Northman's Fury

Never more true a blog name than with this post:

Oh, there is something you are now hearing over and over. The BIG ROVEAN TACTIC is this. Demand that their opponents choose a simple, one sentence strategy for Iraq.

"Well? What would YOU do?"

It is horrendous and a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question. Because No one-sentence answer will sound mature or sage, given the horrific political, social, military, and moral quagmire that we are inheriting. Moreover, any attempt to avoid giving a one sentence answer sounds equivocating and mealy-mouthed.

Another brilliant Rovean gotcha ploy and dems are falling for it.

There has to be an answer that turns the tables. I suggest this one.

"Obviously, a new team will have to work with allies (once we have regained their trust) and others to come up with new plans. But YOU are twisting and evading the issue.

"The issue is who should be entrusted with the task of finding a way out of this mess?

"Although democrats led us through the most successful military campaign in US history, losing not a single US service pwerson while cheaply and swiftly bringing peace and law to Europe for the first time in 4,000 years, while strengthening alliances and even gaining popularity in the Muslim world... still, that does not absolutely prove we will do a great job with Iraq.

"What IS proved, though, is that the present gang of fools cannot be trusted with a burnt match.

"They are the same men who coddled Saddam for decades.

Who - when they had him in their hands - set him free to oppress Iraqis for twelve more years.

Who lied to us and to the world about pretexts for war.

Who have oppressed and meddled and half-destroyed the professionals of the military and intelligence communities.

Who have undermined American science at every turn and undermined out goal of energy independence.

Who ruined all accountability systems and contract rules, replacing them with half a trillion in crony deals.

Who have wrecked U.S. military readiness.

Who have spent our grandchildren into permanent debt.

Who have driven off our allies and friends, while encouraging millions to embrace our foes.

"So don't you DARE demand that I give you a one-sentence answer about what to do in Iraq.

"I can give you a clear answer about what I will do, once in office.

"I will fire the gang of boobs who gave us this mess, and invite in grownups from the professional intelligence and military and civil services, freeing them to give sage advice without fear of retribution. Advice that will be heeded.

"I will also invite in adults from both parties who were banished by a pack of cranky, nasty little boys, who base every national decision upon a context of "culture war."

"I will seek out those - from all philosophies - who were proved right by the passage of time, and hold accountable those who lied or proved unworthy of trust.

"Together - with restored goodwill from the rest of the world - and with iron determination to rebuild our strength - we will start wading out of this mess that we were dragged into, by liars and fools how have no business meddling in the affairs of nations.

Man, this pet food recall is one of those stories that just keep getting bigger and bigger the more you dig. Today’s New York Times has a story saying that use of melamine to falsely inflate the protein count in feed products is widespread in China. While the story focus is on animal feed, it is important to remember that the wheat gluten that started this whole recall scandal was listed as “human grade” and could have been used in products for human consumption.

The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.

“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”

The prospects for melamine entering our food is already quite high, but the real surprise is just how often the food supply has been tampered with.

The Department of Agriculture has also stepped in. On Thursday, the agency ordered more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.

The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

I can see why people are getting concerned about the whole factory farm method of food production. This is scary stuff.

In the latest of William Lind’s ongoing On War series at the DNI site, he takes a look at Martin van Creveld’s latest book, and in particular, Chapter Six’s summary of how the British were able to prevail in Northern Ireland.

First, unlike President Bush in 2001, the British did not declare war, which would have removed a whole series of legal constraints and put the entire conflict on a new footing. Instead, from beginning to end the problem was treated as a criminal one…

Note that, in contrast to what we hear from the Bush administration and the U.S. military, van Creveld sees the removal of restrictions on what troops can do as a disadvantage. He understands that in Fourth Generation war, the counter-intuitive is often correct.

Second, much of the day-to-day work was left to the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary). Its members, having been locally recruited and assigned lengthy stays at their posts, knew the area better than anyone else. Accordingly, they were often able to discriminate among the various factions inside the IRA as well as between terrorists and others…

For the most part, this isn’t even a possibility any more in Iraq, and the same is often true in Afghanistan. The local police forces in both countries are corrupt, underpaid, under-equipped, and either sectarian (in Iraq), or tribal (in Afghanistan). The local military is usually better on the first part, but worse in the second. For the most part, the US doesn’t trust the local forces and has stopped training them for fear that they are training their opponents, which is too often the case.

Third, never again (after Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, when British troops fired into a crowd and killed thirteen people) did British troops fire indiscriminately into marching or rioting crowds

Even today, Bloody Sunday is an incident that lives in infamy. The anger it caused is a large part of why the “troubles” continued for as long as they did. The British recognized this and did what they could to de-escalate the situation.

It’s an incident almost identical to this that started the bad feelings in Fallujah, and the situation simply grew continually worse. Add to that other reports of US troops firing indiscriminately into passers-by after sniper attacks or roadside bombings.

Fourth, and in marked contrast with most other counterinsurgents from the Germans in Yugoslavia to the Americans in Vietnam and elsewhere, not once in the entire struggle did the army bring in heavy weapons such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, or aircraft to repulse attacks and inflict retaliation…

Even the Germans rarely used heavy weapons. This point also has some relevance to Canadians, buying a bunch of newer tanks to replace the aging fleet of Leopards we sent to Afghanistan.

We’ve suffered a number of casualties from badly aimed US air support, how much more so the Afghan people?

Fifth, never once did the British inflict collective punishment such as curfews, the cutting off of electricity and water, demolishing houses, destroying entire neighborhoods. . . As far as humanly possible, the police and the army posed as the protectors of the population, not its tormentors. In this way they were able to prevent the uprising from spreading.

They probably didn’t build many walls either.

Sixth and most important of all, by and large both the RUC and the army stayed within the framework of the law. . .From (1972) on, the British refrained from arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and illegal killings…

The most important insight of all, though, (came) over dinner in Geneva in 1995. My partner on that occasion was a British colonel, regiment of paratroopers, who had done several tours of duty in Northern Ireland. What he said can be summed up as follows…

the struggle in Northern Ireland had cost the United Kingdom three thousand casualties in dead alone. Of the three thousand, about seventeen hundred were civilians….of the remaining, a thousand were British soldiers. No more than three hundred were terrorists, a ratio of three to one. Speaking very softly, he said: And that is why we are still there.(Emphasis mine)

In a nutshell, the reason the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are doomed can be summed up in two words, “Force Protection”. How often have you heard stories of troops firing on vehicles at checkpoints because they failed to stop on time and the troops felt threatened? The idea is to protect the troops from suicide bombers, and it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing. Sometimes they’re right and stop suicide bombers. Other times they are tragically wrong and slaughter innocent civilians.

The message is that our troops’ lives are far more important than the civilians that they are supposedly there to protect. Look at the casualty figures in N. Ireland again. The reason the British suffered greater losses than the terrorists, is because they ignored “force protection” and put civilian life above their own. Part of the fifth point above, they were there as protectors, not tormentors. Shooting up innocent civilians turns their families against the occupiers and to the terrorists. Not shooting them up means some real terrorists get through and you suffer greater casualties.

The reason the latter case works, is because taking the casualties yourself and not inflicting them on the civilian population means the terrorists have far more difficulty increasing their support and numbers. With limited support and numbers, they can be dealt with. “Force Protection” means fewer casualties for you in the short term at the cost of creating more enemies and suffering far more casualties long term and ultimately, leads to defeat.

As an update to my post on Tuesday about Fundamentalists, Richard Gere is under threat of arrest in India for kissing a Bollywood actress in public.

An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Hollywood actor Richard Gere after he kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in public.

Gere, 57, kissed Shetty, 31, several times on the cheek at an Aids awareness event in Delhi earlier this month.

The court in Jaipur in Rajasthan state called it "an obscene act", after a local lawyer filed a complaint.

from the Newshoggers:

I just had a look at the memeorandum blog aggregator.

While every progressive blogger in the cosmos (except me - when I've got something to say that isn't "ditto" I'll say it) is talking about the ongoing spread of the Great Republican Meta-Scandal - from Attorneygate to Abramoff connections to subpoenas galore...

...the Right's scalphunters are crowing about the departure of Rosie O'Donnell from the View.

"Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!

Inuit elders in Nunavut's western Hudson Bay area say more polar bears need to be hunted, as their populations are rising — contrary to scientific data that suggests a decrease.

Elders and hunters from the territory's Kivalliq region told the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board on the first day of public consultations Tuesday in Arviat that they and others have noticed more encounters with polar bears in recent years.

This is a rather unique dilemma for me. Normally, I have little problem with accepting scientific data over just what people think happens to be true. The increased encounters can easily be explained as the fewer bears coming closer to communities, (and their garbage dumps,) than that there are more bears overall.

The reason for my hesitation on this matter is that the scientific data proved wrong on a different polar bear population. The Inuit insisted the population in the Davis Strait had increased and the Government of Nunavut increased the hunting quota, sparking condemnation from the usual quarters. However, when a census was taken, it was shown that the Inuit numbers were the accurate ones.

On the other hand, the locals said the same about the Baffin Bay population and the belief now is that the herd is in decline from over-hunting.

Like the brouhaha over the caribou numbers in the NWT, part of the problem is the amount of money sport hunters bring to the territory for shooting the bears. It provides a significant source of income for a territory that at the moment has few other natural resources being exploited due to its remoteness and small population.

Like I said then, better to try and ensure a steady supply of caribou/bears for the future than wipe them out for short term gain. We’ll see what happens.

The Iraqis are learning from the Bush Administration how best to keep people from focusing on the unpleasant consequences of their actions, stop releasing the reports that show them.

The Iraqi government withheld recent casualty figures from the United Nations, fearing they would be used to present a grim picture of Iraq that would undermine the coalition's security efforts, UN officials said Wednesday.

Working with its own figures, the UN released a new human rights report saying that sectarian violence continued to claim the lives of a large number of Iraqi civilians in both Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods of Iraq's capital, despite the coalition's new Baghdad security plan.

. . .

The Iraqi government announced in a statement its deep reservations about the report that it says is "inaccurate in presenting information" and "lacks credibility in many of its points. Also, it lacks balance in presenting the situation of the human rights situation in Iraq."

"The publication of this unbalanced report … puts the credibility of the UN office in Iraq on stake and it aggravates the humanitarian crisis in Iraq instead of solving it," the statement said.

And there’s no better way to show how lacking in credibility your detractors are than to refuse to show the figures that could prove things one way or the other.

Starting with the usual suspects in Iran:

Two thousand young men in Iran have protested against new clothing curbs, reports say, amid growing discontent about a crackdown on un-Islamic dress.

Shiraz university students were angry about new rules banning sleeveless T-shirts, even inside all-male dorms.

The protest came as the judiciary head warned police that an excessively ferocious campaign could backfire.

Police say they stopped more than 1,300 women for dressing immodestly on the first day of the campaign in Tehran.

I'm sure the folks pushing to start bombing the Iranians are already up in arms over this as a good reason we should be dropping the bombs. They're probably not quite as vocal about the Israelis, though.

The other day I was waiting for a bus in downtown Jerusalem. I was in the bustling orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Sharim and the bus stop was extremely crowded.

When the Number 40 bus arrived, the most curious thing happened. Husbands left heavily pregnant wives or spouses struggling with prams and pushchairs to fend for themselves as they and all other male passengers got on at the front of the bus.

Women moved towards the rear door to get on at the back.

When on the bus, I tried to buck the system, moving my way towards the driver but was pushed back towards the other women.

These are what orthodox Jews call "modesty buses".

The separation system operates on 30 public bus routes across Israel.

The authorities here say the arrangement is voluntary, but in practice, as I found out, there is not much choice involved.

The flavour of the fundamentalist doesn't matter. The so-called "Religious Right" believes they have every right to legislate the morality for the rest of us just as much as the theocrats in Tehran and the ultra-Othordox in Jerusalem. The last time the Christian world was under the authority of the church, it was called the Dark Ages, and for a good reason.

Since Iraq just keeps spiralling into ever worse destruction, it always nice to see a new source of destabilization

Unidentified gunmen have killed at least 74 people in an attack on an oil field in Ethiopia's remote Ogaden region, the Ethiopian government says.

Sixty-five Ethiopians and nine Chinese oil workers were killed in the incident early on Tuesday, an adviser to the prime minister told the BBC.

And

Ethiopian tanks are pounding parts of the Somali capital, stepping up a week-long campaign against insurgents and fighters of the Hawiye clan.

Heavy shelling is also taking place near the presidential palace - guarded by Ethiopian and African Union troops.

Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi said the government forces were winning the war against insurgents.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called for an end to clashes in which more than 250 people have died in the past week.

Ethiopian forces and insurgents are exchanging heavy fire. Mortar and other artillery shells are also landing, Khalid Haji, a resident at Fagah in the north of the capital told AFP news agency.

Rotting bodies have been left on the streets for days according to witnesses.

Another burgeoning success in the “War on Terror"!

Bad Plan

So that whole war in Iraq that's sucking the Republican's poll numbers down the drain, along with American credibility and, oh yeah, the US Army, whose idea was that again?

Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

"I think it was Osama bin Laden's,'' Rove replied.

Man, where to begin?

Does Rove think following the advice of Osama bin Laden is a good idea?

I mean, if somebody who I thought was trying to destroy my way of life started coming up with ideas of what he'd like me to do, I would guess that those ideas might not be in my best interest and refuse to do them.

Michael Scheuer said that Bush had become bin Laden's "indispensible ally". I know most experts figure bin Laden has to be quite happy with the way the Iraq War has turned out and that it is bringing thousands of new recruits to his cause. I just never thought a guy like Rove would admit that they actually are helping him.

How do you think the conversation went when bin Laden phoned the White House?

OBL: Yo, big guy, what’s up?

Bush: Hey man, things are great! Thanks to 9/11, I’ve got to start a war and swagger around talking tough and people think it’s great! I’ve got pretty much the whole world on-side and the whole Afghan campaign looks like its going great!

OBL: Yeah about that. It’s going much better for you folks than I’d thought it would. My followers are being driven right out of the country and I’m going to have find someplace to lie low for a while. In the meantime, I was wondering if you could do me a favour?

Bush: No sweat man, whatever you want!

OBL: Great! I was thinking you should take out that dick Hussein in Iraq. I know you guys have a bit of a love/hate relationship with him, but he’s been a real pain in our ass. That secular government of his has kept my guys from making any headway in Iraq at all. I mean, sure, he provides a counter-weight to Iran, but who’s really afraid of them anyway?

Anyway, if you could pull a bunch of your troops from Afghanistan and give me some breathing room to rebuild Al Qaeda, you can put together an invasion of Iraq. Your old man already destroyed his army, so you should be able to breeze through to Baghdad in a couple weeks. Of course, you’ll probably lose all that international support you have now, get stuck fighting an increasingly brutal and multi-sided insurgency/civil war, and seriously degrade your military into a broken shell of its former self to the point it will be unable to respond to any other crisis for years to come, but you should be able to get some decent photo ops out of it, at least in the beginning.

Bush: Hey, that’s a great idea! Always wanted to one-up the old man. Boy, I can picture some really good photo ops already. Some Tom Cruise, Top Gun thing!

OBL: Great! I really appreciate it! Probably best you don’t tell anybody this was my idea, though.

Bush: Sure, sure, I’ll write an e-mail to the staff or something.

OBL: Don’t you have to keep those? People will find out.

Bush: Heh, heh, don’t worry. We have ways around that whole archiving thing.

OBL: Cool! And thanks a bunch.

From John Cole

From an interview with retired US General Anthony Zinni:

What has disappointed me is there hasn’t been this debate on the strategy, on the policy, a regional strategy on policy, let alone an Iraq policy. We’re, we’re debating the tactics. The, the surge is a tactic. In what context is the surge? You can make an argument for a surge if you were going to withdraw, to cover the withdrawal, for example, or to contain, to reposition forces or to re-engage in a different way or a stronger way. And why we got caught up in the tactical debate, in my mind, is an indication that we don’t understand what we want to do. What should our Middle East policy be? What should our policy be in terms of Iraq and, and the war against the extremists out there or the conflict against extremists? We seem to be strategically adrift, in my view.

In war, the strategic always trumps the tactical. The US can use its overwhelming firepower to win any number of tactical victories, but if they don't involve a strategic component, they won't affect the outcome. Given that the US apparently doesn't even have a strategy, its little surprise that they're heading to a major strategic defeat.

A terrible crime, and my sympathies goes out to the friends and families of thse killed.

It would be nice if something like this could happen without some people immediately looking to push their political agendas regarding gun control, or its lack thereof, but its already too late for that.

Update:

What you should realize though, is that there will be all sorts of stupid “lessons” learned this week. Pro-gun activists will be thrilled to use this as an example that more guns are needed everywhere. Anti-gun activists will pretend that this could have been stopped with more gun control. Sane people will ignore all of them.

Couldn't say it better.

Two more Canadian soldiers were killed yesterday, and reports are two additional NATO soldiers were killed today. In and of itself, this isn't too surprising. When you go to war, you have to expect casualties. What did strike about the Canadian story was this:

Col. Mike Cessford, the deputy commander of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan, has denied suggestions that an apparent spike in violence is an early indication of a planned Taliban spring offensive.

"Obviously, we will examine that closely, but again I am not convinced that this is a Taliban offensive," Cessford said.

Now he may be making this statement in an attempt to play down the Taliban's resurgent strength. A sort of, "they're not really as tough as they say they are" sort of rhetoric. But to me, what he's saying is that as bad as things have been this week, we should expect them to get a lot worse once the offensive really gets going. That doesn't make me feel better.

I guess because the surge is working so well, they just have to keep on surging. Too bad they don't have the troops to do it.

US troops will now serve up to 15 months in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of the usual 12-month tours under new Defence Department rules.

The move is designed to help the military supply enough troops for ongoing operations.

Soldiers will be allowed a minimum of 12 months at home bases upon return.

And if you believe that last sentence, I have a friend in Nigeria with a business proposition for you.

This is just getting sad. McCain made an absolute fool of himself strutting around Baghdad in a bullet-proof vest and with over a hundred soldiers and five helicopters guarding him, not to mention the security sweep of the area that preceded him. He partly came back to reality when he said he "misspoke" on the weekend, but he's back into ridiculous mode again.

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain said he would have taken his tour of an Iraqi market last week even if he had not been accompanied by heavily armed U.S. soldiers.

You know, I almost wish he would take that stroll. Watching a guy I once admired so completely destroy his credibility is as painful as watching a guy like Holyfield keep getting into the ring long past the point that he has what it takes to be a competitive boxer. Please stop!

Greg Djerejian is back to blogging after a couple of months of silence, and man, is it fun to have him back.

for tonight, a little mind exercise, shall we? Imagine the 15 kidnapped Brits were U.S. Navy. And then imagine the eruption of incredible indignation, the 24/7 howls of outrage, the 'we gotta go into Teheran right now!' (it's an "act of war", after all, the hyperbolic goose-stepping gaggles would have gravely advised non-stop), the flood-the-zone jingo-banging of the war drums (as Francis Fukuyama quips about one of the more fevered, incorrigible neo-cons: "when has Krauthammer ever not cried “Munich!” in response to an act of diplomacy?").

Who would have had a freak-out and totally lost it first, one wonders: Bill O'Reilly? Glenn Beck? Lou Dobbs, off the Tom Tancredo-ish nativist brew for a second or two? Anderson Cooper, of course, would have started broadcasting live from a British frigate near the Shatt al-Arab waterway--explaining to us what it must have 'felt' like to get nabbed in disputed waters (though, in fairness to him, his reporting, if breathless, would have been more nuanced than any of the above personages). And, just a couple hours before, Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room would have been rife with buzzing electronic maps, on which frantic, 'John Madden Meets Sun Tzu' magic marker scribblings would have feverishly charted the possible invasion paths into Iran to mount the daring rescue.

And in the blogosphere? Well, Glenn Reynolds would have recycled some horse-dung along the lines that bayonets ain't for sittin', and it's time to roll ( 'more rubble, less trouble!'). Meantime, Charles Johnson would have passed out on his keyboard, after a series of post-cycling conniptions (coming on the heels of the "headscarf threat", it would all have been too much). Oh, and Michael Ledeen? Be afraid, be very afraid. Think frothing, at the mouth, rabidly. Here he is again, calling for attacks within Iran (despite his laughable denials that he's not in favor of military action there):

The fun part about this is that Greg is an old-line conservative who has grown tired, disillusioned, and generally pissed off with the Bush Administration's so-called conservatism and over the top incompetence. There's a saying that there is no truer believer than a convert. Conservative critics of Bush like Greg and John Cole bear that out.

The cost of the Iraq war is filtering down to state and local budgets, forcing cuts in transportation funding, Medicaid, education and other federally subsidized programs, according to analysts and lawmakers.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength, and if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain.

. . .

In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. - Sun Tzu - The Art of War

A fair number of articles I've read about the recent capture and release of British sailors and marines have said that this was a test of British resolve, and that by not responding with force, the British now look weak. More than a few commentators have compared Blair unfavourably to Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands. Apparently, they figure Blair should have responded to the capture of fifteen military personnel like Maggie did to the conquest of some islands.

It's not a terribly good analogy. For one, the Argentinian invasion was a hell of a lot more provocative than the capture of a few troops in disputed territory. Two, if this was the kind of resolve ordinarily expected of countries when their people are captured, what would they advise Iran to do about the five Iranians captured by the US on diplomatic soil in Irbil a little over two months ago?

There's also the small matter that in the Falklands case, the end-game was easily recognizable; Argentina out of the Falklands. Kind of like the first Gulf War, when the end-game was Iraq out of Kuwait. If the end-game here was to secure the release of the sailors, how would military force have made that more likely? I have the sneaking suspicion that the commentators calling on Britain to be forceful in their response to Iran have a different goal in mind.

The biggest thing I find missing in all this, though, is the state of the British military, and what effect that had on the decisions made. Thatcher basically had the entire British military machine to work with. Her army wasn't stretched thin from being bogged down in two far-off wars. She could afford to gamble. Blair not only has an over-stretched army, but a good chunk of that army is sitting in hostile territory, surrounded by folks friendly to the regime who captured the sailors. Bush called the 15 hostages. They were just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of British soldiers (and Americans) who would rapidly be in dire straights should the situation spiral out of control.

So is the West weak? Yeah, I suppose they are, but the reason they're weak now is because of the brave, macho resolve they used in Iraq, tying up their own hands.

Military and search-and-rescue personnel from Canada, the United States and Russia dealt with a simulated airline crash on Vancouver Island on Wednesday to help be prepared if a large passenger plane ever crashes in the North.

I'm not entirely sure how realistic a simulated crash on Vancouver Island in April is compared to a crash in the Arctic where even now we have several feet of snow on the ground, but it is nice to know they're at least thinking about it. I still wonder how long it would take them to find a crash site and where they'd be launching the searches from. There's a whole lot of empty space up here.

British Sailors Released

You have to hand it to the Iranians. They played this whole British capture and release quite masterfully. Not only did they make sure to treat the captured sailors well to contrast with US treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanemo, Bagram, and other bases, but they now appear magnanimous by releasing them without requiring the British Government to admit any guilt. It makes them look like the reasonable and level-headed party who's willing to be generous to avoid further confrontation and by default, makes the UK and particularly the US, look like the stubborn boneheads unwilling to compromise.

It would be interesting to know what the truth is, but I'm not holding my breath that we'll find that out anytime soon.

There's a reason that political correctness has become a slur, and this is as good an example as I've seen.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

snip

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

Keep it up, folks. Soon we can stop teaching evolution because it offends the creationists. Hell, just toss out all Science and History classes and replace them with Bible study. (or Torah, or Koran, or whatever Holy Book you prefer. Don't want to offend anyone.)

But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."

Agreed. Sometimes the truth is offensive. You can stick your head in the ground and deny reality for awhile, but sooner or later you're going to have to learn to deal with it. Better sooner than later.

Channeling my inner geek for a moment, one of my favourite Science Fiction writers, and legitimate scientist, David Brin, has a blog, which I just managed to find. I have a feeling I'll be spending a good chunk of time reading through the past entries for the next couple of days. The link t his blog is now in the sidebar.

Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply.

"Yes, it is food grade," Del Monte spokesperson Melissa Murphy-Brown wrote in reply to an e-mail query. Del Monte issued a voluntary recall Saturday for several products under the Gravy Train, Jerky Treats, Pounce, Ol' Roy, Dollar General and Happy Trails brands.

Wheat gluten is sold in both "food grade" and "feed grade" varieties. Either may be used in pet food, but only "food grade" gluten may be used in the manufacture of products meant for human consumption. Published reports have thus far focused on tainted pet food, but if the gluten in question entered the human food supply through a major food products supplier and processor, it could potentially contaminate thousands of products and hundreds of millions of units nationwide.

LINK via Crooks and Liars

I hadn't been too worried about this considering all of my dog's food was bought last summer for the sea lift, prior to any of this wheat gluten entering the food supply. However, my food tends to be purchased on a more frequent basis. I've worked with melamine. I don't want to consume it.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has dissolved parliament and called a snap election, in an escalation of the country's political crisis.

The move comes amid a long-running power struggle between the pro-Western president and pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

I know very little about internal Ukrainian politics, but whenever I see a story about Yushchenko, I keep wondering, "Whatever happened to that investigation about him being poisoned?" I mean, when the whole "Orange Revolution" was happening, there were all kinds of stories about the vicious and ugly poisoning of Yushchenko and all sorts of rumors linking it to Yanukovych. After Yushchenko became President, the stories seem to have dried up. No mention of it anywhere in this story. What happened?

One other thing struck me while I was reading this.

Mr Yushchenko became president in January 2005, following the pro-democracy Orange Revolution which overturned a rigged victory for Mr Yanukovych

But Mr Yushchenko was forced to accept his rival as prime minister after his allies failed to win a majority in the March 2006 parliamentary election, and the two men have repeatedly clashed.

So the narrow win by Yanukovych for President was a rigged election that was overturned by the Orange Revolution, installing the pro-democracy, and pro-Western, Yushchenko as President. Then when they had parliamentary elections, and apparently democratic ones, Yanukovych and his supporters win a majority. Hmm.

Hopefully, this is just the Russians version of April Fool's, despite the fact that I've read it a couple other places as well. (Also, there was some collaborating evidence that the Russians do believe it.)

The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

I had expected far more political posturing on the US's part before bombing commenced, but it may be that Bush is just past caring.