldn't get too worked up over all this. Just because Dubya's crew is talking to these guys -- over and over and over -- doesn't necessarily mean they buy into their agenda. So look on the bright side. It may be just pandering.

More: Further commentary here and here, from the Slacktivist...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 10:33 AM]:

A capsule review of "Colossus, The Price of America's Empire" by Niall Ferguson:

This book is largely about the relations betweeen the United States and weaker states in what people now call the "developing world". Ferguson's particular claim to expertise is in addressing these questions largely from an economic perspective -- his current position is at NYU's business school. He strongly advocates interventionist policies. The twenty-page index has entries for "Washington, George" and "Washington Post", but none for "Washington consensus". Nor can I recall encountering the latter phrase anywhere in the text.

In slightly more detail:

Ferguson wants America to adopt explicitly imperialist policies toward the developing world -- but he does not suggest that we take direct control there. He's not for colonies. His introduction, defining the term "empire", takes pains to include exercise of soft power and indirect rule. So he advocates that we find indirect means of controlling the behavior of nominally independent states.

But we're already doing that. Conditions attached to World Bank loans and IMF financial assistance packages have a strong -- some would say controlling -- influence over the economic policies of governments throughout the developing world. And particularly over the past decade or two, they've come to look an awful lot alike, under the widely acknowledged influence of the U.S. Treasury department. So, acting through these institutions, we've been imposing a basket of policies called the "Washington consensus" all over the planet. Countries in Latin America, southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and so forth have all been pushed into trade liberalization, privatization, and extreme fiscal austerity measures. And while some of these policies have obvious benefits for their first-world trading partners, the benefits for citizens of these countries on the ground have been harder to see.

Ferguson does not acknowledge this. In fact, he barely acknowledges the existence of the IMF, mentioning it only four times: once to report that it was formed after World War II, once to suggest that it extend aid to "the new Iraq", and twice while citing data from its reports.

Instead, Ferguson advocates we start to intervene in the economic affairs of developing states as if we weren't already doing that. In support of which, he seems to suggest that these states have been choosing their policy entirely on their own, with results so bad that the notion that they should have any independence at all can be reasonably questioned:

... the experiment with political independence, expecially in Africa, has been a disaster for most poor countries. Life expectancy in Africa has been declining and now stands at just forty-seven years. This is despite aid, loans and programs of debt forgiveness. Only two sub-Saharan countries out of forty-six, Botswana and Mauritius, have bucked the trend of economic failure.

Some might think it relevant to note that Botswana and Mauritius are also two of the very rare third-world countries which have attracted attention for bucking "Washington consensus" policies -- Mauritius for its regulation of trade, and Botswana for rejecting IMF loans and the accompanying austerity package. Particularly when Gambia, Ferguson's poster child for the ineffectiveness of third world government, has been far more willing to mold its policies to the Washington consensus -- in so far as it can.

But Ferguson has his own explanation for the relative success of Botswana and Mauritius; he thinks they were particularly good at fostering institutions which create a business-friendly climate. Well, he's not the only one. But if all the countries who have taken World Bank and IMF aid, to worse results, have been unable to foster business-friendly institutions, then what does that say about the judgment of the Bank and the IMF?

But stay tuned for some alarming heterodoxy before you take my word on anything economic...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:31 AM]:

There's a new trend in sports medicine: medical practices paying the teams for the right to treat the players -- and to advertise themselves as "the medical staff of the Bashers", or whatever. And some player representatives are upset:

Mets pitcher Tom Glavine said he was satisfied with the care provided by the Mets' doctors but concerned about the principles of the new financial model. "Potentially, it's an issue that could be disturbing or warrant concern," he said. "You'd like to think the team is getting you the best possible care and you're not just treated by whoever gives the most money."

Troy Vincent, president of the N.F.L. Players Association and a cornerback for the Buffalo Bills, said players, coaches and physicians had each been put at a disadvantage.

"It destroys trust and credibility on all sides," he said. "It's bad for the sport and bad for the community it serves. With all the large sums of money a team spends on salaries and everything else, you have to ask yourself if an extra million dollars from a hospital deal is really worth it."

Many team executives insisted, however, that medical care had not been compromised by these arrangements.

"Do you really think that in the former arrangement, when sports team management like us was paying the doctors, that they were any more likely to put the player's health ahead of our bottom line?", they did not add. "How naive can you get?"

A more serious question for potential patients of these firms is what does it mean when you know your medical practice is spending big bucks on promotional arrangements with sports teams. But in the ads they get to buy, they're not obliged to talk about that...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:00 AM]:

Draka USA. They're here. They're established. They're operating publicly, entirely in the open. They are selling high quality wire and cable products for a wide variety of commercial and industrial applications. Someday, the entire country may be controlled by signals transmitted through Draka cable. Depending on your taste in science fiction, this may or may not be a concern.

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[posted by charles dodgson at 12:21 AM]:

Seymour Hersh has yet another installment in his Abu Ghraib chronicle, this one reporting that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was seeded by an off-the-books program authorized by Rumsfeld personally, which subsequently ran amok. The Department of Defense was quick with a statement which apparently denied Hersh's allegations -- and more than one sharp-eyed observer was just as quick to note that if you actually read the DOD statement closely, it didn't directly deny much of anything.

Then again, actual denials may be a bit of a problem for our military of late, after they denied having ever had Nick Berg in custody, and then rather quickly had to backtrack. And the general confusion about that story has fed a rash of speculation, as my readers are presumably aware. I hesitate to embrace the more extreme theories that are floating around, because even at this late date, having seen all that I have seen and things I could never have imagined, I still and all can't make myself accept that they could possibly be this fucking dumb. But there are more strange things about the Berg "beheading" video than Berg himself being dressed in an American orange prison jumpsuit; some of these look like reasonable questions to me.

And, having gone totally tinfoil-hat for a minute there, a brief note on current events, my analyses, and credibility thereof. I've been worrying about the possibility of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani declaring a general ban on U.S. troops in response to the fighting in Najaf. But Juan Cole says here that it looks to him like Sistani is actively colluding with the Americans to try to take down Muqtada al-Sadr, who has worn out his welcome with the rest of the Shiite establishment, particularly in Najaf. Which, if true, would certainly explain why Sistani's response to the fighting so far has been limited to fatwas urging all the belligerents to take the fight out of town -- a far more practical proposal for the Americans than for the Army of the Mahdi. (That's as opposed to the Iranian theocracy, whose condemnation of the fighting is quite one sided -- and rather worrisome). Adjust your opinion of my sources and analysis accordingly.

One last thing -- as you may notice, I'm playing with blogger comments. We'll see how this works out...

More: Billmon offers yet another dissection of the Pentagon's non-denial denial of Hersh...

Yet more: Colin Powell now says we'd be willing to swallow a theocracy in Iraq, apparently a reversal of our former stance. Lambert at Corrente thinks this, too, was part of Sistani's price for allowing us our frolic in Najaf. I'm not so sure -- Sistani personally is not nearly as inclined toward direct theocracy as the Iranian mullahs (or, for that matter, Muqtada al-Sadr). But it's certainly possible...

Another update: Finally a concrete denial on the Hersh story, but it took them a while, and was preceded by a new version of the original statement (which may, for all I know, change again by the time you read this), which said that there are false statements in the Hersh piece someplace, but was still not terribly specific about which of Hersh's particular claims are actually false...

links via Marshall and Froomkin.

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[posted by charles dodgson at 11:50 AM]:

More hand-wringing about the effect that the War on Terror has had on our civil rights, as shown by the government's case against a Saudi CS grad student, for managing a web site on which he, well, didn't actually write the stuff they're complaining about:

The government's case seems to rest not on Hussayan's postings but the messages and postings of others. And it appears that he worked not with a terrorist group, but alone, on a volunteer basis, in the den of his apartment. Moreover, according to Hussayen's lawyers, these sites also included viewpoints that criticized jihad as well. Thus, they may have been more "marketplace of ideas" -- the First Amendment's ideal -- than terrorist platform.

Providing a forum in which jihadists might, conceivably, get talked out of violent acts is clearly not in our interest. Yes?

Similarly, the nervous ninnies at the ACLU are upset that they had to edit the description of a legal challenge to the Patriot Act to omit the description of the portion of the law that they're challenging, even though the same provisions are described in far greater detail on the DOJ's own web site. And so they cry censorship, simply failing to recognize an inspired artistic tribute to Kafka.

Some people just have no taste...

For what it's worth, the government has other charges against Mr. Hussayan as well, including providing funds to groups that they deem to be terrorist. We'll see soon, I guess, if that amounts to more than providing a forum to the "terrorist" groups in question on which they could, if they chose, point out their willingness to cash a check...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 11:38 AM]:

When talking about Muqtada al-Sadr, our guys in Baghdad consistently describe him as the leader of a small, radical faction, isolated from the mainstream of Iraqi Shiites (as represented, they say, by the Shiite factions represented on the IGC, SCIRI and al-Da'wa). Juan Cole has been saying otherwise for months -- that al-Sadr's support comes from the movement originally built up by his father, which is much broader and deeper than our folks seems to realize. But a new poll, showing 45% support in Baghdad and 67% in Basra, surprises even him:

I am surprised by the high numbers in Basra, where I think the rival al-Fudala branch of Sadrism is more important. The level of support for Muqtada has almost certainly increased greatly since late March when the poll was done.

My own view is that Muqtada has now won politically and morally. He keeps throwing Abu Ghuraib in the faces of the Americans. He had his men take refuge in Najaf and Karbala because he knew only two outcomes were possible. Either the Americans would back off and cease trying to destroy him, out of fear of fighting in the holy cities and alienating the Shiites. Or they would come in after Muqtada and his militia, in which case the Americans would probably turn the Shiites in general against themselves. The latter is now happening.

But oddly, Cole may be giving al-Sadr too little credit; according to reports here, al-Sadr actually agreed to disband his militia and stand trial for the murder he is being accused of by the Americans, in a deal brokered by more senior Shiite clerics -- only to have the deal vetoed by Paul Bremer. The problem? Muqtada wants to surrender after June 30th, to the new, supposedly sovereign Iraqi government; Bremer wants him in custody now.

Now, how Bremer can expect any potential "high value detainee" to hand himself over to U.S. control after the Abu Ghraib scandals is beyond me, but that's what he wants. And since he can't get it, he's ordered troops into Najaf, crossing what the very senior grand Ayatollah al-Sistani had earlier identified as a "red line". Is he daring al-Sistani, at long last, to issue a fatwa against our troops?

Ah, but Bremer believes that, polls be damned, the majority of Shiites are with us, as are our Shiite friends on the council, SCIRI and al-Da'wa, each with its own militia, a long-time rival to al-Sadr's. One wonders who is telling them this. Might it be, perchance, SCIRI and al-Da'wa?

Update: The dare is on... someone's knocked holes in the Shrine of Imam Ali. The Americans are, of course, claiming that it was stray ordnance from the Army of the Mahdi that did the damage, not their own. As if that actually matters...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 1:52 PM]:

Condemnations of the Muslim thugs who beheaded an American are pouring in from all over -- from respected Muslim clerics.

In completely unrelated news, Rumsfeld has said today that Pentagon lawyers are preventing the release of the rest of the Abu Ghraib abuse photos:

In his talk with reporters earlier, [Rumsfeld] said, "As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy to release them all to the public and to get it behind us. But at the present time I don't know anyone in the legal shop in any element of the government that is recommending that."

The government lawyers argue that releasing such materials would violate a Geneva Convention stricture against presenting images of prisoners that could be construed as degrading, Rumsfeld said.

So, if anyone demands public accountability for mistreatment of prisoners in violation of the Geneva conventions -- which necessarily involves discussing, describing, and presenting images of the mistreatment -- holding the miscreants to account would be itself a violation of the Geneva conventions, and cannot proceed. Brilliant! (Though perhaps too clever by half -- someone might notice that a concern for the dignity of the individual prisoners, were anyone to seriously believe that's the motive here, might be satisfied just by painting the faces out).

But that's the kind of brilliance we've come to expect from Rumsfeld -- this is, after all, the same guy who says that the Geneva Conventions don't apply at all to the folks we've been detaining for a couple of years now at Guantanamo, well, just 'cuz.

Meanwhile, back at home, a league of gibbering fools has mistaken the aforementioned Muslim thugs (and their delusional supporters in the Arab world) for the whole of Islamic civilization. And they're wondering why some people think it's news that American soldiers are acting like wanton thugs, but it isn't nearly so much news when wanton thugs act like wanton thugs.

It's because we're supposed to be better than that.

Meanwhile, in other developments, Bremer has rejected a Falluja-style deal for Karbala and Najaf, despite Sistani's endorsement, and hard fighting is underway -- with a historic mosque in Karbala already damaged, and within "oops, where was that tank's gun pointed?" range of major holy sites. I've been wrong before, but I've got a baaaad feeling about this...

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:26 AM]:

Shorter Victor Davis Hanson: it is a testament to the miraculous power and effectiveness of our new, Western, technomarvelous way of war that our enemies are undefeated and gloating about it. So, maybe it's time for a little good old fashioned colonialist brutality, à la the Mongols Persians Romans nineteenth-century Brits.

via Chun

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[posted by charles dodgson at 9:40 AM]:

And now, a brief break from the irony and snark: Prof. Juan Cole's blog is indispensable. Today it features a write-up of interviews with the new Spanish defense minister, Jose Bono, in which it's revealed that Spanish troops refused an order from the Americans -- probably coming from Dubya himself -- to capture Muqtada al-Sadr "dead or alive". That sort of major operation in Najaf would risk putting all the Shiites in the country in arms against us. (Gosh, is that why they wanted the Spanish as fall guys?)

Perhaps I'm not the only one to hear odd echoes of this of the Falluja situation, where the on-scene commander apparently took his superiors in the Pentagon and even Baghdad by surprise, by negotiating a settlement which avoided an armed assault amid a hailstorm of tough talk about deadlines and "all necessary action" from Washington...

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