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Welcome to the weblog, which gets updated whenever I have time to do it. Also new this week: Everything in its place… [web design article]

Friday 16th August

Republican opposition to Bush’s “We’re gonna git you, Sah-daim” policy is growing. This isn’t just any bunch of Republicans who are speaking out, either:

Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration’s high-profile planning for war with Iraq, saying the administration has neither adequately prepared for military action nor made the case that it is needed.

These senior Republicans include former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush’s national security adviser. All say they favor the eventual removal of Saddam Hussein, but some say they are concerned that Mr. Bush is proceeding in a way that risks alienating allies, creating greater instability in the Middle East, and harming long-term American interests. They add that the administration has not shown that Iraq poses an urgent threat to the United States.

Unlike some in the Bush administration, some of these senior Republicans have worked out that there is little enthusiasm for an attack on Iraq anywhere outside the USA:

In The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Scowcroft wrote that if the United States “were seen to be turning our back” on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute “in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us.”

He added: “There is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive.”

The response to this criticism is a little worrying:

Richard N. Perle, a former Reagan administration official and one of the leading hawks who has been orchestrating an urgent approach to attacking Iraq, said today that Mr. Scowcroft’s arguments were misguided and naïve.

“I think Brent just got it wrong,” he said by telephone from France. “The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.”

So never mind whether or not Saddam Hussein is a threat to the West or not; never mind whether there is evidence he has or is developing weapons of mass destruction: if not attacking Iraq’s gonna make El Shrubbo look like a fule then Iraq will jus’ have to be attacked, boy.

Meanwhile, Attorney General John Ashcroft wants to build internment camps to house US citizens he decides are enemy combatants.

Ashcroft’s plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

Of course, the citizens of the USA can trust their Attorney General, can’t they?

In [the case of Jose Padilla], Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States—two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.

As I have said before, I am glad I live on the civilised side of the Atlantic.

Israel warns that no one should expect them to behave as they did in the 1991 Gulf War. If Iraq strikes at Israel, there will be retaliation:

Israel would be free to hit back at Baghdad if Iraq — which fired 39 Scuds into Israel during the Gulf War 11 years ago — attacks Israeli targets in response to an assault by the US, said Dore Gold, a senior Israeli government adviser.

His comments came amid growing discussion in Israel of how it would respond to an Iraqi attack, particularly the use of chemical weapons. Israel officials are believed to have told the Americans that they would hit back…

Recent media reports in Israel … have suggested this would apply even in the event of an Iraqi attack that caused few casualties…

Ha’aretz newspaper reported yesterday that Dr Anthony Cordesman, a military and strategic expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told a recent hearing of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee that Israel would certainly respond with nuclear strikes on Iraq if there was a lethal biological strike on an Israeli city.

Today, Ha’aretz reports that Ariel Sharon, ever the peacemaker, is pressing The Shrub not to delay in taking action against Iraq.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sent messages to the U.S. administration in recent days saying that postponing the Iraq operation “will not create a more convenient environment for action in the future.” But Sharon added that Israel would support any American action, and would respect U.S. decisions regarding the method and the timing.

Has the rush to get armed sky marshals on US aeroplanes since September 11th made air travel safer? This Times report doesn’t suggest that is the case:

Since the September 11 attacks, more than 6,000 new marshals have been hired, leading to so many problems and such a lowering of standards that at least 80 have resigned. Other marshals say that they are considering a class-action lawsuit over working conditions that they claim put travellers at risk.

According to documents obtained by USA Today, and interviews with more than a dozen present and former marshals, many new agents were given guns and badges and put on flights before background checks were completed.

“If someone slips through the cracks, how do you know they are not a terrorist?” one marshal said. “You’ve already put them on the plane.” …

In one incident last month, a marshal was removed from a flight in Washington DC because he smelt of alcohol. The head of the air marshal programme has been forced to confirm at least two cases in which agents accidentally discharged their weapons, one in a hotel room in Las Vegas.

According to other disaffected marshals, one agent was suspended after he left his gun in a lavatory on a United Airlines flight from Washington to Las Vegas in December. A passenger found the weapon.

Despite the undercover nature of the work, officials at the air marshal programme have imposed a dress code that requires them to wear “conservative male or female business attire” on most trips. “This is really dangerous,” one said. “We are so obvious, the terrorists don’t need to bring guns on the planes any more. They just need to gang up and take our guns”

The McQueen that got away: a black boar jumped a wall, waded downriver and ran across a golf course to escape an abattoir.

Inspector Kevin Findlater of Central Scotland Police said: “He is a feisty wee devil.

“We are pretty sure he is in the woodland two miles east of the town and are just waiting for him to make his next move.”

Martin Shaw and Jenny Seagrove have joined the campaign to save the pig and place him in an animal sanctuary.

Well, boo hoo. The forthcoming Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Nemesis looks like it may be good fun, with a plot centred around the Romulans. And Wil Wheaton has been cut from the finished film. According to Wheaton’s web site, his cameo as the — oh, put in your own derogatory adjective— Wesley Crusher went as part of cuts amounting to 48 minutes from an original running time of about 3 hours. Wheaton is disappointed:

Somewhere in Brooklyn, Wesley Crusher falls silent forever.

Everywhere else on the planet, people yell, “Yes! Yes! There is a god!”

“The pictures I was told not to take” — Steve Read is minding his own business photographing some scenery when he is told not to photograph a car:

We were parked at a lay-by in the Ashdown Forest … so I could take pictures of the scenery when these two cars drove up, and some people got out to take a picture of one of the cars. I hadn’t shown any intention of taking a picture of the car, but the woman with the group of people came over to me and my wife and told us not to take pictures. Because the woman kept acting as if I might take pictures of the car, in the best English tradition, I decided to take some and here they are. The quality isn’t great, but I had to act quickly.

He says, “I have blacked out everyone’s faces so I can’t be charged with harassing anyone.” I particularly like the way he has blacked out the sheep’s faces as well. (Note: the pictures on his page are big.)