Murph and I were sitting here looking through the news on the Net and we came upon this opinion poll in French from Le Monde, so we took it. We were particularly attracted by their promise to send the results and comments to Monseeur Jack Chiraq himself. Then we checked the results.

Keep in mind that this is a self-selected survey and therefore not representative of French opinion as a whole, but it bloody well is representative of the mentality of those French folk who read Le Monde, 2700 of whom had filled out the survey when we last checked.

Anyway, out of these folks, 47% said they thought the Iraqis saw the Americans as an army of occupation, not liberation; 57% think humanitarian goals are not of concern to the Coalition forces; 56% say the Coalition should not have intervened militarily in Iraq; 64% say Chirac did not err in his diplomatic efforts; 43% of them say they totally disapprove of the intervention and another 19% somewhat disapprove; and, get this one, 52% see the United States as a danger to the world, as against 29% who see the US as protection against dangerous countries and 18% more who say the US is neither one nor the other. Fifty-two percent of any survey, even a self-selected one like this, is pretty significant, I submit.

The most fun part is that there's a place where you can put your commnets, so we said M. Chirac was a big tete de merde and then Murph added this joke:

Q: What's the difference between the Republican Guard and Jacques Chirac?

A: The Republican Guard knew when to quit.

Oh, yeah. Does anybody remember where I got the name "Inside Europe"? Or care?

Well, in case you folks are interested, today is April 14, 2003. We've been blogging for about fourteen months now; we started off on February 8, 2002, over on the old Homestead site, and we came over here to Blogger in October 2002. Antonio dropped out of the blog around that time, though his spirit is still with us. When Iberian Notes got started (we were using the name Spanglolink--get it? Spain? Anglo? Link? This is what happens when you listen to Murph's suggestions. Perry deHavilland from Samizdata politely informed us that the name sucked. He was right), we were getting ten or twenty page views a day. Now we're getting 300-500 a day, and we're likely to get more than 15,000 page views for the month of April. Also, we've helped to found another popular blog, EuroPundits.

Anyway, the official Iberian Notes birthday was April 11; your chronicler turned 37 though he doesn't look a day over, say, 35, his age when he started this thing. (Hint.) So, in case you're wondering, I've set up a wish list over at Amazon. (Hint. Hint.) It's not hard to do at all; just CLICK HERE. (Hint. Hint. Hint.)

Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a new Remei Margarit translation up on EuroPundits! I find I understand Remei Margarit best when I don't take my antidepressants and then smoke a joint. That puts me in the appropriate state of manic-depressive paranoia that Mrs. Margarit seems to inhabit. My theory is that mutual comprehension is state-dependent. Do not try this at home. There are also some very fine posts up by The Radical and Nelson Ascher. So go check them out!

And a million thanks to the lovely, talented, and operatic Mrs. Sasha Castel for doing what she can to fix the EuroPundits template. It's already a functioning blog now that Sasha's given it a good going-over. So if you find EuroPundits to be like, legible, send at least one or two mental "thank yous" to her.

Here's a cool blog in Portuguese (I understand most of it) called O Intermitente. Check it out. This guy is doing tremendous anti-idiotarian work.

I love commentarist and classics professor Victor Davis Hanson and he's got another excellent column up on National Review Online. Here's the intro paragraph and then the thesis statement.

The jubilation of liberating millions from fascism and removing the world’s most odious dictator apparently lasted about 12 hours. I was listening to a frustrated Mr. Rumsfeld last Friday in a news briefing as he tried to deal with a host of furious and crazy questions — a journalistic circus that was nevertheless predictable even before the war started.

I thought immediately of the macabre aftermath to the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C.

Only Victor Davis Hanson is immediately reminded of the battle of Arginusae in 406 BC by any event us normal folk might imagine. I sure can tell you that nothing has ever reminded me of the battle of Arginusae in 406 BC, immediately or not.

Just another comment on urban warfare. I assume you have seen the American Civil War photographs of what used to be Atlanta, Columbia, Richmond, Petersburg, and Vicksburg. They are not pretty. In fact, those cities were all pretty much destroyed. Should you want to take a look, try Google images. I guarantee you there are lots of Civil War photos there.

Now, the American Civil War is often considered to be the first modern war, the first total war ever, in which the complete economic resources of both sides were thrown against one another, in which the static front became more important than warfare of movement, in which an entrenched defense was first seen to be stronger than the attack, in which primitive blitzkrieg (Sherman's march) was first used to outmaneuver a static defense, in which railroads and steamboats were first used for rapid troop movement and supply, in which there was mass conscription on both sides, in which new technology, especially the rifled musket with the conical bullet, was used for the first time. If they'd had machine-guns and barbed wire (both were invented within fifteen years after the end of the war) we'd have killed five million of each other. Actually, some 620,000 were killed in combat, and some two million total died from starvation, disease, and the like. The wounds the Civil War inflicted upon American society aren't completely healed yet.

I would suggest that future Saddam Husseins and Osama Bin Ladens should devote some serious study to the American Civil War and think, "If they were willing to do that to one another, what might they be willing to do to us?"

PRO-ALLIANCE PERSON: "We won. We captured Baghdad and overthrew Saddam."

PRO-SADDAM PERSON: "No you didn't. You've failed to establish control of Baghdad and looting and anarchy reign."

This is the new argument, folks, and Baghdad Bob Fisk and Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro are all over it. I've seen several writers refer to this weaselly strategy as "moving the goalposts." That is, you cross the line marked "Victory" thinking you've scored a touchdown, but they tell you "Nope. The real Victory line is twenty yards farther along." This is, uh, cheating.

What's the most repulsive is that Bob and Tommy and their pals are quite obviously playing the blatant anti-American card. Blatant anti-Americanism is when you blame the Yanks for something bad no matter what they do. F'r instance, we've been pretty loose about allowing the Baghdadies to blow off steam. Bob and Tommy therefore yell that the Americans are allowing the rabble to trash the city. However, if the Americans got tough and started shooting looters, Bob and Tommy would holler that they're murdering innocent civilians and arrogantly using overwhelming force. You can't win either way, of course, in Bob and Tommy's world.

By the way, it's being claimed around here that the tearing-down of the Saddam statue (eerily like the scene in which they tore down the statue of Stalin in Budapest) was staged by the Yanks. That isn't true and Baghdad Bob is your witness--he was right there, you can pick him out in the film of the people surrounding the statue. He saw it with his own eyes. I might add that I was watching it live on Catalan TV and they were showing the Al Jazeera feed, and Catalan TV and Al Jazeera are not normally considered to be CIA stooges.

Comment on the local attitude toward cheating: There was a soccer game last night and the stinking, putrid FC Barcelona tyrant-lovers got creamed at home 2-4 by Deportivo. They have to play in Madrid next week, and then they have to play Real Sociedad at home the week after that. If they get their asses kicked both times, which I certainly hope they do, they'll be perilously close to 18th place and the Second Division. Anyway, in the first half, Barcelona's Javier Saviola got yellow-carded for taking a dive in the area, trying to draw a penalty. That is, he was cheating and trying to steal a goal. Not very sportsmanlike, to say the least. Then, in the second half, Saviola intentionally used his forearm to bring down a high ball in the Deportivo area. That is, he was cheating again, controlling the ball illegally to try to steal another goal. He got yellow-carded again, meaning that he was kicked out of the game for receiving two yellows. The crowd was furious and the newspapers are just as mad, pointing out that he did not injure anybody. Yeah, but Saviola committed, not once but twice, absolutely blatant unsportsmanlike conduct, the kind that gets you a fifteen-yard penalty in football, directly kicked out in baseball, a technical foul in basketball, and a five-minute misconduct in hockey. He deserved to get kicked out of last night's game, and he deserves to be scorned by the fans, for intentionally cheating. Real sports heroes, like Gary Lineker, don't need to cheat. That's why we were all shocked when FC Barcelona idol Pep Guardiola tested positive for drugs last year in Italy and got suspended for four months. We never thought Pep was a cheater. Well, it sure looks like he's one now.

I've been reading, online, a book by David Irving called Uprising about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Before y'all jump all over me, I know perfectly well who David Irving is, and I don't like him any better than you do. He is best known for his Holocaust denial; he lost a lawsuit over it a couple of years ago in Britain. There's no question he's an anti-Semite; one of the major themes of Uprising is that many of the Hungarian Stalinists who were rebelled against were Jews, and Irving revels in pointing this out. His flimsy cover for banging on this drum is that, so he alleges, traditional Hungarian anti-Semitism directed against the Jews in the Communist Party was an important factor in the rebellion.

The book's interesting, though, because it deals with an urban battle. I've read Antony Beevor's Berlin, another story of an urban battle, I recently read another online book on the Paris Commune, and we've all seen what just happened in Baghdad. There's a major difference between Baghdad and the other three. As far as I can tell, there are no lynch mobs roaming Baghdad as there were in the other three cases. It also looks like there's food and water in Baghdad, or at least enough to survive until the shipments start rolling in. It also seems that the opposition in Baghdad has pretty much given up after only about three days, unlike the other cases. Also, the conquerors of Baghdad are Americans and have no old scores to settle like the Red Army, the Budapest mob, or the Communards. And, simply, Baghdad was not destroyed like the other three cities. You wanna see destroyed? Check out Grozny. Or Beirut about 1985. Or Phnom Penh ten years earlier.

This is why today's Vanguardia is just ridiculous, as usual. Baghdad Bob gets page one to gripe about the looting. Plàcid Garcia-Planas gets page four to whine about how the Yanks aren't stopping the looting. Rafael Ramos gets page five to allege that the Americans are going to plant some chemical weapons in Iraq. Tomás Alcoverro gets page ten to whinge about the looting. Baghdad Bob gets page fifteen, again, to blame the Yankees for the looting and smear them as war criminals for the death of civilians. Finally, on page eighteen and nineteen, Castro's repressive crackdown in Cuba gets a mention. Carlos Nadal gets page twenty to remind us all the Yanks are just a gang of imperialists. On page twenty-three there's a story about how wonderful and peaceful Barcelona is because they had another anti-war demo yesterday, with 300,000 according to the organizers and 25,000 according to the Government. The gummint's figgers tend to be closer to reality than the SocioCommunist organizers', as a rule. On page twenty-four there's an ode to the solidariousness of the rich kids holding a campout in the Plaza Francesc Macià.

Question: Why do they always have campouts whenever they're protesting against something? Answer: Because the campers are high-school and college kids, and adults under age 30. People don't leave home here till they're thirty or so. They live with their parents, under the scrutiny of their watchful Catalan mamas. And most of them don't have cars. This means that they have nowhere they can go to smoke pot and, mostly, have sex. Imagine if you were a twenty-seven-year-old male living in a three-room apartment with your mom and dad. Or, for that matter, a female, though I naturally identify more with the male perspective here. You'd never get any action. It would be awful. You'd be horribly frustrated all the time. No wonder all the kids are always protesting against the system. They need some kind of outlet for their pent-up energies. And, of course, when they go on the protest campouts, what they're really doing is protesting two hours a day and fornicating in the tents for the other 22 or so.

There actually has been some coverage here of Castro's crackdown on prominent dissidents, sending dozens of writers and journalists to prison for long terms. However, there's been little criticism on the editorial pages (Baltasar Porcel has actually spoken out on this, to his credit. For once. Libertad Digital has been very critical of Castro. That's all I've seen as far as opinion pieces go.) Seems to me that if we're hunting down enemies of democracy, we'd do a lot better looking in Havana than in Washington. The Spanish left, of course, is never going to admit this. They're too busy criticizing America for the Baghdad looting and calling American troops "murderers" for having killed a Spanish journo to notice such an atrocious and blatant act of injustice and censorship.

Well, here's a story from Fox News about three guys who hijacked a ferry trying to get to Florida last week. They didn't kill anybody. They were sentenced to death and summarily shot. Now, the Spanish left periodically works itself up into paraoxysms about the fact that in most American states we execute murderers after due process of law. Somehow they never seem to notice it when Fidel has people shot after a mock trial, though, for having done much less.

Here's the link from Libertad Digital on the story. They've got a link to a petition you can sign, and they're calling a demo for Saturday in front of the Cuban Embassy in Madrid. LD says that Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's No. 2, blasted Castro, calling him a "tyrant". CCOO, the Communist labor union, of all people, has protested too. The Socialist Party, the PSOE (People Subsidized with Our Earnings) somehow managed to avoid any condemnation of Castro's actions and voted no, along with Batasuna (ETA's political puppet) and the Communists, on a Parliamentary proposal to condemn Castro's actions.

Unsurprising Anti-American Memes in Today's Vanguardia:

1) The Yanks got away with killing a lot of Iraqis in Gulf War I. (A. Abián, p. 2)
2) The poor Iraqi soldiers were innocent victims. (Ibid.)
3) The Yanks promised the Turks that the Kurds would be kept down, and they Welshed on the deal. (M. Josa, p. 3)
4) The Yanks might let the Turks grab the oil in Iraqi Kurdistan. (Ibid., p. 4.)
5) The Turks are under Yank orders. (Ibid.)
6) The Yanks are letting the Iraqis sack and pillage Baghdad. (T. Alcoverro, p. 4.)
7) Little Ali's arms haven't grown back on yet. (Ibid.)
8) The same people who are looting Baghdad are the victims of the looting. (Ibid.)
9) The American occupation of Baghdad is humiliating to the Iraqis. (Ibid.)
10) The Yanks are losers because they haven't captured Saddam. (Staff, p. 6.)
11) The Yanks are going to pay Spain off for their support. (X. Batalla, p. 6)
12) The perfidious Yanks may try to weasel out of paying Spain off. (Ibid.)
13) Tony Blair isn't really allied with the Yanks. (R. Ramos, p. 8.)

Aw, hell, I've had enough for now. I'll come back later and pick things up starting with Baghdad Bob on page 10!

UPDATE: Here we go with Bob "Iraqi resistance stopped the tanks" Fisk!

14) The naive Americans imagine they have "liberated" Baghdad.
15) Allowing the looting is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
16) Since the Iraqi leadership had such offensively bad taste in palace furniture, defeating them was nothing to be proud of.
17) The new government will have no legitimacy because its foundation is based on looting.
18) The army of "liberation" is really an army of occupation.
19) American soldiers are mean because they search Iraqis for, like, guns and bombs.
20) The Yanks are still killing innocent civilians.
21) The Yanks are not doing a good job clearing dead people out of the streets.

Bob is just bent out of shape because of all this looting. I don't ever remember him getting all indignant over anything the Americans aren't somehow involved in. But if he can blame even a minor sin on the Yanks--like benign negligence while a repressed people explodes in its first two days of freedom--somehow it instantly becomes the epitome of evil.

YOU LOST, BOB! YOU'RE FINISHED! What respectable newspaper will hire you, now that you've proved to the world what a lazy, one-sided, and just not very smart reporter you are? HA HA HA HA HA HA--oops, sorry, I just spit out my drink, I'm laughing so hard. BOYCOTT THE INDEPENDENT! DOWN WITH THE BRITISH DR. GOEBBELS! Chortle, chortle...

Today the Vangua printed a back-page interview with William Easterly, an American economist who used to work for the World Bank. He's a lefty Democrat, against the war, not fond of Bush, and prejudiced against Middle America. However, he points out that wars are lousy for the economy because they create uncertainty and that oil wasn't a motive in the war, since "if Bush wants more oil, there are many friendly countries willing to sell it to him." Also, arms manufacturers are such a small part of the US economy that their gains in production are way more than offset by the losses any war would cause to the economy as a whole. He also said, most importantly to him since he's written a book about it, that charity to the Third World don't work no good at all and the only ways to improve Third World countries are to lower immigration barriers so students and workers can come North and gain the necessary experience, and to eliminate customs barriers so that when they are able to produce something cheaper than we can, they can sell it in our markets.

So three cheers for Mr. Easterly, even if he is a lefty Democrat ashamed of his West Virginia roots, for saying "The demagogy of NGOs and institutional charities while we keep them from competing is the problem. It's more comfortable for us to give them charity than to open our markets and our frontiers so that they can share our salaries and jobs." That would be putting our walk where our talk is. It's much easier to yell about peace and love than it is to actually get any changes made that are actually going to help people, and those changes are going to have a short-term cost and a long-term benefit for us. We're going to have to adjust to the short-term shock of actually dealing with cut-price competition that is willing to outwork us.

Not a single one of the oh-we're-so-moral "No a la guerra" marchers is aware that we can only help the poor by letting them help themselves. In fact, 95% of them would be against it because they're afraid of immigration and competition, and they're very generous about demonstrating in the street when they think a problem doesn't affect them personally. But they won't agree to anything that might interfere with the security of their peaceful bourgeois lives. And they like them moros just fine over there on the other side of the Med, but they're not real big on havin' 'em in Terrassa and El Ejído and Tàrrega.

Sorry. That's how the free market works, people, and yelling about how this shouldn't be so is like yelling at the waves to stop breaking on the shore. And it's the only way to help those poor folks become prosperous. That is, if you actually care anything about their welfare.

Here's a small article about Mr. Easterly from yesterday's Vangua by the X-man himself, Xavier Mas de Xaxàs, former correspondent in Washington who has seen at least part of the light since coming home. He went just a little bit native over there and he didn't recognize it until he came back here, I figure.

Economist Easterly casts doubt on Barcelona aid to Iraq

There are cities that have no restraint when it comes to solidarity with other cities at war. Barcelona is an example. It did so with Sarajevo and it will do it again with Baghdad. Mayor Joan Clos met last Friday with 25 NGOs to prepare the aid that will be sent to Iraq.

these actions, however, do not convince William Easterly, one of the most prestigious American economists. His specialty is development and his theory is that no action of solidarity is successful if it is not accompanied by incentives for the affected populace to help itself. In this sense, he does not believe that cities are in a better position than states to reconstruct the damages of war. Barcelona, for example, may cmake Baghdad's water supply potable, and this will have an immediate positive effect, but then it will not function without some public or private entity that is honest and effective.

Easterly, who was in Barcelona yesterday promoting his book, "In Search of Growth", believes that Barcelona, like the World Bank and the NGOs, fall into the temptation of offering aid that serves its own mediatic interests but not the people who need it. Barceloan, for example, didn't only send aid to Sarajevo, but opened an office there that built housing, schools, and services. This effort, however, was not supported by wider actions that would have guaranteed the correct use of this infrastructure. Easterly, now a professor at NYU, considers that Western solidarity always ends up in whatever programs will get the biggest possible headlines, as is now happening in Iraq. This dynamic, impatient and not transparent, damages the majority of the poor countries and has caused reconstruction plans in Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Somalia to fail.

More Schadenfreude. The National Review has a post up that's simply a serious of quotations from media idiots and idiotarians which have now been proven incredibly stupid. Snicker, snicker, guffaw, guffaw.

InstaPundit links to this Washington Post article about blogging and journalistic ethics. I think it's something we need to be talking about, since a well-known blogger has been nailed for plagiarism. My perspective on blogging ethics is basically this. If I report something as news, state it as fact, then it's true as far as I know. I swear. I make my own opinions clear, so you folks know I'm not unbiased or impartial. A lot of things I say are my own impressions, which I am willing to debate about. I translate a lot of stuff; you'll just have to trust me for accuracy. I do the best I can and often check with my wife if I'm not sure. If I get something from somewhere else, I credit the source. I have been known to fudge details on personal stories, especially with regard to illegal or immoral activities I may or may not have participated in. For instance, I don't give the real name or address of my hash dealer. And I'm probably not as good-looking as I let on.

As for plagiarism, you know I'm already on a personal crusade to nail a plagiarist from our local paper, La Vanguardia. My attitude is don't publish it if you didn't write it, unless you say who the real author is. That's pretty simple, isn't it? I think we can hold bloggers to that minimum.

I just watched the news on Catalunya TV. They say that the Kurds and Americans have taken Kirkuk. The Kurdish peshmerga are being received as heroes. An American armored column is moving on Mosul. It should be there within hours. There has been light, sporadic fighting in Baghdad, apparently mostly between the Yanks and the "foreign legion" of Arab and Muslim volunteers and mercenaries who are still holding out. They put a lot of emphasis on the sacking of the government buildings which, as Scrapple Face said, consists of the Iraqis stealing stuff bought with their money.

The Spanish transport ship Galicia has arrived at Umm Qasr and is distributing food and water to the people there. Some of them said, "Thank you, Spain", and one of the soldiers said that the Iraqis had plenty of food but what they really needed was water. The Iraqis are calling the Spanish troops "Mister Water" instead of, say, "Tommy Atkins". Another one said, very seriously, that he was very proud to be there and to be helping people. That's the way to talk, my man. Congratulations to you and your clarity and decency among all these misguided fools looking for the dark lining within the silver cloud.

The attempted general strike in Barcelona has been a massive failure, as the only protestors are the high school kids. All the shops remained open and public transport worked normally. Supposedly there was a "march of pickets" up the Paseo de Gracia "informing" the banks there that they should close for the strike. "Pickets", in Spain, are not what we call a "picket line". They're small groups who "inform" people they'd better close down or their place will be wrecked. There was nobody at the McDonalds on Mayor de Gracia except for people having lunch there. A lot of "Aturem la guerra" signs on people's balconies are down.

In case you're interested, the mani in the Plaza Sant Jaume at lunchtime didn't get much turnout. There's another scheduled for 7:30 PM in Plaza Catalunya. There'll be a pot-bangin' tonight at 10. The theater actors will close down and march from their shows to the Plaza Catalunya carrying lighted candles. And we're gonna hear some Aaron Copland up here on Calle Martí in the barrio of Gràcia. "Chemical Inma" Mayol lives on this street. I hope she hears it. And hates it.

Here's Baltasar Porcel!

There are so many absurdities in this war that, forcibly, we must deal with new realities that we have not yet codified. So can Bush himself be as closed-minded, petulant, reactionary, and ignorant as he appears, along with Rumsfeld and Rice? Maybe we should look at it from another angle: they're making war in order to make America the eternal world superpower and therefore need to ostentatiously kill not a bestialized tyrant, but a great many civilians, and meanwhile beat up on an entire country, while demonstrating that Europe is either a little lamb at their orders or a bunch of weak loudmouths. At the same time, Washington takes over all sources of energy, which it will control at its pleasure, while it shows how the Yankee people, isolated and robotized, makes up an obedient and robotic mass that, armed to the teeth, has no rivals.

Naturally, with the Twin Towers, a real hecatomb that nobody would have imagined despite the fact that it had been suggested in both movies and novels, the exact nature of inconquerable horror was put to the test. That's why it was the tipping point between the "old" and new United States, it is possible that Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld, who weren't in office because something like that was expected, who were mere members of a conservative and simplistic tendency, have become the instruments of a historic leap, of a very profound objective. People like Powell, of a superior level of intelligence, have also participated. And this ambition, or according to them the necessity, of the great leap is not new in history, in the 20th century Lenin and his followers thought like that, and they went very far in the attempt, or Hitler. George W. Bush wouldn't have lost his head like that, he'd have inagurated the era of the planetary empire.

Wow. That's a wild one. If I understand it, and I'm not sure I do, since Remei and I tried to decipher it for at least ten minutes, and decided we had other things to do like sit around and watch the news, then Porcel is comparing Bush to Lenin and Hitler--except Bush has done a better job!

Boy, the Vanguardia is in a nasty mood today. Heh, heh, heh. As everyone's been saying, this is pure Schadenfreude.

Guess which reporter got the front-page article? Baghdad Bob Fisk! Here's a summary of Baghdad Bob's dispatch: "The Americans "liberated" Baghdad yesterday...sacking, pillage, anarchy...bloody hospital operating rooms...men who had servilely obeyed the most minor secret policeman have become gigantic figures, shouting with hate against the dictator...the "liberators" are a new, foreign, and all-powerful force of occupation lacking in the culture, language, race, and religion necessary to contribute to the unity of Iraq...an epic of the same large-scale orgy of robbery and destruction that the British managed to successfully prevent in Basra...(The Americans), when (Saddam) was in their hands, did what they could--in the decades of the seventies and the eighties--to arm him, help him economically, and offer him political support, making him the authentic dictator that he in fact became....(History says) in these cases, the prisons pass into the hands of the new authorities, like the torture chambers and the methods of easily making weapons of mass destruction...(The Iraqis tell me) "we will want to get rid of the Americans, they want our oil. There will be resistance and then they will call us terrorists."...At bottom I admire their ingenuousness, despite the devastating realities that await the United States in this dangerous and barbarous land...(They killed) two Western journalists and then lied about it...Baghdad lay last night at the feet of its new master...new "friends" of the United States will appear who will inagurate a new relationship with the world, new fortunes will be made which will benefit the "liberators" of the Iraqies and--also undoubtedly--new relations with Israel will be developed with the opening of an Israeli Embassy in Baghdad:"

This is a good summary of the anti-American slurs that will bloom like a million flowers in the Old European press. Let's run through Baghdad Bob's arguments, along with a few easy rebuttals:

1) The Americans are not liberators. (Gee, could have fooled me.)
2) The Americans tolerate anarchy and looting. (So Bob wants the marines to shoot them or what?)
3) Innocent people have been killed. (About a thousand, a good day or two's work for Saddam.)
4) The jubilant Iraqis are hypocrites. (And Bob calls Americans arrogant.)
5) The Yanks are ignorant about Iraq. (Well, they know more about it than you do, Bob.)
6) The Brits are superior to the Yanks. (I don't mind British gloating. I mind British gloating coming from Bob.)
7) The Americans propped up and armed Saddam. It's all their fault. (Big Lie. Try the Russians and the French.)
8) The new government in Iraq will be as bloody as the old one. (I bet it isn't.)
9) The Iraqis believe the Yanks want the oil. (For the last time, it's not about the oil.)
10) The Americans are naive fools. (Who's a fool? Maybe the guy who hasn't been right once in his career.)
11) Disaster awaits America in Iraq. (You hope so, Bob, you hope so, you swine.)
12) The Iraqis are dangerous and barbarous. (That's what we call racism where I come from.)
13) The Americans murdered foreign journalists. (That's completely absurd. See Jack Slater's piece.)
14) The Americans are the new imperial masters. (Two answers. A) the US is the nicest imperial master in history. The Brits would be second. B) that sentence makes more sense without the word 'new'.)
15) The "Americans' new friends", i.e. the Iraqi opposition, is corrupt. (Give them a chance.)
16) The US and its Iraqi puppets will get rich. (The US is already rich. Let's hope the Iraqis get richer.)
17) Israeli interests are behind it all. (Bob, you're an anti-Semitic bastard, aren't you?)

I think those are approximately all the existent anti-American arguments related to this here war against Saddam. Baghdad Bob got 'em all into one article. And the Vanguardia put it on the front page.

I'm laughing. Baghdad Bob is having a conniption fit. It's all over, Bob! You lost! You were wrong! You're the laughingstock of the world! So what else is new?

Jack Slater from Slate has a column on the journalists that were killed by American tanks firing on the Palestine Hotel and Al Jazeera headquarters. As he says, it's too bad they died, but people covering wars sometimes get killed. Happened to Robert Capa, for example. And, probably, Ambrose Bierce. Stephen Crane's health wasn't helped any by his covering the Spanish-American War; he died shortly afterward. George Orwell, admittedly a combatant, nonetheless nearly got killed in the May 1937 fratricidal fighting in Barcelona. Plenty of journalists got taken hostage in 1980s Lebanon. Hell, more than several journos were taken prisoner by the Iraqis in this here war, and one of the two dead Spanish journalists was killed by an Iraqi missile, along with another reporter and a couple of American soldiers. Everybody here in Spain, though, is going ballistic about the dead cameraman in the Palestine Hotel who was apparently killed by American tank fire. Highly selective morality here, folks. Pathetic. The "No a la guerra" shock troops, including 100% of the Spanish reporter corps, have LOST, so they will now do everything possible to smear mud on the Coalition forces. Be prepared for stories over the next several years showing how terrible things are in Iraq and how it's all our fault. When you see them, just laugh. I bet we have a good laugh every day around here.

The pathetic losers held a pot-banging last night in protest, so I cranked up the Hag doing "The Fightin' Side of Me" and "Okie from Muskogee". Then we heard Charlie Daniels and "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Finally, though I don't like the song, I played Lee Greenwood singing "God Bless the USA", and then I played ZZ Top doing "Tube Snake Boogie" just to be a jerk. They were still banging the pots, so I put on Bob Seger's Greatest Hits because it's the worst CD I've got. The banging went away after about the first three songs, which I was just as happy about, so I could stop the pain. Murph played Frank Sinatra doing "My Way" and "New York, New York". Tomorrow night we get sophisticated and play "Fanfare for the Common Man", "Appalachian Spring", and then the horrific "Grand Canyon Suite".

There's a two-hour strike today against the war. Little late, isn't it, guys? There's also going to be, get this, "people's lunches" in front of American fast-food outlets at 2:30; I assume those who show up will be squatters munching on chorizo sandwiches and swilling boxes o' wine. I'm a vegetarian, but I'm thinking about going to the Mickey D's on Mayor de Gracia and seeing what happens. I'll get a Coke to show my support.

Catalunya TV is now running a talk show which has as guests Anna Balletbó and Maruja Torres, who are Eulàlia Solé and Remei Margarit clones: stupid, loudmouthed women. I have no problem with loud women as long as they're not stupid. Women involved in Catalan politics, however, and especially in Catalan journalism, are universally morons. I challenge readers to name one who isn't.

I guess that isn't fair. The men aren't any more intelligent, though they generally have better manners. There are, however, several bright Catalan men.

Anna and Maruja, anyway, went on a long tirade about how the Americans were occupiers, not liberators, and about how the whole scene of pulling down the statue was choreographed by the Yankees, and how the gringos may have won the war but can never win the peace, and Palestine and Palestine and Palestine. They're just furious. I chortled to see their worked-up, twisted faces spitting blind hate.

All you "No a la guerra" people, now hear this. YOU HAVE LOST. For all your whining, the war happened and now is almost over and we won. And the Iraqi people won. And the world is a good bit safer, and the air seems just a bit cleaner somehow. And you, you hypocrites who care nothing about the Iraqis but will jump on any anti-American bandwagon rolling down the turnpike, you have been shown for what you are. Sad, pathetic people whose idea of morality is to shout arrogant and aggressive slogans and bang your pots and pans. You are no more moral than anybody else--in fact, you're much less so, because you allowed your hate for the United States to come first when you chose up sides in this here War against Terrorism. You chose the terrorists. You are morally bankrupt.

The statue is down. They hitched a cable around its neck and pulled it down with a crane attachment on top of a tank. the Russians are denying that Saddam is in their embassy.

Tele 5 is all in a snoot about their guy who was killed yesterday and they're still making it their co-big story. Everybody else has dropped it for now and is filming downtown. It seems like the Spanish networks have their own cameras there, but they're using pickups from Al Jazzera and Abu Dhabi TV.

All four of the major channels here, TV1, TV3, Tele 5, and Antena 3, have cut away from their normal programming for special news coverage.

The rumor going around is that Saddam has taken refuge in the Russian Embassy. The Americans are in control of all of downtown Baghdad.

This huge, muscular Iraqi is taking a sledgehammer to the base of the statue; won't do too much good, I'm afraid, but I'm sure it makes him feel a lot better. They've got a big thick rope around the statue's neck, but I don't think that'll be enough, since this statue is like fifty feet high and made of steel and concrete. If they're smart they'll get a chain, use the rope to pull it up, and then hitch it to the back of a tank. The two high-rise hotels where the journalists are staying, the Sheraton and the Palestine, have been occupied by the Marines.

The disgraceful Spanish episode of the day is that a Spanish cameraman was killed yesterday when an American tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, and the Spanish correspondents claim to have berated the marines as they came into the center of the city for having killed their friend. It's hard to criticize them--their friend was killed, after all, and they must be very sad--but, guys, this is a war zone. Also, wouldn't it have seemed just a little inappropriate to have reminded the Allies as they liberated Paris that they were scum because a journalist had been killed?