"Turkey has reportedly been offered the right to occupy much of Iraqi Kurdistan. Yes, that's right: as we move to liberate the Iraqis, our first step may be to deliver people who have been effectively independent since 1991 into the hands of a hated foreign overlord. Moral clarity!

Meanwhile, outraged Iraqi exiles report that there won't be any equivalent of postwar de-Nazification, in which accomplices of the defeated regime were purged from public life. Instead the Bush administration intends to preserve most of the current regime: Saddam Hussein and a few top officials will be replaced with Americans, but the rest will stay. You don't have to be an Iraq expert to realize that many very nasty people will therefore remain in power — more moral clarity! — and that the U.S. will in effect take responsibility for maintaining the rule of the Sunni minority over the Shiite majority."

Paul Krugman pokes another pin in the "We really just want to invade Iraq to help the Iraqi people" balloon.   Trudy Rubin also touched on the possible Turkish occupation of Iraqi Kurdistan on Morning Edition today.  Krugman also demonstrates what's in store financially for Iraq, by way of Afghanistan's recent experiences.

"...President Bush promised that our interest wouldn't end once the war was won; this time we wouldn't forget about Afghanistan, we would stay to help rebuild the country and secure the peace. So how much money for Afghan reconstruction did the administration put in its 2004 budget?

None. The Bush team forgot about it. Embarrassed Congressional staff members had to write in $300 million to cover the lapse."

Moral clarity!

I just received an email today saying Sportbrain is back up and running.  For those unfamiliar with Sportbrain, they sold a tiny pedometer and a wireless heart-rate monitor that you would wear during the day, and at night pop into a special cradle which would upload the gathered data to Sportbrain's servers where you could graph and keep track of activity levels throughout the day.  They even had prizes for those who 'scored' highest.  Naturally, this company didn't survive the dot-com bomb, but it appears to be back (minus the prizes for the time being) and ready to use again.  I still use the heart-rate monitor regularly with my stationary bike but I'm not sure where the pedometer and cradle have gone.  Time to go digging.  Yay!

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"But if the antiwar movement dissuades the United States and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead. Saddam Hussein will emerge victorious and ever more defiant. What has been accomplished so far will unravel. Containment is doomed to fail. We cannot forget that despots protected by their own elaborate security apparatus are still able to make decisions.

Saddam Hussein has dragged his people into at least two wars. He has used chemical weapons on them. He has killed hundreds of thousands of people and tortured and oppressed countless others. So why, in all of these demonstrations, did I not see one single banner or hear one speech calling for the end of human rights abuses in Iraq, the removal of the dictator and freedom for the Iraqis and the Kurdish people? If we are going to demonstrate and exert pressure, shouldn't it be focused on the real villain, with the goal of getting him to surrender his weapons of mass destruction and resign from power? To neglect this reality, in favor of simplistic and irrational anti-Americanism, is obfuscating the true debate on war and peace.

I agree that the Bush administration must give more time to the weapons inspectors to fulfill their mandate. The United States is an unchallenged world power and will survive its enemies. It can afford to be a little more patient. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, has proved himself to be a strong mediator and no friend of dictators. He and a group of world leaders should use this time to persuade Saddam Hussein to resign and go into exile. In turn, Saddam Hussein could be credited with preventing another war and sparing his people. But even this approach will not work without the continued threat of force."

A good opinion piece in the New York Times by Nobel Peace Prize winner and East Timor's Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Ramos-Horta.  He brings up an important point which is being ignored by the majority of anti-war protestors:  Sometimes war is necessary for peace.  He also makes another important point - one that is being ignored by the "rush-to-war" crowd: the US can afford to be a bit more patient.  There's no need to go tearing up the UN charter just yet.

"In meetings yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the Russian government that "we're going ahead," whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official said. "The council's unity is at stake here."

A senior diplomat from another council member said his government had heard a similar message and was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.

"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."

President Bush has continued to say he has not yet decided whether to go to war. But the message being conveyed in high-level contacts with other council governments is that a military attack on Iraq is inevitable, these officials and diplomats said. What they must determine, U.S. officials are telling these governments, is if their insistence that U.N. weapons inspections be given more time is worth the destruction of council credibility at a time of serious world upheaval."

What a frickin mess.  That's all I have to say.