Things in Iraq are getting so bad that I need a break from summarizing them.

"There is a fatal flaw in attempting to meet the amorphous terrorist threat – either locally or globally – by reaching for a bigger gun."

That's from the Sydney Morning Herald care of this Washington Post World Views column, a valuable source of the wide range of international opinion. (Even though, in the fictional universe of our current 'leadership,' world opinion only matters when in results in others doing our bidding.) There are calls to stay the course, and laments that Wolfowitz wasn't harmed during Monday's attacks; concerns for the Iraqis, and concerns about the U.S. becoming a predatory nation.

Politics infuse everything. Consider this from today's Media Notes column in the Washington Post by Howard Kurtz.

"The concern in GOP circles is such that one prominent Republican strategist said many party faithful hope the administration can provide an 'achievable' deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops by next summer. But that ' "decision-can" keeps getting kicked down the street,' the GOP strategist said."

The summer of 2004? How conveeenient.

The article goes on to quote critics of the peace movement, suggesting that there are only two options: US military occupation of Iraq, or a complete abandonment of the Iraqi people to the chaos already consuming them.

I would ask what these folks are smoking, but being an avid non-smoker it would probably annoy me to find out. Oh, they also state that, because the biggest organization behind the protests doesn't believe the UN should inherit the Bush Administration's mess, that means they're anti-UN, proving that the peace movement hates the Iraqis.

Someone has great drugs and isn't sharing with their hallucination of a monolithic, completely unified peace movement that only sees two options. (You're with us or against us, you're good or eeeeeevil, you're for the war on terror or you're a terrorist, etc.) It's amazing what desperate people will do to avoid having a realistic discussions of our option in Iraq, including accelerating the schedule for actual democracy, letting the Iraqi's choose their own contractors, and coordinating aid and development assistance through the UN.

[And the pro-war hysterics then shout: But then we'd have to give up our lucrative contracts!! We CAN NOT do that! It's our way or the highway! And the conversation becomes unrealistically limited again.]

Kurtz isn't the sort of columnist to call people on these issues, but it's amusing to see their quotes and see how misguided (and blinded) they are just the same.

Occupation is War

Yesterday I attended the peace rally in opposition to the US occupation of Iraq here in San Francisco yesterday. Under a cloudless sky and relentless 80 degree sunshine, thousands gathered to voice opposition to the immoral and unsuccessful policy of occupying Iraq.

As usual, the homemade signs were the best. ("All these signs & Bush can't read!" My favorite I couldn't get a picture of, but seemed to be a speech excerpt from our own administration, 'our mission is to remove a violent and oppressive regime from Iraq...') Several activists in an antique car with silly pro-war slogans and logos representing Bush's period of being AWOL from the Nat'l Guard decorated the car, which was staffed by costumed versions of Bush, Colin, and Dick, all handing out Deception Dollars, a performance which merited considerable attention. (S took a photo of the Powell figure pretending to snort powder off the dashboard through one of these "fraudulent event notes." :-)

During the speeches, the organizers noted that there was an estimated 15-20,000 people participating, and that the media would emphasize that attendance was smaller than during the war, rather than finding it remarkable that people care at all or reporting substantively on our concerns. (Sure enough, today's coverage is completely predictable.) Representatives of military families opposed to the occupation spoke (SF Gate), along with Rep. Cynthia McKinney, mayoral candidates Matt Gonzales and Tom Ammiano, and other local and international luminaries. I found the demonstration to be a positive, creative demand by positive, creative people to reevaluate a failing effort that is costing all of us goodwill and safety.

Discordant notes: police allowing deranged motorists to try to force their way through the march (I have a video of a woman swearing at me after she nearly ran several people down); and a firetruck using the march portion of market street where no traffic accommodations had been made by the police, which was blocked by a rig that had unsuccessfully tried to force its way through. The march route was publicized for weeks in advance, and it appeared that the police were going out of their way to make sure that civilians had to direct traffic. (I guess they're still annoyed over the indignities they suffered on Day X?)

News and Information Resources

• Protester's reports:
  
  
  
  • SF Indymedia Anti-War News, including Nice protest photos by Peter; more photos (best sign: Sammy Hagar imitators against mass homicide)
    
  • DC Indymedia Home, including DC Indymedia's summary the protest (recommended), and A participant's comments on DC Indymedia
    
  
  
• Corporate media reports:
  
  
  
  • Reuters coverage (of the Washington march)
    
  • SJ Mercury coverage
    
  • SF Gate coverage
    
  • Washington Post coverage(Sample:"The demonstrators represented a diverse mix of dissent, from suburban high school students to gray-haired retirees, from fathers pushing their children in strollers to Muslim American college students shouting through bullhorns. There were people from D.C. Poets Against the War, the Louisville Peace Action Community, Northern Virginians for Peace and Central Ohioans for Peace, among many others. Banners in Spanish, Korean, Urdu, Hebrew, Arabic and Tagalog decried the war. Smaller marches began at various locations in the city and led to the main rally, including those organized by Muslim American and by African American activists.")
    
  
  
• Military families' organizations
  
  
  
  • Bring Them Home Now
    
  • Military Families Speak Out
    
  
  
• March Sponsors:
  
  
  
  • Bay Area United Against War
    
  • International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) Coalition
    
  • Not In Our Name (and likely our Not In Our Name Bay Area Chapter); and
    
  • Vanguard Public Foundation
    
  • Endorsed by United for Peace & Justice, Bay Area.
    
  
  

Common Cause has launched an Eye On Iraq campaign to track suspicious spending, among other things. A sample from their e-mail newsletter:

Did you know that the Bush Administration's reconstruction budget for Iraq includes the following requests?
1. Six hundred hand-held radios and satellite phones at an average cost of $6,000 each, BUT enterprising Iraqis have been able to buy satellite phones from Jordan for $900 each.

2. Eighty pick-up trucks at a cost of $33,000, BUT new pickup trucks in the U.S. start at about $14,000.

3. Five thousand computers at a cost of $3,000 each, BUT a computer in the U.S. can be bought for well under $1000.

4. A witness protection program that would cost an average of $200,000 per person, BUT similar programs in the US cost about $10,000 per person.

All this, and some US lawmakers are pointing out possible price gouging by Halliburton. (BBC) You may not be surprised that there are some bills from Bush's no-bid-contract pals that look mighty suspicious. Just because Iraq's ministries pay 98 cents a gallon or less for fuel, doesn't mean Halliburton shouldn't charge the US $1.59 for the same fuel, does it?

The hotel housing US occupation officials was attacked in Baghdad: the attackers escaped, as did Wolfowitz.(SF Gate)

"There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block," said Lt. Brian Dowd of Nanuet, N.Y., a 1st Armored Division reconnaissance officer at the scene.

The comment about having soldiers on every block reminds me of an essay in the Nov./Dec. 2003 issue of Adbusters, a fictional representation of what the world will be like in a few years, when the entire middle east is occupied by a corrupt and exploitative U.S. *shudder* The fiction is long, detailed, reminiscent of the British in India, full of disdain for democracy/sovereignity/self-determination, and completely horrific. For those reasons, I recommend reading it.

[The rest of the issue, on the overall theme of "winners" and "losers" is also worth reading. It generally supports my theory that, if you have absolutely nothing to lose, you have no motivation to support anything in world society, and that the disinfranchised are a threat to peace of our own making -- we allow them to be disinfranchised. That's MY take on it -- your mileage may vary.]

Remember that botulism that the US search teams found in Iraq, the one little vial in some guy's fridge at home that was supposed to be PROOF that Iraq had a bio-weapons program? That story has been SO VERY discredited. (LA Times) First, it was sent their legally by an American group. Ooops. And then, there's the fact that it's, well, just botulism.

The vial of botulinum B — about 2 inches high and half an inch wide — was the only suspicious biological material Kay reported finding.... Oct. 3, Bush said the war in Iraq was justified and cited Kay's discovery of the advanced missile programs, clandestine labs and what he called "a live strain of deadly agent botulinum" as proof that Hussein was "a danger to the world."

But Dr. David Franz, a former chief U.N. biological weapons inspector who is considered among America's foremost experts on biowarfare agents, said there was no evidence that Iraq or anyone else has ever succeeded in using botulinum B for biowarfare.

"The Soviets dropped it [as a goal] and so did we, because we couldn't get it working as a weapon," said Franz, who is the former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., the Pentagon's lead laboratory for bioweapons defense research.

The particular bug in the fridge was Botulinum B. The botulism of food poisoning fame. An easily dispersed, can't turn it into weapons unless you're improperly home canning and can force the rest of the world to eat your improperly canned food, non-weapon, biological substance.

The LA Times article is fun, in that the various administration people they speak to are trying to stick to their original story. Unless they fear that the Iraqis were going to visit us and paralyze the nation with Botox injections... Or throw a picnic with their 'special' pickles... Oh, it's just so darned sad.

The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day. - George Nethercutt, Republican representative, Washington

[I'm suffering back pain that makes sitting upright uncomfortable. I'll post as soon as I feel better...]

How has it come to pass that the Bush Administration believes their main Iraq problem is one of public relations? (Washington Post) It's not the unrest? The violent resistance to occupation? The loss of American and Iraqi lives? Should we believe that those issues are less relevant than Bush's 'message?'

While it's entertaining to hear the President complain that the media isn't cheerleading loudly enough (!!!! where has he been this year, in a cave with Cheney?), it appears that the Administration is a victim of building up high expectations through prior PR efforts. All that talk about all the WMDs we were going to find, and how we were going to catch Saddam Hussein certainly caught the media's attention. It doesn't seem quite right to blame the media for having done such a fine job publicizing the previous ad campaign that it stuck in people's minds.

Especially that Weapons of Mass Destruction part.

Right up until the end, Saddam lied to the Security Council. And let there be no mistake, right up to the end, Saddam Hussein continued to harbor ambitions to threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction and to hide his illegal weapons activity.

-Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Perhaps the flaw in the previous PR campaign was that it had the wrong emphasis. Perhaps, instead of speaking of actual WMDs, they should have spoken of Hussein's nasty ambitions, since that's all they've been able to document.

Pesky details!

Here is a short video (also at Washington Post) discussing the strategic reasons for admitting that a PR campaign is in full swing.

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Well, there's always all that great rebuilding effort the Bush Admin. can emphasize instead, right? Just as great a success as in Afghanistan's, certainly.

Um, forget I wrote that.

Debate is erupting over the funding for the military and rebuilding efforts. "Of the $4 billion a month already being spent in Iraq, as much as a third is going to the private contractors who have flooded into the country." (Washington Post) This article raises concerns that initially arose when only donors to the Republican Party appeared to be pre-approved for work, and has continued as the number of foreign contractors and consultants exceeded the number of foreign military personnel.

The Iraqi gold rush has raised concerns on Capitol Hill that the administration may be losing control of the taxpayers' money. As the task of rebuilding shifts from government employees to for-profit contractors, members of Congress are worried that their oversight will diminish, cost controls will weaken and decisions about security, training and the shape of the new Iraqi government will be in the hands of people with financial stakes in the outcome. Avant calls it "the commercialization of foreign policy." (from the same Washington Post article)

To address some of these concerns the Senate is attempting to add penalties for profiteering and to require an open bidding system.

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It's "interesting" that, as the Administration attempts to justify its actions (BBC), that there is chronic insecurity and unemployment, while foreign contractors are snapping up billions of dollars. And some of those contractors are earning hazard bonuses for... protecting Iraqi oil facilities.

Are the locals supposed to take comfort in that? "My daughters can't go to school any more, and women are disappearing off the streets in broad daylight, but at least the oil refinery is being guarded!"

Do you think that the tactics used by Americans in the Revolutionary War for independence from England would be considered terrorism by today's new standards? Hiding in the trees to snipe at soldiers? Not wearing bright uniforms? Not following the rules of war as they existed then, which required open country and lines of soldiers exposing themselves to their opponents in an orderly way?

The US broke a lot of rules to win its freedoms. It was for a good cause, but I still think the US' tactics would be judged in the current political climate.

It's been very sad to read of the violence that has cost so many lives in Israel and Palestine. It's very tragic. It seems very unnecessary, the death, destruction, terror. But it also seems very... desperate, and I'm not quite sure why observations about the desperation involved are not examined so that such sad events can be prevented elsewhere.

It appears from looking around the world that, in places where people have enough to eat, adequate shelter, and can live comfortably on available resources in relative freedom, the citizens tend not to blow themselves up. Where there are opportunities and people have something to live for, people tend to choose to live. Even in places where there are vast disparities between the rich and poor, systems which at least appear to offer opportunities for upward mobility and some earthly comforts tend to keep people invested in their local system of governance, whatever that system may be. When there is an injustice, people generally organize to try to improve the system. [This has been especially apparent in Central and South America lately, where all sorts of groups are attempting to improve the systems which have been disenfranchising them. They have enough hope for improvement that they have not resorted to blowing themselves up.]

Do you see where I'm going with this?

If people suffer constant collective punishment in an externally imposed and arbitrary system, there is no reason to invest in that system or the "order" it brings. [As if government sponsored assassinations and bulldozing homes could ever result in peace or order!] None. Punishing the peaceful or the moderates radicalizes the survivors. Creating an occupation that leaves people hopeless and gives them nothing to live for creates people who are available for suicide attacks.

I'm not condoning the violence of the desperate - I'm just pointing out that hopelessness and desperation can lead to terror. And if we, collectively, want to eliminate terror, we should eliminate the circumstances that give rise to it as best we can. The US itself resorted to violence to free itself from unjust rule, so I don't feel that we are in a position to criticize the quest for anyone's freedom, (though we CAN criticize the methods). The US' culture also had many violent fantasies during the Cold War about how WE would never ever ever tolerate a Communist occupation, with the firm belief that nearly any sacrifice would be worth our particular system of freedom to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Apocalyptic novels of self-sacrifice were hot sellers, despite their formulaic, torrid worldview. If we thought like that... Well, why wouldn't people who actually find themselves occupied think the same way?

Other people in the world are no different from us. It seems that we can use our vast technology and experience to make life more hopeful for people everywhere if we REALLY want to combat terror. If we export hope and improved lives, fewer people will be available to be used as tools of terror. That may not eliminate terror, but reducing it is worth a try.

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[Ingredients to such an effort: aid where needed; very fair trade that REALLY benefits the poorer nations; information exchanges, including health care worker exchanges; appropriate technology, for those of you who know what that is... These things are done on a small scale currently by NGOs to positive affect with limited NGO resources. If governmental organizations, especially in the industrialized and wealthier parts of the world, made a significant committment for the sake of increased world security, the existing efforts could be analyzed, a series of best practices for each region and culture could be developed, and the best work could be reproduced on a much larger scale for all interested countries. Doesn't that sound better than bombs and military bases? Of course it does.]

Search In Iraq Finds No Banned Weapons. (Washington Post)

Bush believes the report vindicates his administration because it shows that Hussein sought components for forbidden programs, but doesn't show that he actually GOT any, contrary to the Administration's announcements prior to war. (Washington Post) It appears that the Iraqi regime had high HOPES of having forbidden programs, but didn't quite work up the skill and materials to MAKE anything.

That's not quite what we were told when this all started.

Kay's WMD report on the CIA website is fascinating. I think my favorite quote so far is this one:

Discussions with Iraqi scientists uncovered agent R&D work that paired overt work with nonpathogenic organisms serving as surrogates for prohibited investigation with pathogenic agents.

That's right, Iraqi scientists were working with benign biological substances, but were hoping to learn things they could use with really nasty biological agents! Oh, shame on them for using harmless agents and fantasizing of harmful ones!

This is another great excerpt:

We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Investigation into the origin of and intended use for the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.

Read it a few times. Doesn't it just flow over the tongue, like cold chunky peanut butter? Don't you feel a desire to rephrase it? Something more along the lines of, "you probably couldn't make any WMDs in these trailers, but we really have no clue what they were used for, so we count these as proof that they were up to SOMETHING nefarious for now."

The report is full of "could haves." They looked into making something chemical, so they someday could have figured it out! Hussein once asked how long it would take to produce a chemical weapon, and received an estimate! They produce *gasp* ESTIMATES!! And this report reveals that scientists who studied nuclear weapons prior to 1998 were allowed to keep practicing science! YES! "In some cases, these groups performed work which could help preserve the science base and core skills that would be needed for any future fissile material production or nuclear weapons development." SCIENTISTS WERE ENGAGING IN SCIENCE THAT PRESERVED THEIR CORE SKILLS! HOLY COW!

I don't mean to make light of this, but... I was expecting something more compelling, and I feel let down, somehow.

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Are they serious? Bush aides reported being surprised that the news coverage of Kay's interim report focused on the absence so far of weapons of mass destruction.. (Washington Post) Oh, I hope they're not serious. I mean, golly. Even if THEY forgot the original rationale for entering into the war, those of us who are even somewhat sober remember it.

There's a sad article I just read about the current, chaotic state of Somalia. (BBC) There is concern that the country could become a haven for terrorists. The country didn't come onto the US' press radar until unrest after the fall of a president resulted in local warfare and the death of many UN peacekeepers. The US was involved, but the operation went badly, and many US soldiers died. Before those events, you'd think the nation didn't exist, so little was it mentioned in US papers.

Most Americans, me included, were mystified at the time. It was as if Somalia sprang into existence overnight, and was somehow magically filled with high powered guns while its people lacked most of the basics. How could it be? Where did the guns come from? There was some very basic information missing.

A great essay about Americans never understanding international events straightened me out, and so now I know what to look for. If you look at the BBC's excellent timeline of Somalia's history, you'll notice some references to the influence of the Soviets during the cold war.

Can you think of any place where the Soviets alone had influence that the US didn't try to intervene? The US apparently supported and armed warlords who were engaged in a battle of resistance against the left-leaning government, the same way the US supported resistance to the USSR in Afghanistan.

It's very similar to Afghanistan in that respect.

But for those who hadn't heard this excluded tidbit, there's an odd quote from a former American ambassador: "The US now has a coherent policy of trying to get the neighbours to take some responsibility for Somalia." Not that I expected him to bring up OUR role and responsibilities. But... But....

I enjoyed this controversial piece by former UK environment minister Michael Meacher called "This war on terrorism is bogus: The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination." (Guardian UK). Meacher wants to know why the US was so interesting in starting a war so far from home against a country who, it has now been proven, did not have the resources to damage the US.

Meacher's inspiration is a report called "Rebuilding America's Defenses by the increasingly infamous Project for a New American Century, a group that has been planning US world domination (especially through military superiority) for many years, and from which many members of the Bush Administration came. Meacher is especially disturbed by a section on the required elements to shift attitudes toward it's ultra-pro-military stance:

"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Meacher's theory is that the September 11, 2001 attacks provided the catalyst that the PNAC folks have been seeking to follow their grandest plans -- not so much by the Bush Administration's design, but by laxity that happens to coincide with militarist interests. In response to critics who accuse him of hysterics, Meacher tries to draw attention to the source of his concern - the report:

It sets out publicly as objectives for the new Bush administration control of the Gulf region, irrespective of Saddam Hussein, regime change in China, US domination of space and cyberspace, and development of biological weapons as "a politically useful tool".

All this is highly relevant to the debate currently raging in Britain as to whether the war in Iraq was justified. Ostensibly Britain was taken into a war to support US goals of combating global terror. But in reality, the evidence shows that the war on terror is largely a cover for wider US geopolitical objectives set out in the neo-conservative manifesto. This is what we should be focusing on.

Ideologically based criticisms aside, I am surprised that his suggestions that the open-ended war on terror are serving some people are so shocking (we have always had war profiteers), and that they distract his critics from the document upon which they are based. The PNAC report itself, and the appropriateness of the Bush Administration's members being blatant militarists who have not distanced themselves from a document which advocates US world domination through military action raise questions on their own.

Shouldn't there be a few more concerns over comments in the PNAC document such as this:

The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In a world of global cooperation, is it appropriate for the US to want to maintain a military presence around the world, especially in areas where it is notoriously unwanted and unwelcome? Does any nation have the right to impede the sovereignty of other nations for the sake of its financial interests in taking other nation's natural resources in order to have global dominance? Historically, the answer has always been no. Shouldn't the policies that the US is following, as outlined in this document, generate greater concern than implications that the Bush Administration has a conflict of interest with regard to security?

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A detailed analysis of the PNAC document and its operations by MoveOn, currently published at Indymedia (Idaho Indymedia) provides additional background information on the organization and funding behind this dubious conservate effort to build an empire.

I've been home ill for several days, so I missed yesterday's Bring the Troops Home demonstration here in SF. (SF Gate) Bringing the Troops home is a laudable sentiment, but I think we peace-loving people should demand more.

The costly war on Iraq relieved the Iraqi people of a despotic ruler whom the US previously helped keep in power, a belated correction to some very serious and immoral US foreign policy actions, which came at the expense of countless Iraqi lives. But the occupation is not going well, and neither the soldiers nor Iraqis are happy with it. It's time to admit that. Considering the social strife raging through lawless occupied Iraq (Washington Post) that the power vacuum has created, pulling out and abandoning the people after having created chaos is not enough.

The US finds itself in this situation because of ego and greed. The US' attempts to maintain a business monopoly over Iraqi resources and military positions while demanding money from the UN is self-serving and bound to fail. The US does not have a history of successful nation building, having intervened in dozens of nations but still only pointing to the same two examples from my parents' childhoods to prove it can be done well.

Bringing the troops home must be part of a broader plan to help the Iraqis. It's time to surrender the assets of Iraq that the US has seized to an international trustee; involve international peacekeepers and participate with and support them with US forces; set a timetable for Iraqi self-rule; and use UN resources to set up a method for Iraqis to express what it is they believe they need and their developmental priorities in a way that will result in the most needed and beneficial action. The sooner, the better.

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Yes, such a proposal may involve surrendering some of the lucrative development contracts that Bush has been granting to his donors and friends. The most important thing is that the Iraqis are getting what they need. It's bizarre to read about mobile phone contracts being let when people there don't have water or security. There are nations much closer to Iraq who can surely supply many of the people and equipment needed to give people the basics they need to live. What is best for US business isn't necessarily best for the Iraqis, and if we're still claiming this war was for Iraqi liberation, we need to get on the ball and make sure they're getting what's truly best for them.

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This goes for Afghanistan, too, which we've largely abandoned.

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The Washington Post Iraq Post-War photo galleries (Macromedia Flash) are up and full of informative photos about the way Iraqis of all stripes are living (and dying) in the post-war breakdown of order.

An interesting bit within the 'hunt for WMDs' gallery: a photo of a piece of lined paper, showing a drawing of a flask and some text which was found accompanied by a flask of powder. This discovery generated excitement among the WMD hunters. It turned out to be... a student's science homework.

(This implies the folks looking for WMDs don't have translators with them. Which seems unwise, for many reasons.)

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Cheney is refusing to drop a discredited story about hijacker Atta and an Iraqi meeting in Prague, which has been abandoned by the rest of the Bush Administration. (Washington Post)

U.S. records showed Atta living in Virginia Beach in April 2001, and they could find no indication he had left Virginia or traveled outside the United States.

Even so, on March 24, 2002, Cheney again told NBC, "We discovered . . . the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague."

The FBI and CIA have both confirmed that there is no evidence that Atta left the country at the time the alleged meeting took place, and the lone informer's testimony to the Czech government lost its credibility: "Havel quietly informed the White House in 2002 there was no evidence to confirm the meeting." And yet Cheney is STILL bringing it up.

Is Cheney trying to make it easy for me to say that facts are no obstacle to certain members of this Administration? This surely is the sort of attitude which resulted in members of the House Intelligence Committee accusing the administration of using information that was at least 5 years old (Washington Post).

The ongoing lawlessness in Iraq is taking tolls on Iraq's most vulnerable: especially young female children. A horrific July article called "Rape (and Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad" (New York Times, $) details an attack on a 9-year old which threatens her life -- not because of the violence of the act, but because it means her male relatives wish to kill her to cleanse their family's honor. She's only 9!

She isn't the only one: the article describes other victims, women lying about what has happened to their daughters to protect family honor, refusals by the police to act on reports, bureaucratic obstacles... I'm citing this older article, because I haven't seen this come up again recently, although families locking their girls indoors and male relatives standing guard outside of girl's schools all day are likely things that have continued along with the disorder.

This bodes badly for the country: as pointed out in a short MS Magazine interview with Jordan's Queen Noor, cultures with women participating in public life tend to moderate extremists. When women are eliminated from the public world, extreme views toward their treatment and protection flourish, including more extreme forms of fundamentalism. Which make the world less hospitable for all of us.

This is still apparent in Afghanistan, where women are still wearing the Burqa outside of Kabul, where journalists generally won't tread.

At least the US military is consistent: troops who killed eight Iraqi policemen have been cleared of wrongdoing (BBC), as have US troops who killed Reuters camerman Mazen Dana (BBC).

Dana's death has had a big impact on the press: a BBC video feature notes that his killing was 'not a one off' (BBC), but part of a pattern of US soldiers killing innocents, including civilians, under the 'rules of engagement.' The civilian deaths have been reported without comment elsewhere, but suggesting that the pattern of civilian deaths (BBC) is actually (a) bad and (b) a pattern is somewhat unique in the non-partisan press.

The US government's battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people could have a new obstacle: US plans to privatize and sell off Iraq's various non-oil assetts. (BBC) Selling off the oil assetts would make all those allegations about the US really being after the oil look... a bit true.

Mr Allawi said: "this point always comes up". But he doesn't believe it himself.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is now under bipartisan criticism for favoring companies with close financial ties to it for Iraq's rebuilding contracts. (BBC)

"The Iraqi contract process looks like Dodge City before the Marshals showed up," Oregon Democrat Wyden told a news conference.

"It just doesn't pass the smell test to have companies not be part of the competitive bidding process."

I'm back from a short vacation in the Sierras, only some of which are on fire. Pesky misplaced lighting!

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Highlights from immediately prior to my departure: Bush says "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks (Yahoo!). Also from this article: Condi Rice is quoted as saying "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9-11."

This Modern World has more on this topic.

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In other news, the Condi Rice notes that the long awaited report on Iraq's alleged WMDs may not be released to the public (whitehouse.gov). After talking about how thourough the report is expected to me, and how important, and how it will compile intelligence information about what was really known about Iraq's capabilities, there is this exchange:

Q When will Kaye's report will be public?

DR. RICE: David Kaye is not going to be done with this for quite some time. And I would not count on reports. I suppose there may be interim reports. I don't know when those will be, and I don't know what the public nature of them will be.

It's funnier (and sadder) in context to see the report built up and then shut down like this.

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Did he really mean expectation, or was the word he was searching for "hope?"

"Our clear expectation is that this interim report will not reach firm conclusions about Iraq's possession of WMD."
- Blair spokeman

This comes from a Guardian UK article on the advance word circulating in Washington that the long-awaited WMD report will emphasize Iraq's intent to have a WMD program, someday. (Guardian UK) The article is full of quotes from folks who claim to know what's in the report, and claim that it demonstrates that the WMD claims were all false. Interim or no, the report should be a good read, should it be allowed to see the full light of day.

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A Democratic Congressman from Georgia is blaming the media for troop deaths in Iraq (talkingpoints.com). I'm not sure grasping at straws can even cover that one. The original op ed piece (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) penned by the congressman contains such zingers as "The falsely bleak picture weakens our national resolve, discourages Iraqi cooperation and emboldens our enemy." And then he skips the news about how our troops keep killing civilians, and mentions that our school renovation projects are going to make a big, positive impact on the Iraqis. And says that all the Iraqis HE saw smiled and waved.

Golly. It may be out of line here, but I think the best way to get good press that 'strengthens our national resolve' would be to make good things happen in Iraq. Is that such a stretch?