Unlike this rare incident and this rare incident, this latest rare incident took place in Iraq.  The motive is unknown, and no pattern has yet been observed.  By Prashant Rao for AFP:

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Two American soldiers were killed on Tuesday when an Iraqi army comrade opened fire after an argument over a sports match, the first US deaths since Washington declared an end to combat operations here.

The shooting, which also left nine American soldiers wounded, happened at the Iraq's Al-Saadiq Air Base near the city of Tuz Khurmatu in Salaheddin province while a US army company was visiting local security forces.

"Iraqi soldiers and American military advisers were playing sports when a quarrel broke out between an Iraqi soldier and an American," defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari told AFP.

"The Iraqi soldier opened fire on them," Askari said, naming the gunman as Soran Rahman Saleh Wali.

"The American soldiers killed the Iraqi soldier. We have opened a high-level investigation into this issue."

A US military statement said: "Eleven US soldiers were engaged with small arms fire, killing two and wounding nine, inside an Iraqi army commando compound."

The gunman was a member of one of the army's elite special forces units, said Colonel Hussein Bayati, police commander for Tuz Khurmatu, north of Baghdad.

There were no details on what set off the argument or on the Iraqi soldier's possible motives.

However, Bayati said that on Monday, US and Iraqi forces "began searching houses in the neighbourhood where this soldier was from because they suspected Ansar al-Sunna (insurgent) fighters were hiding there."

It was unclear whether Wali might have already been under surveillance or if the sweep had angered him.

[...]

Under the terms of a bilateral security pact, American soldiers are allowed to return fire in self-defence, and take part in operations if requested by their Iraqi counterparts.

Thank goodness U.S. negotiators were able to push through the self-defence clause.

[...]

"This is a tragic and cowardly act, which I firmly believe was an isolated incident and is certainly not reflective of the Iraqi security forces in Salaheddin," said Major General Tony Cuculo, US commander in northern Iraq.

There is also the case of Kaissar Saady al-Juboory, a soldier in the Iraqi Army who shot 5 US soldiers in December 2007, killing Capt. Rowdy Inman and Sgt. Benjamin Portell.  The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group, claimed that the US soldiers were beating a pregnant Iraqi woman, and Kaissar Saady al-Juboory shot the US soldiers to protect her.  Quoting the Association of Muslim Scholars:

"His blood rose and he asked the occupying soldiers to stop beating the woman.  Their answer through the translator was: 'We will do what we want.' So he opened fire on them."

Quoting Sheikh Juma' al-Dawar:

"Kaissar is from the al-Juboor tribes in Gayara -- tribes with morals that Americans do not understand.  Juboor tribes and all other tribes are proud of Kaissar and what he did by killing the American soldiers. Now he is a hero, with a name that will never be forgotten"

The US military denied reports of the beating of pregnant women, and said that Kaissar was a member of a Sunni insurgent group.

There was also an incident April 6, 2006 in which an Iraqi soldier shot and killed U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Bryan N. Taylor inside a coalition base near Al Qaim in Iraq.

UPDATE: The shooter in the most recent incident has been identified as Soran Rahman Saleh Wali.  His brother Marwan, who works as a policeman in Tuz Khurmatu, has been arrested.

For the sake of argument, please allow me play Devil's advocate, with no aspersions meant toward Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who is planning the Qur'an burning.  While I agree that a "book burning" is not the most intelligent way to respond to Islamic ideology, and that it conjures images of fascists burning books as a form of censorship, the picture is not quite so clean cut.

Firstly, when the Mohammad cartoons were published, and then re-published, in Denmark, there was similar criticism that doing so would "radicalize" and "inflame" the Muslims.   We knew, or should have known, that Muslims would respond violently, so publishing them was an intentional provocation.  True, the Danes had the right to publish the cartoons, but they shouldn't exercise that right, out of respect for Islam and Muslims.

In that case, most of us agree that it was appropriate for the Danes to publish those cartoons, and that a right that cannot be exercised is no right at all.  So why is publishing drawings of Mohammad in Denmark defensible, but burning a Qu'ran in the U.S. is not?

Secondly, the Ground-Zero mosque has been defended with the argument, "it's their Constitutionally protected right to build a mosque wherever they want to."  If it's important to defend the Constitutionally protected right to build a mosque, then it should be important to defend the Constitutionally protected right to burn a Qur'an.  The Constitution is meant to be applied to all citizens equally.  If the exercise of our free rights makes members of some communities uncomfortable, then so be it.

Thirdly, there are many cases throughout history, where Muslims have intentionally defiled and destroyed the religious symbols and institutions of other religions, with little-to-no outcry from non-Muslims.  Not that non-Muslims should look to Muslims as guides for behavior, but the case can be made that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and that a little reciprocity might (hey, anything's possible) engender a little empathy on the part of Muslims in the future.

Fourthly, Islam lays out rules for the proper disposal of old or damaged Qur'ans, and that process specifies that Qur'ans ... are to be burned.  In Florida today, and everywhere else old Qur'ans exist, Muslims are burning Qur'ans.  So this situation is not purely about burning Qur'ans, but has to do with who is burning the Qur'ans (Muslims = okay, kuffar = forbidden), and the intentions of the person doing the burning.  Once again it is asymmetrical, with one set of standards applied to Muslims and another, more restrictive set, to kuffar.

I agree that rational debate is preferable to emotional grandstanding.  But I feel some discomfort in the amount of pressure that is being applied to Pastor Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center.

Here are some brief quotations about the Istanbul Pogrom (citations in the original):

The Istanbul Pogrom ... was a pogrom directed primarily at Istanbul's Greek minority on 6–7 September 1955. The riots were orchestrated by the Turkish military's Tactical Mobilization Group, the seat of Operation Gladio's Turkish branch; the Counter-Guerrilla. The events were triggered by the news that the Turkish consulate in Thessaloniki, north Greece—the house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881—had been bombed the day befor.  A bomb planted by a Turkish usher of the consulate, who was later arrested and confessed, incited the events. The Turkish press conveying the news in Turkey was silent about the arrest and instead insinuated that Greeks had set off the bomb.

A Turkish mob, most of which had been trucked into the city in advance, assaulted Istanbul’s Greek community for nine hours. Although the mob did not explicitly call for Greeks to be killed, over a dozen people died during or after the pogrom as a result of beatings and arson. Jews and Armenians were also targeted.

The pogrom greatly accelerated emigration of ethnic Greeks (Turkish: Rumlar) from Turkey, and the Istanbul region in particular. The Greek population of Turkey declined from 119,822 persons in 1927, to about 7,000 in 1978. In Istanbul alone, the Greek population decreased from 65,108 to 49,081 between 1955 and 1960.  The 2008 figures released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry place the current number of Turkish citizens of Greek descent at 3,000–4,000. However according to the Human Rights Watch, the Greek population in Turkey was estimated at 2,500 in 2006.

[...]

Thirty-two Greeks were severely wounded. In addition, dozens of ethnic Greek women were raped, and a number of men were forcibly circumcised by the mob. 4,348 Greek-owned businesses, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, 21 factories, 73 Greek (and other Christian) churches and over a thousand Greek-owned homes were badly damaged or destroyed. The American consulate estimates that 59% of the businesses were Greek-owned, 17% were Armenian-owned, 12% were Jewish-owned, 10% were Muslim-owned; while 80% of the homes were Greek-owned, 9% were Armenian-owned, 3% were Jewish-owned, and 5% were Muslim-owned.

[...]

In addition to commercial targets, the mob clearly targeted property owned or administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. 73 churches and 23 schools were vandalized, burned or destroyed, as were 8 asperses and 3 monasteries. This represented about 90 percent of the church property portfolio in the city. The ancient Byzantine church of Panagia in Veligradiou was vandalised and burned down. The church at Yedikule was badly vandalised, as was the church of St. Constantine of Psammathos. At Zoodochos Pege church in Bal?kl?, the tombs of a number of ecumenical patriarchs were smashed open and desecrated. The abbot of the monastery, Bishop Gerasimos of Pamphilos, was severely beaten during the pogrom and died from his wounds some days later in Bal?kl? Hospital. In one church arson attack, Father Chrysanthos Mandas was burned alive. The Metropolitan of Liloupolis, Gennadios, was badly beaten and went mad. Elsewhere in the city, Greek cemeteries came under attack and were desecrated. Some reports also testified that relics of saints were burned or thrown to dogs.

[...]

An eyewitness account was provided by journalist Noel Barber of the London Daily Mail on 14 September 1955:

The church of Yedikule was utterly smashed, and one priest was dragged from bed, the hair torn from his head and the beard literally torn from his chin. Another old Greek priest [Fr Mantas] in a house belonging to the church and who was too ill to be moved was left in bed, and the house was set on fire and he was burned alive. At the church of Yeniköy, a lovely spot on the edge of the Bosporus, a priest of 75 was taken out into the street, stripped of every stitch of clothing, tied behind a car and dragged through the streets. They tried to tear the hair of another priest, but failing that, they scalped him, as they did many others.

And here is the dedication of  "The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6 - 7, 1955, And The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul", by Speros Vryonis, Jr., to Dêmêtrios Kaloumenos, the photographer who documented the immediate aftermath of the pogrom:

In dedicating this book to Dêmêtrios Kaloumenos, I wish to acknowledge his important contribution to our knowledge of the little-known pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, which inflicted massive destruction on the Greeks of Istanbul.  His contribution was twofold and resulted from both his copious photography, which was done under dangerous circumstances, and from his personal record of the events, published and unpublished. Above and beyond Kaloumenos’s direct experience of the pogrom lie his keen perception and strong ethical values. A well-read man, with complete command of both Greek and Turkish, he is also highly intelligent, with great physical and moral courage, and dedicated to the truth.

Early on the evening of September 6, he quickly understood that violent and important events were in the making, and so hastened to his studio in Galata, took his camera and numerous rolls of film, and, over the next five days, shot some 1,500 photographs of damaged or destroyed Greek homes, businesses, churches, monasteries, cemeteries, schools, and print shops. These images soon made their way to the outside world. Consequently, we now have a plethora of visual documentation to illustrate the oral and written testimony of the pogrom’s course and nature. In short, Kaloumenos was an extraordinary individual who understood history and politics, as well as the ethnic hatred and violence that often ensued from the former, and who, in full knowledge of the danger to him, undertook to preserve the truth.

That the pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, is virtually unknown—and has been effectively excluded from the scholarly and political discourse concerning its larger context—does not testify to its insignificance. Rather, it bespeaks the fact that, for the most part, the event has been, in turn, ignored, rationalized, excused, or denied by the Turkish government, and by the governments that have underwritten Turkey for half a century, in order to further their respective national and geopolitical interests. We are thus all deeply indebted to Dêmêtrios Kaloumenos for his foresight, unwavering courage, and perseverance in documenting and preserving the historical truth of the pogrom, and for his unrelenting pursuit of justice.

Kaloumenos opened his studio, Embeka, in 1948 at Maden Han 5, in Galata. His father, uncle, and brother were also professional photographers, and their studio, Lumiyer, which they had earlier established in Yüksek Kald?r?m, was to be destroyed during the pogrom (see the photographic inset). Kaloumenos was not only the ecumenical patriarchate’s official photographer, but served as import agent for the newspapers and magazines of Athens and Thessalonikê. Thus, his connections to the Greek press were close and constant, which was to be a significant factor in the subsequent dissemination of his photographs of the pogrom. Kaloumenos was well-prepared to document the violence against the Greek community because, in addition to his experience as a photographer and journalist, he was deeply knowledgeable—indeed a student—of the history of Istanbul and its culture.

Kaloumenos found himself at Tophane at 5:00 pm on September 6, 1955, among a group of Turkish soldiers preparing to participate in the pogrom. He observed that they were removing their uniforms and putting on civilian clothes while, nearby, people in parked trucks with official markings were arming them with crowbars and pickaxes. Sensing that something dramatic was about to take place, Kaloumenos hurried to his studio; by 6:00 pm, he was in Taksim Square prepared to photograph what he thought would be a demonstration. He caught the tail end of the speeches to the gathered mob and then witnessed the onset of violence.

From that time onward, and for many days thereafter, the patriarchal photographer busied himself with the dangerous business of photographing the destruction, although the conditions were anything but felicitous. The police and military forbade taking pictures, and so Kaloumenos had to hold the camera under his coat. Furthermore, despite the poor lighting, he could not afford to use a flash attachment, as this would have given him away. By 10:00 pm, he had boarded the ferry for Chalkê (Heybeliada), where his family had been staying for late summer vacation. On the morning of the seventh, he boarded the same boat at 6:00 am and now went to his studio, took a second camera and ten more rolls of film, and spent most of the rest of the day photographing in Galata, Yüksek Kald?r?m, Beyo?lu, Kalyoncu Kulluk, Tataula, Tarabya, and Büyükdere.

On September 8, he was joined by the correspondent from the Athens newspaper Ethnos, Giôrgos Karagiôrgas, who had been sent to cover the devastation suffered by the city’s Greeks (and who was joined, in turn, on September 9 by Iôannês Iôannidês, the editor of Makedonia, the major newspaper of Thessalonikê). Thus, on the morning of the eighth, Karagiôrgas followed Kaloumenos to the large Greek cemetery of Sisli. Both men have left accounts of their experience, and of their encounter with the police, which included Karagiôrgas’s escape and Kaloumenos’s arrest. Karagiôrgas’s description of their “voyage of discovery” in the destroyed cemetery of Sisli contains details of how they furtively (since they were followed by security police) photographed the ruins and desecrations:

I…managed…to enter the cemetery of Sisli two hours before entrance was to be forbidden. Horror was scattered over all the little “streets” of the cemetery, over the fallen and smashed [marble] crosses, over the exhumed corpses, intermingled with the repulsive stench. To the left and in the distance, the ossuary was still burning [almost two days after the destruction]. From within the piles of bones, there arose a light, diaphanous white smoke….There were also two young Turks [police] with their wrinkled red shirts following us….

Dêmêtrios Kaloumenos…loaded with his camera was constantly grumbling, “Do not indicate that you know me…stay close to me…but with a little distance between us.” He was continually turning to the left and right to see who was near us. He photographed everything, even the interior of the ossuary, which was smoking with a smoke that was choking us. We issued forth once more into the cemetery. There, with a small Japanese camera, I photographed a priest who had been slashed, with a knife, on the forehead….

[Throughout Istanbul] the Greeks were weeping, Dêmêtrios wept, the priests were weeping. Greeks had gathered at the [Greek] consulate…and mutely sought comfort from the consul….

Our rolls had finished, time was passing, and so we decided to leave. I led and Dêmêtrios followed; we had passed the rolls inside our socks. Suddenly, three men (one of them was the young policeman who had followed us) jumped out from behind the graves and ordered us…“Police, come here!” Two of them immediately surrounded Dêmêtrios….

Karagiôrgas escaped by hiding in open graves; before leaving the cemetery, he quickly gave the film to a priest with orders to get them to Kaloumenos’s studio. Kaloumenos was taken in for questioning, but, as he had managed to get rid of his film, was released. The priest, meanwhile, took the rolls of film to Kaloumenos’s studio, and the photos were ultimately delivered to Karagiôrgas, who, on the day he left Istanbul, taped them on his back to keep them from being found in his luggage. Finally, on the ninth of the month, Makedonia gathered further photographs from Kaloumenos, and so it was that a large body of very graphic pictures found their way into the Greek press within two weeks of the pogrom.

Kaloumenos’s life became increasingly difficult because of his harassment by the security police. On June 15, 1957, he was arrested, incarcerated in the central police station at Sirkeci, and alternately interrogated and tortured by the police. As he was held incommunicado, Kaloumenos’s wife did not know where he was or what had happened to him. He relates that he was subjected to bastinado four times, estimating that the beating was spread out each time over twenty to thirty minutes over a period of about fifty-six hours. In the end, the police decided that he had little to tell them. He was subsequently expelled from the country by the Turkish authorities.

One is amazed at Dêmêtrios Kaloumenos’s persistent pursuit of truth, which endangered him bodily and psychologically. In these days of ready and crude compromise, such courage and willingness to persist are truly rare. On a final and personal note, without his generosity—and the direct and free access he gave me both to his extraordinary photographic archive of the pogrom and to his photographic collection on various aspects of the life, culture, and society of Istanbul’s Greeks—this study would have been much diminished.

Mary here awarded Mao the title of "the most evil man in history".

At the outset, let me state I'm not quibbling about Mao's title.  But millions of names go on that trophy.

I don't subscribe to the Great Man  view of history.  I don't believe that if Winston Churchill, or Thomas Jefferson,  had been born in Shanghai, that China would have therefore evolved into a modern democracy.  I think that society has a much greater influence on the developing leader than vice versa.

Mao deserves every epithet spat at him, but it is the Chinese society of the 1930's through the 1970's that is guilty of carrying out his wishes.  Mao thought it would be a great idea for everyone in China to build a backyard furnace to smelt steel, and have everyone melt their farm working tools and kitchen implements in them.  That's dumb, but it's dumber for the people to implement it, leading to mass starvation.

I have no doubt that there exists in our countries a Hitler, Stalin, and Mao; probably several of each of them.  But the reason they don't "get their chance" to lead our society is that our society is not fallow ground for their ideas.  So they spend their lives as streetcorner watercolor painters, or assistant librarians, or whatever.

My point is that the only thing that makes our Western societies great (and they are great) is our values, tenets, and beliefs.  I don't believe in a divine providence protecting and guiding us.  The only thing protecting us and our freedoms (in my opinion) is our own vigilance.

Allowing mass immigration from societies that have an entirely different, and incompatible, set of values will change our societal values over time, regardless of any discussion on the merits pro-or-con.  Especially when that discussion is explicitly verboten, forbidden, censored.  And then it becomes merely a numbers game. 

Nazism, and Baathism, and Communism, are not democratic systems, and yet in a sense they are.  They can only succeed in gaining power if a significant percentage of the population supports them.  If someone stands up in a beer-hall in Des Moines in 2010 and rails about "the Jews", they'll be ridiculed and ignored, although those same ideas expressed in a mosque in Detroit in 2010 would find some resonance in the audience.

It took just a few German men to come up with the Final Solution, but it took many thousands to implement it.  Those nameless, faceless men and women driving the cattlecar trains, building the camps and the ovens, delivering the Zyklon B to the camps, turning in their Jewish neighbors to the police, and so on, deserve as much vitriol as their leaders.  Blaming it all on Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Mohammad, lets everyone else off the hook.

Any celebration of the achievements of Western societies (and there are so many achievements) is condemned as jingoism, while condemnation of the failures (and there are so many failures) of non-Western (especially Muslim) societies is condemned as "cultural imperialism".  If we cannot point out those things we did that were good, and why they were good, then we lose sight of our values which act as our societal guides.  And we lose our way.  We lose our identity as a society.  And with values now suitably hidden, "we are all the same," "we all share the same values", where "values" are now reduced to the mundanities of driving the kids to soccer league.

How often do our schools or universities lay out the tenets of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, and clearly criticize those tenets?  Instead, we are left with portrayals of comic-book villains, men whose only goal was to destroy the world out of the pure evilness of their hearts.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were evil men.  Jefferson, Churchill, and Adams were great men.  But what made the evil societies evil, and the great societies great, was not just those few men.  It is the values of their societies that guided them, for good or evil.

Fine, let Mao put the trophy on his mantle.  But history is a team, not an individual, sport.

From the AP:

DOHA, Qatar – Iran's president said Sunday that any Israeli attack against his nation would mean the destruction of the Jewish state.

The two nations have exchanged numerous threats and warnings in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program, which Israel, the United States and other countries believe is aimed at developing weapons, despite Tehran's denials.

Iran threatens to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.  Israel warns Iran that it will disable their nuclear weapons.  Iran threatens to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons.  Yep, they've exchanged threats and warnings, but it's a bit asymmetrical, ain't it?

"Any offensive against Iran means the annihilation of the Zionist entity," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. "Iran does not care much about this entity because it is on its way to decay."

He said he doubted Israel or the U.S. would dare to stage such an attack because "they know that Iran is ready and has the potential for a decisive and wide-scale response."

At the same time, Ahmadinejad sought to ease concerns among neighboring Arab nations that Tehran could target them if armed conflict were to break out with the West over its nuclear work.

Many of Iran's Sunni Arab neighbors, some of which host U.S. bases, fear that Tehran could attack them if such a conflict were to break out.

Ahmadinejad, who met with Qatar's leader during Sunday's visit, said there is a need for reconciliation and cooperation between Shiite-dominated Iran and other Gulf nations.

U.S. military chief Adm. Mike Mullen said last month that America's military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a military strike is probably a bad idea. Still, he said the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable and he reiterated that "the military option" remains on the table.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Wednesday that Iran's response to an attack would not be limited to the region, suggesting Iran would target U.S. interests beyond the Persian Gulf.

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any military attack launched from Dar al-Islam against any nation from Dar al-Harb as an attack by Islam on kuffar, requiring a full retaliatory response by kuffar worldwide upon Dar al-Islam."

It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

By Amy Davidson for the New Yorker:

Who owns Kabul Bank? And where has its money gone? Last night, after Obama had finished his speech about how we were sort of almost done in Iraq but still had a lot of lives to lose and money to spend in Afghanistan (see Anderson, Osnos, and Packer for more on that), the Washington Post put a story on its Web site about how the Afghan Central Bank was moving to replace the management of Kabul Bank. This is the bank that handles the payroll for Afghan soldiers and schoolteachers. From the Post:

Kabul Bank’s wayward lending practices, real estate speculation in Dubai and weeks of venomous feuding between major shareholders have threatened to wreak economic and political havoc.

U.S. officials have long worried that Kabul Bank, because of its size and unorthodox practices, could trigger financial mayhem, a prospect that would leave Afghan security forces without pay, threaten unrest by angry—and often armed—depositors and undermine President Obama’s Afghan strategy.

Our war in Afghanistan may be compromised by a bank? And, again, whose bank—who are the major shareholders involved in “venomous feuding?” The Post includes a helpful chart; they all seem to have ties to Karzai, his election campaign, and his cabinet. One is his brother, Mahmoud Karzai. He is in a better position to come out of this well than the depositors who were heading to the bank to get their money out this morning; there is a fair amount of confusion at the moment about who’s in control, what the central bank’s role will be, and, most of all, where all the money has gone. (Some seems to have funded an airline owned by the chairman of the bank.) Are American taxpayers going to end up bailing this bank out, because it’s so entwined with the Karzai government that it’s considered crucial to the war effort? Is there such a thing as a bank that’s too corrupt to fail?

The Wall Street Journal, in a follow-up, described “a massive portfolio of off-the-books loans by the bank’s chairman to himself and to other politically connected Afghans.” The bank has also, according to the Journal, used hawala, a less-than-regulated money-exchange system, “to clandestinely transfer almost $1 billion out of Afghanistan in the past few years.” It was mixed up with New Ansari, a firm that, as the Journal put it, “allegedly helped Afghan politicians, drug barons and even the Taliban move billions of dollars out of the country.” (Karzai recently intervened to get one of his aides, who was accused of taking a bribe to stop an investigation of Al Ansari, out of jail.) The Times said that Kabul Bank and its chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, were “at the heart of the political and economic nexus that sustains—and is sustained by—the government of President Hamid Karzai” and “provided millions to Mr. Karzai’s campaign.” Then there are its business dealings:

First among the beneficiaries was Mr. Farnood himself, the officials said. He invested about $140 million of the bank’s money in the real estate market in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, said Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother and a Kabul Bank shareholder. Among those properties were more than a dozen multimillion-dollar villas in Mr. Farnood’s name, some of them on Palm Jumeria, an island off Dubai’s coast, Mr. Karzai said.

A lot of that value was lost when the Dubai real-estate market fell (assuming, of course, that the transactions were real). More from the Times:

It is not clear what Mr. Farnood did with all the properties he purchased, but he made at least some of them available to his friends and allies. One of them was Mahmoud Karzai, who owns about 7 percent of the bank. Speaking in an interview from Dubai, Mr. Karzai said he had rented one of Mr. Farnood’s villas for the past year and a half.

Mr. Karzai said the bank’s troubles—and Mr. Farnood’s opaque dealings—had made him decide to vacate soon.

“I want to move to a different house,” Mr. Karzai said. “I want to cut this out.”

So President Karzai’s brother has been living in a villa in the Emirates that constitutes a questionable investment by the bank he partially owns; but he might move. The Wall Street Journal said that a U.S. official had tried to make the case that the removal of bank officials was “a sign” that Karzai was getting a little bit serious about corruption. But, the Journal noted,

An Afghan banker with knowledge of the situation offered a less optimistic view, saying the move may have more to do with shifting political and business alliances among the country’s small, clubby elite.

Mahmood Karzai, for example, has recently forged stronger links with the owners of Afghan United Bank, a competitor of Kabul Bank. Afghan United Bank’s chairman owns a 20% stake in a housing development that Mahmood Karzai is building outside the southern city of Kandahar, where U.S. forces are making a major push against the Taliban.

So what is Mahmoud Karzai's new preferred bank like?

Afghan United Bank is owned by the founders of New Ansari, the hawala that is being investigated. U.S. officials say the bank’s owners still control the hawala, although the bank’s owners say they have cut ties to the money-transfer business.

Moving the money from one bank to another, or the President’s dubiously wealthy brother moving himself from one villa to another, doesn’t really count as doing something about corruption. Or, if it does, then we have a long way to go in Afghanistan. It’s a bit like moving soldiers from one war to another, and calling it victory.

So, should U.S. taxpayers bail out Kabul Bank because it is considered so vital to the war effort?

Were that all our foreign policy decisions were so easy.

By Rachel Zoll for AP:

NEW YORK – American Muslims are boosting security at mosques, seeking help from leaders of other faiths and airing ads underscoring their loyalty to the United States — all ahead of a 9/11 anniversary they fear could bring more trouble for their communities.

Their goal is not only to protect Muslims, but also to prevent them from retaliating if provoked. One Sept. 11 protest in New York against the proposed mosque near ground zero is expected to feature Geert Wilders, the aggressively anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker. The same day in Gainesville, Fla., the Dove World Outreach Center plans to burn copies of the Quran.

Allah knows, if Muslims become violent, it will be because they were provoked.  We had our chance to live in peace with them, and we blew it.

[...]

"We're telling everyone to keep their eyes open and report anything suspicious to authorities and call us," said Ramzy Kilic of the Tampa, Fla., chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

[...]

Islamic centers as far away as Tennessee and California faced protests and vandalism. In western New York, police said a group of teenagers recently yelled obscenities, set off a car alarm and fired a shotgun during two nights of drive-by harassment at a small-town mosque near Lake Ontario.  [Sounds like my former neighbors.  Maybe they were Islamophobophobes. ]

And so on and so forth.

Please read Karl Vick's article for Time magazine, then select which of these are his main point(s):

1. Jews keep harping on the same old tired stories of their forced exodus from ancient Israel
2. Jews are moneygrubbers who don't care about peace
3. Jews have no taste, and are gaudy dressers
4. After a generous 2 1/2 years with no suicide bombings in Israel, Jews need another wake-up call to remind them to get back to working on peace
5. Jews took the land from the "Palestinians", and now refuse to negotiate with them
6. Jews are intractable blood-feuders who are not interested in peace, while peace is the number one goal of "Israeli Arabs"
7. Heli Itach and Eli Bengozi, two real-estate agents selling property in Ashdod, are suitable spokespersons for "the Jews"
8. All of the above

After reading the textual description that Hugh posted, you may be interested to see interviews with and footage of the characters, from the brave Larisa Kudziyeva to the jihadi Ali.

By Arghea Desafti Hapsari for the Jakarta Post:

Human rights activists have described Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali’s proposal to disband the Ahmadiyah congregation as a “setback” and a national “humiliation”.

Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia’s representative to ASEAN’s Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that Suryadharma’s statement was a setback and was counter to the country’s commitment to religious freedom.

The minister will inflame hard-line groups to commit even more violence with such a statement, he added.

Suryadharma said on Monday that Ahmadiyah “must be disbanded immediately” because it violated a 2008 joint ministerial decree that stated that Ahmadiyah can not propagate its teachings.

The process of dissolving the group will be gradual, Suryadharma said Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com.

“We will not abruptly disband it. The process will begin with the enforcement of the joint ministerial decree,” he said.

I don't think the good minister understands the basis for criticism of the ban.  The concern is not the rate at which the Ahmadiyya will be disbanded.  The concern is that the Ahmadiyya will be disbanded at all, and forbidden by law from practicing their religion (which is also Islam, but a heretical enough version for the Sunni majority to consider them un-Islamic).  It doesn't even occur to him that Muslims banning the practice of other religions is anything out of the ordinary.

Neither Suryadharma nor the ministry provided evidence supporting the minister’s allegations.
Rafendi said the planned ban of Ahmadiyah was inimical to the country’s efforts to uphold the principles of human rights and democracy.

President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono previously told an audience at Harvard University in the US that Indonesia “has shown that Islam, modernity and democracy — plus economic growth and national unity — can be a powerful partnership.”

Yudhoyono also said that the country wanted to ensure that tolerance and respect for religious freedom became part of its “trans-generational DNA” and that Indonesia was a powerful example of how Islam, democracy and modernity can go “hand in hand”.

Of course, the hands of democracy and modernity have been severed before being held aloft in triumph by the hand of Islam, "hand in hand."

Jamaah Ahmadiyah, which has 200,000 followers in Indonesia, has also been the target of attacks from hard-line Islamic groups, most recently in Manis Lor, Kuningan regency when three were injured.

Hard-line Muslim organizations have demanded that the group be banned.

Home Affairs Ministry spokesman Saut Situmorang told the Post that a mass organization could be banned if it was proven to have disturbed the public order or posed a threat to national unity.

A sufficiently vague standard that could be applied by Muslims to whatever religious groups they want.

Saut said if the Religious Affairs Ministry decided to ban Ahmadiyah group, the Home Affairs Ministry would have to apply the 1985 Law on Mass Organizations, which provides a mechanism to disband groups.

Nurkholis Hidayat, the chairman of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation, asked if the Ahmadiyah needed to be banned under the law. “I think the FPI (Islam Defenders Front) meets more of the requirements,” he said.  [Cheeky devil,and a brave one at that] 

Rafendi said banning Ahmadiyah would justify more violence. “What (Suryadharma) said concerns an inalienable right (of the Ahmadiyah members) to hold religious beliefs that cannot be denied in any kind of situation,” he added.

An update to this story about everyone's favorite baker-murderers.  First, Sgt. Derwin Longmire's discrimination lawsuit against the city of Oakland has been dismissed.  By Josh Richman for the Chauncey Bailey Project:

A federal judge has dismissed most of a civil-rights lawsuit filed by the former Oakland homicide detective who led the highly criticized investigation of journalist Chauncey Bailey’s 2007 slaying.

Sgt. Derwin Longmire had claimed in his April lawsuit that the Oakland Police Department, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan and Internal Affairs Division Lt. Sean Whent violated his constitutional rights and ruined his reputation by investigating his conduct and allowing information leaks while forbidding him from clearing his own name.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White this week ruled Longmire’s case is full of holes and can’t be sustained by the facts presented in the complaint. He dismissed all but one of Longmire’s claims, allowing Longmire the right to amend and refile his case on the others.

And more interestingly, Yusuf Bey IV's lawyer has been dismissed for smuggling a "hit-list" out of prison.  By Thomas Peele for the Chauncey Bailey Report:

OAKLAND — Yusuf Bey IV’s longtime lawyer smuggled a hit list out of jail in March that named witnesses her client wanted killed to prevent their testimony in his upcoming trial on charges of ordering journalist Chauncey Bailey and two others killed in 2007, according to court papers filed Tuesday.

The attorney, Lorna Patton Brown “smuggled written communication and materials out of Santa Rita Jail (in Dublin) without the authorization of the sheriff’s department and delivered the unlawful communication to others” on six occasions, an affidavit in the filing states. It also states she has smuggled unidentified materials into the jail for Bey IV.

Brown also received “documents from others and passed(ed) them on to Bey IV” in jail, the affidavit states. She resigned as his lawyer on April 16. Brown had represented Bey IV and his late father, Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey, in several felony cases.

On one of the documents she smuggled out of the jail “witnesses’ names had been highlighted” so that (a hit man) would know who “he would have to kill so they would not be available to testify at Bey IV’s pending murder trial,” states the affidavit written by Inspector Kathleen Boyovich of the Alameda County district attorney’s office.

The affidavit does not say whether Brown knew why the names were highlighted. Her attorney, Spencer Strellis, declined to comment Tuesday and Brown did not return a message. She has not been charged with a crime. The penal code section cited in the affidavit is a misdemeanor.

The affidavit also states that Bey IV routinely tries to circumvent recording devices during jail visits by “whispering and lip syncing.” In those communications he had tried to intimidate witnesses and asked them to lie and destroy evidence, Boyovich wrote.

Milli Vanilli and Jessica Simpson lip synced.  Yusuf Bey IV mouthed words.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this point that after allegedly attempting to assist in the murder of witnesses, the lawyer simply resigned and walked away.  No criminal charges filed, no reprimand from the Bar Association.  Maybe she can follow Sgt. Longmire's lead and file a discrimination lawsuit against the city.  Ka-ching.

By Babar Dogar for for AP:

LAHORE, Pakistan – Three bombs ripped through a Shiite Muslim religious procession in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing 25 people and wounding about 150 others, officials said.

The explosions appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks by Sunni extremists against the minority Shiites they consider infidels. Allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban, the bombers are also seeking to destabilize Pakistan's U.S.-backed government.

The blasts were the first major attacks since Pakistan was hit by devastating floods more than a month ago. Lahore, the country's political capital and home to much of its military elite, has been regularly targeted by militants over the past two years.

The bombs exploded at three separate sites Wednesday evening as 35,000 Shiites marched through the streets of Lahore in their traditional mourning procession for the caliph Ali, one of Shiite Islam's most respected holy men.

[...]

After the blasts, the marchers erupted in fury, setting fire to a police station, another police facility, two police cars and three motorcycles, said Zulfiqar Hameed, a senior police officer. Police lobbed tear gas canisters at the crowd and fired shots in the air to disperse the assailants, he said.

The first blast was a time bomb that exploded in the street near a well-known Shiite building, Hameed said. Footage of that explosion shown on Geo television showed a small blast erupting amid a crowd of people on the street followed by a large plume of smoke. Hundreds of people fled from the blast, while others rushed to the area to carry the wounded to safety.

Minutes later, with the streets in chaos, a male suicide bomber who appeared about 18 years old tried to force his way into an area where food was being prepared for the marchers to break the traditional Ramadan fast and exploded, Hameed said. Soon after, another suicide bomber detonated himself at an intersection near the end of the procession.

Does anyone seriously believe that if the U.S. pulled all troops out of every Islamic nation, and if every Jew left Israel tomorrow, then there would then finally be peace in Dar al-Islam?

By Eileen Sullivan for AP:

WASHINGTON – Two men on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Amsterdam were questioned by Dutch authorities after U.S. officials found a cell phone taped to a Pepto Bismol bottle and a knife and box cutter in checked luggage connected with the men, a law enforcement official said.

The official identified the men as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi and Hezam al Murisi. Al Soofi had a Michigan address, the official said, but it was not immediately clear where the two men were from.

As of Monday night, FBI agents had visited the southwest Detroit neighborhood where several addresses were found for variations of al Soofi's name, according to neighbors who declined to give their names to The Associated Press.

ABC News, which first reported the incident Monday, said al Soofi was from Detroit and that both he and al Murisi were charged in the Netherlands with "preparation of a terrorist attack," but U.S. officials would not confirm that.

Another law enforcement official said, as of Monday night, the men had not been charged with anything in the U.S.

The law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation and sensitive security issues.

Al Soofi was questioned as he went through security in Birmingham, Ala., on his way to Chicago, according to one of the officials. He told the Transportation Security Administration authorities he was carrying a lot of cash. Screeners found $7,000 on him, but he was not breaking any law by carrying that much money. Officials also found multiple cell phones taped together and multiple watches taped together in his checked baggage.

Al Soofi was supposed to fly from Chicago to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and then on to Amsterdam, the official said. But when he got to Chicago, he changed his travel plans to take a direct flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. Al Murisi also changed his travel plans in Chicago to take a direct flight to Amsterdam, raising suspicion among U.S. officials. Federal Air marshals were on the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam, a law enforcement official said.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said once officials found suspicious items in luggage associated with two passengers on Sunday night's flight, they notified the Dutch authorities.

"The items were not deemed to be dangerous in and of themselves," Kudwa said. She would not identify the two passengers.

It is not illegal to carry knives or taped cell phones and watches in checked baggage.

No, it's not.  It's also not illegal to stand up during a flight and start praying loudly in Arabic; to order seatbelt extenders when they are not needed; switch seats back and forth among a group travelling together; pack a brick of cheese with wires stuck in it into checked luggage; make frequent trips back and forth to the washroom; and take pictures of the flight crew with a cellphone after the crew has told passengers to turn off all electronic devices; all of which Muslims have done in the last few years.

It's also not illegal to start screaming in mock terror in the darkness of an overnight overseas flight; to shine a flashlight into the eyes of your sleeping neighbor on a flight; to urinate into a jar in the restroom and then pour it on the floor and seats of the plane; to scream at the top of your lungs that the elderly woman sitting next to you is a disgusting pig;  play electric guitar at full volume; or any of a million other annoying and disturbing things one COULD do that are not technically illegal.

It's not illegal, but we shouldn't do them.  We should act with respect towards our fellow passengers, and in cooperation with airline and security personnel who are tasked with ensuring the safety of all passengers.  We should loudly and clearly criticize those who intentionally disrupt flights, and take actions to ensure that they cannot disrupt future flights.

You know and I know these are not just rowdy passengers.  These are "dry runs", intended to test the boundaries of our security systems, to probe for weaknesses that can be exploited.  These are intended to habitualize airline crews to their bizarre behavior, and to cow airline crews into submission with threats of discrimination lawsuits.  They are meant to divert attention and resources to monitoring airline flights, while other methods and routes are being used to prepare for future jihad attacks.

Their behavior may not be illegal, but it is unacceptable, and it must stop.

By Asra Q. Nomani for The Daily Beast:

NEW YORK – New revelations about the owner of the Ground Zero mosque building could mean a split between him and the project's influential imam, making it unlikely to ever get built.

Sharif El-Gamal, 37, the owner of the building at the center of the storm over the construction of a "ground zero mosque," is a quintessential American story, a man who went from waiting tables in New York's A-list restaurants to buying and selling properties.

But new revelations are emerging that present a very different narrative. And it could lead to a split between the forces behind the mosque.

Court records from Florida to New York state reveal that Sharif and his younger brother, Samir "Sammy" El-Gamal, 35, a partner with him in his company SoHo Properties, both have a history replete with intersections with tax and debt issues, dating back to at least 1994 and continuing into this year. In one instance, Sharif told a court he didn't hit a tenant from whom his brother and he were trying to collect back rent. He said to police, the tenant's "face could have run into my hand."

I now don't think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero.

After tracking Sharif's finances and talking to acquaintances about his rough-and-tumble business style, I now don't think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero. According to people familiar with the mosque project, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, a community leader, were blindsided by the revelations about Sharif, making a partnership unlikely. Moreover, Sharif’s domineering personality troubles them because it doesn't fit into the slow, methodical, and even boring work of building a nonprofit.

Fast jihad, take a seat on the bench.  It's slow jihad's turn for a while.  We'll put you back in the game in the fourth quarter.

I expect that Rauf and Khan will gracefully bow out of this project near ground zero, lead an interfaith community effort to build an Islamic center elsewhere, and welcome Sharif and his family in the congregation with open arms. To me, that’s the best solution out of this political—and now PR—debacle. I'm also certain that somewhere in there the businessman in Sharif will see a profit.

This is exactly as Hugh and Rebecca predicted.  Sharif El-Gamal will ostentatiously be set aside, Imam Rauf will make a magnanimous acceptance of millions of dollars to move the Ground Zero mosque a couple of blocks down the road, and the issue will fade away.

[...]

According to friends, the brothers [Sharif and Samir "Sammy" El-Gamal] ran with a fast crowd in their twenties. Sharif waited tables at the posh restaurant Serafina, while Sammy waited tables at Tao. For a short while, Sharif worked as a waiter at Michael Jordan’s, named after former basketball star. But, according to people familiar with that restaurant, he was fired within two months for arriving reeking of alcohol, among other things.  This is around when Sharif started acquiring a criminal record, say people familiar with his life.

This past weekend, capturing this period of Sharif's life, the Daily News ran a headline, "Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal has a history of run-ins with the law," including pleading guilty in 1994, 1998, and 1999 to disorderly conduct in Manhattan, as well as pleading guilty to disorderly conduct in 1990, a DWI in 1992, and attempted petit larceny in 1993 in Nassau County, N.Y.

According to Broward County court records, on March 3, 1999, Hollywood, Florida, police arrested Sammy, then 25, for "theft/to deprive," a misdemeanor. Later that year, Sammy pleaded guilty, and Judge Sharon Zeller fined him $143 and required him to attend a "substance-abuse through education" course. Just two years ago, during the summer of 2008, the court filed "financial obligation suspension" papers for Sammy's failure to pay his fine.

Neither Sammy nor Sharif responded to a request seeking comment.

After the 9/11 attacks, Sharif told New York magazine that "he just felt like praying." Sharif first started attending Manhattan Masjid, known in the community as "the Salafi mosque," for its adherence to a rigid, puritanical interpretation of Islam, espoused, among other things, on its website.

Why would the 9/11 attacks engender in Sharif a desire to start attending a mosque that teaches adherence to a "rigid, puritanical interpretation of Islam"?  Was it for the peace, tolerance, and love that they were espousing?

Then, he discovered Masjid al-Nur, or "Mosque of Light," where Rauf preaches. It's nicknamed "the Sufi mosque" by congregants.

Contrary to current belief, Sufis are not simply peaceful spinning dancers.

Career-wise, Sharif was heading into real estate, collecting commissions off rental leases. He was no big shot, and really never has been, building just a small portfolio of property. In late 2003, he created a website, sohoproperties.com. The three partners were Sharif, Sammy, and Nour Mousa, the young nephew of Amr Mousa, secretary general of the Arab League, a relationship that would later become a lightning rod for critics of the mosque.

On September 10, 2005, New York police arrested Sharif for alleged assault on a Manhattan renter, Mark Vassilieve, when Sammy tried to convince Vassilieve to pay his rent. The charges were dropped when Vassilieve filed a civil suit, which Sharif settled.

On January 24, 2006, according to court records, Nino and Nicola Gaudio won a judgment of $3,300 against Sammy, as well as permission to evict him from property they owned. On February 1, 2006, they won another $3,300 judgment, and on April 6, 2006, N&S Realty won a judgment allowing them to have forcible entry against Sammy. The Gaudios couldn't be reached for comment.

Big things were still in the air though. According to electronic records, Sharif created a website, retailsoho.com, in April 2006. (A visit this weekend showed nothing on the site.) That year, Sharif told the Daily News, he hired a teenager, Francisco Patino, to scout for a new mosque location, when he spotted him on a TV at a Sharper Image store, charming TV viewers of the reality show American Inventor. That same year, according to media reports, Sharif bid on the property at 45-47 Park Place.

The next year, on March 13, 2007, New York state issued a state tax warrant against Sammy for $19,895, according to court records. On April 30, 2007, Sharif bought apartment 6C in a building on W. 93rd Street for $1.075 million with his wife, Rebekka, an American-born convert to Islam.

By this time, the El-Gamal brothers knew Imam Rauf well. In December 2008, Rauf officiated Sammy's wedding to Allison Poole, a scarf delicately draped over the bride's golden brown locks. The young couple clasp hands and gaze softly into each other's eyes in a photo taken at the wedding, as Rauf led the ceremony, smiling, with a microphone hooked to his loose tunic.

On July 7, 2009, after buying the property where he wants to build the Islamic center, Sharif created two companies, 45 Park Place Partners LLC and 45 Park Place LH, LLC. The next day, he started Soho Properties General Partner LLC as a foreign limited liability corporation. On October 16, 2009, Sharif created Soho Properties Inc., naming himself chairman.

Since the controversy erupted, the media has largely portrayed the man behind the mosque effort as Imam Rauf, an Egyptian-born progressive Muslim cleric who could be Sean Connery's body-double [but not his philosophical-double]. His wife, Khan, a Muslim community leader born in Kashmir, India, occasionally shares the spotlight. Known inside the Muslim community as unabashedly ambitious, the couple has irked Sharif and others in his camp. Last week, in a conference call with interfaith partners and others, set up by the Council on Foreign Relations, Khan said, "one of our congregants, Sharif El-Gamal, took it upon himself" to find new space for the overcrowded mosque where Rauf led prayers. Otherwise, there wasn't another word about the Brooklyn-born Sharif. Khan directed folks to the website of the Cordoba Initiative [link by Artemis], an interfaith nonprofit her husband runs, not the developer's website for the effort.

Isn't it interesting that among all the "vast majority of moderate Muslims" who are allegedly trying so hard to build a symbol of "interfaith outreach" to the community, that as soon as you look at who is actually leading these projects, it is either an imam who claims that the C.I.A. carried out 9/11 and who refuses to denounce Hamas, or a low-level thug who allegedly beats tenants?  Are these really the "best and brightest" that Islam has to offer?

By Kim Gamel for the AP:

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq – A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects — more than 10 percent of the $53.7 billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deepwater port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.

Define "success".  Is it truly a "success story" if the U.S. builds police stations, border forts, and government buildings in Iraq at U.S. expense, for the ungrateful Iraqi people?  Is it a "success" to train and arm the Iraqi army and police who are currently in a state of near-war with each other, and who, as soon as we extract our troops, will begin terrorizing and torturing "The Iraqi People"?  Or rather, Sunni police and soldiers will terrorize and torture Shi'a, and vice versa.  And it will all be the fault of the Evil Empire, the U.S., for having  trained and armed them.

But even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.

Actually, the jury came back years ago with their verdict, as is made clear later in this article, which we continue to steadfastly ignore.

Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq this summer, said it has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.

Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis who have complained that they were not consulted on projects to start with.

When the "success" of our strategy depends on the Iraqi people, we are doomed to failure.  We should have never gotten ourselves in this position, and we should do everything in our power to get out of this situation as soon as possible.

[...]

Another problem was coordination with the Iraqis, who have been left with health facilities that would cost at least as much as the Americans spent to complete. One clinic was handed over to local authorities without a staircase, said Shaymaa Mohammed Amin, the head of the Diyala provincial reconstruction and development committee.

"We were almost forced to take them," she said during an interview at the heavily fortified local government building in the provincial capital of Baqouba. "Generally speaking, they were below our expectations. Huge funds were wasted and they would not have been wasted if plans had been clear from the beginning."

As an example, she cited a date honey factory that was started despite a more pressing need for schools and vital infrastructure. She said some schools were left without paint or chalkboards, and needed renovations.

"We ended up paying twice," she said.

No, the Iraqis ended up paying nothing.  It was U.S. taxpayers' money that was wasted twice.  First, by sending it to a people who hate us and who hate each other, to try to improve the horrific lives they have built for themselves, and secondly, by giving that money to Iraqi contractors who built hospitals without staircases, and generally did substandard work while siphoning off funds for their personal use via corruption, mismanagement, and outright theft.

[...]

The Americans committed to rebuilding the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah after it was destroyed in major offensives in 2004. The U.S. awarded an initial contract for a new waste water treatment system to FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C. — just three months after four American private security contractors were savagely attacked. The charred and mutilated remains of two of them were strung from a bridge in the city.

An audit concluded that it was unrealistic for the U.S. "to believe FluorAMEC could even begin construction, let alone complete the project, while fierce fighting occurred daily."

That sounds like a good summary of the entire Iraqi intervention.

[...]

In an acknowledgment that they weren't getting exactly what they hoped for, Iraqi officials insisted the label "state of the art" be removed from a memorandum of understanding giving them the facility. It was described as a "modern pediatric hospital."

The hospital's director, Kadhim Fahad, said construction has been completed and the electricity issue resolved. "The opening will take place soon, God [Allah] willing," he said.

Allah didn't provide their new "modern pediatric hospital", it was the United States of Naïve, Misguided Benevolence. 

Residents are pleased with the outcome. One, Ghassan Kadhim, said: "It is the duty of the Americans to do such projects because they were the ones who inflicted harm on people."

We got rid of Saddam Hussein and the Baathists, stopped the Shi'ite militias such as Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army from killing Sunnis, stopped the Sunni militias such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from killing Shi'a, and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity to create a democratic government of their own choosing.  For that, we owe them.

There is a Chinese proverb, "He who saves a man's life is forever responsible for it."  The moral being, I suppose, to be careful who you help;  it may be better for a bystander to simply walk away and let the person in trouble perish.  That is not a Judaeo-Christian principle, it is not a Western principle.  All belief systems are not equivalent, and this is not a proverb that we live by.

Whatever the wisdom of it, we helped the Iraqis.  Our obligation to them ended at that point.  We didn't "break it," and we don't need to "fix it".  The Iraqis are responsible for their own decisions and for the society that they have built for themselves.

This entire article is listing a few individual projects that wasted a few paltry tens or hundreds of million dollars here and there, without questioning the entire TRILLION dollars we have spent during our occupation of Iraq.  These few billion "wasted" dollars are insignificant compared to the waste of the entire Iraqi project.  Eight years on, we are still not ready to question the reason we are there (to protect the Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Emirati royal families from Saddam's forces), and do the requisite cost-benefit analysis from our point of view.  We're just nibbling around the edges, fretting over some empty prison or hospital, when the entire project was a fool's errand from the start.

If Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's fundraising trip, underwritten by the U.S. State Department, through the Arabian Peninsula to benefit Park 51 the Ground-Zero mosque fails to come through, there is another option:  New York City public funds.  By Joan Gralla for Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.

The Democratic comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.

"If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we'd certainly consider it," Sieber told Reuters.

[...]

The mosque's backers hope to raise a total of $70 million in tax-exempt debt to build the center, according to the New York Times. Tax laws allow such funding for religiously affiliated non-profits if they can prove the facility will benefit the general public and their religious activities are funded separately.

Imagine if Japanese-American citizens in 1943 had built a 15-story Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Hirohito at Pearl Harbor.  Using tax-free funding supplied by Honolulu citizens, no less.

Our forebearers would have had none of it.  But then that just proves what a bunch of uneducated, intolerant bigots and racists they were.

We are so much wiser than they were.

Are we really all the same?

The Pew Research Center has released a new report, "Public Remains Conflicted Over Islam".  The raw top-level questionnaire (some of it redacted) is available here.

Some excerpts:

Also, note that in Aug 2010, 35% of Americans believe that "the Islamic religion is more likely than others to encourage violence among its believers", compared with 42% who believe that it is not.  That 35% number is amazing, considering the constant repetition of the "Islam is the Religion of Peace" canard.

And broken down by political affiliation, my fellow Democrats have much to learn from the Republicans on this issue.  Democrats have a 41% favorable, 27% unfavorable view of Islam, compared to Republicans' 21% favorable, 54% unfavorable.  Overall, 30% of Americans have a favorable view, compared to 38% unfavorable.

These numbers are heartening for those who wish to defend traditional Judaeo-Christian values against Islamic incursion.  If it is inevitable that Islam will continue its assault (both by violent and non-violent means) on the U.S. and the U.K., it is also inevitable that more non-Muslims will take the time to learn more about Islam, and therefore inevitable that non-Muslims' view of Islam will become less favorable.  This is how jihad will eventually be controlled and possibly rolled back: by education, not by military invasion and occupation of Islamic-majority nations.

By Elizabeth A. Kennedy for AP:

BEIRUT – The most serious fighting in Beirut since 2008 appears to have been touched off by a traffic dispute that escalated into deadly, hours-long street battles between the Shiite Hezbollah group and a small Sunni faction, witnesses said Wednesday.

Security officials said three Hezbollah members and a follower of the conservative Sunni al-Ahbash group were killed Tuesday night in the Bourj Abu Haider district, just outside Beirut's downtown, in running battles with fighters wielding assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The state news agency also said four people died, although the army put the death toll at three.

It was not clear why the fighting intensified so dramatically, but tensions among the Sunni and Shiite communities have been running high recently amid reports that Hezbollah members will be indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, once the country's top Sunni politician.

[...]

Al-Fakhani and several other witnesses said there was a commotion outside the Bourj Abu Haider mosque about 20 minutes before the gunbattles began, with men fighting over a car.

"They were shouting and yelling insults at each other," al-Fakhani told The Associated Press. "Then a group from Hezbollah approached the mosque and they just kept coming. We were astonished," he said.

[...]

On Wednesday morning, cleaning crews were sweeping the chunks of concrete that had been blown off the mosque by bullets and grenades. At least one gunman holding an AK-47 assault rifle had taken up position in a building across from the mosque.

The article does not mention whether the Burj Abu Haider mosque is Sunni or Shi'ite, but to reiterate, Muslims fired AK-47's and RPG's at a mosque over a traffic incident.  We see the "sanctity" that they place on their places of worship.  We take note of the frequency that mosques are deliberately targeted by Muslims in bombing attacks, that mosques are used by Muslims as bases from which they fire weapons, and that mosques are used as storehouses for weapons caches.

Another one of those 'rare' cases where an Afghan soldier opens fire on Coalition troops.  This time hundreds of Afghans tried to join in on the fun.  By Aref Karimi for AP:

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Hundreds of angry men tried to storm a small NATO base in northwestern Afghanistan Wednesday after a shootout left three Spaniards and an Afghan police trainee dead, officials said.

The Afghan policeman killed two Spanish paramilitary police officers and a Spanish interpreter during a training session at the base in the province of Badghis before security forces shot him dead, Afghan and Spanish authorities said.

Hundreds of Afghan men then tried to over-run the Spanish-administered base in protest at the killing of the local officer, in an incident that left more than two dozen men injured, police and doctors said.

"We have 25 people admitted to our hospitals. Some of them suffer from bullet wounds, others from injuries caused by rocks and sticks," said Abdul Aziz Tareq, the provincial public health chief.

Television footage showed crowds of angry men in turbans and shalwar kameez throwing rocks at the front gate of the base.

"In a class, one of the students apparently opened fire on the two Civil Guard policemen and the interpreter, who was also Spanish, and killed all three," Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on radio.

"The security forces in turn repulsed the attack, fired on the assailant and killed him."

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which the officers were assigned, said two of its service members along with a civilian and an Afghan police officer were killed in what it called a "shooting incident".

Of course the motivation for the attack is not clear, and of course this incident will not affect the strategy of Coalition troops working alongside Afghan troops.  Of course.

While we were all paying attention to Park 51 the Ground Zero Mosque, another Islamic milestone has quietly passed.  By Matt Krupnick for Contra Costa Times in northern California:

BERKELEY -- The Quran is the primary textbook at this city's newest institution of higher learning.

Zaytuna College will open today to its first class of 15 students, who will strive to become the first graduates of a Muslim four-year, liberal-arts college in the United States. The school, which hopes to enroll 2,000 students a decade from now, is seeking accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the same organization that licenses schools such as UC Berkeley and Saint Mary's College.

The endeavor will be a challenge for Zaytuna's three founders, who started down this path with the 1996 opening of a Hayward institute to teach Islam. New nonprofit liberal-arts colleges are rare, and Zaytuna's leaders will be counting on fellow Muslims to sustain the school.

"The Muslim community in the United States is growing," said co-founder Hatem Bazian, who teaches at UC Berkeley, Saint Mary's College in Moraga and Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. "As such, it is increasingly needing an institution of higher learning.

[...]

But Zaytuna's founders, Sachedina said, will have to be careful how they approach potential Muslim donors. Muslims will be very cautious about the school's curriculum, he said, particularly about the college's teaching of Islam.

"Muslims worry about the eternal life," he said. "If I give money to a Muslim college and Islam is taught badly, I will suffer because I have done something wrong. That is the fear that is in the minds of Muslims."

[...]

The college, which is offering bachelor's degrees in Islamic law and theology and Arabic language, is open to students of any religion. Although all its inaugural students are Muslim, Nawaz said the school accepted students of other faiths.

 Here are some quotations from the wikipedia article on Hatem Bazian (links and citations in the original):

According to the San Francisco State University campus newspaper The Golden Gater, Bazian was appointed to the paid Discourse position by a lame-duck student-body administration that had recently been defeated in elections.[3]. He was paid a significant sum at a time when there were no publications and when there were no plans to continue publishing the magazine.[4].

A rise in incidents of anti-semitism as reported by Jewish students at San Francisco coincide with Bazian's rise to power on campus[5], and contemporaneous Jewish students have said that Bazian was a critical player in fomenting this environment [6]. Throughout the early 1990s at San Francisco State, Bazian continued his involvement in student politics at San Francisco State even after he was no longer a student, where he publicly obfuscated the difference between Jews and proponents of Zionism.[7]

When a controversial mural of Malcolm X containing dollar signs surrounded by Jewish Stars was painted on the student union building at San Francisco State, Bazian helped to organize students in support of the mural. Furthermore, Bazian was an organizer of and a featured speaker at a press conference in support of the mural held in the public Student Union building. According to the campus newspaper, The Golden Gater Jewish students were forcibly excluded from this press conference despite it being held in the public Student Union building.[8]

Bazian has been accused of anti-semitism. American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us quotes him at a 1999 conference of the American Muslim Alliance as saying:[9]

In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you're on the east side until the trees and stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that's in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.

Bazian said on The O'Reilly Factor that this statement was falsely attributed to him, and that he was considering legal action as a response.[10][11]

A former SFSU student has alleged that Bazian prevented his appointment to the Student Judicial Council on the grounds that he supported the state of Israel and was therefore a racist.[12].

Here are some quotations from the wikipedia article on co-founder Sheikh Zaid Shakir:

While many have cited Imam Shakir as example of Islamic moderation,[12] his critics have questioned his moderate credentials. In his book America Alone, Mark Steyn challenges the characterization of Shakir as a moderate Muslim, citing Shakir's expressed hope for the conversion of America to Islam and adoption of Islamic law in America.[13]

On November 13, 2009 Imam Shakir issued a lengthy statement regarding the Fort Hood shooting with this introduction:

I begin by expressing my deepest condolences to the families of all of the dead and wounded. There is no legitimate reason for their deaths, just as I firmly believe there is no legitimate reason for the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have perished as a result of those two conflicts. Even though I disagree with the continued prosecution of those wars, and even though I believe that the US war machine is the single greatest threat to world peace, I must commend the top military brass at Fort Hood, and President Obama for encouraging restraint and for refusing to attribute the crime allegedly perpetrated by Major Nidal Malik Hasan to Islam. We pray that God bless us to see peace and sanity prevail during these tense times.[14]

This statement was praised by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) but criticized by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy and a former lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. Jasser said that "as an American Muslim," he was offended by these comments which he believes reflect Shakir's "disdain for our military."[15] However, Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America supported Imam Zaid's response to the Fort Hood tragedy as "solidly grounded in the Islamic legal, ethical and intellectual tradition."[16]

 Here are some quotations about the third co-founder, revert Sheikh Hamza Yusuf:

The British newspaper the Guardian called him “one of the West’s most influential Muslim scholars.” Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre placed him on its list of the top 50 most influential Muslims in the world. The magazine Egypt Today described him as a kind of theological rock star, “the Elvis Presley of western Muslims.” [3] Recently, Hamza Yusuf was ranked as "the Western world's most influential Islamic scholar" by The 500 Most Influential Muslims, edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin, (2009).

Here is a video of rock star Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, telling the story of a woman who spoke disrespectfully to the Islamic prophet Mohammad, not knowing who it was.  When she found out, she feared and went to apologize to Him, and He responded that she should have been patient earlier, it was too late now.  Note that at 1:50, Yusuf explains, "...it's the, to stop, I'm not going to punch him, because he's a Muslim, right, I'm not going to do that".

By Nasir Iqbal for Dawn.com in Pakistan:

ISLAMABAD: Horrified by a brutal incident of vigilante justice, the Supreme Court on Friday came down hard on law-enforcement personnel and their superior officers who stood by and watched as two young brothers were tortured and then hanged by a mob in Sialkot.

It ordered Anti-Corruption Director General Justice (retd) Kazim Malik to investigate the matter. No-one would dare to take law into his own hands if police had the courage and command to eradicate such brutal and inhuman practices from the society, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry observed while heading a bench which had taken a suo motu action on the matter.

On Aug 15, dozens of people publicly beat to death two young brothers, Hafiz Mughees, 15, and Hafiz Muneeb, 19, in the presence of Sialkot District Police Officer Waqar Chauhan and eight other police officers who watched the brutal act as silent spectators. The bodies were later hanged upside down on the chowk.

At the very least, this is a comment on the state of the legal system, and the tenor of society, in Pakistan.  There were rumors, disputed by other commenters, that the brothers were involved in some sort of robbery.  Even if it were true, this is not an appropriate punishment for theft of material goods.  The reports rightly criticize the apathy of the police attending the lynching, but there is strangely little interest shown in the motivation for the attack itself.  Of course, the religious affiliation of the victims and the attackers is not mentioned, at least in the English reports.

From The Local in Sweden:

A civil servant working under Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni will be assigned new duties after writing a blog saying that there are no good adherents of Islam and comparing the religion to Communism or Nazism.

The man, a non-political appointee, shared his opinion on Islam on his blog in September 2008 when he commented on an article by writer Lena Andersson in which she warned against the "religious terrorism" directed at artists, writers and journalists.

The civil servant's own commentary on the article was that "Islam is like Communism or Nazism. There are no good practitioners - just confused or evil."

Sabuni told the Expressen daily on Wednesday, "I strongly disagree with these views and there is of course no truth in them."

However, neither she nor her state secretary, Christer Hallerby, commented on Wednesday on whether they consider the man man fit to work with immigration issues.

"I cannot conduct personnel policy in the media since this is something we deal with internally," Hallerby told news agency TT. "This is something he has done outside of his duties and as I understand it also before he was hired here."

"For the non-political parts of government offices, the same rules apply as for those in the rest of the labour market in terms of freedom of expression, job security and professional negotiations during a transfer."

Sabuni also stressed that the man is an non-political civil servant and that she cannot keep track of what all the civil servants in the government offices think. She declined to comment on whether the man is suited to work as a researcher in her department.

However, a written statement from Hallerby on Wednesday evening confirmed that he and the staff member had agreed that as the discussion had arisen it was made clear that the man could no longer represent the department "in the same way as before."

The man will "change job duties within the department in the future." A discussion of what these will entail is currently ongoing.

If this civil servant had criticised Christianity or Judaism, would he have suffered the same repercussion, or any repercussion whatsoever?  Islam seems to be singularly beyond criticism.  For having the temerity to express his personal opinion on his private blog two years ago, possibly before he began working in the government, in the wake of several actual incidents of Islamic violence directed at artists and politicians in Scandanavia, he may well lose his government job.

Xinjiang continues to be "restive", with "ethnic tensions" between (kufir) Han and (Muslim) Uyghurs.  By Keith B. Richburg for the Washington Post.

BEIJING -- An attacker riding a three-wheeled vehicle attacked a contingent of security volunteers Thursday in Aksu city, in China's restive western region of Xinjiang, killing seven people and wounding 14 others in the first such incident since bloody ethnic rioting shook the area a year ago.

A statement posted late Thursday on the Web site of the autonomous Xinjiang regional government said the volunteers were on patrol and standing in a line when the attacker struck. The statement said five security force members died at the scene, and two others died later in a local hospital.

The attack occurred in Yoganqi township, on the outskirts of Aksu city, on the highway linking Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, to Kashgar in the west, the statement said.

"At 10:30 a.m., the violent criminal rode a motor tricycle and rushed toward a patrolling group, throwing an explosive device and triggering an explosion," the regional government said. It said the attack came when the 15-member patrol, led by an assistant police officer, reached a T-junction and lined up there. Several police motorcycles were damaged in the blast, it said.

After the attack, "one criminal suspect was caught at the scene," which was quickly cordoned off, the statement said.

Earlier, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government, Hou Hanmin described the arrested suspect as a member of the country's Muslim Uighur ethnic group. She said most of the victims also were Uighur and that some of the injuries were serious.

In a telephone interview, Hou said it was too early to say whether the suspect was connected with one of the separatist organizations that Beijing has labeled as terrorist groups. "The explosion was not an accident," Hou said. "It was an intentional, man-made explosion. Whether it's a terrorist attack or not, I can't draw that conclusion right now. We still need time to investigate."

According to an Aksu resident who works for a local transport company, the vehicle may have exploded after it was stopped by local security volunteers at a checkpoint.

"The sound was loud," he said when reached by telephone. "But I thought it was a tire of a vehicle exploding." He said his company had an emergency meeting and organized the workers to be on duty at night to patrol and look for any suspicious people.

[...]

The Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language, consider Xinjiang their homeland, although they now are a minority after years of Han Chinese migration to the area. Many have said the outburst of violence last year was a result of pent-up anger and frustration at the Chinese government's heavy-handed tactics in imposing its control over the region.

In an effort to show a softer touch, Beijing in April replaced the longtime Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, who was considered a hard-liner. The new party boss, Zhang Chunxian, immediately restored Internet access and seemed to emphasize building Xinjiang's economy.

Perhaps a "super happy joy joy" even-softer touch is called for?

Chinese officials lately have been touting their efforts to develop Xinjiang, and this week the Foreign Ministry is hosting a group of foreign journalists on a tightly-scripted tour of Xinjiang to show off China's development projects.

China has also been promoting tourism in Xinjiang, particularly in the far western city of Kashgar, as a way to alleviate persistently high unemployment in the area. In another effort to try to improve the local economy -- and ease ethnic tensions in the process -- Chinese authorities recently said Kashgar would soon be designated a new "economic development zone" for investment and could become a major trading hub for China's Central Asian neighbors.

Ilham Tohti, an economics professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing and a leading Uighur academic, said Xinjiang residents were largely willing to wait to see if the new party secretary keeps his promises and improves the economy.

Muslims willing to wait and see if the kufirs improve the economy.  Where have I heard that one before?