Wednesday, April 09, 2003

How far will the State Department go to smear an Iraqi freedom-fighter? [OpinionJournal] The War Street Journal is working with the Crusaders in the government (although since it's an anonymous editorial, it may be the same people) to push Chalabi as their Iraqi puppet leader. Since they're the ones running things, they will presumably just install him regardless of what people think. This raises a question--what happens when a national leader is a fugitive from justice in a neighboring country? 10:04:41 PM    comment () Saudi businessmen stated that their participation in re-building Iraq is pre-conditioned on the establishment of a 'legal government' there. (Al-Watan, Saudi Arabia 4/9/03) [The Middle East Media Research Institute] This raises an interesting question: what exactly constitutes a "legal government?" 5:23:26 PM    comment () Disarmament vs. Liberation. Now that Baghdad has fallen, you have to wonder yet again why the Iraqi regime has not used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces. Earlier in the war, the speculation was that Saddam did not want to alienate world opinion and vindicate the Bush administration by using weapons of mass destruction he has long denied having. Instead, the theory went, he was counting on a bloody, drawn-out battle for Baghdad to compel a settlement that would allow him to remain in power. But now he (or whoever is in charge now) has nothing to lose. Could it be that Iraq never had a siginificant WMD capability? So far the search for evidence of one has turned up nothing but false alarms. A lot of ground remains to be covered, of course, but the administration's decision to play down disarmament as the war's goal seems to anticipate the possibility that nothing much will be found. If so, will it matter? Even before jubilant Iraqis started pouring into the streets, waving improvised flags and tearing down Saddam's statues, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" had metamorphosed from a pre-emptive act of self-defense into a humanitarian mission to rescue people from a brutal dictator. It's hard not to rejoice that Iraqis are finally free of Saddam, but it is also hard not to worry about the precedent set by their liberation. A policy of using our military to free oppressed people would lead to war with half the world. [Hit & Run] 1:24:42 PM    comment () British launch gun amnesty in Basra. Locals are asked to hand in their weapons as UK troops try to restore law and order to the southern Iraqi town. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] The troops have been largely successful in stamping out the looting which has dogged the city in recent days but the large number of weapons in circulation is still a cause for concern, military officials said. Residents are being urged to dump their guns in an "amnesty pit" close to one British military compounds. "Iraq has a culture of weapons. There are a lot of them around, most held quite legally," said Captain Cliff Dare, of 3 Commando Brigade Engineer Group. "If we want to give the new Iraq a chance these weapons have to be taken out of circulation." I have to admit, I'm surprised that they're already doing stuff like this. I knew it would happen eventually, but I figured they'd at least wait until the fighting had stopped before they started "liberating" the Iraqis from their newfound (and apparently very short-lived) freedom. 11:05:19 AM    comment () Fed Monopoly Cracking?. The state of Nevada contemplates its own silver coinage. [Hit & Run] Nevada is the first of the 50 states to consider taking such steps against the Federal Reserve, and one has to wonder which, if any state, will be next. At a minimum, it's not good news for a Federal Reserve that has made printing money and manipulating the amount of money and credit in circulation into an art form, especially on its 90th anniversary. I doubt this will go anywhere, but it's interesting to see a state even thinking about standing up to the Feds like this. 10:59:29 AM    comment () The people who had been providing those Russian intelligence reports are stopping--apparently at the behest of their government. That's unfortunate, as they were considerably more informative than the mainstream media coverage. 10:09:33 AM    comment () Karlin Lillington: "A lot of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations also routinely publish items that are basically just rewritten, unquestioned press releases and government statements." [Scripting News] This is certainly true. I first noticed this around ten years ago, when the Internet made it possible to find alternative sources of information such as small local newspapers. Presumably this has been going on for much longer, but before the Internet only people who happened to have personal knowledge of the subject knew what was happening. 10:00:12 AM    comment () U.S. Military Warns of More Fighting [AP World News] It looks like the fighting in Baghdad is basically over--I hope "Salam Pax" came through it okay. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the government to finish securing its hold on Iraq. If it takes too long (as in, more than a year or two), the forces needed to conquer Syria and Iran may not be available. After a time (three years, in the previous case) the Iraqi people will probably start fighting the occupying force, so there's a relatively short window of opportunity for the US government to act. 9:34:51 AM    comment () Leander Kahney at Wired - Intel Coder Not Going Anywhere - More on the imprisonment without bail or charges of Mike Hawash. They've finally admitted that he's there, but he won't get a hearing in front of a grand jury until April 25. Until then, he's locked up "at a federal prison in Sheridan, about 50 miles south of Portland". Anybody around there want to volunteer to break him out? A few dozen ex-federales could make the local hog population very happy. [whatreallyhappened] [End the War on Freedom] Steven McGeady, a former Intel executive who is spearheading a campaign to free Hawash, said he was very disappointed the judge didn't grant Hawash bail. "We are outraged that the judge failed to consider the implausibility of Mike as a flight risk," McGeady wrote in an e-mail." The order barely addressed this -- it appears that the judge merely acquiesced to the government's desires." What did McGeady expect? Of course the judge did what the government wanted--judges are part of the government! 9:19:07 AM    comment () Should Saddam have been using PGP? Iraqi crypto broken... [Politech] Apparently the Iraqis were using a twenty-year-old system they bought from the British. 9:03:16 AM    comment ()

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