Ready or not, Iraq, get ready for June 30!

Bleak outlook

MSNBC - Pessimism grows about Iraq's future: "Inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified U.S. administration compound that Salim was about to enter when the suicide bomber struck, expectations are grim. 'It will take a lot of doing for this not to end in a debacle,' a senior occupation official said. 'There is no confidence in the coalition. Why should there be?'"

So next time Bush tries to laud his boldness, resolve and leadership, try not to laugh too hard in his face.

WMD found?

Not quite. If this "Traces of sarin in bomb story" turns out to be true, it isn't even remotely proof that Dear Leader was right. Before the right-wing bloggers start citing this as vindication, remember that chemical weapons were a specialty of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Al Queda leader who operated in U.S.- and Kurd-controlled Iraqi territory before the Gulf War II.
From a Slate article I've cited before:

As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide.

This is the same guy who could have been killed long before the invasion had the White House just given its OK. But that, of course, would have undermined the need for our invasion.

More superb work

Car bomb kills head of Governing Council

We're getting ready to hand over power, and we can't even guard the Iraqi head of state?

Of course, maybe that's my media bias talking. I mean, why can't they report on all the Iraqi officials who weren't killed by a suicide bomber?

Powell criticizes Arab governments

MSNBC - Powell criticizes Arab governments: "Powell said he has made clear, specifically to Arab leaders, that systematic torture of prisoners is unacceptable anywhere. Yet, he said, their denunciation of the killing of Nicholas Berg, kidnapped while in Iraq seeking business for his Pennsylvania communication company, fell far short of their attacks on the United States for the treatment of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison."

Good point. One of the main differences between our prison scandal and those of these Middle East dictatorships is that here, it's actually a scandal. You'll rarely -- if ever -- see the governments of Syria, Iran or even Saudi Arabia launching investigations into their own behavior. It was our own military and our own press that brought this scandal to light. That's more than you can say about any Middle East country, except maybe Israel.

Forget Rumsfeld; fire Bush.

White House memo shifts abuse inquiry’s focus

A story in the latest edition of Newsweek has shifted the focus of the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal to the question of whether the Bush administration established a legal basis that opened the door for the mistreatment.
...
And the Newsweek story reports that U.S. soldiers and CIA operatives “could be accused of war crimes. Among the possible charges: homicide involving deaths during interrogations.

Now, I don't believe Al Queda qualify as soldiers (they're not uniformed, they target civilians, etc.), and I actually don't have too big a problem with high-value subjects getting a little roughed up, assuming it doesn't taint the info we get or chances of prosecution. But to simply throw away the Geneva convention for ordinary, secured prisoners -- 90% of which the Red Cross says are mistaken detentions -- is a grave, grave mistake.

The Geneva convention isn't a straightjacket so much as a protection for our soldiers. When enemy forces know they may face war crime trials after a war is over, it makes them think twice about mistreating our soldiers. And throwing them out makes us just another warring party, not a force of good in the world. Of course, the whole Iraq War II kind of did the same thing.