"The speech "treated the war [in Iraq] as a virtually unqualified success", he remembered later. "I could not understand why everyone was applauding the speech enthusiastically, given that the United States had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was bogged down in a vicious insurgency and had almost totally isolated itself from the rest of the world.""

Wait. I am confused. Is the US helping the Taliban back to power, or getting rid of them? "British strategy in Afghanistan suffered a blow when the Taliban overran a town in northern Helmand where a controversial peace deal had been signed."

"First US officer since Vietnam goes on trial for speaking out"

"From cows to Humvees, American involvement deepens in Lebanon after Syrian withdrawal" (thanks Laleh)

"The men in their tent city downtown are a powerful symbol in Lebanon. They are smoking their hooker pipes and playing cards and sleeping rough next to the shining new city which Rafiq Hariri rebuilt from the ruins of Beirut - a city to impress foreigners but one in which the south Lebanese poor could not afford to buy a cup of coffee. Hariri's theory - or at least this is how he explained it to me before his murder - was that if the centre of Beirut was reconstructed, the money which it generated would trickle down to the rest of Lebanon. But it didn't trickle. The bright lights of downtown Beirut were enjoyed by the rich and purchased by the Saudis and admired by the likes of Jacques Chirac but they were not for the Shia."

"The Hamas prosecution also featured another central player in the Libby saga: former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who testified on behalf of prosecutors in Chicago about an Israeli interrogation session with Salah that she witnessed in the early 1990s." (thanks Salaita)

"The Turkish Hosiery Manufacturers' Association (ÇSD) sent 12 pairs of socks to World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz after he was photographed with torn socks during a visit to Turkey." (thanks Badis)

New TV is reporting that Suq Al-Mazra`ah (two blocks from the house where I was born and grew up) has adopted a new policy: to ban customers from discussing politics. All stores will now post reminding customers of the ban.

"Gen. George W. Casey Jr. told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the war remained “winnable”". I don't know about you, but I think that 20,000 additional troops can make any war winnable.

You can go to sleep now: it is official. "A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years."

The US ambassador in Lebanon today issued a fatwawawawa: he decreed that the parliament in Lebanon is the only body that can bring down a government. Imagine if the Lebanese ambassador in Washington, DC lectures the American public about the American constitutional process.

Walid Jumblat is obsessed these days with impressing the White Man. You have to read this speech of his in which he reproduces vulgar Orientalist cliches about "the East." He even quotes Kipling's "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet." And then concludes by quoting Churchill. Correct me if I am wrong, but it is not the rule in Western countries that whoever quotes Churchill becomes instantly a "statesman"?

"It was a rich contradiction: US-allied Sunnis carrying posters of Saddam." I don't see the contradiction. It is not a contradiction at all. In fact, it is consistent. It is as consistent as those Shi`ite puppets in Iraq holding portraits of Khumani. (thanks Lisette)

Hannah Arendt is right. People are very selective when they read Fannon's The Wretched of the Earth. Fannon warns of the "unmixed and total brutality [which] , if not immediately combatted, invariably leads to the defeat of the movement within a few weeks." (As cited in Arendt, On Violence, p. 14). I thought about that as I woke up to the news of the bloody clashes in Gaza. But notice that Israel does not stop killing Palestinians no matter what: "Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians in three confrontations." (According to New York Times, Israel always kill Palestinians--even Palestinian children--in "confrontations.")

Usamah Rahbani compares his (untalented) father, Mansur, to Shakespeare and Al-Mutanabbi. He could have compared Bush to Hegel and Nietzsche, while he was at it. (thanks Amer)

Hamid Karzai is now paid his salary in shoes.

You may be accused of "France-bashing" if you (correctly) quote Chirac.

Yes, she was brave...except on Palestine.

""The fact of the matter is we have a government that will do what it wants to do for the next two years," he said. "The worst is yet to come. It's sort of like we're essentially powerless [and] just play it out.""

A Lebanonese tells the White Man about the problems of Lebanon (and why poor Lebanon is a victim):

"Victime de l’Etat qui, en 1943 (date de l’Indépendance du Liban), n’a pas su intégrer la communauté chiite à la Nation,
Victime de la communauté chiite qui – jusqu’à l’heure où je vous parle – se veut (se trouve ?) toujours liée et dépendante (religieusement, doctrinalement, voire patriotiquement) du Guide Suprême de la Révolution Islamique en Iran,
Victime de sa richesse (la richesse de sa terre, de sa civilisation, de son histoire, de son peuple),
Victime de sa beauté, Victime de sa géographie..." (thanks Ali)

"Kissinger noted that the “the Sunni states of the region—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the non-Shiite government of Lebanon, the Gulf states—are terrified by the Shiite wave.”"

"Mr. Meridor said in the interview that he saw the beginnings of a realignment in the Middle East, linking Israel and the United States with moderate Sunni Muslim Arab states fearful of the rising power of Shi'ite Iran."

Birth pangs in...1975: "HENRY KISSINGER, Interviewed 1975: I believe that with all the dislocations we know—now experience, there also exists an extraordinary opportunity to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society, carried by the principle of interdependence. And if we act wisely and with vision, I think we can look back to all this turmoil as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system." (thanks Fayez)

Once a year, the Nation magazine remembers Arab victims--provided Israel is not mentioned.

"Where are the Palestinian people and the children of stone to stone their leaders and their organizations..."

"The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it. U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed."

Brace yourselves: more "liberation" is on the way. "A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document."

"Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of bomb plot " (I accuse Ethiopia of invasion of Somalia plot).

One should never make political judgments based on appearances, but don't Arab tools of Israeli occupation look like...tools of Israeli occupation? Look at this dude here.

Art works belonging to Holocaust victims stolen by Israeli museum.

Dahlan gangs claim that they have found Iranian experts in Gaza. The experts look suspiciously like the three Iranian soldiers that Israeli forces had found in South Lebanon during the Israeli war on Lebanon.

Just like in Lebanon: war criminals forgive war crimes. "The Afghan parliament has approved an amnesty for warlords and others accused of war crimes, possibly including the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar."

"Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today."

Al-Quds Al-`Arabi puts news of Israeli contacts with any Arab government on its front page, and act unamused, except when it comes to Qatari-Israeli contacts which get buried to inside pages.

Mukhtar Limani, the Arab League ambassador in Baghdad who hast just resigned, talks about Iraq under occupation.

US/EU/UN/Israel/Arab regimes are depriving the Palestinian people of food needs; but they managed to smuggle those weapons to Dahlan gangs. (And by the way: prior to showing those weapons to the news media, Dahlan gangs were insisting that the trucks were carrying medical supplies).

In most of her movies, Egyptian actress Najla' Fathi (on whom I had a huge crush while I was growing up) is heard saying: "sibni ya mujrim" (Leave me, o criminal).

"Several Iraqis have been detained for questioning in the ongoing investigation of at least two senior Iraqi generals suspected of involvement in an insurgent attack that killed five American soldiers on Jan. 20, U.S. officials told FOX News on Thursday."

"Pressed by Mr. Jeffress about the conflict between her testimony on Wednesday and the interview and the affidavit, Ms. Miller, who was combative and testy at times, replied: “I don’t know what you want me to say beyond what I’ve said. I don’t remember the people I talked to” about the Wilsons. “That’s all I can tell you, sir,” she added. Asked again about such conversations, she said with exasperation: “I just don’t remember,” then added in a loud voice, “I don’t remember.”

Today, hoping to attract attention to his simplicity, Paul Wolfowitz showed up to a meeting shirtless.

It is a surge, alright.

"“I told him I take a bath every day,” Mr. Sharpton said."

A man of principle: "“I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record,” he said."
"“Shiites do not have the reaction of the Sunnis or of Europeans,” said Mr. Chirac, who over the years in private meetings has expressed distrust of Shiite Muslims." Well, Chirac's love and admiration for a sect is directly proportional to cash donations made to him from members of that sect.

"But the hegemon will live." But for how long?

It was not mentioned in the US press that the Arab League ambassador in Baghdad has resigned out of disgust over the conditions in Iraq, and of the stances of Arab regimes. This account does not mention that the ambassador wrote a long letter in which he spelled out his views. Limani, in his letter, criticized sectarian fanatics and Arab regimes.