The allies' broken promises

Oil
Tony Blair: 'We don't touch it, and the US doesn't touch it' MTV, 7 March

The reality: Yesterday's draft UN resolution gives total control of Iraq's oil revenues to the US and UK until an Iraqi government is established

The UN
George Bush: 'The UN will have a vital role to play' Belfast, 8 April

The reality: The UN is reduced to an advisory function on the ground in Iraq. All operational decisions will be taken by UK and US officials

Weapons
Jack Straw: 'Should the UN have a vital role to play in respect of weapons inspections? The answer to that is yes.' Interview, 25 April

The reality: No role for the UN inspectors 'for the foreseeable future'

Aid
Tony Blair: 'The UN should have a key role in administering the delivery of humanitarian aid' House of Commons, 18 March

The reality: US and UK to oversee aid effort with UN reduced to co-ordinating role

Government
Tony Blair: 'Military action is to uphold the authority of the UN and to make sure Saddam is disarmed' MTV, 7 March

The reality: A US and UK 'occupying power' will rule Iraq

I seem to remember a promise about finding WMD as well but it could just be my faulty recollection.

For what it's worth the UN draft resolution reads:

Reaffirming the commitment of all member states to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq;

Reaffirming the importance of disarmament of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in accordance with its previous relevant resolutions;

Stressing the right of the Iraqi people to freely determine their own political future, welcoming the commitment of concerned parties to support the creation of an environment in which they may do so as soon as possible, and expressing resolve that the day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly;

Encouraging efforts by the people of Iraq to take the first step toward forming a representative government based on the rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to tall Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion, or gender;

Welcoming the April 15 Nasiriyah statement and the April 28 Baghdad statement;

Resolved that the UN should play a vital role in providing humanitarian relief, in supporting the reconstruction of Iraq, and in helping in the formation of an Iraqi interim authority;

Noting the statement by the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations in which the members recognized the need for a multilateral effort to help rebuild and develop Iraq and for the need for assistance from the IMF and the World Bank in these efforts;

Welcoming the resumption of humanitarian assistance and the continuing efforts of the Secretary-General and the specialized agencies to provide food and medicine to the people of Iraq;

Welcoming the appointment by the Secretary General of his Special Adviser on Iraq;

Reaffirming the need for accountability for crimes and atrocities committed by the previous Iraqi regime;

Stressing the need for respect for the archaeological, historical, cultural, and religious heritage of Iraq, and for the continued protection of archaeological, historical, cultural, and religious sites, museums, libraries and monuments;

Noting the letters of (1/8)DATE(3/8) from the Permanent Representative of the United States of America and the United Kingdom to the President of the Security Council and recognizing the specific authorities, responsibilities, and obligations under applicable international law of these states as occupying powers and the responsibilities of others working now or in the future with them under unified command (the "Authority");

Concerned that many Kuwaitis and Third-State Nationals are still not accounted for since 2 August 1990; Determining that the situation in Iraq, although improved, continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security;

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations;

1. Appeals to Member States and interested organizations to assist the people of Iraq in their efforts to reform and rebuild their society and return to the international community as a member in good standing;

2. Calls upon all Member States to respond immediately to the humanitarian appeals of the United Nations and other international organizations for Iraq and to help meet the humanitarian needs of the necessary for reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq's economic infrastructure;

3. Calls upon all Member States to deny safe haven to those members of the previous Iraqi regime responsible for crimes and atrocities;

4. Encourages efforts to locate, identify and repatriate all Kuwaitis and third-State nationals or their remains present in Iraq on or after 2 August 1990, which the previous Iraqi regime failed to carry out;

5. Decides that all Member States shall take appropriate steps to facilitate the safe return to Iraqi institutions of Iraqi cultural property and other items of archaeological, historical, cultural rare scientific, and religious importance illegally removed from the Iraq National Museum, the National library and other locations in Iraq since the adoption of resolution 661 (1990), including by establishing a prohibition on trade in or transfer of such items and items with respect to which reasonable suspicion exists that they have been illegally removed;

6. Calls upon the Authority to promote the welfare of the Iraqi people through the effective administration of the territory, including in particular working towards the restoration of conditions of security and stability and the creation of conditions in which the Iraqi people may freely determine their own political future;

7. Calls upon all concerned to comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907;

8. Requests the Secretary General to appoint a Special Coordinator for Iraq whose responsibilities will involve coordinating the U.N.'s activities in post-conflict processes in Iraq, coordinating among U.N. and international agencies engaged in humanitarian assistance and reconstruction activities in Iraq, coordinating with the Authority, and assisting the people of Iraq through:

(a) support for and coordination of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance by U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations; (b) support for the orderly and voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons; (c) working with the Authority and the people of Iraq with respect to the restoration and establishment of national and local institutions for representative governance; (d) facilitating the reconstruction of key infrastructure, in cooperation with other international organizations; (e) promoting economic reconstruction and the conditions for sustainable development, including through coordination with national and regional organizations, as appropriate, civil society, donors and the international financial institutions; (f) encouraging international efforts to contribute to basic civilian administration functions; (g) promoting human rights; (h) encouraging international efforts to rebuild the capacity of the Iraqi civilian police force; (i) supporting international efforts to promote legal and judicial reform;

9. Calls upon Member States and international and regional organizations to contribute to the implementation of this resolution;

10. Supports the formation, by the people of Iraq with the help of the Authority and working with the Special Coordinator, of an Iraqi interim authority as a transitional administration run by Iraqis until a permanent government is established by the people of Iraq;

11. Decides that, with the exception of prohibitions related to the sale or supply to Iraq of arms and related materiel other than those arms and related material required by the Coalition to serve the purposes of this and other related resolutions, all prohibitions related to trade with Iraq and the provision of financial or economic resources to Iraq established by Resolution 661 (1990) and subsequent relevant resolutions, including Resolution 778, shall no longer apply;

12. Notes the establishment of an Iraqi Assistance Fund, with an international advisory board including duly qualified representatives of the Secretary General, the I.M.F., {appropriate regional institution(s)} and the World Bank, to be held by the Central Bank of Iraq, and to be audited by independent public accountants chosen by the international advisory board;

13. Decides further that the funds in the Iraqi Assistance Fund shall be disbursed at the direction of the Authority, in consultation with the Iraqi interim authority, for the purposes set out in paragraph 14 below;

14. Underlines that the Iraqi Assistance Fund should be used to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, for the economic reconstruction and repair of Iraq's infrastructure, for the continued disarmament of Iraq, and for the costs of indigenous civilian administration, and for other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq;

15. Decides that the Iraqi Assistance Fund shall enjoy the privileges and immunities of the United Nations;

16. Welcomes the readiness of international financial institutions to assist the people of Iraq in the reconstruction and development of their economy and to facilitate assistance by the broader donor community;

17. Requests the Secretary General, in consultation with the Authority, to continue the exercise of his responsibilities under Security Council resolution 1472 and 1476, for a period of four months following the adoption of this resolution, as necessary to ensure the delivery of priority civilian goods under contracts approved by the 661 Committee pursuant to paragraphs 8 (a) and (b) of resolution 986 (1995), to the extent not modified or terminated, or as necessary to fulfill other commitments made pursuant to those resolutions;

18. Decides that all funds remaining in the escrow account established pursuant to resolution 986 (1995) that have not been allocated as of the date of the adoption of this resolution to finance the export of goods to Iraq under paragraph 8(a) or (b) of that resolution, and that have not been committed by the Secretary General pursuant to his authorities under Security Council resolution 1472, shall be transferred promptly to the Iraqi Assistance Fund in order to provide for the urgent needs of the Iraqi people;

19. Decides that all export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas from Iraq following the date of the adoption of this resolution shall be made consistent with prevailing international market practices, to be audited by independent public accountants reporting to the international advisory board referred to in paragraph 12 above, and decides further that, except as provided in paragraph 20 below, all proceeds from such sales shall be deposited into the Iraqi Assistance Fund, until such time as a new Iraqi government is properly constituted and capable of discharging its responsibilities;

20. Decides further that (1/8)X(3/8) percent of the proceeds referred to in paragraph 19 above shall be deposited into the Compensation Fund established in accordance with resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent relevant resolutions;

21. Further decides that petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas originated in Iraq, and proceeds of sales thereof, shall be immune from judicial, administrative, arbitration or any other proceedings (including any prejudgment or postjudgment attachment, garnishment, or execution or other action to satisfy a judgment) arising in relation to claims, of whatever kind and whenever accrued, against Iraq or any instrumentality or agents thereof (or the Authority, or its participating states or their instrumentalities or agents), and that all Member States shall take any steps under their respective domestic legal systems necessary to give full effect to this paragraph;

22. Decides that all Member States in which there are: (1) funds or other financial assets or economic resources of the Government of Iraq or its state bodies, corporations, or agencies, located outside Iraq as of the date of this resolution, or. (2) funds or other financial assets or economic resources that have been removed from Iraq, or acquired, by Saddam Hussein or other senior officials of the former Iraqi regime and their immediate family members, including entities owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by them or by persons acting on their behalf or at their direction, shall freeze without delay and immediately cause the transfer of those funds or other financial assets or economic resources to the Iraqi Assistance Fund; and further decides that all such funds or other financial assets or economic resources shall enjoy the same immunities and protections as provided under paragraph 21;

23. Endorses the exercise of the responsibilities stated in this resolution by the Authority for an initial period of 12 months from the date of the adoption of this resolution, to continue thereafter as necessary unless the Security Council decides otherwise;

24. Requests the Special Coordinator to report to the Council at regular intervals on his work with respect to the implementation of this resolution, the first report to be submitted within (1/8)(3/8) days of the adoption of this resolution.

The liberating occupying powers are to be congratulated for affirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq. No doubt a number of dictionaries are being rewritten as we speak to explain that the phrase 'sovereignty and territorial integrity' includes the right to be subjected to an unlawful invasion justified entirely by lies.

on sacking the governor-general
I'm bemused by the idea that Peter Hollingworth cannot or should not be dismissed. I'm not a lawyer so I invite correction if I'm wrong at law, but really it seems to me the problem is political rather than legal.

The Constitution's only reference to appointment and dismissal provides:

2. A Governor-General appointed by the Queen shall be Her Majesty's representative in the Commonwealth, and shall have and may exercise in the Commonwealth during the Queen's pleasure, but subject to this Constitution, such powers and functions of the Queen as Her Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.

The Queen acts on the advice of the prime minister of Australia on this as on any other matter in relation to Australia. Similar language appears with respect to the ministers (including the prime minister) at Sections 62 and 64.

Talk of legal grounds for dismissal actually turns quite quickly into statements like Ken Parish's:

Creating a precedent for dismissal of a Governor-General for conduct (short of proven moral turpitude) committed otherwise than in office would be best avoided,

I know it's not Ken's positions but a lot of commentary is getting close to the deeply weird position that the governor-general should not be dismissed because the dismissal would confirm the arbitrary powers we already know the prime minister holds. The solution is first to terminate this governor-general so we can find someone capable of representing Australia and second reviewing the whole shoddy system by constitutional amendment. Somehow I suspect the 'ain't broke, don't fix it' vote might be significantly lower at the next referendum.

A role fit for Hollingworth

The Governor-General provides living proof that the myths that impeded the "discovery" and recognition of child sexual abuse still hold sway in Australia. Hollingworth made use of the first - that children are seductive - not just on ABC TV's Australian Story where he accused a then 14-year-old girl of leading the priest on, but in his statement (February 20, 2002) where he said that he did not condone a bishop's sex with a young girl "regardless of whether or not the girl was a willing participant".

The second myth used to deny the extent of child sexual abuse - that children fantasise - is beautifully ironic. For it is not the children's memories that have been found to be faulty in the Diocese of Brisbane report, but Hollingworth's: "The board finds that Dr Hollingworth's recollections are faulty, and that he had apparently reconstructed what he believed he was told, rather than recalled what in fact was said."

The third myth - that intervention inevitably causes more harm - is also apparent in Hollingworth's responses. In one letter to a child molester, he even claims it is better to leave the perpetrator in a parish because "your departure at this stage could cause unintended consequences that would make things worse for you and the church".

On a final note I am one of 20 million owners of the official website of the Governor-General of Australia. I do not want to read there a string of self-serving and misleading statements discussing this governor-general's various missteps in answering allegations of giving aid and comfort to child abusers. They are no part of his office and I would like the holder of that office to get his shit off my property.

It's time to go
Ken Parish has delivered a devastating summation of the governor-general's situation. He is also dead right, Peter Hollingworth is now incapable of executing his office. The one bright light in this repellent situation is that it may force a review of how we appoint and dismiss our chief of state.

Gone to the flogs
You have to read SPEAKING FREELY: Technological illiterates and WMD. If you read nothing else in the next blogcycle, read this.

When some bubble-headed TV newsreader admits on camera that he hasn't "figured out how to set my VCR", the FTI-meter goes to full-tilt. There is almost no way to measure the perceptual difference between the people who invented television and someone who would make such a remark. Ironically, they are both in the same business (TV) so we have the situation where beautiful techno-illiterates appear in everyone's life - a feat made possible by some of the finest techno-geniuses of history.

and

Welch became Wall Street's man because he was able to return, with mathematical regularity, increases in "shareholder value". His method, which earned him the nickname of "Neutron Jack", was to close down plants in the US that usually represented a couple generations of technological genius, and ship the tools to some Third World location where labor was cheap. He was called "Neutron Jack" because like the proposed Neutron bomb, it destroyed the people but left the buildings standing. For executing this plan, he was rewarded with wealth beyond wretched excess.

and

There seems to be a gap in consciousness between buying, maintaining and ultimately destroying technology and building the stuff. In the army, talking tough will get you into the very inner rings of power; talking about the nearly infinite ways that technology can be reduced to uselessness will get you stationed in Greenland.

And so a fashionably technologically illiterate groupthink replaces reason in the corridors of power. Questioning the existence of Iraqi WMD at the Pentagon in mid-March 2003 was a good way to get yourself called "French", even though the whole idea of WMD production by Iraq had become technologically preposterous.

Apart from excellent analysis the author rises to a pleasing level of snark as well. His ebook Elegant technology is next on my list, right after I finish the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'll never go through a Rumsfled press conference without thinking 'telephone sanitiser' again.

cholera outbreak in southern Iraq
let us imagine that once upon a time in Iraq a government imposed by force of arms so neglected the country's infrastructure that the water supply deteriorated and there was an outbreak of cholera. I wonder what the Bush administration would have to say about that? Of course this is only a fairy story, right?

From Bloomberg

London, May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Southern Iraq is experiencing an outbreak of cholera caused by untreated water, the World Health Organization said as the U.S. lifted some sanctions to allow delivery of aid to help the country rebuild.

Seventeen cases were confirmed in the southern city of Basra, WHO said. The number of people infected may be 10 times higher, Denis Coulombier, a health official in Iraq's second-largest city, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Hospitals are able to ``treat the symptoms but not the source of the problem, which is clearly linked to the water supply situation in Basra,'' a WHO statement said. ``Sewage is not being disposed of, garbage collection is happening intermittently or not at all, and people are using water from the polluted Shatt Al-Arab river.''

Iraq's local administrations ceased to function when Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed last month after a three-week war led by U.S. forces. The allies are helping Iraqis restore power, water and health services. U.S. forces also are searching for any weapons of mass destruction, and suspect a mobile laboratory found in the north was used to produce biological agents.

More from the Guardian:

Despite allied forces having had control of the area for around a month, there is still a shortage of vital drugs and intravenous fluids to treat victims.

"The real concern is that the situation in Basra, with a real lack of safe water for the population and a lack of security at the moment, could lead to a rapid spread of something like cholera," Mr Simpson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"With a water supply which simply isn't functioning and isn't providing clean, safe water to most of the population, people are getting their water from completely unsafe sources.

"With a lack of security, people are not able to come to hospitals - either patients or hospital workers - and are not able to get out on to the streets to provide the kind of public information work that is vital to prevent something like cholera from spreading.

From the World Health Organisation

Suspected Cholera outbreak
A team from the World Health Organization, which now has a permanent presence in Basra, visited Al Tahrir Teaching Hospital together with local health experts in order to assess the health situation in Basra. Doctors in the hospital reported a significant increase in the number of cases of diarrhoeal diseases, gastroenteritis and dehydration. Seven cases of clinically confirmed cholera were reported, mainly among very young children (between 13 months and 4 years old). They were from the north of Basra, near to the Airport. The children were rehydrated and subsequently returned home. The doctors said there are currently more than 30 admissions per day for diarrhoeal disease. They expressed concern that it is not possible to perform medical tests at the hospital because the central laboratory is not functioning and some vital reagents are missing or have been stolen. The WHO team took samples to Kuwait the same day to be analysed at the National Public laboratory in Kuwait to confirm the presence of cholera. The results are expected in the coming few days.

The same situation was confirmed at the Basra Children's Hospital. Doctors said that out of 200 outpatients a day, 90% are for diarrhoea; others are diagnosed with hepatitis, Acute Respiratory Infections, malnutrition, shigella and typhoid. Again, there are no facilities to conduct tests to confirm the presence of cholera or other infectious agents. However, there is no doubt among the doctors and the visiting team that this is cholera. "In the absence of laboratory confirmation, we can only rely on our experience and knowledge of our patients to be able to recognise these diseases. We can clinically confirm 4 cases of cholera this week," one one of the managers said.

Hospital workers point out that they could only treat the symptoms but not the source of the problem, which is clearly linked to the water supply situation in Basra. Sewage is not being disposed of, garbage collection is happening intermittently or not at all and people are using water from the polluted Chatt Al Arab river.

Another key problem is that surveillance control activities have declined or disappeared since the beginning of the war, with an almost total lack of surveillance and control of communicable diseases. In Basra, it is clear that this combination is contributing to an increasing number of cases of diarrhoeal disease and there is concern that an outbreak of cholera could cause severe problems. The doctors reported also cases of food poisoning, mainly arising from eating ice cream. The water is not clean and ice cream is being made in poor sanitary conditions.

Googling the governor-general
I searched under the terms: hollingworth rape australia governor-general. The search result is deeply embarrassing.

That does not mean that Archbishop Hollingworth does not have the right to a fair trial or that he is not innocent until proven guilty. It does not mean that he was wrong to seek a suppression order from the Victorian supreme court. In my opinion it does mean that he should consider putting the country's interests before his own.

ACT moves to allow gay couples to adopt

Another Australian government is moving to enable gay and lesbian couples to adopt children.

The ACT has proposed law reforms to remove discrimination in the Adoption Act.

The Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has announced the ACT could be the second jurisdiction in Australia to make a number of legislative changes giving same sex couples equal adoption rights.

"The adoption law is quite explicit, it says that only a heterosexual couple may adopt children," he said.

"That's discrimination."

Members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex community says the reforms will promote the interests of children.

Spokeswoman Lindy Edwards.

"This legislation is not about creating gay families," said community spokeswoman Lindy Edwards.

"It's about giving the thousands of gay famiilies that do exist the tools to fully meet their responsibilities to their children.

"For example if the child gets sick, despite being a primary carer the non-biological parent can't authorise medical treatment. It also means that the child isn't recognised as financially dependent on that non-biological parent."

But Dean Logan from the Australian Christian Lobby says the Government appears to have overlooked community opposition to the proposal.

"This affects our entire social fabric. At the Anzac day dawn service, Australians need to question is this what our diggers went to fight for? Is this where Australia's going? Is this what we want?"

Western Australia was the first jurisdiction to give same sex couples the right to adopt children.

Also about bloody time. Some diggers were certainly gay and that should not be denied in a pathetic attempt to raise opposition to this bill.

UN reform
Matthew Iglesias and others have raised UN reform in terms of remaking the Security Council to reflect the real world. Since Charter amendments require a 2/3 vote of the General Assembly including all of the Security Council's permanent members I somehow doubt that either France or Britain are about to throw themselves on their swords. I doubt that any of the Big 5 are prepared to have the veto restricted to Chapter VII matters either.

Of course, since many of these calls are part of the neocon Francophobe hysteria I guess the Bush administration could break the road block by announcing that it is opposed to the veto and will surrender its own but I would more than mildly surprised if they did. Along with one or two others.

Reforming the UN Commission on Human Rights is an easier project. The push comes from 2 or 3 directions. The Howard government promotes 'democratic exceptionalism' - a new form of colonialism in which the UN human rights machinery ignores the Anglosphere and becomes the scourge of tyrants. If they're not white. The second direction comes from the US and promotes the United States (but no-one else) as exceptions to the system. The third push comes from the human rights community itself.

NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights watch are calling for the exclusion from the commission of any state which doesn't meet basic requirements.

Amnesty proposes a state would have to:

Extend a standing invitation to the special procedures of the Commission and to co-operate with their requests to undertake visits,
Ensure full and prompt implementation of the recommendations of the special procedures,
Ratify key international human rights treaties and their optional protocols, and provide for communications procedures and on-site investigation,
Ensure full and prompt implementation of the recommendations of the treaty monitoring bodies,
Ensure timely submission of periodic reports to treaty monitoring bodies.

Neither Australia nor the US would be enthusiastic about this but neither government is enthusiastic about Libya chairing the UN Commission on Human Rights. If either state is genuine about the universality of human rights they might consider putting themselves at the head of the NGO campaign. Sadly, I'm not quite ready to hold my breath waiting.

US Senator Byrd says it all

What I heard the President say also disturbed me. It may make for grand theater to describe Saddam Hussein as an ally of al Qaeda or to characterize the fall of Baghdad as a victory in the war on terror, but stirring rhetoric does not necessarily reflect sobering reality. Not one of the 19 September 11th hijackers was an Iraqi. In fact, there is not a shred of evidence to link the September 11 attack on the United States to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was an evil despot who brought great suffering to the Iraqi people, and there is no doubt in my mind that he encouraged and rewarded acts of terrorism against Israel. But his crimes are not those of Osama bin Laden, and bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not bring justice to the victims of 9-11. The United States has made great progress in its efforts to disrupt and destroy the al Qaeda terror network. We can take solace and satisfaction in that fact. We should not risk tarnishing those very real accomplishments by trumpeting victory in Iraq as a victory over Osama bin Laden.

We are reminded in the gospel of Saint Luke, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." Surely the same can be said of any American president. We expect, nay demand, that our leaders be scrupulous in the truth and faithful to the facts. We do not seek theatrics or hyperbole. We do not require the stage management of our victories. The men and women of the United States military are to be saluted for their valor and sacrifice in Iraq. Their heroics and quiet resolve speak for themselves. The prowess and professionalism of America's military forces do not need to be embellished by the gaudy excesses of a political campaign.

War is not theater, and victory is not a campaign slogan. I join with the President and all Americans in expressing heartfelt thanks and gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their service to our country, and for the sacrifices that they have made on our behalf. But on this point I differ with the President: I believe that our military forces deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and not used as stage props to embellish a presidential speech.

Not really much more anyone can say is there? Incidentally the camera angles had to picked carefully as otherwise the California coast would have been visible and the presidential Top Gun impersonation would have been revealed for the sham it was.

I think I'm going have a fit
From the UK Telegraph thanks to Gianna:

The term "brainstorming" has become the latest target of political correctness, according to a charity.

Trainee teachers are being told to avoid the word for fear of offending pupils with epilepsy. Instead they are being advised to use "word storm" or "thought shower".

However, charities working with epilepsy say "brainstorming" is not offensive. "We had several inquiries from teachers about it so we did a survey of our residential home," said Gemma Baxter from the National Society for Epilepsy.

I wake up now and then feeling like I've run a marathon. If I'm lucky it hasn't happened when I'm on my own. I used to be scared witless my kid would see me in the middle of a seizure. The anticonvulsants don't work well for me at all and I've always hated the side effects. When I started blogging this I just thought it was funny. As I finish I am angrier about epilepsy than I think I have ever been before.

truth or scare
From the Nation:

My fellow Americans, there may be threatening amounts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There may not be. We're not sure. And if they are there, it may take weeks after military victory before we can launch a major effort to find and secure them. By then, they could be gone--that is, if they were there in the first place--perhaps in the hands of people who mean us harm. And after we defeat Iraq's brutal regime, the people of Iraq will welcome US troops as liberators. Then again, within days, many of them could be shouting, "Yankee, go home" and calling for a new government dominated by fundamentalist religious leaders. We don't know. Nor do we really know the extent of any operational links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda--if such things exist. Still, I believe the potential risk posed by Saddam Hussein is so great that we cannot let what we do not know to stand in the way of decisive action. We cannot afford to guess wrong. With that in mind, I have ordered...

With Baghdad conquered, the fog of prewar has started to clear. And it now seems that had the Bush Administration been honest with the American public (and the world), its on-to-war pronouncements would have resembled the imaginary sequence above. Instead, Bush and his national security team--including ex officio members deployed in think tank bunkers and op-ed command centers--declared, without question or pause, that Iraq had dangerous levels of weapons of mass destruction and that it was "urgent," as Bush said, to find and destroy these weapons. They also talked about birthing a democratic government in Iraq without acknowledging obstacles and potential traps. But, it turns out, the Administration was not on the level. Moreover, it was woefully unready to deal with the consequences of military victory.

Though Bush and other war cheerleaders had spoken of liberating Iraq, their main argument concerned the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The reason he was such an immediate danger, they said, was that he had these awful weapons and could, as Bush breathlessly noted, slip them to anti-American terrorists at any moment. Yet once US troops were in Iraq, the Bush Administration and the Pentagon adopted a rather lackadaisical approach to locating and securing such weapons. Weeks after the April 9 fall of Baghdad, the Pentagon was still in the process of assembling a survey team of 1,000 experts to search for chemical and biological weapons and signs of a nuclear weapons program. Why had this force not been ready to roll at the war's start?

Now if we reworked this just a tad...

So I say to the Australian people that maintaining the US alliance at all costs is the supreme purpose of my government's foreign policy. There may or may not be weapons of mass destruction buried under a signpost on the road to Baghdad but if I call George and ask for evidence he'll get all bitter and twisted and we mustn't have that. Hell, for all the intelligence reports I read they may not even have signposts on the road to Baghdad but we have to keep our great and powerful friend happy.

At least John Howard is intellectually (if not factually) consistent.

Howard catches up with Keating
From the Prime Minister's New York press conference:

JOURNALIST:

Mark Turner from the Financial Times. In the run up to the debate over Iraq there has been a lot made of a trans-Atlantic split, a sort of divergence of view or not between the Europe and the US. I'm wondering from Australia's perspective, whether you find that there is a danger at the moment that countries like your own are going to have to make some fundamental strategic decision whether to ally with the US or with Europe, or perhaps go with a sort of Anglo-Saxon bloc as some have suggested?

PRIME MINISTER:

Well Australia has linkages and alliances with many countries. We have a very close relationship with the United States, and that has certainly been reinforced and strengthened and further invigorated in recent months. And we also of course have very important and enduring linkages with the nations of Asia, and I certainly don't see Australia becoming part of some Anglosphere. I see Australia as a country that will have very close and always have very close relations with the nations of Europe and particularly, but not only, the United Kingdom and Ireland of course have shared history, but also many other nations in Europe. But very importantly we have enormously important relationships with countries of Asia. Our best customer remains Japan. Of all the countries we trade with, over the past five years there has probably been a greater quantum change in our trade with China than any other nation. And of course we have very close and important linkages with Indonesia. I have never seen Australian foreign policy in terms of making what you call fundamental decisions, choosing. You should never get yourself forced into choosing between your history and your geography. Australia in a way occupies quite a unique intersection of culture, history and geography. We are a nation of western European roots. We have a very strong linkage and association with the United States, but we also have very important linkages with and a very important future invested in with the countries of our region. So I am not into putting Australia into particular spheres - Anglo or otherwise - nor am I into making a choice. As to trans-Atlantic relationships, well that really is a matter for the Atlantic powers, of which Australia is not one. I would make one simple observation, and that is that I think there has been a little too much of a tendency to oversimplify the divisions that have occurred in Europe on the issue of Iraq. I'll leave it to the Europeans to sort that out. I haven't come here to offer gratuitous advice to the nations of Europe.

The link will be posted as soon as it goes live. Seriously, this is a giant step forward for the prime minister, as is his attitude that our commitments in East Timor and elsewhere in the region preclude further military adventuring as the Gurkhas of the American empire.

Three fictional heroes

Link from Lying Media Bastards thanks to This is not a blog. Read it and weep.

NSW set to lower gay age of consent

New South Wales appears set to end discrimination in the age of consent between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

The state government is planning to introduce a bill to lower the gay age of consent to 16.

Gay rights groups have long fought to have the age of consent for gay men loweredfrom 18 to 16, and it is now possible they will get their wish with the Attorney-General Bob Debus announcing a conscience vote on the issue for Labor MPs.

Mr Debus says the bill will include safeguards, including the toughening of penalties for offences on children under 16, and the removal of the defence of not knowing a child was underage.

About bloody time.

'Al-Nidaa on the 'Shi'a threat to Iraq'
From MEMRI

"In conclusion, the threat of the Shi'a to the nation is equal to the threat posed by the Jews and the Christians. They harbor the same ill-will against the nation, which needs to protect itself from them and from being deceived by them? They pose a danger not only to Iraq, but to the whole region. If the Shi'a have influence over Iraq, or if they obtain some kind of autonomy in southern Iraq, they will be so much closer to extending their influence. After all, they exist in considerable numbers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain. If those Shi'a get organized and if their initiatives get support from countries that sponsor them - Iran, Syria, and Lebanon - it will mean that they have reached advanced stages in their 50-year plan?"

"The Muslims should be careful, because the Shi'a do not hesitate to cooperate with the Crusaders and the Jewish enemies [of] the Sunna. The Shi'a believe that the threat of the Sunna and their heresy is greater than the threat posed by the Jews and the Christians. Whoever follows history knows that the Shi'a assisted the enemies of the nation who stabbed her in the back. It suffices that the Shi'a defiled the sanctity of Allah's house and stole the Black Stone [the Ka'ba] for twenty years, [2] before it was brought back to its place. Those who are familiar with the beliefs of the Shi'a can hardly fathom the depth of their evil and hatred. Beware [of] them, Oh Muslims."

"We also caution against those who advocate befriending the Shi'a. Such [an] approach can only cause further harm to the nation. To get close to the Shi'a is more dangerous than getting close to the Jews, because the animosity of the Jews is well known, while the Shi'a pretend [to be friendly] and deceive the nation?""How can we approach those who believe that we should curse the followers of the Prophet Muhammad and accuse them of heresy? They, who curse the Prophet's wives and accuse [the Prophet's wife] 'Aisha of prostitution?... If you advocate getting closer to people with such beliefs, then getting closer to Christians is not as bad? [N]ot everyone who maintains that he is Muslim is indeed a Muslim, if his deeds completely nullify Islam ?"

I thought this worth posting because it exemplifies the jihadi worldview and demonstrates how Western assumptions about Islamic fundamentalism are often wildly inaccurate. Iraqi Shi'a are not necessarily Iranian Shi'a. There are tensions between the ayatollahs in the two countries and the automatic equation of Shi'a and fundamentalism is just plain wrong.

The theft of the Black Stone happened in 930 CE. It was actually carried out by the Shi'ite Isma'ili sect known as the Qarmatis. The Isma'ili are Seveners. Almost all surviving Shi'a are Twelvers but evidently that matters little to the author of the piece reported by MEMRI. The Isma'ili's most famous adherents were the Fatimid caliphate which ruled from Cairo and the Assassin sect based at Alamut.

Seems a long time to be holding a grudge. Also seems to drive a truck through the alleged al-Qa'ida/Saddam linkage.

Hollingworth report
The document can be downloaded here. Link thanks to Gareth Parker at My Two Cents.

The report is interesting although I disagree radically with Gareth's view that no-one who has not read it should comment. It's a civic question to be decided by citizens, not a technical question to be argued only by those with certain qualifications. The first role of the governor-general is to represent the Australian people. Archbishop Hollingworth is unable to do that because of this scandal.

more later
I'm still reading and I hope to post my thoughts some time soon.

The people's will: G-G must resign

More than three-quarters of the Australian electorate wants the Governor-General to quit amid growing pressure for his resignation from Federal Government members.

A Herald-AC Nielsen poll at the weekend found that 76 per cent of people believed Dr Peter Hollingworth should give up his $310,000-a-year job. Just 18 per cent believed he should tough out the scandal over his role in protecting a pedophile.

Even after the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975, only 40 per cent of voters wanted Sir John Kerr sacked as Governor-General.

The poll of 1400 people of voting age asked if Dr Hollingworth should resign, given the findings by an Anglican church inquiry that as archbishop of Brisbane, he allowed a priest guilty of child sex abuse to continue working.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, who chose Dr Hollingworth for the job, yesterday continued to stand by him, saying there were no grounds to dismiss him, and refusing to be drawn on whether he should resign.

But for the second successive day, the Treasurer, Peter Costello, put public pressure on Dr Hollingworth to leave voluntarily. Both he and the deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, have called for him to consider his position.

Late yesterday a spokesman for the Governor-General reconfirmed his determination to stay as fresh allegations emerged in Brisbane of Dr Hollingworth having ignored claims of the rape of a nine-year old boy by a church school teacher.

Mr Costello, while supporting Mr Howard's position that there were no grounds for sacking the Governor-General, noted that Dr Hollingworth "can at any stage go to the Prime Minister" and quit.

As well, the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, Joe Hockey, delivered the harshest assessment yet by a member of the Government, saying the evidence against Dr Hollingworth was "damning" and his behaviour indefensible.

"I can't defend Dr Peter Hollingworth for what he did as archbishop of Brisbane in that circumstance, and I think most people would find it difficult to do so," Mr Hockey said.

I suppose I should declare my hand and say I voted against the republic because I think an appointed presidency is a bad idea. All the same I cannot imagine that even the Howard republic could have produced the idiotic situation where the government is devoting time defending the likes of Hollingworth.

The governor-general must be above suspicion. This governor-general is not. John Howard needs to stop inventing constitutional conventions that you only need to be above suspicion while in office. The governor-general is a personal appointment of the prime minister. John Howard should show us some of that vaunted ticker he's so proud of.

And since he has so spectacularly messed up one appointment he should consult more widely when he appoints Holinngsworth's successor.

Sydney is safe for another day
The ADF is setting up a new Special Operations Command. The press release instructs:

Media are asked to assemble at the rear gates of Holsworthy Barracks (Moorebank Avenue) no later than 1.20 pm. Further details and attendance confirmations should be requested through Tara Daley on (02) 9359 2785 or 0411 203 579. An early indication of attendance is appreciated.

An information kit including vision and stills of both units will be available to media on the day. This kit will include vision of SOCOMD's counter-terrorism capabilities that will not be demonstrated on the day.

I am deeply relieved they will not have to demonstrate counter-terrorism capabilities. I don't live far from Holsworthy Barracks.

up, up and away
Wow. George Bush described John Howard as a man of steel. We just have to hope there will be no prime ministerial appearances in tights and a cape. But I digress.

Dublogging
I've been in Dubbo for a week. The zoo was great. The observatory was impressive. I was intrigued by the business sign that read: 'Today Dubbo, tomorrow the world.' The country was a lot greener than when I passed through there in December. The State Rail Authority's XPT really needs to get the electronic lock on the lavatory in Car B repaired.

Channel 9 interview this morning:

LIEBMANN:

Prime Minister, just on a final question, at the end of this week you're flying to Texas for another meeting with President Bush. Still no weapons of mass destruction, no Saddam Hussein, no irrefutable link between Iraq and international terrorism. Don't some people have the right to say we were conned?

PRIME MINISTER:

No they don't. It's unrealistic to expect that all of the evidence of weapons of mass destruction would have been discovered within...

LIEBMANN:

They haven't found any.

PRIME MINISTER:

No, well I think there is a lot of circumstantial evidence around and a lot of inspections are being undertaken. I didn't think for a moment that you'd find it under a sign on the road side saying weapons of mass destruction look here. I mean they were hiding the stuff from the United Nations inspectors and you remember the great lengths they went to. The question of whether Saddam Hussein is dead or alive, I don't know whether he's dead or alive, what I know is he's no more the president and dictator of Iraq and that is a very good thing. And in the long run whether he's dead or alive I don't know, I think as far as links are concerned there's more evidence that's become available over the past few days that I was aware of, that suggestion of the visit to Baghdad by the al-Qaeda representative is not something that I, or to my knowledge President Bush or Mr Blair had been aware of prior to the commencement of the invasion. So I don't believe people would feel conned, I think they feel very happy that Iraq now has the opportunity of building a democratic future.

The road sign metaphor has been around for a while. It was meaningless when first used and it's meaningless now. The coalition leaders told us they knew of WMDs in Iraq. They did not tell us they had a fair idea and they'd look for street signs after the war. They gave us the aluminium tubes and that was untrue. They gave us the African uranium and that was untrue. Now John Howard is giving us street signs.

Before the war they spoke about knowledge from intelligence sources. Now they are talking about guesswork. I know Australians are into gambling but making war on another country because the chances are good that the country has weapons of mass distruction seems a bit too much of a punt to me.

The motion put to the House of Representatives at the outset of war reads in part:

2. recognises:
(a)that Iraq?s continued possession and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, in defiance of its mandatory obligations under numerous resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, represents a real and unacceptable threat to international peace and security;
(b)that Iraq?s behaviour weakens the global prohibitions on the spread of weapons of mass-destruction, with the potential to damage Australia?s security; and
(c) that, as more rogue states acquire them, the risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists multiplies, thereby presenting a real and direct threat to the security of Australia and the entire international community;

I can't see any references to street signs there. I also can't see anything about an each way bet.

In his address the prime minister said:

Intelligence analysis tells us that Saddam Hussein considers these weapons programs to be essential both for internal repression and to fulfil his regional ambitions. No doubt he looks to a time when the world will be distracted by other events and he can use his arsenal to bully and coerce his neighbours and to dominate the Middle East. Iraq?s continued defiance represents a threat to the delicate balance which supports nonproliferation. It is no idle speculation that other countries in the region, perceiving this threat, might decide that their own security requires that they develop a significant chemical, biological or even possibly nuclear arsenal to deter attack from Iraq. Moreover, other rogue states would be tempted to ignore the international conventions on arms control, which Australia and others have so painstakingly built up over the last 30 years, and would feel that they could get away with developing similar weapons programs. This is proliferation. We know the lessons of history: the more nations that have these weapons, the more likely they are to be used. That is why we fear proliferation, and we are very concerned about the potential for the proliferation of these weapons in our own region.

Nothing in there about searching under street signs either. John Howard said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. None have been found. The frequent announcements that fizzle out 48 hours later have now been running since early February. None has ever proved true. Why is that?

gone to the blogs
I've always admired good snark, what can I say? While, like most other Australians, I am bemused and bored by the Santorum brouhaha on the other side of the pond that does not stop me linking to a nice piece of vitriolic writing when I see it.

gone to the blogs
DailyKOS examines, in some detail, the quest for the missing WMDs.

The prewar claims that posting some information would endanger the lives of agents in Iraq is especially telling. Either the agents are no longer in Iraq or (just possible) the occupation government is performing so badly they have not yet found their own agents. That of course, would not prevent the coalition publishing the reports of these agents. I do not recommend you hold your breath while waiting for that to happen.

up a tree with GWB - the downside
The US Agriculture Secretary has appointed one Don Amstutz as agriculture coordinator in Iraq. let's not look at the official bumpf, let's cut to the chase with US Wheat's attitude:

Amstutz has a wide familiarity with markets, international commerce and government programs facilitating economic development. In addition to his private experience, he was USDA Under Secretary for International Affairs and Commodity Programs from 1983 to 1987 and Ambassador and chief negotiator for agriculture during the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks in 1987-1989.

The Australian government appointed Trevor Flugge, the former Australian Wheat Board Chairman, to head Australia?s reconstruction effort. A consummate monopolist, ?Flugge?s first priority will be to protect the billion-dollar-a-year wheat market for Australian wheat,? according to a story in Melbourne?s Herald Sun newspaper.

But Amstutz has a different view. ?I view the role of Trevor and me to be facilitators,? he told USW, ?to work with leaders in Iraq?s food and agriculture industry and provide assistance where needed and desired to help rebuild and reconstitute their industry. We will try to be helpful in all areas from production through post harvest functions including processing, distribution and trade. Our desire is to assist in revitalizing Iraq?s agriculture economy so that it can reach a healthy, expanding mode.?

At a press briefing last Monday, World Food Programme spokesman Khaled Mansour reported that by May the WFP needs to be shipping enough food aid into Iraq to feed the entire 27 million population. However, he said, ?the network of mills, silos and warehouses which make up the Public Distribution System, is still not ffully functioning.? So WFP has hired 10 milling experts to conduct countrywide assessments over the next 30 days.

Australia's Minister of Trade Mark Vaile speaking on 24 April about his May trip to Washington:

"I will stress to secretaries Veneman and Evans Australia's commitment to playing a central role in helping Iraq rehabilitate its agricultural sector.� The Government's appointment of eminent agribusiness figure Trevor Flugge and his team of experts earlier this week will spearhead this endeavour," Mr Vaile said.

"Australia has a longstanding agricultural relationship with Iraq, including as a provider of quality wheat and technical assistance in dryland farming and other fields.� It is important that we work together to revitalise Iraq's agriculture sector both to improve food production and to provide much-needed income and employment opportunities."

The NGO attitude to the Amstutz appointment seems quite clear:

Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said Mr Amstutz would "arrive with a suitcase full of open-market rhetoric", and was more likely to try to dump cheap US grain on the potentially lucrative Iraqi market than encourage the country to rebuild its once-successful agricultural sector.

"Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission," Mr Watkins said.

"This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market - but singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a developing country."

I wonder was Australia consulted in any way about the Amstutz appointment? I wonder if Downer of Baghdad even asked before making his speeches about Australia's future role in agricultural reconstruction in Iraq? I wonder if Australia's involvement in the coalition will actually mean very much when it comes to reconstructing Iraqi agriculture. US Wheat seems not to think so.

running off America
From the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs

The new Saudi terms of reference, by demanding a territorial withdrawal beyond the requirements of 242, would thus erode Israel's right to defensible borders that was enshrined in UN Resolution 242. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London, Ghazi al-Qussaibi, has verified that this, in fact, is Riyadh's intent ( Al-Sharq al-Awsat, February 19, 2002; MEMRI, March 1, 2002). The Saudi formula, additionally, creates an equivalence between an irreversible concession on Israel's defense lines in exchange for a reversible concession on normalization (ambassadors can be withdrawn, trade frozen). Were Saudi Arabia more serious about ending its hostility to the State of Israel, it could make discreet direct contact with Israel, as other Arab states have done. Real negotiations are based on mutual compromise, and not on a take-it-or-leave-it offer in an op-ed article of a foreign newspaper.

It's worth the recalling the text of 242 (boldface mine):

The Security Council,

Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East, Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security, Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter, 1/ Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in recent conflict;

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

2/ Affirms further the necessity

(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;

(b) For achieving a just settlement for the refugee problem;

(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;

3/ Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;

4/ Requests the Secretary General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.

Adopted unanimously by the Security Council at the 1382nd meeting.

22 November 1967

I think it's stark that the JCPA article alters 242 from a demand for withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and makes it a guarantee of Israel's pre-1967 borders without any further action on Israel's part. israel has been in breach of 242 since 1967 but has not attracted the Iraq treatment. The US is about to launch yet another campaign of public diplomacy to try and lift it's image in the Arab world. I suggest the image problem runs much wider than the Arab world and much deeper than just the Israel/Palestine question.

Al-Ahram reports:

The campaign appears to emanate from an egocentric world view which makes the American way of life the substance of its message despite the fact that, as most US observers who follow the Middle East acknowledge, this is not what the Arab or Muslim populations of the region take issue with. At the same time, the primary cause for the antagonism harboured in Arab and Islamic countries towards the US -- which is America's position on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict -- is deliberately skirted and ignored.

The campaign, moreover, chooses to address its audience as a nebulous and homogenised Muslim mass instead of specific peoples living within certain political contexts, be they Iraqis, Palestinians or Egyptians. As such, it does not formulate solutions or devise policies to redress any current grievances that they might entertain. The pattern makes sense when one views the current US media campaign for what it is: a form of "information warfare" that the Bush administration is working to incorporate as an integral part of its foreign policy. As such, it obscures issues and underscores others in a manner which is consistent with the administration's agenda.

In a 21 January interview broadcast on the PBS television programme "NewsHour, with Jim Lehrer", Charlotte Beers, the US State Department's undersecretary of public diplomacy and public affairs, who is in charge of the media campaign to win over the Muslim world, said: "I completely disagree with people that the number one issue is the Israeli-Palestinian issue although it is crucial." Beers instead spoke at length about the importance of containing "anti-American" sentiment within the Muslim world by means of sustained messages on how America embraces Muslims and how, contrary to "Muslims' beliefs", America does not embrace decadent lifestyles.

Finally, in another part of the world, as Jon Jeter writes in today's Washington Post:

At the heart of the election is an economic crisis that rivals the Great Depression era in the United States. Once Latin America's wealthiest economy, Argentina is in the midst of a five-year recession that hit bottom 16 months ago, when the government that succeeded Menem's ended his policy of linking the value of the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar.

That policy had curbed hyperinflation, but many economists say it also destroyed local industries and jobs, which could not compete with the influx of foreign goods made suddenly competitive by the strong peso. Menem also accumulated unprecedented levels of foreign debt and privatized virtually all state-owned industries, efforts that don't sit well with many Argentines who have seen unemployment, poverty and crime soar to unprecedented levels.

Opinion polls show eight in 10 Argentines opposed the U.S. war against Iraq. During the Persian Gulf War 12 years ago, when Menem was president, Argentina and Honduras sent troops to fight alongside American forces -- the only Latin American countries to do so.

"There is this creeping anti-Americanism at play here," said Graciela Coatz-Romer Gil, a pollster and political consultant. "Our research shows that it's everywhere in Latin America but it's particularly strong here in Argentina. It's not only because of the war in Iraq but there is also this disappointment that the policies promoted by the United States since the end of the Cold War -- privatization, an open economy -- didn't produce here, and in fact, for the middle class . . . had disastrous consequences. They're the ones who lost their jobs."

Similar feelings hold among the European public, the Korean public, the Japanese public...

Perhaps the marketing geniuses in the State Department might consider that if a campaign is crashing in all markets it may be the product, not the advertising, that is at fault. They would probably be horrified to be accused of being the most postmodern White House on record but their insistence that message is all and reality is nothing is pomo gone mad.

El oro de los tigres
Jorge Luis Borges

Hasta la hora del ocaso amarillo
Cu�ntas veces habr� mirado
Al poderoso tigre de Bengala
Ir y venir por el predestinado camino
Detr�s de los barrotes de hierro,
Sin sospechar que eran su c�rcel.
Despu�s vendr�an otros tigres,
El tigre de fuego de Blake;
Despu�s vendr�an otros oros,
El metal amoroso que era Zeus,
El anillo que cada nueve noches
Engendra nueve anillos y �stos, nueve,
Y no hay un fin.
Con los a�os fueron dej�ndome
Los otros hermosos colores
Y ahora s�lo me quedan
La vaga luz, la inextricable sombra
Y el oro del principio.
Oh ponientes, oh tigres, oh fulgores
Del mito y de la �pica,
Oh un oro m�s precioso, tu cabello
Que ans�an estas manos.

Pressgang at Stone Moat Village
Du Fu

At dusk, I stopped for the night at stone moat village,
An officer came that night to capture men.
The old man escaped by climbing over the wall,
The old wife went to look outside the door.
How angrily the officer now shouted,
How bitterly the wife did weep out loud!
I heard the words the wife was sending forth:
"Three sons of mine have gone to defend Ye city.
From one of my sons, a letter has arrived,
The other two have recently died in battle.
The one who survived has kept alive for now,
The dead ones though have met their final end.
Inside this house, there are no people left,
There's just a grandson suckling on the breast.
The grandson's mother also cannot go,
She goes about without a skirt intact.
Although I am an old woman with failing strength,
I beg to follow you into the night.
Please just let me work in the camp at Heyang,
And to prepare the morning meal for you."
Her voice then died away into the night,
I seemed to hear her sob and whimper still.
At dawn, before I set upon the road,
It's only from the old man that I part.

heavy fighting reported in Ozblogistan
There seems to be an outbreak of blog versus blog versus blog. I bagged Yobbo. Ken Parish bagged me. Ken bagged Tim Dunlop and Rob Schaap. Rob counterbagged. Ken promoted me from 'cosy prejudice' to 'considered reply'. There's almost a case for a coblog so we could escape from the godawful comments interface.

Alternately we could engage in mayhem by arguing whether the Iraq exercise meets the standards for international humanitarian intervention laid out by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

Their final report The responsibility to protect identifies a number of requirements.

(1) The Just Cause Threshold
Military intervention for human protection purposes is an exceptional and extraordinary measure. To be warranted, there must be serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur, of the following kind:
A. large scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not, which is the product either of deliberate state action, or state neglect or inability to act, or a failed state situation; or
B. large scale 'ethnic cleansing', actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape.

(2) The Precautionary Principles
A. Right intention: The primary purpose of the intervention, whatever other motives intervening states may have, must be to halt or avert human suffering. Right intention is better assured with multilateral operations, clearly supported by regional opinion and the victims concerned.
B. Last resort: Military intervention can only be justified when every non-military option for the prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis has been explored, with reasonable grounds for believing lesser measures would not have succeeded.
C. Proportional means: The scale, duration and intensity of the planned military intervention should be the minimum necessary to secure the defined human protection objective.
D. Reasonable prospects: There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention, with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction.

(3) Right Authority
A. There is no better or more appropriate body than the United Nations Security Council to authorize military intervention for human protection purposes. The task is not to find alternatives to the Security Council as a source of authority, but to make the Security Council work better than it has.
B. Security Council authorization should in all cases be sought prior to any military intervention action being carried out. Those calling for an intervention should formally request such authorization, or have the Council raise the matter on its own initiative, or have the Secretary-General raise it under Article 99 of the UN Charter.
C. The Security Council should deal promptly with any request for authority to intervene where there are allegations of large scale loss of human life or ethnic cleansing. It should in this context seek adequate verification of facts or conditions on the ground that might support a military intervention.
D. The Permanent Five members of the Security Council should agree not to apply their veto power, in matters where their vital state interests are not involved, to obstruct the passage of resolutions authorizing military intervention for human protection purposes for which there is otherwise majority support.
E. If the Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time, alternative options are:
I. consideration of the matter by the General Assembly in Emergency Special Session under the ?Uniting for Peace? procedure; and
II. action within area of jurisdiction by regional or sub-regional organizations under Chapter VIII of the Charter, subject to their seeking subsequent authorization from the Security Council.
F. The Security Council should take into account in all its deliberations that, if it fails to discharge its responsibility to protect in conscience-shocking situations crying out for action, concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and urgency of that situation - and that the stature and credibility of the United Nations may suffer thereby.

(4) Operational Principles
A. Clear objectives; clear and unambiguous mandate at all times; and resources to match.
B. Common military approach among involved partners; unity of command; clear and unequivocal communications and chain of command.
C. Acceptance of limitations, incrementalism and gradualism in the application of force, the objective being protection of a population, not defeat of a state.
D. Rules of engagement which fit the operational concept; are precise; reflect the principle of proportionality; and involve total adherence to international humanitarian law.
E. Acceptance that force protection cannot become the principal objective.
F. Maximum possible coordination with humanitarian organizations.

I think that's a reasonable set of standards to argue about.

Polygamists angry at gay link

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The leader of one of Utah's largest polygamist sects has objected to Sen. Rick Santorum's comment lumping plural marriage with other practices the Pennsylvania Republican considers to be antifamily.

Santorum has been under fire for comparing homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery.

But Owen Allred, 89, head of the United Apostolic Brethen, based in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bluffdale, agreed with Santorum in part.

"He is absolutely right. The people of the United States are doing whatever they can to do away with the sacred rights of marriage," Allred told The Salt Lake Tribune.

But Allred said Santorum's inclusion of polygamy in his list tarnishes a religious tradition whose roots are traced to biblical figures such as Abraham, Jacob and Moses -- defiling them as "immoral and dirty."

While I doubt either the evil elites or ordinary Australians care much about the furorum Santorum this is so breathtaking it just has to be shared.

Link courtesy of OxBlog

Howard in hot water
According to the US ABC:

To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war ? a global show of American power and democracy.

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans. "We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Officials now say they may not find hundreds of tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or during the war.

From the London Times

WHY have American and British Forces not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The most plausible answer is that there are none, in the true sense of the word, even though forces are likely eventually to come across some very unpleasant weapons created by Saddam Hussein.

But Tony Blair and President Bush cannot give this answer, as they asserted unambiguously that these weapons existed in justifying the war. So members of Blair?s Cabinet and Bush?s Administration have felt obliged to offer less plausible accounts of where the elusive weapons might be.

The most ambitious so far were put forward yesterday by Geoff Hoon, the Defense Secretary, in a fabulously implausible narrative which contradicted earlier statements by his Prime Minister, his colleagues and himself.

It is an understatement to say that the failure to find such weapons is an embarrassment for the British and American governments. Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, was always very careful to say that he was looking for weapons which were ?unaccounted for?, discrepancies between what Iraq could have produced and what it had declared.

Blix never said they definitely existed. But Blair, Bush and their henchmen stepped repeatedly over that line, particularly in the frenetic and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to secure the backing of a second UN resolution.

This raises a crucial constitutional principle. A minister who misleads the House must resign. On 18 March the prime minister told the House of Representatives:

For 12 years, Saddam Hussein has forced his nation to endure stringent economic sanctions and pariah status rather than give up his weapons of mass destruction. The presence of weapons inspectors has hindered and irritated him but has never stopped his weapons programs. Even during the first four years of weapons inspections, when the inspectors perceived they were making real progress, Iraq continued to develop and successfully conceal biological weapons. Luckily, a series of defectors blew the whistle on some of Iraq's prohibited weapons programs, forcing the Iraqi regime to reveal one of the most sophisticated and expansive offensive biological programs in the world; but we cannot expect always to be so lucky. Inspectors were ordered out of Iraq before they could finish dismantling it. The available intelligence indicates that, since the departure of inspectors in 1998, Saddam has continued to work on his chemical and biological capabilities and has maintained his nuclear aspirations.

Even under the threat of force he has only engaged reluctantly in token, piecemeal destruction of weapons and continues to deny the existence of weapons programs. Even with over 200,000 coalition troops massed at his borders he quibbles about how interviews are to be conducted with his scientists and how many of the reconnaissance aircraft supporting the inspectors can fly at any one time. After 12 years, he does not believe that the international community has the will to act. In that he has made a terrible error of judgement.

The prime minister of Australia has mislead the parliament in relation to a matter of war and peace. In the alternative the prime minister could argue that the government of the United States deliberately caused him to mislead the house. He has no choice. He must go.

Link to US ABC report courtesy of Atrios.

Howard and the missing WMDs
From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Prime Minister yesterday told sceptics questioning the existence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to be patient as they clamour for evidence.

This week the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said "so much" of the intelligence the US and Britain relied upon to justify their attack on Iraq "seemed to have been shaky".

But John Howard said he remained convinced the intelligence the US, British and Australian governments relied upon was "correct" and "very credible". Commentators had to be "a little more patient" as they waited for the coalition to uncover the weapons of mass destruction Saddam had allegedly hidden.

Of course ordinary Australians know what's happened to the missing arsenal. The fiendish Saddamites threw them in the water.

saeeding Santorum?
Robert Fisk, the eponymous hero of fisking has now been joined by al-Sahhaf, the eponymous hero of saeeding.

If Rick Santorum let former Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf do his talking, this is what the irrepressible propaganda man might say

"The American press is all about lies!

"Chairman Santorum will tolerate nothing but truthfulness, as he is a wise man of great honor and integrity. Be assured, his enemies are distorting his words. They are a gang of sodomites who wish to desecrate our home like wild donkeys. These infidels will force you to slaughter your wife and defile your sister. Cowards! They are desperate and stupid. God will roast their stomachs in hell! I triple guarantee you!

"Praise Rick!"

Link courtesy of Jumping to Conclusions via the Volokh Conspiracy

Rick Santorum is a US senator with some deeply-weird opinions on homosexuality.

Australia actually disproves his claim. Here homosexual law reform was always a legislative, not constitutional issue, because we do not have a bill of rights. With the exception of Vermont's civil unions law arguably the statutory rights enjoyed by Australian GLBT people (and won state-by-state) are somewhat greater than the constitutional rights enjoyed in the US.

Not only has there been no move to abolish the separate crimes of incest and child sexual assault since homosexual conduct was decriminalised, but arguably those offences have been strengthened in most Australian jurisdictions. There is a lot of friction on the slippery slope.

Chalabi's Shi'a credentials
Zachary Meares gives Ahmed Chalabi the comprehensive bagging he deserves as the Pentagon's candidate for head of their wholly-owned and -operated Iraq subsidiary. Chalabi's religious credentials are dubious.

He describes himself as a 'secular Shi'ite' although the term is incomprehensible in Shi'a thought and practice. There is no record of Chalabi observing any Shi'a practices or beliefs. he did not, for example, attend the recent Karbala pilgrimage. Chalabi's family were in the highest circles of the old royal dictatorship during the 1950s, when the Sunni monopolised public office.

The Asian Times reports:

Writing the same day in the New York Times, Dilip Hiro, a veteran journalist and commentator on the region wrote, "But contrary to his Pentagon backers, the CIA's longtime assessment of him remains solid: although he is a Shi'ite, he lacks any constituency inside Iraq. Nor is he likely to inspire new followers. Had he joined the hundreds of thousands of Shi'ites who made the pilgrimage to Karbala this week, he might have enhanced his standing. But apparently he couldn't be bothered."

Chalabi calls himself a "secular Shi'ite". But his father was a Sunni, and he is not known for any particular religious devotion in the 45 years that he has spent living outside Iraq. Such subdued religiosity goes down well in the US, but won't win him any popularity with the masses of Shi'ites beginning to emerge on the streets of Iraq after decades of repression under the Sunni-dominated Ba'ath Party.

The only conclusion is that Chalabi's Shi'ite credentials are about as genuine as the twice-discovered and twice disavowed massive terrorist facility in Iraqi Kurdistan.

eurozone wars
At risk of getting derivative John Quiggan has picked this up:

The real issues are subtler and relate to the complex relationship between military power, economic power and the ?soft power? of cultural and diplomatic influence. A successful outcome in Iraq may be seen as reinforcing US hegemony and therefore increasing the willingness of market participants, including central banks, to take actions that reduce their own returns but bolster the status of the dollar as a reserve currency.

Taken as a whole, I would argue the Iraqi war has done the opposite. The effect has been to make the US appear dangerous and unpredictable and to increase the desire of most people and governments to constrain its hegemonic power. Moreover, Bush?s willingness to spend vast amounts on war while making yet more dramatic cuts in taxes has strengthened the perception that US debts will sooner or later be repudiated either directly or through inflation.

However, this is not the view in Washington, where military and economic power are still seen as going hand in hand. It?s clear that, in the minds of those formulating US policy, military victories achieved in the face of European opposition will pave the way for continued US economic dominance.

Thus far, the foreign exchange markets don?t seem to agree. Although the $US is still well above its fundamental value, it has declined steadily during the Iraq war, with little regard for whether the war news is good or bad.

It will be interesting over the next few months to watch what happens to the 'hegemonic premium', the difference between the market value and the fundamental value of the US dollar.

gone to the blogs
From William Burroughs' Baboon:

IRAQI REGIME BANS UNITED NATIONS WEAPONS INSPECTORS The Baghdad-Washington axis of Iraqi occupation has refused to allow UN weapons inspectors to enter Iraq. Either the fish in the Euphrates are giving off a nasty odour or something is amiss with Iraq's attitude to its alleged WMD. Mullah George Bushemite, leader of the neocon sect, speaking through senior cleric Hairy Fleischer from their religious home on the Potomac issued a fatwa condemning UN inspections

Operation Desert Snipe
A must read. Link courtesy of DailyKOS. About the only item in the Great Missing WMD debate that Cogent Provocateur misses is the massive terrorist facility in Iraqi Kurdistan which Powell alleged to the UN on 5 February, was disproved by British journalists on 7 February and then recycled by Bush on 27 March.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I found this while I prowled the net trying to find an URl for the Han Gaozu incident. The Three Kingdoms is a great book and the online version is worth reading. To quote the website:

A Korean saying goes: "You can discuss life after reading Romance of Three Kingdoms." And the most famous Chinese commentator, Mao Zonggang, who lived in the 17th century at the start of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), had chosen "Seven Beautiful Books", and he ranked Romance of Three Kingdoms the first among them.

from Austin to Alexandria Eschate and back
The Asian Times has had a rush of blood to the head with historical analogies. In two interesting articles here and here, they set up an analogy between Bush and Alexander the Great and between Afghanistan and Agincourt.

In The war nobody won Henry Liu writes:

In Gaddis acknowledges that these plans depend critically, however, on Americans' being welcomed in Baghdad if they invaded, as they were in Kabul. If they aren't, the whole strategy collapses, because it's premised on the belief that ordinary Iraqis will prefer a US occupation over the current conditions in which they live. There's no evidence that the Bush administration is planning the kind of military commitments the United States made in either of the two world wars, or even in Korea and Vietnam. This strategy relies on getting cheered, not shot at.

The trouble with Agincourts - even those that happen in Afghanistan - is the arrogance they can encourage, along with the illusion that victory itself is enough and that no follow-up is required. It's worth remembering that, despite Henry V, the French never became English. And the war went on for a hundred years.

The United States has already lost the moral high ground by resorting to a coalition of the willing. Gaddis makes a perfect point: A nation that sets itself up as an example to the world in most things will not achieve that purpose by telling the rest of the world, in some things, to shove it.

Terrorists fully anticipated a hardening of reaction from the US to the horrors they perpetrated on September 11, 2001, as embodied in the NSSUSA, for it is this hardening of reaction that will produce more terrorists.

Liu further argues for the safqua story that Baghdad was surrendered, not conquered, in return for bribes and concessions to the RG/SRG high command and to certain regime figures. I do not know what to make of the safqua theory although it is rife in the Arab media and has been quoted elsewhere.

Mark M Miller's piece is much shorter and in ways more interesting.

Alexander's non-Greek empire covered all of the Middle East; from modern Turkey in the northwest, down the Mediterranean coast to Egypt, and everything eastward including Afghanistan and Pakistan. The White House has already conquered Afghanistan, Iraq (ancient Babylon and Mesopotamia) has succumbed, and others have been put on notice that they must adopt the American way (as prescribed by the Bushites) or else.

Consider that Iran (Persia), a member of the "axis-of-evil", lies between the military protectorates of Afghanistan and Iraq, with the brutal dictatorship of the Assads in Syria just to the west. To the Bushite way of thinking, the application of American influence, bribes and threats just may cause a wished for domino-effect, changing all of the region to states of joyous vassals of a benevolent and righteous hegemony. This scenario is unlikely in the extreme; instead of calming and advancing the Islamic societies with Western values, it may start a conflagration that will consume all societies.

Peace, order and good government cannot be imposed on developing nations by unilateral imposition of philosophy or force of arms; it needs to be encouraged and engendered through multilateral organizations and civil discourse. The Afghan conflict was a just cause, deserving and receiving the approval of the world for the ousting of a regime that was directly implicated with the devastating events of September 11, 2001 by harboring and nurturing the group that carried out the heinous acts. Regime change for calculated opportunity and possible imperial expansion should not be conciliated by announced rhetoric of immediate necessity. Many regimes in this world are despotic and tyrannical, with the potential to threaten neighbors and create major weapons of destruction. Who or what should forcibly change them?

Alexander either had a god-king complex, or was deluded by others; let's hope George W does not, and is not, prodded into an un-American imperial stance by the sarissas of the neo-Companions.

I am much too restrained to mutter into my latt� that God must have elected George Bush because the American people certainly did not. So I won't. It is nevertheless deeply disturbing to watch the continued disorder in Iraq, the lack of basic security and basic services, and the total lack of any sense of any duty by the occupation government to provide those services. Baghdad and other cities have now been in US hands for some time. When will the lights be turned back on?

Lastly, since I am as addicted to historical allusion as anyone else, Proconsul Garner should read an incident early in the reign of Gaozu, the first Han emperor. Gaozu emerged from the chaos and warlordism that followed the collapse of the Qin dynasty. The Confucian gentry who advised him told him on one famous occasion: 'You can conquer China from the saddle, but you must govern from the throne.' Bush needs to start governing Iraq, and thus far has shown no sign of understanding that.

WMDs go AWOL
From the Los Angeles Times:

As Joseph Cirincione, a top weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment, put it, the purported existence of those weapons "was the core reason for going to war with Iraq and the reason we had to go now If we don't find fairly large stockpiles of these weapons, in quantities large enough to pose a strategic threat to the United States, the president's credibility will be seriously undermined and the legitimacy of the war repudiated."

That concern is largely absent in the U.S. media, where "liberation" is now a code word that smoothes over any irritating questions one may ask when a Christian superpower invades the heart of the Muslim world. Its partner phrase, "the building of democracy," is also all the rage, as if real democracy was something you could create with Legos or SimCity software.

At this point, though, we can only hope it will all turn out for the best, and that a retired U.S. general will figure out how to use the country's natural resources to end poverty, build excellent schools and provide crime-free streets and an electoral system where positions of power don't go to the highest bidder. Then he can come back and apply this genius at home, where we've got plenty of unwelcome violence, poverty and on-the-take politicians.

However, in the unlikely case this fantasy comes true, albeit at an untold price in money, lives and human suffering, it should be remembered that this was not the justification for war given to the American people.

And, in a more sober mood, one must still ask the embarrassing yet essential question: Did our president knowingly deceive us in his rush to war?

If he did, and we are truly concerned about our own democracy, we would have to acknowledge that such an egregious abuse of power rises to the status of an impeachable offense.

I think this is the first time I've seen the i-word in relation to Bush's own adventure. I notice elsewhere that 'Garner of Arabia' is developing some traction. It's an obvious and shameless steal from Mike Carlton's 'Lord Downer of Baghdad'.

how to do regime change VII
From the Asia Times

BAGHDAD On Friday it took a fiery sermon by the Sunni cleric Dr Ahmad Al Qubaisee to unleash Baghdad's full-throated Muslim religious fury at US occupation forces.

On Monday, they didn't need a cleric at all.

Or, make that, rather, that they did need a cleric. To be precise, they needed the Shi'ite Ayatollah Muhammed Al Fartuzi - and they needed him now.

Trouble was, nobody seemed to know where he was.

In what is quickly becoming a recurring metaphor for the multi-layered political and religious paradox in which the United States finds itself deeply immersed in Iraq, Monday and Tuesday afternoon witnessed an angry throng of chanting Muslims facing down a badly outnumbered US military contingent in Baghdad, with the poor soldiers sitting there in harm's way having not the least clue as to why this was happening or what to do about it.

This is the sort of disaster that happens when an administration ignores any history except its own spin. Someone in the Bush administration should read up on the First Anglo-Afghan War. In the unlikely event they bother they should read with special care the words of Lord Auckland, the Viceroy of India:

...the whole thing was unintelligible to me...

It is what happens when imperial adventurers occupy a foreign nation without any political understanding of what the people of that nation might wish. And those who the pay the cost are the Iraqis suffering the white man's burden and young soldiers deprived of political intelligence trying to deal with an angry people.

a question that needs asking
From the Independent:

So where are they? In case we forget, distracted by the thought of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, looted museums and gathering political chaos, the proclaimed purpose of this war, vainly pursued by Britain and the US through the United Nations, was to disarm Saddam Hussein and to destroy weapons of mass destruction deemed a menace to the entire world.

But, Mr Blair, where are they? A month has passed since American and British troops entered Iraq, more than a week since the fall of Baghdad. But thus far not even a sniff. Not a drum of VX or mustard gas, not a phial of botulin or anthrax, not a shred of evidence that Iraq was assembling a nuclear weapons programme.

The other question, of course, is where is the occupation government? When will the power be back? When will the hospitals be functioning? And why did the occupation have time to take down a mosaic of Bush the Elder but not protect the museum or the library? Evidently not all artistic questions are without significance...

eurozone wars
From the Guardian

Almost 70% of the world's currency reserves - the money that nations use to finance international trade and protect themselves against financial speculators - takes the form of US dollars. The dollar is used for this purpose because it is relatively stable, it is produced by a nation with a major share of world trade, and certain commodities, in particular oil, are denominated in it, which means that dollars are required to buy them.

The US does very well from this arrangement. In order to earn dollars, other nations must provide goods and services to the US. When commodities are valued in dollars, the US needs do no more than print pieces of green paper to obtain them: it acquires them, in effect, for free. Once earned, other nations' dollar reserves must be invested back into the American economy. This inflow of money helps the US to finance its massive deficit.

The only serious threat to the dollar's international dominance at the moment is the euro. Next year, when the European Union acquires 10 new members, its gross domestic product will be roughly the same as that of the US, and its population 60% bigger. If the euro is adopted by all the members of the union, which suffers from none of the major underlying crises afflicting the US economy, it will begin to look like a more stable and more attractive investment than the dollar. Only one further development would then be required to unseat the dollar as the pre-eminent global currency: nations would need to start trading oil in euros.

I think there are problems with the eurozone explanation of the war, although I do not put it past the economic folly of the war party to invade Iraq for this reason. It should be remembered that the British empire was once known as the sterling area and that for some time after 1945 a series of British governments fought desperately (if unsuccessfully) to maintain the pound sterling as a global currency. That effort failed because the British economy was not strong enough to maintain itsindependence of the US dollar.

And that's the final imperial folly. The first province of the American imperium is not Iraq, but the United States.