More on the assas­si­na­tion of al-Hakim from River­bend and Salam Pax.

From stan­leyscoop:
bq.
“We should not march into Bagh­dad .… To occupy Iraq would
instantly shat­ter our coali­tion, turn­ing the whole Arab world against
us, and make a bro­ken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero
… assign­ing young sol­diers to a fruit­less hunt for a securely
entrenched dic­ta­tor and con­demn­ing them to fight in what would be an
unwinnable urban guer­rilla war. It could only plunge that part of the
world into even greater insta­bil­ity.” — For­mer Pres­i­dent, George
Bush, in his 1998 book A World Trans­formed, co-authored with
Brent Scow­croft, Ran­dom House.
[End the War on Free­dom]

Obvi­ously the older Bush had a bet­ter grasp on real­ity than his son.

Gold is up to over $370/ounce now!

America’s dou­ble stan­dard infu­ri­ates rest of the world. But the shoot­ing down of civil­ian air­craft is a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tional avi­a­tion rules no mat­ter who is on board. The dif­fer­ences in the cases do not make the glar­ing incon­sis­tency in the U.S. posi­tion any less evi­dent — or any less famil­iar. It’s another instance — though not as dra­matic as Iraq or global warm­ing — in which our gov­ern­ment resorts to inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions and laws when it agrees with the posi­tion and ignores them when it doesn’t.

It is this dou­ble stan­dard that infu­ri­ates so many peo­ple in the world: insist­ing oth­ers play by the rules, while we bend them at will because we can. (link)

I sup­pose we think peo­ple don’t notice this. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

There’s another glar­ing exam­ple of this dou­ble stan­dard right in the arti­cle, although the author missed it:

bq. On Thurs­day, the U.S. gov­ern­ment indicted for mur­der two Cuban fighter pilots and the for­mer head of the country’s air force for shoot­ing down two unarmed Broth­ers to the Res­cue civil­ian air­craft in inter­na­tional waters near Cuban air space, result­ing in four deaths.

The US doesn’t acknowl­edge the “author­ity” of the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court, a posi­tion I totally approve of. How­ever, the US has been “indict­ing” for­eign cit­i­zens who have never so much as set foot in the US of vio­lat­ing US laws for years–this is prob­a­bly where the Tranzis got the idea in the first place. The Feds need to stop act­ing like US laws some­how apply out­side the US.

10-Year New­ton Anniver­sary. The New­ton offi­cially turns 10. [tow.com]

In Sader City inci­dent, media mis­con­cep­tions inflamed pas­sions. The sense of out­rage in the crowd was pal­pa­ble as they marched through the streets of Sader city last week, hop­ing to show their sup­port for Al Hawza and Ahl-el Beyt last week. But at least some of that anger may have been unwar­ranted. One week after the Sader City ban­ner inci­dent, lead­ers at al-Sader Martyr’s office have admit­ted that in fact no one was killed either dur­ing the inci­dent or in the clashes that fol­lowed. Media mis­con­cep­tions, and unchecked facts helped feed a whirl­wind that brought half of Sader City out on the streets last Fri­day and left many chant­ing “We Want No Amer­i­can Sol­dier in Our City.”

[…]

That fact, how­ever, hasn’t eased rela­tions between either side. A full apol­ogy for the inci­dent was issued a day later, but a group Sader City com­mu­nity lead­ers who met the Amer­i­cans has refused to accept the apol­ogy and made even fur­ther demands. [<Iraq Today]

I sus­pect the Iraqis don’t under­stand how big a deal that apol­ogy is. It’s prac­ti­cally unheard of for the gov­ern­ment to apol­o­gize to its victims–it’s much more com­mon for the gov­ern­ment to kill some­one and then insist that he deserved it. At best they’ll make some state­ment about “mis­takes were made.” I don’t know whose idea it was to apol­o­gize, but who­ever it was was going way beyond what Amer­i­can cit­i­zens could expect in order to keep the Iraqis happy.

Bomb Tar­gets Key Iraqi Shi­ite Cleric [AP World News]

bq. Also Sun­day, Iraqi sources said U.S. author­i­ties were recruit­ing key ex-members of Sad­dam Hussein’s feared secu­rity ser­vice, work­ing to expand intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and root out the resis­tance that has pep­pered U.S. forces with guer­rilla attacks and now resorted to ter­ror bombings.

The Iraqis, closely linked to the Mukhabarat ser­vice, spoke only on con­di­tion of anonymity. They said the U.S. recruit­ment of about 100 for­mer intel­li­gence higher-ups had been in progress for more than two weeks.

Another exam­ple of what the Feds mean by “liberation.”

Al Qaeda Claims Respon­si­bil­ity For Power Black­out In U.S.!. A communiqu

Another Asi­nine Acronym. Wired News reports on draft leg­is­la­tion of the “Vital Inter­dic­tion of Crim­i­nal Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions Act of 2003, or Vic­tory Act.”

Authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Vic­tory isn’t just the lat­est asi­nine leg­isla­tive acronym to come down the pike (the USA PATRIOT ACT, you’ll recall, stands for Unit­ing and Strength­en­ing Amer­ica by Pro­vid­ing Appro­pri­ate Tools Required to Inter­cept and Obstruct Ter­ror­ism Act.) The bill, Wired News points out,

…includes sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the so-called Patriot Act II, which faced broad oppo­si­tion from con­ser­v­a­tives and lib­er­als alike and embar­rassed the Jus­tice Depart­ment when it was leaked to the press in February.

Crit­ics say the bill is an oppor­tunis­tic attempt to link the fight against drugs to the fight against ter­ror­ism by cre­at­ing a new crime called “narco-terrorism.” Accord­ing to the draft, narco-terrorism is the crime of sell­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing or man­u­fac­tur­ing a con­trolled sub­stance with the intent of help­ing a ter­ror­ist group.

Read the arti­cle here.

[Link via Free-Market.Net] [Hit & Run]

We can expect either a dra­matic ter­ror­ist act, or a whole bunch of “warn­ings” about ter­ror­ism, as the Feds drum up sup­port for this.

Nina Shapiro at Seat­tle Weekly via Alter­net -

Cops Against the Drug War — a story about Law Enforce­ment Against
Pro­hi­bi­tion,

LEAP, lead by Jack Cole, for­merly an under­cover New Jer­sey
cop. [smith2004]
bq.
“Eighty-five per­cent of the crime asso­ci­ated with drugs is not
asso­ci­ated with peo­ple using drugs. It has to do with the
mar­ket­place,” says Peter Christ, a for­mer police offi­cer in New York
state who orig­i­nated the idea of LEAP. Turf wars, smug­gling, vio­lent
bill col­lec­tion — all are typ­i­cal drug-related crimes that are not
the result of being high. More­over, LEAP argues, the ille­gal­ity of
drugs has inflated their value to a point where addicts have to steal
to get their fix. “If we put 50-gallon drums out on every street
cor­ner in Amer­ica filled with drugs, we wouldn’t have the prob­lems we
have today,” Christ says.

At the same time, LEAP argues that the pro­hi­bi­tion has kept soci­ety
from reg­u­lat­ing drugs in a way that keeps them out of the hands of
chil­dren, for whom it’s eas­ier to buy cocaine than it is to buy beer.
As in the alco­hol indus­try, LEAP says, legal­iza­tion would also allow
the gov­ern­ment to license and mon­i­tor busi­nesses that sell drugs and
to set prod­uct stan­dards that would pre­vent most over­doses. Says
Christ, “When you go to buy a bot­tle of Jack Daniels, you don’t have
to won­der if there’s a quart of antifreeze in it or rat poi­son.“
Legal­iza­tion would fur­ther allow the gov­ern­ment to tax this
billion-dollar indus­try and use the pro­ceeds for drug treat­ment
pro­grams.
[End the War on Free­dom]

This is good news, since the only peo­ple I’ve met who actu­ally sup­port the drug war are cops and lawyers who per­son­ally ben­e­fit from it.