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Nabhal Amin, deputy director of Iraq’s National Museum of Antiquities, discovers the losses and damage done by looters to its ancient holdings.

Photograph by: Lucian Perkins — The Washington Post
More about Post photographer Lucian Perkins

Twice today I couldn’t believe my ears. On NPR of all places, I heard two different guest “experts” casually remark something to the effect of, “…to liberate the Iraqi people, which was why we went to war in the first place.” And neither of the hosts even blinked at these amazing assertions. It’s stunning how the Bush administration is able to use the Jedi mind trick on journalists and the American public. [Ben Kenobi voice ON]“The war is going according to plan. You have nothing to worry about.”[Ben Kenobi voice OFF]

Since when did we go to war “to liberate the Iraqi people’?

This was never the primary reason given. A strong case could be made that a “primary reason” was NEVER clearly given, but if ANY reasons were given they went like this:

1. Al Qaida would like nothing more than to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in an attack on Americans or their allies.

2. Al Qaida is unlikely to produce these weapons on their own, but could acquire them from a “rogue” state, like Iraq, who (allegedly) does have them.

3. If Iraq will not satisfy the United States and Britian right away that it has no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, then a war is necessary (and justified!) to guarantee that Iraq has no such weapons.

Add in a premise about Iraq not satisfying the US and you end up where we are now.

Now, I think this argument is full of holes. Premise 2 is dubious. No link between Iraq and Al Qaida was ever demonstrated. Osama Bin Laden himself called Saddam Hussein an infidel and hates him. Al Qaida could acquire these weapons much more easily from some place like Russia that has countless nuclear warheads laying around under the flimsiest of security. Muslim Chechnyans would be more likely to assist them in such an effort than Saddam. North Korea already has nukes and hates us and was even caught red-handed shipping missles to Yemen! So, singling out Iraq for this treatment is absurd.

Given the problems with premise 2, premise 3 becomes even more problematic. There are countless options to war that could have successfully guaranteed our security from the tiny threat posed by Iraq’s alleged weapons. These options were not fully explored. This is why the rest of the world hates us. We don’t listen. We do what we want and make up justifications later.

That’s what is happening now. All of a sudden, this was a war “to liberate the Iraqi people”. Huh? What happened to the weapons of mass destruction? And if George W. Bush cares so much about liberating people, then tell him that liberty starts at home. Not since the McCarthy era has there been a more chilling roll-back of the civil liberties of American citizens. And if we’re looking for oppressed people to liberate, Iraq would be stop #3 at best. We should’ve started liberating people in North Korea, who has the world’s worst living dictator running its show. Next stop would be Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from anyway. The crown princes there repress their people like it’s going out of style. Only after “liberating” the people of these countries should we bother with Iraq. And a stop at Liberia to end a brutal regime there would have been easier and would have made more sense.

No, this was never a war “to liberate the Iraqi people”. It was never sold to the American people that way. It was never sold to the UN that way. Whatever the Bush administration chooses to call it right now doesn’t matter, because only time will tell why we really fought this war. And I’m betting the real reason, if we ever learn it, won’t be nearly so noble as so many have apparently been lulled into thinking.

SecurityFocus.com has an article explaining that new so-called “Super-DMCA” laws (more restrictive versions of the federal Digital Millenium Copyright Act) stifle the legitimate research of Ph.D. students in Computer Science. Niels Provos is a graduate student in Michigan who studies steganography (techniques for concealing messages) and HoneyPots (a technique for detecting mailicious intruders). He’s worried by Michigan’s recent passage of such a Super-DMCA law. So, in an attempt to protect himself from criminal charges he has moved all of his web pages to the Netherlands and set up a questionaire that tries to discern if you are from a country like the U.S. that would make it illegal to learn about his research. Ed Felten, a Professor at Princeton, has raised the alarm about these laws on his Freedom to Tinker blog. You can write your state representatives and support the EFF if these MPAA-written laws sound ridiculous to you. The craziest thing about the laws is that they are so vague that they could actually outlaw your running a firewall to protect yourself from intruders. Almost every company on the planet runs a firewall and in seven states they may now be breaking the law. Nutty.

emolument \i-’mäl-y&-m&nt\ noun
*1 : the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites
2 archaic : ADVANTAGE

Example sentence:
“The president, one of the old trustees, had a right to his office, salary, and emoluments, subject to the twelve trustees alone.” (Select Speeches of Daniel Webster The Dartmouth Case, p. 42.)

I just came across this word, hadn’t heard it, and so made it my own word of the day. Merriam Webster’s web site linked above has its own Word-of-the-day that you can have e-mailed to you daily. It’s interesting about a third of the time.

That Daniel Webster is full of good words. Here’s another:
eleemosynary \e-li-’mä-s&n-”er-E\ adjective
: of, relating to, or supported by charity

Example sentence:
“The eleemosynary sort of corporations are such as are constituted for the perpetual distributions of the free alms or bounty of the founder of them, to such persons as he has directed.” (Select Speeches of Daniel Webster The Dartmouth Case, p. 45-46.)

Minnesota Senator, Norm Coleman, who replaced Sen. Paul Wellstone after his tragic death, seems to think pretty highly of himself. In the Congressional Mag, Roll Call (subscription required), Coleman is quoted as saying,

“To be very blunt and God watch over Paul’s soul, I am a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone. Just about on every issue.”

The San Francisco Chronicle writes about the incident, adding,

After the Roll Call story appeared Monday, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., called for Coleman to apologize, saying his remarks were inappropriate, disrespectful and “an unnecessary attack on a leader our state continues to mourn.”

Wellstone’s former spokesman, Jim Farrell, called Coleman’s comment a “shameful, self-serving assertion.”

Coleman issued a statement Monday night, saying he should have made clear in his remarks that he was comparing his relationship to the Bush administration to Wellstone’s. “I would never want to diminish the legacy or memory of Senator Paul Wellstone, and I will accept full responsibility for not having been more accurate in my comments,” Coleman said.

I’m not sure how saying you are 99% better than someone on “Just about every issue” could be construed as merely saying you are better than Wellstone on the single issue of having a cozy relationship with the President. Wellstone got along just fine with former President Clinton, as do most within their own parties. If the only thing Coleman has to toot his horn about is getting along well with a fellow Republican, then he should shut up, step down, and the voters of Minnesota should find themselves a more useful Senator.

Regular Slashdot readers know from a previous story that they can get a cheap desktop with Mandrake, Lycoris, or Lindows pre-installed from Wal-Mart.com, and the more savvy readers might know about Linux desktops from Pogo Linux or Penguin Computing. But, if you wanted a laptop with Linux pre-installed I only knew of Emperor Linux and their cheapest laptops are about $2000.00, not what your average fiscally-minded geek has in mind. Now, PC Club, who operates retail stores primarily in the Western United States, is offering Red-Hat pre-installed on a laptop that starts at $899. It is rare to hear of a physical retailer where you could walk in and play with a laptop with Red Hat on it and then take it home. In doing research for this, I also found Los Alamos Computers, who will pre-install Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE, or Red Hat on a Laptop that starts under $1000! They also will deliver your computer running the file-system of your choice, and pre-install Apache and Samba if you request it. Wow! I also found Qli Linux willing to install all of the above, plus Gentoo or Xandros on their laptops. Things seem to be getting better for those who’d like to buy mobile hardware with Linux on it already ready-to-go. I’d be pleased to hear of other low-cost laptops with Linux pre-installed like those from Los Alamos Computers and Qli. While PC Club offers me a local retailer, I get the impression that these other guys are Linux experts and so the service down the road will be much more enjoyable. (This was a Slashdot submission, but they rarely post my stories. They have selected each of these in the past though.)

In a previous entry here, I ranted about Virginia Tech’s Board resecinding affirmative action, dropping anti-discrimination protection of gays and lesbians, and prohibiting anyone who had “participated in illegal acts of domestic violence and/or terrorism” from meeting on the campus unless they obtained permission from the president. (The attorney general of Virginia who opposes affirmative action even said that the last prohibition was illegal.) Well, they’ve faced such continuing opposition from faculty, students, alumni, citizens of Virginia, and the governor of Virginia, that the board had to eat its words and take back all three resolutions. This is good news. But, there are apparently a number on the board who still don’t get it. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports,

The board voted 8 to 5 to rescind the resolution on affirmative action, which it had passed at its March 10 meeting… The board’s rector, or chairman, Mr. Rocovich was one of five members who voted against reversing the decision, along with William C. Latham, Mitchell O. Carr, Donald R. Johnson, and A. Ronald Petera. While he stopped short of calling Sunday’s reversal a mistake, Mr. Rocovich said that eliminating affirmative action at the university was “the right thing to do” and denied that the decision had been made hastily. “I accept the judgment of the board, and we will move forward in a unified manner,” Mr. Rocovich said.

So, this is still a mess. We’ve got five board members who still don’t get it and who are not responsive to the community they serve. The Governor still needs to look at getting some new blood in there, and I see five spots that look available.

An inter-faith peace organization, FOR, is collecting signatures of those who would like to ask the International Criminal Court to indict George W. Bush as a war criminal. The U.S. would not recognize such an indictment were it to occur. Read about the many useles legal options (Courtesy Jon Bonne). Here’s the text they ask people to sign:

With heavy hearts, with faith-based convictions, and with shock at recent events, we, citizens of the United States of America, respectfully request that consideration be given to indicting our own President, George W. Bush, as a war criminal, for unleashing a basically unprovoked war upon a populace that has already suffered immeasurably from over a decade of economic sanctions. We do not make this request lightly, or unmindful of possible consequences, but out of deep, though varied, spiritual faiths, we believe it is time for people and organizational entities of conscience to take the strongest possible stand against easy resort to imposing the horrors of modern warfare upon innocent people.

I find this interesting given President Bush’s very public faith. One of the things they mention on their site is that virtually every religious organization out there is opposed to the war. The mainstream media rarely mentions this. Instead anti-war protestors are portrayed as a small ragtag group of ex-hippies. On the contrary, from the Pope down to average preachers, religious authorities are saying: this is wrong.

Another U.S. Citizen has been whisked away by the FBI and held incommunicado without facing charges or having access to an attorney. (If you’ve been sleeping, we got rid of the Bill of Rights a while back…) Story from Boing Boing. Here’s an excerpt:

In an open letter to senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Intel SVP Steven McGeady writes:

On Thursday morning, March 20, a long-time employee of mine, Mike (Maher) Hawash, was arrested outside Intel’s Hillsboro offices and taken into custody by the FBI and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We later learned he was being “detained” as a material witness. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying M-16s woke Mike’s wife and three children in their Hillsboro home, searched it for four hours, and presented Mrs. Hawash with a grand jury subpoena.

All of the court documents in this case are sealed. Mike was held incommunicado from his wife and attorneys for several days. When they did contact him, neither he, his attorneys, nor anyone else knows why he is being detained. Mike is a long-time U.S. citizen, originally of Palestinian birth and previously of Jordanian nationality. He has been a U.S. citizen for many years, having attended college in Texas. He worked for me at Intel on and off for 10 years. (…)

The only thing anyone can think of is that, long before 9/11/01, Mike and his wife donated to Global Relief, a once-respected international aid organization that since October 2002 has fallen into disrepute. But there is no way Mike could have known this at this time. My wife is a recently-naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from Northern Ireland, another victim of terrorism. If our donations to Northern Irish aid were to be mis-directed, without our knowledge, would I have FBI agents kicking down my door? Would my wife be put into federal prison?

Read the rest of the letter, and read more about the case via The Register