This is appalling. Perhaps Israel could save money and gain in PR by just firing the lot of them. Money quote:

Gee, wouldn't everything be simpler if there actually WAS an international Jewish conspiracy?

It sure would. But barring that, how about just a tiny bit of good old fashioned yiddishe seichel?

The nations are meant to say "surely this is a wise and understanding people". But there's a condition attached to that. Perhaps that's the problem.

This is what I've been saying for years. Expelling Arafat is the stupidest idea since julienned bread; it would return him to his status as Europe's favourite exile, on permanent tour. Killing him would be just, but would arouse massive condemnation; not that that's such a terrible thing, but it doesn't help. But if he were arrested and subjected to a public Eichmann-style trial, what could anyone say?

Of course, privately all the closet antisemites would be gnashing their teeth. They hated the original Eichmann trial too. But in public, with justice being done before the whole world's eyes, they'd have no choice but to grin and consent to the proceedings and sentence.

I've heard it suggested that the less-than-stellar experience with the Barghouti trial shows that an Arafat trial would not be a good idea. But the main problem with the Barghouti trial was that so much of the evidence against him was either secret, or depended on informers who refused to testify. But there is enough public-domain evidence against Arafat that there would be no need to dip into the secret stuff, or to rely on reluctant witnesses. Unlike Barghouti, Arafat's crimes go back 40 years, and none of it is statuted out.

And if they can somehow produce, and play in public, the tape the CIA allegedly has of Arafat personally ordering the murder of those USAn and Belgian diplomats in Khartoum in 1973, the USA would be in no position to punish them for it.

Today's lead editorial in the NY Times, America's Prison Camp, about the prisoners at Guantanamo, says:

The justifications offered by the administration are equally unpersuasive. The argument that the detainees are not prisoners of war because they are not uniformed members of a regular armed force has no foundation in the Geneva Conventions.

Er, try reading the damn things. Particularly the 3rd Convention, Article 4, section 2b.

Oh, oh, it looks like Jayson's back.

Amid all the obfuscation over who said `imminent', and who `implied' it, and who merely inferred it or guessed it or simply made it up, QandO has the definitive answer on why the USA went to war, and whether those reasons were justified.

I just discovered The Right Coast today. Reading further down it, I came across this. I'm not a Californian, but it seems about right to me.

Michael Rapaport makes some comparisons. I'm not sure I agree, though. Bush is more like Cornelius Fudge after the truth has been demonstrated in deadly force, when he finally and belatedly realises what needs to be done and starts doing it. In book 6 Fudge may start prosecuting the War on Voldemort in earnest. But will the Daily Prophet support him in that war, or will it revert to type and play the role that the various appeasers have done in our universe over the past 2 years?

So who's our Dumbledore? Is it too outrageous to suggest Paul Wolfowitz et Cie?

William Safire writes about Howard Dean's claim to have been misrepresented by John McCain, regarding his reaction to the targeted killings of Saddam's sons. According to McCain, Dean's reaction was that ‘the ends do not justify the means’, and McCain's own reaction to that was that ‘I was astounded; the ends were to get rid of two murdering rapist thugs and the means was the use of American military intelligence’. Dean claims never to have said that, and Safire investigates.

After expressing initial sympathy for Dean's claim to have been misrepresented, citing the widespread but false belief that Richard Nixon claimed, in the 1968 election, to have had a ‘secret plan’ to end the Vietnam war, Safire cites this article, by Holly Ramer of the AP.

Questioned about the deaths of Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, in Iraq, Dean dismissed suggestions that it was a victory for the Bush administration.
"It's a victory for the Iraqi people ... but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war," Dean said. "I think in general the ends do not justify the means."

Safire thinks that this blows away Dean's claim to have been misquoted, and justifies McCain's characterisation:

Dean spinmeisters will abandon their candidate's untenable "never said any such thing" and argue that the words "in general" remove the quoted sentence from an answer to the specific question about killing Saddam's sons. They will blow smoke about Dean offering a philosophical observation entirely detached from the rapists who were the subject of the question. Some partisans would buy that.

But look at what Dean said, and what McCain said he said. Yes, Dean was reacting to the news about the world having being rid of Uday and Qusay, and he did say the words ‘the ends do not justify the means’'. But what means is he talking about? He says that while ‘it's a victory for the Iraqi people’, i.e. he thinks it's good news, ‘it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war’. I don't see how anyone can read this and fail to understand that the means he is talking about—which, in his opinion, is not justified by its having achieved the deaths of Uday and Qusay—is the war, not, as McCain would have it, ‘the use of American military intelligence’.

Like Safire and McCain, and unlike Dean, I think the war was justified, and while killing the devil's spawn would not be enough to justify the war all on its own, it certainly adds to the justification. But that's my opinion, not Dean's, and given his position it does seem to me that he has been misrepresented.

Here's something that's been bugging me for a long time: the people who, every time Bush or Powell or Cheney or someone says that Saddam was connected with al-Qaeda, they hear, or pretend to hear, that Saddam was responsible for the 11-Sep-01 attacks. They then shout that there is no evidence for this, and therefore Bush or Powell or Cheney or whoever LIED!!!!! and should be IMPEACHED!!!!

But these are two separate issues. I don't recall anyone in the administration ever claiming that Saddam was involved with the 11-Sep-01 attacks. What they have consistently claimed, and what seems to be absolutely true, is that he was involved with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is more than 11-Sep-01.

And here's the important datum: after 11-Sep-01, Bush announced that the USA was at war, not just with al-Qaeda, but with everyone who assists it, everyone who shelters it, everyone who is allied with it. The Taliban weren't responsible for 11-Sep-01 either, but every sane person understood that we were justified in sending them to their 70 raisins, because they gave al-Qaeda a base, so to speak, and refused to disassociate themselves from it and turn its members over to us for justice. And Bush promised that we would pursue al-Qaeda and all its allies wherever they are.

That is why in Powell's address to the Security Council on 5-Feb-03, he spoke about al-Zakawi having received shelter and medical treatment in Baghdad, and about al-Ansar operating in an enclave in Northern Iraq, outside Saddam's geographical reach but with his financial and logistical support. And that is why the Bush administration continues to maintain that Saddam was indeed linked with al-Qaeda, in many ways.

Now, was he in fact involved with 11-Sep-01? The only honest answer at this point seems to be that we don't really know. He was involved with al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda did perpetrate the attacks, therefore it stands to reason that he may have assisted them in some way with their plans. Or he may not have. Perhaps they didn't ask him for help; perhaps they didn't even trust him enough to tell him what they were planning. The only actual evidence I'm aware of is the Atta-Ani meeting in Prague in Apr-01; publicly, at least, the White House isn't pushing this story, perhaps because they know it to be untrue, or perhaps because they don't absolutely know it to be true, and don't want to run with yet another story that relies on foreign intelligence. And assuming that the meeting did take place, who is to say that they discussed Atta's main project, the 11-Sep-01 attacks? At the time it was thought that they might be planning an attack on Radio Free Europe; perhaps that supposition is correct after all.

But the bottom line is that while we don't know that Saddam was involved in 11-Sep-01, nor do we know that he wasn't. If we were a jury, and he were being tried before us on this charge, we would have to acquit him. But we are not a jury, and we are not in the artificial universe of a courtroom; out here in the real world he certainly does not deserve a presumption of innocence — we know he's no innocent. So Cheney was absolutely right when he refused to rule out a Saddam–11-Sep connection.

I just finished Smoke and Mirrors, by Neil Gaiman, on Monday. The last story is a doozy. I will never think of this folk tale the same way again...