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A good friend of mine says she is going with another woman and two gay men (these two categories must encompass most of the audience) to see "Puppetry of the Penis," which I gather involves these two fellows stretching and pulling their marriage tackle into a variety of shapes. I told her I'll wait for the sequel -- "Ventriloquism of the Vagina."

 
Under US law, you cannot declare personal bankruptcy for 7 years after last doing so. The Left, it seems, declares moral bankruptcy every day. Michele at A Small Victory catches them at it. The upshot is that some Iraqi exiles begged to differ at an anti-war rally. Their point was that the killing has already started, war or no war; the only difference is that war is the only hope of ending the killing. They were, of course, refused permission to speak, and their signs, leaflets, and massacre photos were confiscated. Since the main moral objection to war is the suffering of the Iraqi people, one would expect that they might have something to say about it. This is nothing new for the Left. The Chinese lao gai is full of people who tried to organize independent labor unions. Why should the oppressed be permitted to speak for themselves when the Leading Party can do it for them? Read the comments from Jane, who is really not as clueless as her post makes her out to be.

It is not enough that the opposing arguments are silly. To see a cogent moral argument for liberating Iraq, see
One Hand Clapping. He puts it into the American tradition of the moral fight, as embodied by the Northern side in the Civil War. It is well and closely reasoned, and beautifully written. And besides, if a former career Army officer and ordained minister is not worth listening to on the just war doctrine, I defy you to find someone better qualified.

 
Today is the 10th anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing. It was carried out by fundamentalist muslims, with the blessings of their cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman. The participants included an Iraqi who has never been caught. The Europeans say we are always late for the war; considering that this one started at least 8 years before we fought back, I guess they're right. The thing is not to be the first to arrive, but to be the last to leave.

 
More on Iraq

You know what opinions are like -- everyone has one, and they all stink. So here's mine. I've been trying to figure out what the French are up to in this whole mess. Their fight to keep the US out of Iraq and Saddam away from the hangman has gone on long past the point where they could win, and yet they persist. Chirac has the reputation of a blunderer, but he doesn't seem to be alone in his position. Clearly there is some desire to keep the "hyper-puissance" of the US under some control. (Can we start calling France a hyper-pissant?) No French politician ever got turned out of office for ticking off the Americans. Going up against the US is also a way of emphasizing that Europe is going its own way -- with France leading, of course.

As we have heard so many times in the past, though, this time it's different. The US suffered its first foreign attack on its home soil since the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. For all the media bleating about "nervous" America, I'm hearing more anger. Immediately after hearing about Pearl Harbor, Churchill shook his head at what was clearly a Japanese misreading of our character: "I know the Americans, and it is much easier to infuriate them than to cow them." Bush has made it clear that no matter what hoops he has to jump through, Saddam is a dead man. So why not embrace the inevitable and get a share of the loot? Some have hinted that maybe the French and Germans have been dealing weapons to Iraq on the sly. Certainly they did so in the past. The Osirak nuclear facility that the Israelis destroyed in the 1980's was built by the French, and it can't have been a surprise to them that it would be used for producing atomic weapons materials. There was a "rogue" German company found guilty of selling chemical weapons equipment in the early 1990's, which earned the firm's president a staggering fine -- of some $30,000 US. But are they stupid enough to do the same thing twice? Even if they were, would they be stupid enough to make their dirty deeds traceable? I doubt it on both counts.

Here is my guess: The sanctions regime has not hurt Saddam and his inner circle. Far from it. Iraq never fully participated in the oil-for-food clause in the sanctions. Starving and suffering make great propaganda, as long as someone else is doing it. Saddam has been involved in smuggling Iraqi oil out and consumer goods into Iraq and has reportedly amassed a large fortune since 1991. A continuation of the "containment" idea would have its attractions. Saddam couldn't keep up his profiteering without some help from both inside and outside Iraq. Remember that Total-Fina-Elf is a huge producer of Iraqi oil. If they were producing much more than the sanctions can account for, be sure the Chirac government would know. It could not continue without a wink from Paris. An arrangement like this, being corrupt in origin, might be corrupt in its other manifestations. Who benefits? Well, after the invasion, maybe we'll find out.

 
The long sad saga of my "rebuilt" PC has come to a happy conclusion, although not what I thought it would be at first. The new motherboard is in and the machine runs beautifully. With DSL installed and the router doing its routing thing, life is good. It turns out that I may have waited to long to upgrade, as I wound up using a lot fewer of the old components than I had anticipated. Anything with an EIDE interface (except drives) was out -- PCI slots only. I had to solder together a new switch and wiring harness -- the old box used AT, while the new power supply is ATX. I had to "carve a new orifice" in the backside of the chassis to put the motherboard in -- they had put a pretty good sound card on the board, with the output jacks sticking up above it. Most oddly, there are no serial, mouse, or parallel ports, so I had to spring for a new USB keyboard and get an adapter for my printer.

On the other hand, the damned thing screams.

Better yet, I haven't yet set this one on fire.

 
Dude, you're getting a cell!

The annoying kid on the Dell commercials just got popped for holding weed. Who could have imagined? Maybe it's a method actor exercise.

 
I had an interview for a contract job at Fidelity in Merrimack, and it looks good. The job involves doing small Access/SQL things, working directly with the users.