Some people are upset that after 80 days of occupation, the US has yet to find the weapons of mass destruction the Administration claimed were in Iraq. President Bush wants to set the record straight.

“For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them,” he told Polish television. He is referring to two trailers containing lab equipment that were discovered a few weeks ago. While there was no evidence of weapons production in the trailers, the equipment in them could have been used to work with biological samples.

“We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two.”

I also remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world and said Iraq had 25,000 liters of anthrax, 550 artillery shells with mustard gas, 500 tons of chemical weapons, and a vast uranium enrichment infrastructure.

So for those of you who are having trouble keeping up, here is the state of play on the WMD issue:

Claimed before the war:
:: 25,000 liters of anthrax
:: 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
:: 500 tons of sarin, VX, and mustard gas
:: 30,000 shells for delivery of chemical weapons

Found:
:: 2 trailers with some lab equipment

Mission accomplished!

In the central Iraqi town of Hit this week, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at US troops. US forces searched homes in the vicinity of the attack for weapons, and in response, the townspeople rioted, tossing grenades at US forces and burning the police station to the ground.

Forced to withdraw from the town, US forces seem puzzled by the civil disturbances, as if people in most countries enjoy having foreign troops force entry into their homes and tramp around looking for weapons.

Rather than the surprising tale of cultural insensitivity the press seem to see in this incident, I see an indication that tempers are brittle in Iraq, particularly in the Sunni center of the country. Along with the attacks that have killed five US soldiers and wounded four others this week, this should be a pretty urgent sign that patience is running very thin in Iraq.

It may be that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when the US invaded it. It may be that Iraq really did destroy them all, as they claimed they did.

At least, this is the view of radical anti-war activist Donald Rumsfeld.

In yet another astute move that is sure to engender trust among ethnic groups in Iraq, the US occupation authorities have ordered everyone to hand over their heavy weapons and automatic rifles, except for the Kurdish groups.

This will generate particular good will in Kirkuk, where Arab and Kurdish groups have been busily butchering each other for the past week.

An especially bizarre twist is that one of the militias being disarmed is Ahmed Chalabi's Free Iraqi Forces, who had been flown in and armed by the US military in the first place. That must mean the State Department is on top this week. Expect all militias except the FIF to be disarmed next week.

My wife Julie and I speak Arabic, but our dialect is very Egyptian. Ever since she came back from Baghdad in January, Julie has wanted to learn more of the Iraqi dialect, which is quite different. Yesterday I ordered her a set of tapes, originally developed by the Defense Language Institute, but now put out by a private company.

Most language tapes go through the basics and then have exercises about ordering in a restaurant, going to a bullfight, etc. Not this one. The table of contents for the accompanying booklet reads as follows:

Lesson 1: Guide to Pronunciation
Lesson 2: Question Words and Negation
Lesson 3: Greetings
Lesson 4: Giving Information
Lesson 5: Courtesy Phrases and Expressions
Lesson 6: Numbers
Lesson 7: Time Expressions
Lesson 8: The Weather
Lesson 9: Giving and Receiving Directions
Lesson 10: Tour of a Military Post
Lesson 11: Planning an Attack
Grammar Charts
Verbs in Imperative Mood
Glossary

We’re betting “Verbs in Imperative Mood” has some interesting examples.

Now that it is too late to make a difference, the Administration is going to study whether the intelligence it used to justify the war in Iraq was fanciful and overstated.

I would say better late than never, but it isn't particularly.

Once again showing that he is the very model of the modern major general, Maj. Gen. David "Rock Me" Petraeus ordered his troops to seize Mosul's television station last week to force them, among other things, to stop rebroadcasting programming from al-Jazeera. The fact that al-Jazeera is freely available to everyone with a satellite dish within a 2000-mile radius does not seem to figure into the equation.

Officers familiar with the matter said military officials were uncomfortable with the station's programming. They wanted to apply a U.S. military formula for gauging the station's accuracy, balance and trustworthiness, and if the programming fell short, the station would be shut.

I would love to have a look at those criteria, but how much do you want to bet they are classified?

It had been previously reported that Rock Me wanted to seize the station, so his order to do so comes as no surprise. The twist is that the head of the Army public affairs office in Mosul, Maj. Charmaine Means, said she could not in good conscience seize the station, it being kind of antithetical to everything the US said it wanted to do in Iraq. So she refused the order.

Maj. Means put her career in real jeopardy in order to stand up for American values: free speech, the right to self-determination, and kept promises. If you want to improve America's image around the world, you need more people like Maj. Means representing us. People who genuinely believe in these values and who are not willing to throw them out the window every time someone mumbles "al-Qaeda."

But Rock Me was less impressed. He fired Means and got her on the first helicopter out of town.

Paramilitary groups of Arabs and Kurds are now actively engaging in ethnic violence in Kirkuk. At least five people died and 40 were wounded over the weekend.

The occupation forces do not really understand what is happening, never mind how to stop it. "It's tribal fights," Sgt. Christopher Choay told the New York Times. "It's hard for us to tell who is who. We can't take anyone's side." It is, of course, much worse than that: they cannot be seen to be taking anyone's side. And no matter what they do, or don't do, they will be seen by at least one group as favoring another.

Turkey has already smuggled arms to ethnic Turkmen in Kirkuk, and threatens more vigorous action -- even invasion -- if Kurds take control of the city. The Arabs in town must feel threatened, and many will be looking for a figure to rally around, be it the absent Saddam Hussein or another, yet unknown demagogue. The KDP and the PUK could either unite to fight the other groups or turn once more to fighting each other; it is hard to know which would be worse.

If it sounds like Beirut in 1975, it's not. It's worse. Beirut had no oil for the various factions to fight over control of.

The American government has seen the light.

They are providing free health care to all citizens and spending millions to build new hospitals and improve primary and secondary education. Salaries of teachers and police officers will be raised significantly, offset by cuts to the military budget.

All of this is to be paid for with US taxpayers' money, but the Administration believes it is money well-spent.

Guns have been banned and are being confiscated and destroyed. While some gun-owning citizens protest that their guns are their best protection against lawbreakers, the government has pointed out that the widespread availability of guns has caused an unacceptable level of violence.

If only they were doing these things in the United States instead of Iraq, we might have something.

Maj. Gen. David "Rock Me" Petraeus is the military governor of Mosul. "I am the occupying power, make no mistake," he told the Washington Post. It is a job he describes as "a combination of being the president and the pope."

Rock Me first made these pages when he said that Iraqi democracy would be best served if US military censors sat in the offices of the local TV station and prevented anything they did not like from going out on the air. And he continues to champion the cause of democracy and free speech:

[Rock Me and Saleh Khalieh Hamoodi, a Sunni cleric] met recently in the mayor's suite to see how they could help each other. Sweating in long gray robes, Hamoodi was the first to ask for assistance. Kurds were trying to drive members of the Iraqi Islamic Party out of their offices, he said. Could the general send some help?

"I'm not going to secure Islamic Party headquarters if the imams say bad things about coalition forces," Petraeus told him. "And some of your colleagues are. It hurts me and my men to hear that."

Hamoodi smiled. He took the names of six imams identified by U.S. intelligence as potentially problematic and assured the general he would speak to them at once.

Which I am sure did not remind Mr. Hamoodi of anything. Nice mosque you've got here; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.

Rock Me seems to be unclear on some other concepts of democracy as well:

The local government [of Mosul] is the first to be "democratically selected" in Iraq, although Petraeus still sits next to the mayor in semiweekly council meetings. Using the Army division's money, he has carpeted and furnished the mayor's suite in the looted downtown government building.

The final four mayoral candidates were interviewed individually by Petraeus, who was mostly interested in their past ties to Hussein's Baath Party.

Ah, yes, the system of democratic "selections" that we hold so dear in the United States, where the military interviews the top candidates for positions to ensure they do not hold any politically unacceptable views.

"There's really no understanding of what democracy is here," says Rock Me. Can't argue with him there.

Congratulations to Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party and among the most enthusiastic supporters of the war, who appears to be the first major Iraqi player to publicly use the word "quagmire" with respect to the situation in Iraq. "Major mistakes have been made," Barzani told the Washington Post, "and if we continue in this confusion, this wonderful victory we have achieved will turn into a quagmire."

While Barzani gets the prize, there is still time for others to get in on the ground floor. Watch this space.

In another indication of its profound understanding of local conditions, the US military government of Iraq has installed a Baath-linked Sunni as mayor of Najaf, which is kind of like making Jerry Falwell mayor of the Vatican. Predictably, he is having some problems.

If you were looking to put up a straw man representing the US occupation for hostile Shia to rally in opposition to, this is exactly what you would do, and where you would do it, and it would be brilliant. But since that is pretty much the opposite of what the military government wants, it looks to be pretty stupid.

Watch out, ESPN2: here comes extreme ironing. A group of British divers claim to have set the record for ironing at depth in Egypt's famous Blue Hole. The ironists used closed-circuit rebreathers and incurred impressive decompression obligations in order to get their shirts wrinkle-free.

But before you don your crampons to tackle the obvious next extreme ironing record, be advised that it has already been done.

It seems that Bushglish is infectionable: Colin Powell said today that the recent terrorist attack in Riyadh "has the earmarks of al Qaeda."

This should put to rest the allegations that Mr. Powell does not speak for the President.

If the Bush Administration's half-assed policy isn't working, it must mean that someone is implementing it wrong.

In March they fired the ad executive they had hired to make commercials that would make the Arab world love America because "she didn't do anything that worked." Now they are reshuffling the Iraq reconstruction team because a gleaming liberal democracy has yet to emerge in the country, and the Iraqis don't seem to appreciate the American tanks in the street anymore.

No more will Iraqis feel the comforting hand of Jay Garner on their shoulders. He has been replaced by L. Paul Bremer III, who is a counterterrorism expert with no development experience, so he should fare much better. Also out are Barbara Bodine, Margaret Tutwiler, Tim Carney, David Dunford, and John Limbert. Despite having three weeks to do it, these losers were not able to restore the infrastructure and economy of Iraq and establish democracy. Incompetents!

This new team better come up with some results, and pronto. "Unless we do something in the near future," an Administration official told the New York Times, "it [Iraq] is likely to blow up in our face." So it looks like there is a very difficult job ahead, with disasterous consequences for failure. Boy, too bad nobody warned us about that before we decided to go to war, huh?

The US has occupied Iraq in order to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. So naturally the general in charge of Mosul wants to install military censors at the city's television station to make sure the press is strictly controlled by the US military.

Maj. Gen. David "Rock Me" Petraeus says that the move is necessary because Mosul "still has folks who are totally opposed to what we're doing and are willing to do something about it." Well, opposition to military occupation certainly isn't acceptable in a democracy. It must be stifled at once!

"Yes, what we are looking at is censorship," says Rock Me, "but you can censor something that is intended to inflame passions." Yes, I believe that is the generally accepted standard. No word yet on whether this means Commando Solo will have to stop rebroadcasting Fox News.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the organization that fielded weapons inspectors to Saddam Hussein's Iraq to try to find nuclear weapons material. They have asked the US government to allow them into Iraq to inspect nuclear sites that have been looted to try to determine if dangerous nuclear material has been stolen, and if so, how much. The US dismisses the danger, saying Iraq's nuclear material poses no threat. "All of this uranium would require significant processing in order to be suitable for enrichment for weapons use," says State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

That's right: the IAEA is concerned that dangerous nuclear material may have found its way into private hands -- even to terrorists -- and the US government says not to worry, because Iraq did not really have any dangerous material to begin with.

In pursuit of his dream of democracy in Iraq, The Donald held a town hall meeting in Baghdad on April 30th. For US military personnel. Hooah.

One PFC asked The Donald if Iraq was a member of OPEC, and if not, would it join? According to the transcript, The Donald said:

Rumsfeld: I don't know. I suspect they're not or if they are they probably are on a very qualified basis.

Iraq has been a member of OPEC since its inception. Indeed, OPEC was founded at a meeting in Baghdad. You might not know that, but the military government in Iraq does not report to you, so that's not really a problem. Given that OPEC strictly governs how the only significant part of the Iraqi economy works, and that The Donald is now effectively in charge of that economy, it is a little worrying that he has no clue.

But of course The Donald never lets little things like comprehension of political or economic realities get in the way of kicking some ass. "I shouldn't get into -- This is diplomacy and I don't do diplomacy. You may have noticed."

Oh my goodness, yes.

Blogger's new software messed with my quotes and special characters. It makes some of the entries below kind of difficult to read. I've asked them about the problem and hope it will get sorted out soon.

For the second time, US military teams seeking weapons of mass destruction have arrived at a nuclear site in the country only to find that it had been so extensively looted that they cannot tell if weapons material has been stolen or not.

The war in Iraq was sold to you largely as a way to prevent terrorist organizations from getting weapons of mass destruction. Yet, weeks after the collapse of the regime in Baghdad, the military is just now getting around to checking out the country's best-known nuclear facility, only to find that most everything has been carted away.

Not one of the seven nuclear sites that have been inspected thus far was intact. That's just the nuclear sites; what else around the country is scattering to the four winds as I write this? And where is it going? Absolutely nobody knows.

I feel safer, don't you?

The surprises just don’t stop. It seems that the war in Iraq may be encouraging terrorism, rather than preventing it. O, the irony! Who would have predicted such an outcome?

According to Reuters, the people of Falluja are mad at the Americans for shooting at demonstrators in the town. The news agency quotes a boy whose father was injured and his uncle killed trying to help him as saying “I hate Americans. I want revenge. I will wait, I will join a group, and, one day, I will kill Americans.” A 29 year-old housewife says she is glad Saddam is gone, but that she “will strap explosives to my chest to get rid of [the Americans].”

I feel safer, don’t you?

The US has signed a cease-fire agreement with the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, an Iranian guerilla group that has long staged attacks on Iran from Iraq, with Saddam Hussein’s support. This has raised some eyebrows, since the Mujahedeen-e Khalq are on the terrorist list.

The US had previously bombed Mujahedeen bases, but according to the new agreement they will not attack Mujahedeen personnel or equipment provided they are not used against Coalition™ forces. The agreement does not seem to say anything about not launching attacks against Iran from US-occupied Iraq.

This has irked the Iranians somewhat. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, said the agreement was proof that “‘bad’ terrorists are only those who are not America's servants.” Which is a ridiculous accusation, because… Because it’s… Um, why is it, exactly? Didn’t we go to war against Afghanistan because they were hosting a terrorist group that had a history of attacking American targets?

Some people may have the impression that the Official Blog of the Far-Flung Ryan-Silva Media Empire is exclusively about Iraq. We want to assure you that we also try to keep you up to date about Japanese doomsday cults.

Take the Pana Wave Laboratory. It may sound like a techno band, but is actually a group of zany Japanese cultists who believe the earth's magnetic field will reverse on May 15, causing catastrophic natural disasters. They dress in white from head to toe, even before Memorial Day, in hopes of protecting themselves from electromagnetic waves, which they see as harmful. Does it block out Fox News, I wonder? Hmm.

The Pana Wave Laboratorists (Panamists? Wavers?) are in trouble with the authorities because they have occupied a strip of road in a difficult-to-understand attempt to further shield their leader from electromagnetic waves. Even with their compact automobiles, the local people cannot squeeze past the cultists to get to their favorite karaoke and oxygen bars.

Thanks to some unpleasantness caused a few years back by Aum Shinrikyo, doomsday cults make the Japanese nervous, which I can understand. Hello Kitty doesn't seem to bother them though, which I cannot.