The upheaval about the tortures in Abu Ghraib has now hit the level I thought it should have hit three or four days ago. These people in the photographs should ALL face a court-martial, as should ANYONE against whom there is evidence that he or she may have tortured prisoners. If found guilty, long prison sentences are indicated. Additionally, ALL officers in the direct chain of command over this prison should be cashiered, and if that means we have to purge a couple of hundred guys for negligence and incompetence, well, so be it. Dishonorably discharge the lot.

Here's what happened, as best as I can gather from looking at various sources. During mid-to-late 2003 the abuses depicted in the photos happened. The Army figured this out in about December and began a serious investigation in January. Court-martials started a month or so ago and that's when it hit the fan, since they can't keep that secret. If soldiers are going on trial, perhaps for their lives, that's the line they can't cross. That has to be done publicly and with the guarantees of due process, though I believe that military law and civilian law differ in several important ways. (Gil, I know you know something about this; can you fill us in? I know the accused get counsel from a professional Army lawyer.)

CBS got hold of the report from the internal investigation and the Pentagon asked them to keep it under their hats until they (the Pentagon) had determined what they were going to do, which CBS agreed to. Seymour Hersh got hold of the report, too, though, and it became known that he was going to run his story in the New Yorker no matter what, so CBS broke the story with what they knew at the time.

Some 25-50 Iraqis, at least, were psychologically tortured and/or publicly humiliated. At least several were physically tortured, one sodomized. Possibly at least two were murdered. Supposedly some 15-20 soldiers, most of whom are from the same military police unit, have been implicated. At least six are being court-martialed. So what this looks like is one unit gone bad and a couple more isolated incidents. The unit that went bad went very bad, though, and if they actually killed people, hang 'em. If people of whatever nationality, American or not, who murder Americans get the death penalty, as I think is justified, then Americans who murder people of other nationalities should get the very same thing. And no, serving in (or working for) the army and complying with legal orders is not murder.

Note that intentionally killing noncombatants or surrendered enemy is not a legal order, and doing so is a war crime for which we hanged Nazis (like SS General Peiper, the commandant at the Battle of the Bulge who had American prisoners shot down in masse, or Wehrmacht Generals Keitel and Jodl, hanged at Nuremberg for, among other things, ordering the killing of prisoners and hostages), or Japanese General Homma, the general in charge of the Bataan Death March.

An example of a soldier killing an innocent person while complying with a legal order might be, say, firing a shell into a house that enemy fire is coming from and later discovering that along with two bad guys with guns you had killed a couple of more people who were just accidentally there for whatever reason.

It's a terrible thing that those innocents were killed, and no matter how hard you try not to do so, innocents will be killed in war. But it's the soldier's job to kill the enemy, especially if the enemy is shooting at him. This is why you do not go to war unless you absolutely have to. I believe the threat to the United States, its allies, the world, and people in general, wherever they live, that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the rogue states pose, justify the occasional tragic death of innocents that war produces.

Perhaps the most important difference between this war, being fought on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the sphere of intelligence and police work around the world, and Vietnam, is that in Vietnam nobody attacked us. Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh boys were brutal Communist bastards, all right, but they didn't pose any real or direct threat to America--unlike Cuba, which I fully believe we would have been justified in invading back in '61 or '62 or so.

Well, we bloody well know that the Islamic terrorists and their rogue state supporters have attacked America and its allies and show every sign of wanting to do so as often as possible in the future (remember WTC I? The USS Cole? The African embassies? Then 9/11, Bali, and Madrid?). So if we have to use war to stop them, so be it. If they weren't trying to kill OUR innocents, none of THEIRS would be in any danger of being killed by us.

America's terms for peace are pretty generous. Stop killing other people with terrorist attacks, especially those people who live in America or allied countries. Stop invading your neighbors. Don't do something so horrendously hellish to your own people that it just has to be stopped. That's all we want. Run whatever tinhorn dictatorships or monarchies or whatever you want. You guys jack up the price of your oil all you want, we don't care. That's your business. We'll buy it off you if we think it's cheaper than spending our money to intensify American production, and we have literally hundreds of years of fossil fuels left--and that's only what we know about, if Bjorn Lomborg is right.

Oh, yeah, one thing. You need to stop trying to exterminate the Israelis. That's important. You recognize their right to exist and give 'em ten years of peace, and I mean NO terrorist attacks, and I bet you they'll respond with a withdrawal to the 1948 borders with Jerusalem as an open city. If I were the Israelis I'd take that deal. But based on past evidence, it's up to YOU to prove they can trust you, not vice versa.

Go read Andrew Sullivan's obituary of Pat Tillman. It's not a feel-good story at all, yet it does help us put the cruelty and abuse of power committed at Abu Ghraib in perspective. It's also a commentary on how a person of integrity deals with the cheap, sleazy world of the media and celebrity.

Check out this piece from the Weekly Standard by Christopher Caldwell on Zapatero's Spain. Caldwell is generally right, I think. Spaniards may want to read this article in order to discover what the American moderate right thinks about Spain and Europe; I would say Mr. Caldwell's ideas are pretty standard among US conservatives; they're pretty similar, though of course better-written, to what we've been saying here.

Here are the first four paragraphs of another Weekly Standard article by Gerard Alexander about the EU's "non-strategy against terror". Go read it.

IN THE WAKE of the March 11 Madrid train bombing, Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said, "It is clear that force alone cannot win the fight against terrorism." Prodi was hardly the first continental leader to implicitly criticize U.S. policy as short-sighted and to suggest that there are clear and compelling alternatives to America's strategy in the war on terror.

Soon after 9/11 itself, French prime minister Lionel Jospin traced terrorist acts to "tension, frustration, and radicalism," which in turn "are linked to inequality," which would have to be addressed. In 2002, France's foreign minister famously termed U.S. policy toward terrorism "simplistic" precisely because it did not look to "root causes, the situations, poverty, injustice." Norway's prime minister, Kjell Bondevik, insists that "fighting terrorism should be about more than using your military and freezing finances," and convened two international conferences on the root causes of terrorism in 2003. And after Madrid, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder said that "terrorism cannot be fought only with arms and police. We must also combat the roots of terrorism."

This view isn't restricted to the other side of the Atlantic. John Kerry said in January 2003 that President Bush "has a plan for waging war [on terror] but no plan for winning the peace" over the long haul. "We need more than a one-dimensional war on terror," he went on, requiring us to "recognize the conditions that are breeding this virulent new form of anti-American terrorism."

There are only two things wrong with this line of
criticism. The United States is mounting a long-term strategy against terrorism. And Europe isn't offering any alternative.

The American media is not paying enough attention to the prisoner-abuse story. I'm surprised the European media isn't playing it up more, because this time they really do have something solid against us. My guess is they've already heard and believed so many atrocity stories about American troops that this is nothing new, no big deal. People, this is the real thing. This is a legitimate atrocity committed by Americans, the first since Vietnam. Most of the other crap they've broadcast about evil Yankee soldiers is bullshit, but this one isn't. The only positive aspect is that the Army is taking responsibility, firing the officers in charge for negligence and court-martialing those soldiers who actually broke military law. America must clearly demonstrate that we do not tolerate this kind of behavior, especially when our guys are the ones who did it.

Before you read this story from page 10 of today's La Vanguardia, click on this AP story and read the whole thing. This is bad. Heads are already rolling among the officer corps, however, and six soldiers are facing court-martials. This is as it should be. Those soldiers accused of cruelty to prisoners should be tried and, if found guilty (and if the photos are legit, which they show every sign of being, they will be), given harsh sentences.

If they killed anybody, they should be tried for capital murder and, if found guilty, should receive at the minimum life imprisonment. Torture is a felony, and in Kansas if you kill anybody as a consequence of committing another felony you can be sentenced to death (e.g. if you rob a bank and during the robbery kill a guard). I would not object to the death penalty in this case, though I would argue the mitigating circumstance of having been in combat, if these soldiers had been.

Well, here we go with Andy Robinson from today's La Vanguardia.

More Iraqi prisoner sadistic torture evidence

Bush emphasizes in message difference with Saddam's cruelty

More proof of "sadistic" torture marks the anniversary of Bush's "mission accomplished". The most recent images of abuses suffered by Iraqi prisoners in the Anglo-American occupation's detention center are only the tip of the iceberg, according to documents obtained by the prestigious magazine "The New Yorker".

The prisoners of war and civilians held in the sinister prison of Abu Ghraib have been "sodomized with flourescent bulbs and broom handles", while their American jailers--members of the military police company 372 and the US secret services--broke chemical lamps and poured their liquid over their nude bodies, beath them with sticks and chairs, and threatened to rape them," according to the 53-page report written by the American Major General Antonio Taguba.

The report also includes two photos of dead prisoners who show signs of torture. One, with the number 153999, has his face "beaten in". Another, "whose bloody body was wrapped up in cellophane," was "beaten up so badly he died", according to the confession of one of the six Americans arrested as directly responsible for the abuses. There are also direct images of an empty room splashed with blood.

The evidence of torture throws another dark shadow ofer the anniversary of the premature victory speech made by President Bush on May 1, 2003, from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, in which he announced the "mission accomplished" in Iraq. Bush said yesterday in his radio speech that, despite the "important challenges" that still remain, there is "an abysmal difference with respect to Saddam's cruelty, since people "no longer disappear in prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves."

But the report about what happened until February 2004 inside Abu Ghraib--one of the most feared prisons during the dictatorship--made the President a liar. Now thousands of arrestees are locked up in this prison complex 30 miles from Baghdad, and "flagrant, indiscriminate, sadistic abuses", according to the report. "The majority of the arrestees are civilians," it continues, "victim of the almost indiscriminate roundups made by the Americans." 60% of the civilians detained in Abu Ghraib are no threat to the occupation forces," it adds.

All the abuses denounced are acts of torture, and "they are not isolated incidents", assured Amnesty International...

There are two and a half more paragraphs but you get the idea.

Now, let's compare the two stories. The AP story makes it clear that those soldiers who were involved are in extremely deep trouble. Three are already facing courts-martial, three more have been indicted, and seven more have been suspended from duties, which I assume is a temporary status before being either indicted or having their cases dismissed. Andy's story doesn't mention that.

The AP story doesn't say anything about prisoners being killed. Andy's story makes a big deal about two allegedly muredered prisoners.

The AP story says one prisoner was sodomized. Andy's story implies that this happened with some frequency.

The AP story does not imply that these cruelties and abuses were something widespread. Andy's story says they were.

Conclusion: If Andy's story is right, the Americans are little better than Saddam. This is just the tip of the iceberg and many more torture and murder cases will turn up. Should torture and murder committed by Americans have been a widespread practice in occupied Iraq, we should leave quickly, as fast as possible without turning the country over to some new dictator, because we have no business telling anybody how to behave if our army practices widespread torture and murder.

If the AP story is right, though, then this was just a few isolated incidents and those responsible will be punished. Also, this information came from a United States Army internal report, and investigation into abuses of prisoners was under way well before the photos hit the press. Which proves that the Army is not covering anything up and is trying to get to the bottom of the story.

Based on the AP's take on the story, I actually feel not that horrible. I am shocked and ashamed that American troops participated in such abuses of prisoners, but it looks to me like these were the actions of just a few psychopaths who somehow got into uniform, and that the American government and armed forces will not tolerate and openly condemn their behavior.

Based on Andy's take, the Marines are the SS, Abu Ghraib is Auschwitz, and Bush is Hitler.

We'll have to see which of the two turns out to be true.

Now read Seymour Hersh's piece in the New Yorker, the original source for both Robinson's and the AP's stories.

I just thought I'd take five minutes and give y'all some links to slightly offbeat websites that I like. You've probably heard of at least some of them, but you may not have heard of some others. Check them out.

Urban Legends Reference Pages--The well-known snopes.com. Earth's best source for debunking of rumors, scare stories, and the like.

Quackwatch--Loads of information on health (and a few other) frauds. Includes lots of skepticism and logic and science and all that stuff.

The Hardball Times--The best baseball site, bar none.

Pet of the Day--Really cute pet pectures.

Victorian Web--Everything you ever wanted to know about one of the most fascinating periods of history.

Arts and Letters Daily--If you didn't already know about this one, you should. Dozens of links to the most interesting middle-to-highbrow articles and essays out there.

Fametracker--This one is hilarious. It half loves and half laughs at the world of celebrities and showbiz, and skewers that world.

Darwin Awards--Everybody loves the Darwin Awards. I think it's because we enjoy knowing that we're not the stupidest people out there.

JunkScience.com--Another great debunking site.

Screenplays For You--Over 600 real movie scripts. I have no idea whether this is legal or not. It's based in Russia, so I suppose it isn't.

KHYI--My favorite country station. A bunch of hippie rednecks out of Dallas. Just click "Listen Now".

The Crime Library--Great morbid sensationalistic true-crime stuff.

Cliff Yablonski Hates You--Great collection of dumb photographs with even dumber comments. Hilarious.

The Straight Dope--Answers to hundreds of questions you probably wouldn't have thought of yourself. Indispensible.

A lot of people have been talking about this article (in Spanish) by Fernando Mugica in El Mundo. It details what happened between March 11 and March 14, explaining why the Aznar government was so sure that ETA was behind the bombing and what then occurred in the media frenzy that ended with Zapatero's victory. I think it's just a little conspiracy-minded, myself; that is, I believe most of the media and the political left did their very best to torpedo the PP, and they achieved this. I do not believe, however, that there was a plot behind the media assault; I think it was spontaneous. What happened was that several different media outlets all did the same thing at the same time, but each acting on its own. That shouldn't be too hard to believe, since we know that the bosses of El Pais, TV3, SER radio, and the like are all the same kind of people and so are all likely to automatically do the same thing. Bang any normal person on the knee and he'll kick his foot. Bang any normal Spanish leftist on the knee and he'll try to sabotage the Partido Popular.

Just to show there's occasionally somebody sensible writing in La Vanguardia, here's Jaime Arias, who does not like the current Administration one bit but who is pro-American. He's commenting on the expansion of the European Union to 25 countries, which officially happens today. (Trivia question: Can you name all 25 countries without looking it up? First person to actually do so wins a date with the Jedman. Second person wins two dates.)

...America (is) the traditional guarantor of democratic values and principles. This is a question of forgetting, just for a few moments, the errors committed in foreign policy by the current Administration in Washington. And remembering, on the other hand, how much of the achievement of the dreams of Churchill and Monnet is owed to the almost continuous generosity of the United States and Canada during and after the Second World War.

You can be sure that Europe would not be celebrating today the union of 25 of its states if it had not had the formidable support of the successive Congresses and presidencies of the United States. The colossal landings, the participation in the decisive battles, the incredible Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the firm support of European institutions, the alliances in the Cold War leading to deStalinization, the later military presence in the Balkans, and the Sixth Fleet, protecting our seas...Why go on? Despite the obvious failures, debated in the media with the freedom of expression, Europe: "Remember". (in the original English).

Thank you, Mr. Arias. We may disagree about Bush, but I'll bet we agree about most other things.

Now let's take a dive into the shithole. Here is a story from yesterday's Vanguardia. It seems that Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro is back in Barcelona and spreading lies.

La Vanguardia's correspondent in the Middle East, Tomas Alcoverro, on Wednesday denounced the violation of human rights by George W. Bush's administration in Iraq. During a conference, part of a series organized by the Sabadell city government, the journalist asked, "How many civilian victims have fallen in this war that does not want to admit its name since Bush proclaimed on May 1 the end of military operations?"

The experienced correspondent told how in Fallujah an American sergeant fired on a boy who, with his hands in his pockets, was crossing a vacant lot, and killed him on the spot. The sergeant screamed at his soldiers, "Leave him to me." He wanted to get revenge for the death of a Marine friend--he explained--who had been shot to death by an Iraqi guerrilla.

...He talked about the vulnerability of the civilian population and the violation of freedom at the hands of the most brutal violence.

I accuse Tomas Alcoverro of lying. First, if he'd really seen anything like that, he'd have reported it post-haste and it would have been a big screaming headline on the Vanguardia's front page. Second, if he'd really seen anything like that, he should have reported it instantly to Coalition authorities--perhaps by bringing it up at a press conference. If Tommy didn't trust the Americans, he could have made his accusations to a Spanish officer. Third, how does Tommy know why the sergeant wanted to kill the Iraqi boy? He must have talked to the sergeant himself or to his men. Why doesn't he give their names or units? (The sergeant and his men should have been identifiable because of their surnames and their unit badges sewn on their uniforms.) That would prove his story is true. Or why doesn't he produce a photograph? What's a reporter these days doing without a cheapo digital camera?

I just bet he doesn't give their names and units because he made up the whole damn thing himself. You are a liar, Mr. Alcoverro, and I'll see your sorry ass in court if you want to sue.

La Vangua's back-page interview goes to one Jean Baudrillard, who isn't sure what he is, "whether a philosopher, a thinker, a metaphysicist, a moralist..." I'd call him simply another long-winded, pretentious wanker with a Ph.D.

A: ...We live under the illusion that we are the masters of our actions, but I do not believe we are responsible for our own lives.

Q: That would lead us to amorality.

A: Yes, yes, or to immorality. I think we live on a double plane. In one, according to the social and moral rules. The other one depends on fate, on something else, on unpredictable things, on meaninglessness, and that reality is so intolerable that we invent a meaning. But I advise people not to let the meaningless level of life out of their sight.

Q: But you define yourself as a moralist.

A. Good and evil, in the end, exchange places. An excess of good produces evil and vice versa; it's a sort of perverse effect that annuls the dividing line between good and evil.

Q: We could establish the frontier at the respect for human life.

A: Existence isn't everything, it's even the least important of things, it's raw material. We think the human being was made in order to live and be happy, but that is just our system of values. To other cultures, happiness and the individual mean nothing. We should relativize our culture and beliefs.

That is about the most nihilistic alleged philosophy I've encountered. Not to mention totalitarian. His "double plane of life" is instantly identifiable as the Freudian id versus the superego. That's nothing new or original. And exactly how does an excess of evil produce good? Think about the Holocaust. Yes, it produced Primo Levi's writings and Anne Frank's diary. And not much else good to balance out all that evil. Finally, one reason I prefer our Western culture to many others is specifically its respect for human life; Baudrillard thinks we should become more like those other cultures!

I don't want to get involved at length in the absolutism versus relativism debate here; I'll merely state that it's been a question that real philosophers like Kant and Aristotle and Mill have been debating for the last 2500 years or so, and Baudrillard has failed to add anything to the discussion except to say we ought to think in a more relativistic way. The main counterargument here, of course, is that if you believe in human rights you're an absolutist--you're saying that no matter what the circumstances are, people have certain rights and violating them is wrong and evil. Remember that bit about "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."? (Jefferson had originally written "sacred and undeniable"; Adams and Franklin suggested the change.) The Founders were absolutists on human rights. If you "hold a truth to be self-evident", you're saying, "Look, dude, this is what I believe and there's going to be no changing due to circumstances. What's wrong is wrong, period."

Ima Sanchis, the interviewer, neatly carves up Baudrillard in her last three questions / statements. Good job, Ima!

Boy, the news that American troops have done some pretty nasty things to Iraqi prisoners has been a bombshell over here. First things first, no ifs ands or buts. The American armed forces are investigating the soldiers involved in this incident and they will be disciplined. Several officers' careers will be ruined and the individuals who appear in the photos will undoubtedly spend some time in the stockade. If anything less happens--if there's an attempt to sweep this under the rug--I will be outraged.

This behavior is not typical of American troops and an example must be made in order to demonstrate that we do not tolerate the cruel treatment of prisoners.

Now, what these people did was psychologically torture and humiliate Iraqi prisoners. Comparisons to Saddam Hussein's torture chambers are ridiculous, and accusations that more than a handful of US troops are bad eggs, rogue elements, cruel bastards, whatever you want to call them, are ludicrous. The claims made by the person in charge, Sergeant Chip Frederick, that he had not been given proper instruction from above on how to interrogate prisoners are ridiculous. Gee, buddy, you ask them questions, and if they don't answer, you ask them the questions again. Somebody will talk eventually. You do not blindfold them, put them on a beam, put electric cables in their hands, and tell them if they fall they'll be electrocuted, and then be dumb enough to photograph the whole thing. One would think any idiot could figure this out. Those excuses don't wash.

Just a comment. This guy's name is Chip Frederick. Now, if there's ever a fratboy name, this is it. I will bet you ten-to-one this electric-cables stunt and this posing of prisoners in simulated homosexual scenes are techniques Chipper picked up during his fraternity years. Both of them sound like typical fraternity hazing crap. My old high school classmate, Walt Neidner, who was in Sigma Nu at the University of Kansas, can serve as witness that at his fraternity they did something very similar to the electric cables, and I've heard several people say that they had to simulate homosexual acts as part of initiation.

(Note to fraternity members: Yeah, yeah, I know, 99% of you would never do anything like what Chipper did, and of course you're right, you wouldn't. It's no more fair to say all frat guys are bad because of what Chipper did than it is to say that all American soldiers are bad because of it. During my time in college I never heard of any real fraternity atrocities; once the SAEs got busted for putting somebody in the hospital by forcing him to drink, another time they almost got kicked off campus for stealing cable TV, and the most notorious thing that happened was one of their pledges ordered a pizza and then attacked the black girl who delivered it. Of course, they kicked the guy out, and he was arrested and jailed. That was about it. That and the Acacias were forced to disband, I think by the national headquarters, and they wrecked the house, which cost a whole lot of money. These were both loser fraternities at KU during my time, at least. Those guys were not cool, they were jerks. Most of the other frats were considerably higher-toned and more respectable.)

All right, River City! This is Dr. Johnny Fever and I am burning up in here! And now here's Les Nessman with the news...

Well, let's see. In today's Vanguardia Andy Robinson has a smear piece on John Negroponte. Meanwhile, the Thais had a shootout with some Islamic fundamentalist rebels in the southern part of the country and killed more than a hundred of them. They figure that Jamaa Islamiya is behind it; there have been multiple terrorist attacks against police officers, Buddhist monks, and just plain civilians that are likely their work, and Jamaa Islamiya's operations chief was arrested in Thailand last year.

The Vangua also has a story saying that the US is very happy about the expansion of the EU to 25 states. First, most of the new additions are former Communist states that are now strongly pro-American. Second, this is a further guarantee of continued peace in Europe; the US doesn't have to worry about any more trouble in these parts and can focus on other areas. Third, this is of course going to be a boost for the new members' economies, and American business is expecting to benefit in the long term based on the theory of the rising tide lifting all boats. Fourth, France's influence in the EU will be diluted. It looks like Eusebio Val, Vangua correspondent, has picked up Danielle Pletka from the American Enterprise Institute as a regular source, because he quotes her extensively in his story and says that her statements were made directly to "this newspaper", i.e. he himself. He's used her at least once before as an exclusive source. Excellent. This is evidence that Val is trying to report both sides of the story, at least somewhat, since Pletka is obviously pro-American and conservative. Val's articles that quoted Pletka were both quite moderate in tone. Say what you will, this is better than Xavier Mas de Xaxas, and a hell of a lot better than Spain's Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, and Robert Fisk all rolled into one, Rafael Ramos, a disgrace to the profession of journalism. Since journalism is one of the lowest professions existent, ethically speaking, calling Ramos a disgrace to it is strong language, which I fully intended. I would put journalism at its worst, Ramos's journalism, somewhere below prostitution, which is at least a fair deal, assuming both parties agree to the arrangements.

Zap went to Berlin and licked Gerhard Schroeder's taint. Spain is officially in the Berlin-Paris Axis of Weasels. Said Schroeder, "I've spoken with French president Jacques Chirac, and we are in agreement to propose a close collaboration between Germany, France, and Spain that could result in the launching of joint initiatives in the European sphere and the international sphere", said Schroeder. Specifically, Spain is going to dump the Poles and roll over for the French plan to divide power among the various EU countries; that is, Zap is going to accept less power for Spain in the constitutional carveup than what Aznar and the Poles were holding out for. Also, specifically, there is lots of talk that the Bermuda Triangle of Europe is going to propose some kind of resolution in the UN related to who ought to be in charge in Iraq; I suppose what they're hoping for is a UN resolution mandating that the US turn over control of its forces in Iraq to the UN, which the Americans and British would undoubtedly veto but which is the kind of grandstanding that Socialists and anti-Americans like to do.

Zap's next stop is Paris, where he will lick Chirac's taint.

There are rumors running around the Spanish media that the Americans are refusing to collaborate, and are actually being obstructive, in the Spanish pullout from Iraq. Spain's military spokesman denied this, of course, and I can't imagine that the Americans are actually interfering in the military actions of an "ally" or doing anything that would put Spanish troops in any sort of unnecessary danger.

Jordi Pujol, retired Catalan Prime Minister, gave a quite reasonable talk yesterday. Pujol is an old fox, and I have a good deal of respect for him because he is a conservative politician with impeccable anti-Franco credentials (he was jailed for three years and was tortured several times). He has always defended freedom and democracy, though his economic ideas are more conservative / mercantilist than liberal / capitalist; he's a Christian Democrat in spirit if not in name, and he takes the social responsibility of the state very seriously. Pujol, like most Continental Europeans, believes that the state's role is to take care of the citizens, rather than to serve the citizens. He is not altogether closed to influence from outside, though, and has always been very pro-business, though somewhat protectionist in his pro-Catalan bourgeois small business stance. I had three complaints about Pujol while he was PM of Catalonia: he had no idea what a balanced budget was, he had a demagogic tendency to play the Catalan nationalist card when he was criticized, and he was rather an old-style cacique regarding things like the awarding of government contracts. But, hey, he's personally honest and his friends aren't any bigger thieves than anyone else in Europe. Especially not when you compare them with France.

Pujol's very reasonable on foreign affairs. He wants to be friends with everybody, both the French and Germans and the US; I don't know if this is possible but Pujol wants to try. It's a respectable position for a conservative politician who believes that Spain should stay in the second rank of powers internationally, which was one of the main points of Pujol's talk; he accused Aznar of thinking that Spain was a more important player than it really is: "Sooner or later you will see the real strength each one has."

He pointed out that "if what France is trying to do is destabilize the United States, then Spain should stay out of it," that Europe and the US "need to understand that they need one another", that Europe should become "an ally of the United States and not its altar boy," and that therefore both sides should prepare themselves to work together and, importantly, should not "feed the desires of those in Europe who want the United States to fail." Pujol then called those people "stupid".

I don't agree with everything Pujol says, I never have, but he is somebody who it is worth listening to. There's a Spanish expression: "If you keep your mouth closed, you won't swallow any flies." Pujol has kept his mouth shut since leaving office, and when he opens it it's usually to say something fairly serious.

Judge Garzon believes that a guy named Amer Azizi, an important Al Qaeda operative in Spain, is the connection between the Al Qaeda cell behind 9-11 and the other Al Qaeda cell behind 3-11. Azizi and Said Barraj were present at an Al Qaeda summit in Istanbul in October 2000 and Azizi organized the meeting in Tarragona before 9-11 where the final plans were apparently laid down. Said Barraj is wanted--there's an international warrant out on him--as a 3-11 conspirator. These two guys are the link. This same bunch of people, the Terrorist International, were behind ALL the terrorist bombings, not to mention a major player in Iraq. I cannot believe that anyone in his right mind can fail to see that we, the West, are at war with these people, and Zap's saying "Well, we don't want to fight, so please don't attack us anymore" is not going to work.

By the way, there is heavy speculation that the still unidentified seventh terrorist killed when they blew up the Leganes apartment is either Barraj or Azizi.

Here is the dumbest thing La Vanguardia has done for a long time. On the front page, a jump headline says, "Mark Spitz states that US may not compete in Olympics". Well, it turns out that Mark Spitz got interviewed by the BBC and he said something about maybe the Americans won't go to Athens because it will be too dangerous. Now, Mark Spitz is a private citizen who doesn't know any more about it than you or I do. He's not on the Olympic Committee or the Swimming Federation or whatever; he's just a guy who won a bunch of medals 32 years ago. Yet they stick this on the front page. Sheesh.

Travelling Shoes has got an excellent post on the question, "Who is Javier Robert?" Seems that as part of the Oil-for-Food scam, three people in Spain were on the list of people who were bribed by Saddam with oil coupons. Two of them were Spaniards of Arab origin, and the other is one Javier Robert, who doesn't seem to exist. A couple of the more sensationalist Spanish magazines, Interviu and La Clave, have suggested that "Javier Robert" is really Javier Ruperez, the Spanish ambassador in Washington. Interesting if true.

James Taranto links to Baltasar Garzon's continuing investigation into the Spanish connection with 9/11. We know that Mohammed Atta and the Al Qaeda boys met with a bunch of other conspirators in the months before 9/11 in out-of-the-way hotels in Tarragona and Salou, very close to Barcelona. What they're trying to figure out is exactly who is connected to whom and to what because, let me tell you, there are so many Mohammad Thises and Abu Thats and Abdul The Other Things involved in the whole Al Qaeda / Terrorist International spiderweb that I can't believe the cops can keep it all straight, because I certainly can't.

Well, the promise that Zap's bailout from Iraq would result in, like, peace and love and stuff, was broken by Moqtada Al Sadar's Shiite militia, who attacked Spanish patrols near Najaf twice within 24 hours. Ironically, it was the same bunch of guys who got attacked both times. They get shot at and kill two terrorists, get back home, go out the next day, get shot at, and kill six of them. Somebody ought to put these dudes in for a medal. That's pretty courageous, that is. The second shootout lasted more than two hours, when the patrol got ambushed by Al Sadar's men. They opened fire from their armored cars and called in reinforcements: soon fifty Spanish troops were on the scene. They took seven prisoners, four of whom were turned over to the Iraqi police and the other three, wounded, were taken to the Spanish base and given medical treatment. A large weapons cache, of explosives, grenade launchers and grenades, and machine-guns, was captured. The Spaniards took no casualties. Congratulations to these brave soldiers; I think they've demonstrated the Spanish Army can fight well. Too bad these proven troops who've seen battle are now being sent home. Our contempt for Zap certainly does not extend to the Spanish military and police forces.

La Vangua is reporting that the Americans have Fallujah surrounded and that there are about 2000 terrorists holding out inside, of whom some 200 are foreign "activists", one of whom is our friend Musab Al Zarqawi of Al Qaeda, a major suspect in the 3/11 bombings in Madrid. Mr. Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, is considered the brains behind the foreign Islamist presence in Iraq. He is also behind the brains of a planned chemical attack in Amman that might have killed tens of thousands of people; two weeks ago the Jordanian authorities rounded up six terrorists and sent four others to the land of 72 virgins. These guys had twenty tons of chemical explosives and poison gas that they were going to use against the secret service headquarters, the "Ministry of Information", and the prime minister's office.

La Vangua is also echoing the anti-Kerry campaign the Bushies are doing so well at encouraging. They point out Kerry's rotten record in the Senate on defense, opposing eight major defense systems (MX missiles, B-1 bomber, Apache helicopter, F-15 and F-14 planes, and Sparrow, Tomahawk, and Patriot missiles), opposing the first Gulf war, flipflopping on the Iraq war, and the personal questions about his character brought up by the "did he throw his medals away?" flap and his other political actions during the Vietnam War. Do the Dems really think this guy is electable? I see him as very vulnerable on his Senate record, where his votes have been lefty Democrat as a rule. I don't know how well lefty Democrat is going to play in Florida or Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan or any other of the battleground states.

Note for foreigners: to simplify matters, Kerry should win the Northeast and the West Coast. Bush should win the interior West, the Plains states, and the Southeast. The war is on in the Midwest, the triangular area between Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh, and Florida, which is atypical because everyone there has moved from somewhere else and the place is full of blacks, Cubans, crackers, old folks, Jews, and rootless suburbanites, all of which tend to run up big votes one way (Cubans, suburbanites, and crackers Republican, the rest Democrat) and wind up canceling one another out, so you never can predict what's going to happen.

La Vanguardia's line on Zap and the Iraq pullout is that Zap was right when he said that there was no chance that by June 30 for the UN to take over Iraq politically or for the Americans to turn command of their military forces over to the UN or some other organization. Therefore, Zap did the right thing, especially since Spain is now going to line up with Paris and Berlin rather than Washington and London. Carlos Nadal says that Zap is an "open and dialoguing man" who with "the complete right" has "changed the direction of Spanish foreign policy". He adds that the Madrid-Paris-Berlin should elaborate a real foreign policy alternative to America's.

So much for the alliance. See, when your newspapers are saying that Spanish foreign policy has been correctly and appropriately changed in order to oppose the United States, and that your government should and will ally with others in order to provide an alternative to (i.e. sabotage) American policy, and when you yourself set non-negotiable conditions that are clearly prima facie unacceptable before taking the unilateral decision to pull out of a allied military operation, it seems to me that you don't want to be an ally anymore.

If that's true, Zap, if you want to bail out of the Western alliance, just say so, and then don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Spain will likely be treated by Washington with more respect if its government becomes an out-and-out opponent of America rather than a weaselly undependable pseudo-ally, which is what it is right now. Better to be honest, open, and disliked than scorned, laughed at, and disliked, which are the two choices open to Spain regarding its policy toward the US at this point.

The big news today, though, is the Real Madrid-FC Barcelona soccer game tonight. Although Valencia is in first place, tied with Real Madrid at 70 points with five games left, the Madrid-Barca games are the two big events of every Spanish soccer season; it's the biggest rivalry in Spanish sports. What we all have to do is go down to one of the various local bars if we want to see the game, though, because it's on pay-per-view. The bars, completely illegally, show the game on their TV and fill the place with beer drinkers. It's actually kind of fun to go down there, if you can deal with the drunken screaming of idiots who know even less about soccer than I do hollering at top volume "Falta! Penalti!" every time a Barca player kisses the turf. That and drinking warm beer. They always sell out of cold beer by the end of the first half or so.

Anyway, Barcelona is making a serious comeback. They started the season horribly, but since about Christmas they've been winning steadily. They're in third place on 63 points--but if they win tonight (of course therefore Madrid would lose), and if Valencia loses to Athletic Bilbao, which is entirely possible: Athletic's in fifth place and playing at home, and they have a pretty good team--then they'll be four points behind Valencia and Madrid with four games to go. That, my friends, is an end-of-season pennant race; Deportivo de la Coruna seems to have fallen by the wayside and will likely come in fourth.

The lineup will be Valdes, whom I don't particularly like, in goal; a defense of Reiziger, Puyol, Oleguer, and Van Bronckhorst, which has finally stabilized and allows surprisingly few goals; Cocu, Xavi, and Davids in midfield, all of whom are solid team players, Xavi more of an attacking player and Cocu and Davids more defensive; and Luis Enrique, Ronaldinho, and Saviola at forward. Luis Garcia, who normally plays left wing, is out and Luis Enrique, who is over the hill and playing out his last season, will sub him. Notice that Kluivert doesn't get to play anymore. He's gone. I bet he winds up with some mediocre Italian or English team, one of your Middlesbroughs or Brescias. Madrid will play their standard lineup except with Solari in for Ronaldo. I predict a pretty good game. Barca has nothing to lose, and I'm sure they are going to come out at full speed and bombard Madrid's area with every decent ball they get. Madrid, on the other hand, is nervous; they've been slumping lately and their fans are angry. They need a win badly, for psychological reasons, though a tie would probably be enough to knock Barca out of the race for the title, leaving them seven points back with four games to go.

Here's a call for protectionism from the business pages of the Vangua today; it's by Pedro Nueno, in response to what they're calling "delocalization" around here--that is, companies moving high-wage, low-skill factory jobs to places where the wages are lower and the skills are equally low. This is something that's been going on, I dunno, since the enclosure movement in Great Britain at the very least. Probably it's been going on since as soon as the division of labor began.

Anyway, get this. "So while we can still think (and have ideas thanks to God), we workers should not take our jobs lightly and the politicians should not touch anything that works. Just the contrary: they should be sensible and facilitate everything that the industries we still have ask." Boy, if that isn't a petit bourgeois call for the protection of the position their small businesses currently hold, then I've never seen one. "We" workers should work hard and the government should give companies tax breaks and tariffs and subsidies and restrictive anti-competition regulatory laws. Never mind that all this protection comes at the expense of the Spanish consumer, forced to pay higher prices due to the lack of competition on the supply side of the market.

Mr. Nueno's attitude is not uncommon over here, and it shows several traits of Spanish thinking that Americans often find a little strange. One is the idea of the small-company boss as patron of the workers, completely dead in America but still alive over here. The state is also thought of as the workers' protector rather than the people's servant. Second is the curious contradiction between the utter economic conservatism (NOT liberalism / capitalism) of the Spanish people--they want mercantilism, protection, low growth and low risk, above all security--and their professed leftism. If the tradeoff for what they want is delayed innovation, frustrated entrepreneurship, fewer individual opportunities, weaker long-term performance, and a second-rank position in the world, they're willing to pay those prices. Third is the idea that no matter what a public question is, the state should take at least some role in deciding what the response is going to be.

Friday was Sant Jordi, a pleasant holiday here in Catalonia. As you probably know, the "tradition" is that men give women a rose and women give men a book. Some enormous proportion of the books bought in Catalonia every year are bought for Sant Jordi. And the gypsies and homeless people put up flower stands and sell roses all over the city. It's kind of nice. People get out in the streets and there are Catalan flags and roses all over the place.

On Saturday Remei's cousins had the annual reunion out in Cervera; a good time was had by all. We went to this restaurant that's inside the storeroom of an old bakery under the city walls, and the food was excellent this time. (Once they all decided to go to this place in Odena where they served rabbit paella, which half the people wouldn't eat, and this nasty sweet local wine. It was just awful. Another time we went to this dump in Igualada that specialized in deep-fried frozen food, or at least that's what they served us.) Course one was various platters of salt shrimp and steamed mussels in a vinegar sauce, steamed small scallops with olive oil and garlic, xato (pronounced sha-TOH), which is a salad with escarole and salt cod and a spicy peppery sauce called romesco, and roast artichokes and mushrooms with olive oil and black pepper. I wiped out a whole platter of artichokes and mushrooms and let the others eat the mollusks, which kind of gross me out. Simple, excellent quality food. Course two was ternasco, which is more or less a beef rib with a huge chunk of greasy meat on the end, slow-cooked in the oven. (This place's specialty is stuff they cook in their big old oven, of course). As a non-mammal eater, I got escalibada, which is a salad of roast red pepper, eggplant, and onion, roast setas, which are wild mushrooms, and a big old roast potato "al caliu" with garlic and olive oil. Good stuff. Course one came with "vino turbio", a young white wine from Galicia that goes well with seafood. It's called "turbio" because it's not clear. Course two came with a very nice red wine from the Cervera area. I'm no wine expert but this was pretty good stuff. It's made with Tempranillo grapes, the Spanish red standard, and it's hard to go wrong with a good solid Tempranillo wine. Dessert was a cake, which was very mediocre as usual--I don't much like Spanish pastry, it's too dry and too sugary for my taste, and they don't use butter--but the brut cava that accompanied it was good. Coffee and brandy after dinner, of course, and if you'd wanted a cigar you could have had one, though only Tio Jesus did. Get this. Thirty bucks apiece. Everything but the cake top-notch, and the cake was prepared correctly and pleased everyone else; I just don't especially like Spanish cakes.

Also, of course, the family doesn't hassle me about being American or foreign or talking funny Catalan. They hassle me about why we don't have any kids and stuff like that.

I think the best Catalan cooking is the simple kind, with first-class ingredients and tried and true recipes and cooking styles. They've got these fancy places that charge a couple of hundred bucks, like Ferran Adria's restaurant, serving whatever's the latest Nuevo Wavo, and that's fine if you like that and can afford it, but it is hard to go wrong in a down-to-earth real Catalan place.

Good God, it's puff piece week in La Vanguardia for Manuel Castells. He must be their pet intellectual, since this talk he gave yesterday gets page 11 of their "Living" section. It's sponsored by the Pompeu Fabra University, the Godo Group (the people who own the Vangua), and the Count of Barcelona Foundation. supposedly the lecture was the first course of a Master (Spanish for worthless certificate of attendance at some seminars) in Direction of Communication and Multimedia Group Enterprises. Get this: Josep Maria Casasus, worthless and incompetent La Vanguardia ombudsman, is the director of the course, and there's a photo of Castells and Casasus along with the puff piece. The story includes a couple of paragraphs on what a genius Castells is. Here's his conclusion: "Today, of all the information available in the world, 97% is digitalized and 80% is on the Internet. Therefore, each one of us can construct his own hypertext. It is a total revolution, which changes concepts and directly affects the mass meada, constantly eroded over the last 20 years. We do not live in an era of virtual reality, an incorrect expression, but of real virtuality, understood so as the dominant culture is the one that is supported by electronic systems of communications". How much does this guy get paid for spewing this nonsense?

Dis is "Lefty da Horse" wit da news heah from da Gambino boys heah in Barcelona. Oh, hell, that's going to get me into even more trouble than Speedy Gonzalez. Screw it. Anyway, the Vangua reports that Washington is seriously pissed off at Zap's sudden withdrawal--can I call that coitus interruptus? Anyway, Sebi Val has gotten hold of someone he identifies as "a high civil servant in the Administration"--somehow I doubt that anyone of importance is leaking to Sebi--who says, "We completely respect the political decision to withdraw the troops, but the way it's being done is very disappointing and unprofessional. They didn't coordinate it with the commanders on the ground. It's causing us problems in order to cover very important positions. And it could put operations and lives in danger. It's just not the way allies behave toward one another. The president is very, very angry." Anybody still laughing about my placement of Zap's Spain at number two on the Administration shit list? I repeat: from what I read, which is all I know about it, Washington can handle opposition, such as what Germany did. But it won't stand for getting jerked around, which is what France and now Zap's Spain have done. This is why there's some rapprochement between the US and Germany, but not with France, not in the very least.

Sebi goes on to say, "The acid language of the American administration shows to what point the Zapatero government's decision has hurt, above all for the most inopportune moment at which it took place, exactly when the US and Great Britain were trying to involve the UN more and promote a new Security Council resolution that would allow the incorporation of more countries in Iraq's stabilization." This is a pretty serious accusation if Sebi is right. Zap just plain screwed up. He's way over his head. He had no idea what was going on regarding Coalition strategy, or if he did, then he chose to do exactly the wrong thing in response.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, the new and highly unqualified Foreign Minister, is trying to put a happy face on things. He said something about how the Americans wanted him to be a mediator between Israel and Palestine--he must be dreaming--and some guff about looking together into the future, not to mention maintaining the "privileged relationship" between the US and Spain. Didn't work, says Sebi. Powell wouldn't hold a joint press conference with him, and Condi Rice's office won't even comment on her meeting with Moratinos.

Says Jose Bono, Spain's new Defense Minister, "The Spanish government does not foresee that the United Nations will take charge of Iraq politically and militarily because there are countries that at this moment will never turn over the command of their troops to a different general who is not of the nationality to which the troops belong." OK, Jose's rationale here is that since the US will not turn over the command of its 125,000 guys over there to anybody else, especially when nobody else but the Brits is providing more than about 2000 troops, and especially not to the useless United Corrupt Dictatorial Third World Nations, therefore Spain should leave the Coalition. Real smart.

Added Bono, "Spain is an autonomous state and never again, never again, not while Zapatero governs, will it turn its back on the United Nations or the Spanish people in order to give a handshake to a partner like the Government of the United States." So, Joe, what you're saying is that Spain's allegiance to the NATO treaty is less significant than to the UN, and should the two come in conflict, you'll go with the UN rather than with the US or, by extension, NATO. Shows what Spain's word on a treaty is now worth. Zap and Moratinos and Bono are headed straight for international isolation; their only friends are going to be the Axis of Weasels and the Lula-Chavez-Castro bunch. Oh, yeah, and Al Qaeda, of course.

Here's a very interesting piece from the New Republic on who Al Qaeda's new recruits are. I do not doubt that there are a few radical youths here in town who would at the least shelter anyone who they thought was a real terrorist and would do so just for kicks. Some of these squatters are real idiots and a couple of them have already been busted for collaborating with ETA. The great majority, of course, are just stupid kids playing revolutionary, but I'll bet you a combination plate that within the next couple of years we'll see at least a couple more of the local doofus squatters behind bars for collaborating with terrorists.

Andrew Sullivan links to this upcoming event called the Copenhagen Consensus, sponsored by The Economist among others, in which opposing papers regarding ten subjects (like, say, "Climate change") will be presented on the twin issues of the environment and economics. The idea is to see how we can best use the free market in order to define what a reasonably acceptable environment is, what improvements can be made immediately (Legalize DDT! Stop malaria! Two million human lives a year! Environmental damage minimal! Incredibly cheap! or Promote genetically modified foods! They're cheaper and more productive both in the short and long runs, and besides they have added positive characteristics that make them, say, rot less easily or possess additional vitamins! or Make sure that everywhere in the world there are large supplies of those salt-glucose-and-liquid IV bags for people with epidemic diarrhea! That's basically Gatorade. So cheap and would save so many human lives!) and then to make the most logical choices for the future.

Gee, this could be something we could get at the Forum of Cultures here in Barcelona, right? I mean, this actually sounds like they're going to talk about important stuff from a realistic point of view based on, like, facts and other difficult things like that. I bet people who attend the Copenhagen Consensus will actually learn something, and who knows, may even go home and do something to change policy.

Naah. The point of the Forum is for a bunch of fruitloops, flakes, and nuts to all pat one another on the back about how moral they all are and to make some money for some real estate developers with good connections in the Ajuntament.

Here's some more Manuel Castells.

3. The bombing and occupation of Iraq were not the Iraq War. The war started afterward, according to the strategy of assymetrical confrontation, in which each side uses the methods that benefit it most. The United States, bombings and technology. The resistants, bombs, attentats, guerrilla warfare and, now, the kidnapping and murder of foreigners.

First, Manuel, lay off about the horrors of the bombing; several hundred Iraqis, and I emphasize the word hundred, who were innocent civilians, were killed in the combat stage of the war, which can be said to have ended with the American entrance into Baghdad. This is a terrible thing. It's also one of the cleanest bombings in history; it did what it was supposed to, which was knock out Saddam's command and control, and it killed very few innocent people compared to the positive good it did. This is because the Americans tried their very best to kill as few innocents as possible. All Brits in disagreement might look up "Dresden" or "Hamburg". Any German in disagreement--well, there are a whole lot of things he ought to look up before getting all righteously indignant about this one.

The thing that's really pathetic about Point 3 is the moral equivalence Castells makes between the "resisters" and their use of murder, terrorism, kidnapping, and the like, and the Coalition, which follows the laws of warfare, is consistent with the laws of each participating country, and commits no unprovoked violence. Castells actually justifies terrorism since it's the only weapon the terrorists have to carry on their struggle.

4. The capture of Saddam and the death of his sons did not diminish the resistance. In reality this intensified with the passage of time and the experience of occupation. Which demonstrates that it is not acolytes of Saddam Hussein who are the source of opposition to the occupation, but the proverbial Iraqi resistance to all occupiers, reinforced in this case by Islamist activists from other countries who, now, are intervening in Iraq.

This guy flings so much bullshit that you almost have to deconstruct him word for word. 1) Resistance, my ass. Terrorists and Saddam Fedayeen. 2) Iraq is a hell of a lot better place now than it was during the Saddam regime. Anyone not recognizing that is deluded. Mr. Castells is deluded. 3) "It is not acolytes of Saddam Hussein..." What exactly does Castells think the Saddam Fedayeen is? 4) "Iraqi resistance to all occupiers"? Iraq has never resisted a single occupier. Hell, it didn't even exist as a concept, much less a country, until after World War I. "Iraq" wasn't even the standard geographical term for the area, which was and is Mesopotamia. For about the six hundred years before that it had been part of the Ottoman Empire. Before that it was part of the Abbasid Caliphate. Before that it was part of the Persian Empire. It was also occupied at various times by various hordes of Turks, Mongols, and the like. As for Iraqi resistance to the British, when the Brits overthrew the pro-Nazi Iraqi regime during World War II, nobody made a peep because they knew the Brits were not going to brook any nonsense. 5) Check out the logic. The fact that terrorism has arguably increased in Iraq since Saddam's capture proves that loyalty to Saddam is not a motivation of the terrorists in Iraq. Says Mr. Castells. I think a real logician could find at least seven fallacies in that one. 6) "Islamic activists from other countries"? How about "crazed bloodthirsty fanatics with the blood of millions on their hands"? 7) These terrorists were in Iraq before and after the Iraq War--remember the names Ansar El-Islam, Abu Nidal, Al Zarqawi, and so on? Note that Mr. Castells admits that much of the "resistance" is now made up of foreign "activists". Well, since those people are our sworn enemies, aren't we much better getting rid of them now in Iraq than three years from now in Missouri or La Mancha?

Good Christ, this guy is one of the most dishonest writers I have ever encountered. As Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman, "Every word is a lie, including 'the' and 'and'". More Castells tomorrow. By the way, this jackass Castells gets a nice puff piece on page 36 in the Vanguardia today; he will apparently speak at the Pompeu Fabra University tomorrow evening on how we communicate in the Internet era. There's a whole paragraph on how distinguished and important Mr. Castells is.

HEY ASSHOLE! This is how we communicate in the Internet era! By Internet! Fuck you, Castells, and your moral relativism, love for terrorists and dictators, and hate for America! Down with Old Europe! Down with appeasement! Down with the terrorists! Down with Zap, Chirac, and Schroeder! Long live classical liberalism, democracy and capitalism!

Well, there's some news. Honduras and the Dominican Republic are going to pull their troops out of Iraq, and Thailand is considering doing so. Everybody else in the Coalition is standing firm.

Tikrit Tommy Alcoverro has left Baghdad. He did so by taking an armored car to the airport, after of course getting a special pass from the coalition authorities so he could get through the roadblocks. Originally he wanted an armed escort to the airport, to be provided by either the Spanish embassy or by Coalition armed forces. He says this himself. Question: Is Tommy chickenshit or is Baghdad really that dangerous? In either case, it doesn't look like Tommy got outside the Hotel al Mansur too often while he was its honored guest.

There's an unconfirmed story going around that Al Qaeda was going to try to blow up the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester during the Man U-Liverpool game on Saturday, when 60,000 people would have been there. And there are still those who doubt that Al Qaeda and the Terrorist International's war is against all of us.

According to the White House, Aznar telephoned Bush in order to disapprove of Zap's decision to withdraw the troops. Bush mentioned the "frank" conversation he had with Zap; in diplomatese, "frank" means "angry". The Vangua's writers, Sebi Val and Carmen del Riego, got ahold of Danielle Platka from the American Enterprise Institute, who apparently said it was a "terrible shame" that Spanish troops were leaving Iraq. Of course they managed to mistranslate that. In both American and British English, saying that something is "a shame" is a means of passive criticism; it means you don't like something very much, but you're not going to point fingers at the people responsible. "It's a shame our team lost so many games this year," for example. The correct translation to Spanish would be "una terrible lastima". Sebi and Carmen managed to translate it as "una terrible verguenza", though. "Verguenza" is a pretty strong word in Spanish, and it means "something you should be ashamed of" or "something that makes you lose face or look bad". So instead of Platka saying "It's too bad the Spanish troops are leaving", which is what she meant, they've turned it into "The Spanish should be ashamed of themselves that their troops are leaving". There's a major difference in meaning.

Judge Baltasar Garzon has arraigned four of the Algerians arrested in January 2003 in Catalonia. They were then freed after several months in jail without bail for lack of evidence. Now they've been re-arrested because they may have collaborated with the establishment of the 3/11 terrorist cell. The mobile phone timer of the bomb that didn't go off at Atocha Station was the same brand and manipulated in the same way as the mobile phone timer that was used in the Bali bombing. When these four Algerians were arrested back in 2003, the cops wondered why they had manipulated mobile phones, dismantled digital clocks, and large quantities of electrical cable. The arrestees' defense was that they worked in the electric installation business. They also alleged that a quantity of chemicals found were merely "laundry detergent" and that a "viscous liquid" found was not an ingredient for homemade napalm but a waterproof material used to repair swimming pools. Anyway, their names are Mohamed Tahraoui, the ringleader, Smail Boudjelthi, Ali Kaouka, and Mohamed Nebbar.

The Vanguardia article points out, "The (January 2003) arrests were used by Aznar as an argument to justify his support for the US in the Iraq War." And a damned good argument they seem to have been. These guys were planning to hit Spain all along. They had at least two sleeper cells that could be activated at any time in place long before 3/11 or even 9/11.

In happy news, two of the three unidentified terrorists from the Leganes suicide bombing were identified as Mohamed and Rachid Oulah, whose sister was arrested as a conspirator and is in jail and whose brother is serving time for robbery, which is probably why he wasn't connected with the plot, too. Unidentified terrorist number three is suspected to be Said Berraj. All three had an international arrest warrant out on them. The other speculation going around is that body number three is that of a previously unknown boss of the Tunisian, until now thought to be the director of the 3/11 cell.

As you certainly know, some dirtbags removed the body of Francisco Javier Torronteras, the policeman killed in the Leganes explosion, from his tomb and desecrated it. The police believe that the profaners are family or friends of one or more of the arrested or dead terrorists because of the severe amount of violence done to the body; it was chopped into pieces and burned. They also believe that the desecration was planned because the desecrators knew in advance which of the 15,000 niches in the cemetery belonged to the officer. The only other hypothesis, that of some sort of satanic rite, has already been laughed out of town.

Here are a few interesting questions from Libertad Digital's blog:

In addition to surprise among the allies and approval among Spain's enemies, the withdrawal from Iraq of the Spanish troops raises doubts about the real motivations of the prime minister when he made the announcement unexpectedly on Sunday, the second day of his term:

1) If it was a decision based on the conclusions drawn from the secret meeting of Bono (the new Defense Minister) and Rumsfeld and in the impressions they had developed before the Parliamentary debate (Thursday), why wasn't it announced during that debate when, specifically, the leader of the Opposition (Mariano Rajoy) asked Zapatero insistently to confirm his plans regarding the Spanish presence in Iraq?

2) Zapatero promised that he would wait until June 30 to decide whether the troops would stay on; what led him to flagrantly break this promise in the first decision he made?

3) Zapatero said, categorically, there would be no turnover of military command to a UN multinational force (i.e. that the US would not do so); why, then, did he repeat during the Parliamentary debate that he hoped said organization would act as an umbrella for Spanish presence?

4) The Prime Minister has stated that Spain is withdrawing from Iraq in order to continue contributing to the stabilization and democratization of that country: how exactly does he plan to do this?

5) The Prime Minister promised that his new style would be based on dialogue and consensus before making big decisions. What happened to that promise when he presented his first serious decision as a fait accompli, not only to the Opposition in the Parliament but to his own Council of Ministers?

6) What does the Prime Minister plan to do with the Spanish troops stationed in Kosovo, where the international intervention was also made without UN approval?

To which I'd add 7) How likely is it that an instant withdrawal from Iraq was the Communists' and Republican Left's price for their support?