I'm sorry, but I'm gaining no small measure of satisfaction watching Western leaders fall over themselves to condemn the outcome of a democratic election. What hypocrisy there is with all the huffing and puffing about the huge victory Hamas achieved in Palestine, from the very people who incessantly lecture the Muslim world about the value of democracy.

It's interesting to hear the language of the condemnation: Western governments are making it sound as though Palestinians deliberately elected a terrorist organization as their leader. This isn' t the case at all: Palestinians got sick and tired of the ineffectual, lazy and corrupt Palestinian Authority and finally held them accountable. The PA has never achieved statehood for their own people and little else to end the occupation. It's also practically bankrupt and no one seems to know where all that foreign aid actually goes. So, the simple analysis is that Palestinians made a change for those who have a track record of providing the basics better than the government could.

Of course, Hamas isn't just a social services organization, but like I said, it's more what helps people earn their daily bread that mattered when people went to the polls. But immediately, the rejection came from Israel and Europe fast and furious. The United States has already threatened to hold back on economic aid, which is nothing more than blackmail.

The real test will come when Hamas has to deliver on a broader scale of what it's already done in Gaza. It's one thing to be a popular group that offers medical and social services (and yes, armed resistance to the Israeli occupation) and quite another now to take the reins of government. In some respects, Hamas has limited options because it can't act like the local resistance cell, the renewed calls for Israel's destruction notwithstanding. Everyone is at a standstill now, because the Hamasniks need to understand they have a social mandate, not a military one.

But that all depends on whether or not the Western "democracies" can learn to live with results of a choice that was never theirs to make. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, sanctimonious assholes.

Well, well, right on cue, we have another taped message from terrorist mastermind Usama bin Laden. Thought he was dead, you know. Or at least on the run, as the military keeps telling us. Perhaps so, but he still finds time to run from one studio to the next and get his latest and greatest in the mail box.

Yes, here we are, two and a half years into our Iraqi Expedition, thousands of people dead, and the Bush Administration declaring itself above the law with its illegal wiretapping hijinks. And as if to underscore how we should give them even more power, along comes a perfectly timed cameo from bin Laden, who must have a subscription to the Times or the New York Post, since he's in fair command of what's going on in the world. He says all the right things, including a nice statement that there have been no attacks not because of security, but because planning this stuff is like, oh my gosh, just the biggest logistical challenge ever! And given that such a statement is so odd, I can't believe that Bush or any one of his adult handlers won't use it as leverage: who you gonna trust, middle America? Usama is lying because we've thwarted him so many times, thanks to our Republican leadership. And we all know what kind of choices middle America tends to make.

So with bin Laden threatening us, and the Democrats so jaw-droppingly spineless, the Republicans will again manage to set the talking points and start scaring the shit of out everyone, and their little plans at unfettered control will proceed apace because no one is stopping them. Thus, Alito will get easy confirmation, Bush will begin mentioning terrorism and the fight against it, plus the wonderful progress in Iraq and how it's the front line in the war on terror, blah, blah, blah.

And scores of idiots (and their subscribers) will believe it.

Way out of sight and way out of mind is the stunning cost of our Iraqi Expedition, and so that you need to take my word for it, you can read this little article about it.

It's such a deep irony — no, make that obscenity that the federal government can't come up with either the money or the resources to help those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but yet there's money flowing into that black hole we call the "liberation" of Iraq. And worse, I think about what the real threats facing this country: Iran and North Korea. Throw in the growing challenge of China, and bingo: a revised "axis of evil."

But try telling that to any of these red state losers, who still believe that all wars are just and our Iraqi Expedition is some noble enterprise about building democracy. Yeah, right. Like their fearless leader, they keep plunging ahead with the idea that the bigger the mess, the more of a chance that it will all straighten itself out.

Not to mention that in the LA Times a few days ago, an article appeared stating that the so-called "Marshall Plan" for Iraq was basically unraveling. Our stupendous allies who helped us break Iraq and pledged billions seem to have already left the room (Japan, are you listening?). Now there's talk of making the Iraqis pay for this themselves.

Guess those post-WWII comparisons with Germany and Japan were just a tad premature.

Now, is it just me, or does anyone else think that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is fucking nuts?

It’s no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I not a fan of Israel (although the editors now insist I stop placing the name in quotes), but there are certain things that I accept as fact without having to feel I’m validating Jewish claims to Palestine at the expense of Palestinians. The Holocaust–which the fair and balanced Iranian president recently decried as a myth– is a fact. Jews were killed by the Nazis during Word War II, along with scores of other people. And no matter what new book you can pick up at the Cairo Book Fair, I don’t doubt there was a Final Solution, and I don’t find the ever present Arabic translation of “Mein Kampf” any more pleasant than in bookstores in America.

While this probably puts me in the minority of other Arabs who live in the Middle East, that isn’t the point. Along comes Ahmadinejad with his mouth running at full steam, what with his talk of eliminating the Zionist state or relocating the Jews and now claiming that the Holocaust didn’t happen. I guess there is so much leisure time in Iran since they solved all their social and economic problems, that he can devote his considerable energy talking about Israel. For someone who hates the Jews so much, you can’t escape the feeling that with Ahmadinejad, it’s All Israel, All the Time.

Even if a lot of Arabs or other Muslims disagree with him, there is an automatic reflex to say, “Well, at least he’s standing up to the West and we like him for that.” Please. There have to be countless other ways of standing up to the West without resorting to such bullshit that makes Islam look even more intolerant, and the Iranian state even more dangerous and unstable. Iranian officials always talk about exporting the Islamic revolution: guys, this ain’t the way to do it.

But there is something interesting here: Bush should find in Ahmadinejad a kindred spirit, since they both believe God is talking to them. Which of course, makes the world sooo much safer and saner.

Cute kid, but apparently there’s nothing else in his head.



This Florida teenager’s story is just too weird to be accepted at face value, and if it’s true, then it has to be a great embarrassment to the government how the hell a dopey high-school student got into Iraq. Can’t blame the Syrians for this one.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything to laud about this idiot’s story, and it makes a mockery of those who have gone to Iraq and wound up with their heads becoming severed from their body. The preliminary account is that Mr. Hassan stayed with family friends in Beirut before heading to Baghdad. And these assholes didn’t stop him? Weren’t concerned, especially because he doesn’t even speak Arabic?

Fishy story, but the real story will be 1) how hard his father beats him; 2) just how much money he’s going to make with the book deal he’s undoubtedly going to get. Either that or the entire story is made up, at which point the budding journalist can get hired by The New York Times.

They love publishing fiction as fact.

Remember him? That other terrorist attacker in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when letters containing deadly anthrax spores mailed to a Democractic senator? Remember the panic and unease these attacks caused an already terrified population?

I didn’t think so.

Seems like the Anthrax Terrorist (whose infamy entitles him to get his title capitalized) has slipped through every’s memory. With the exception of law enforcement, it’s not on anyone’s mind and probably nobody cares. If I were more cynical, I’d say that had the victim been a Republican, everything would have been overturned to track down the killer (remember, there were deaths associated with this attack) but since it was the hapless (and now deposed) Tom Daschle, well, it’s just not a priority anymore.

I often wondered why no connection between the Anthrax Terrorist and (now also deposed) evil dictactor Saddam Hussein was ever made. Perhaps the opportunity brought by 9/11 to make a case for invading Iraq was too distracting to the Administration, which set about invading that country while the proverbial smoke was still rising from the fallen World Trade Center. Yet every now and then, I’ve thought about why the anthrax letters don’t figure into the public’s discussion on why they trust Bush so much. Come to think of it, I don’t even remember John Kerry raising the issue in his run for president. Then again, I don’t remember him putting up much of a fight against the Republican slime machine anyway.

And in other forgotten news, remember the two Iraqi scientists dubbed “Dr. Germ” and “Mrs. Anthrax”? Hmm, I didn’t think so, but they were both vilified in the Western press for their dastardly roles in building evil dictactor Saddam Hussein’s feared weapons of mass destruction. You remember those, right? The ones that didn’t exist? Well, in any case, these two women were quietly released and with nary a word from the press. I’m not shocked about that, because after all, being in the journalism profession means never having to report a fact or follow-up on an important story. But it’s important to note that the silence of their release should be further ammo for those who want to point out what a farce our Iraqi Expedition has been. Not only predicated on lies, but bolstered by a lot of phony posturing and capturing of the higher-ups in Saddam’s government, and then a quiet retreat on what happens after.

I’d like to know, in the most general terms of course, what intelligence has been gleaned from the capture of those folks unlucky enough to be on the entertaining poker cards circulated by the military to the delight of idiot journalists. Has it stopped attacks? Has anyone whose been captured given us something credible to work with and stop the “insurgency”?

Or do we just not give a shit anymore?