Coalition forces apparently bombed the wrong house near Mosul , killing at least five, and letting “the targets” get away. No word on whether an Islamic wedding ceremony was taking place inside the house. Doubtless, just more winning of Iraqi hearts and minds as the election on which we are banking everything draws near. If it weren’t going to show Al Qaeda “our sensitive side”, to quote a mocking Dick Cheney, perhaps a sound truck blaring “We’re terribly sorry for any inconvenience” (in English, of course) might be dispatched. Would that any of this were funny.

In this week’s visit to Pravda, we get this good old assault on Western values, noting not without bitter irony that the cost of our butchery in Iraq (I may use that term more regularly) hovers at around $200 billion (it’s really much more, of course), whereas the entire Western world got together for a mere $4 billion in relief aid for tsunami relief (and less than 10% of that is from the American government, the one that committed hundreds of times their aid package for the purpose of murdering swarthy people in Iraq (for some still unexplained reason that...

And so day one of the Alberto Gonzales, Arlen and Leahy Circus, a/k/a Alberto Gonzales’ senate confirmation hearings to become our nation’s 80th attorney general. As to his prior advocacy of torture and dictatorial presidential powers and the purported obsolecence of the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales told senators something like “mistakes were made”. Well, the right honorable gentlemen will duly grill Mr. Gonzales, and then debate. My advice, not that anyone wants it, is that the Senate Democrats express their disgust, and then note that they have no interest in undermining the President’s choice of “his team”; the people elected the...

The White House has manufactured another “crisis”, requiring immediate (and thereby, preferably, swift and thoughtless) Congressional action. Joining the panacea January 30th Iraqi elections, which will solve all problems in the Middle East, if not the universe, and removing the “security” aspect of social security, the President brings his brand of Texas cruelty to the nation writ large, by proposing at Collinsville, Illinois, a venue purportedly where large medical malpractice verdicts are reached, proposing that all pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice cases be capped at $250,000. What the President will not tell you is that the National Practitioner...

The House Republicans themselves took action to reverse themselves on a revision to an ethics rule that would have permitted Majority Leader Tom “Bugs” DeLay to maintain his leadership position, even if a Texas prosecutor decided to indict him. I understand perfectly why rank and file Republican House members would have wanted to make this rule change reversal. What is astounding is how suicidally worthless the Democrats are. I mean, I swear, the so-called leaders of my own party make me sick– they are really that bad. And I would say that Congresswoman Pelosi should be ousted as Minority Leader,...

I’d be referring to the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of the nation’s 80th attorney general, succeeding the thankfully inimitable John Ashcroft. Gonzales is “expected to receive criticism” of his memoranda suggesting, if not “legally” justifying, unlimited dictatorial presidential power (which includes the power to usurp the Congress and judiciary and lock up who the President pleases, forever, without charge or trial). But Democrats, knowing that the President picked up around 9% more of the Latino vote in 2004 than in 2000 must be very, very wary of seeming to come down too hard on the first Latino...

From our weekly (more or less!) visit to Beijing’s People’s Daily, we give you this analysis that projections show that within the next four or five years, Taiwan will become the number one foreign purchaser of American armanents. We don’t see the usual railing in the piece about American intervention in Chinese “internal affairs”, but it’s never very far away. All oh so complicated; for example, a major crisis for Israel is brewing associated with its agreement to upgrade a number of Chinese airborne unmanned drones (said drones originally supplied to China by… Israel). Washington desperately doesn’t want Israel to...

Ah, yes. A young reservist, whose unit has not yet been deployed to Iraq… give it time, lad… has raised around $3,000 in an auction of sports memorabilia intended to be used to fund body armor and other necessary equipment for his reserve unit. Despite reports that the $87 billion “for our troops” (which was, if our troops were smart enough to have large defense contractors”, but didn’t mean body or vehicle armor), many military men and women report having to scrounge around for what we would consider basic safety equipment– as roadside bombs have killed a fair part of...

Thanks to this week’s visit to Pravda, we learn that Georgy Kirpa , former Ukrainian Transportation Minister and organizer of the (now unsuccessful) presidential campaign of Victor Yanukovich was found dead of an apparent suicide, amidst the surfacing of allegations of over $130,000,000 in missing state funds (intended to build a bridge) were evidently diverted to the Yanukovich campaign are coming to light. Some speculate this was not a suicide at all. We, of course, won’t even talk about the possibilities of what Mr. Kirpa might have been able to tell the new government about, oh, election fraud, in the...

Let’s get right to it, shall we, and report some apparent good news out of Sudan in the nature of a peace deal, a power sharing arrangement between the Khartoum government and its southern area rebels. This particular conflict is blamed for upwards of two million deaths, and is one of Africa’s longest-standing. It, like the conflict in Congo that has apparently killed nearly five million people, is, for whatever reason, less high profile than the conflict in Sudan’s west, the Darfur region. The Darfur conflict rages on, however, but we’ll take good news where we will find it. This...