ON THE HOME FRONT: Bush has given a big vote of support to Senator Rick Santorum, the chap who not only condemned homosexuality but adultery as well. Bush's speakyperson Ari Flesicher says Bush thinks the guy is doing "a good job as a senator" and that the President "doesn't ask that question about people. He judges people about who they are. ... He judges people for how they act and how they relate."
Of course, someone who swipes at people who have same-sex or extra-marital love (we wonder how many senators haven't tried at least one or the other) could probably be argued as not relating that well to other people, but there you go.
Bush and Rumsfeld might be determined that Iraq won't have a government dominated by hardline religious bigots. Presumably to avoid charges of merely imposing the American 'democratic' system on the country, then.

 
NOW, THAT'S GETTING INVOVLED WITH YOUR STORY: When we made a reference to the US networks looting Baghdad, we were only thinking of the taking of documents from ministry buildings. As usual, Fox News has gone one better than its rivals and one of its engineers is now facing charges of smuggling paintings, bonds and other items. Sweetly, he was planning on giving one of the painting to his employer - the report doesn't say if he meant it to hang in Fox News HQ or give it direct to Rupert Murdoch. Bless.
[Thanks for story to Kellie]
FYI: We've noticed that some visitors to WarTicker have been arriving here direct from Fox News Channel's online search engine - now, that's what we call a regime change.

 
HANGING FROM THE GALLOWAYS: The whole odd story of the Telegraph's "scoop" on George Galloway is curious from start to end. As David Blair, the journalist who 'found' the documents which suggest that Galloway was making money under the Oil For Food programme, points out, the chances of someone planting the documents on the offchance that a British journalist would find them seems incredibly far-fetched. But the odds seem so long that they were found that it has to start alarm bells ringing. Charles Moore reckons it was "a good-old fashioned scoop", but we're not so sure that this counts as such - surely proper journalism would mean that a second, confirmatory source would have been called for; especially with something as unlikely as a little scoop dropping into the Telegraph's lap like that; especially when the documents have rather odd anomalies about them - the name of the intelligence service is in English, on what was meant to be an internal document, for example; especially when plausible alternative explanations (that Galloway was unknowingly having his name used by an Iraqi scam artist) exist, that should at least have been considered.
But then again: why would anyone have to work so hard to destroy Galloway's reputation? It's not likely that many telegraph readers will be now shaking their heads saying "I used to like the socialist fire in his belly, but now I might have to consider not supporting his calls for massive redistribution of wealth"; and on the thinking left, his shameless arse-licking of Saddam on that last Iraq visit would have been enough to mark him as damaged goods - if he had been dipping his beak, it might at least offer a spot of an excuse for such behaviour. So who would this impress? It's all a puzzle.
Also thrown up in the coverage was that amongst the looting done by the Iraqis, the American TV networks also did their own bit of taking away. The Guardian reports that carloads full of Iraq Government documents were driven away by the US channel's people in Baghdad. We're sure that they're going to give them back straight away. Unless, maybe, we should descend on Rockefeller Plaza and adopt a similar loose approach to ownership laws.

 
AAAAAAAH, WE SCREWED UP: Sorry to those music heads of you with no interest in the war, as in a fit of chocolate-egg-driven madness we inadvertently posted three warticker posts to No Rock. We've now moved them to the right place.

 
JULIE CRUISE MISSILE: Julie Burchill recycled much of her earlier war article again this week and, while I know what she wants is a reaction, I'm going to be weak and give her rattle back to her. For the first couple of paragraphs, anyway:
When anti-war/pro-Saddam types had finished trotting out all the dumb cliches to no avail
It's almost tiresome to have to point out, once again, that being against the bombing to buggery of Iraqi citizens doesn't make you pro-Saddam, Julie, any more than your objection to the Kosovo campaign made you pro-Milosovic (we know you like your monsters a little more historical; you can enjoy your love of Stalin more when the blood is dried).
- "It's About Oil!" (yes, among other things, and unless you live in a cave or a windmill and walk everywhere rather than take a car, bus or plane, then shut up, you hypocrite);
It is a simple phrase, admittedly, but seemingly oversimplified for you. Just to clarify: the war wasn't about Saddam sitting on oil and refusing to allow it to be used to fuel cars and make hospitals work. The 'it's about oil' catchphrase was more pointing out that the US was keen to get control of Iraqi oil for its own use. I don't think not living in a windmill invalidates the right to object to a country using a human rights figleaf to cover the seizing of a nation's natural assets. Nobody who marched against the war was marching against oil; many may have had a problem with the use of war to transfer contracts to the US oil giants.
"We Armed Him!" (not much, the USSR mostly, but even if we did it a bit, then surely it was our responsibility to make up for that by taking him out);
The USSR mostly? Apart from being factually incorrect - remember Matrix Churchill, for example? -, the logic that "we gave the man the tools to become a danger, and so we now have to take them away" does have a certain appeal. Hopefully, no other country will ever buy arms from America or Britain again, since they clearly come with a clause that says as soon as they're going to use them they'll be bombed to destruction to stop them.
"It'll Make Muslims Angry!" (duh! they were angry before)
Eh? Is this a ham-fisted attempt to render "It might not be a good idea to further inflame a region that doesn't think much of America and create a whole load of future problems" into Burchill speak? And if it is, does 'there's already a lot of antipathy towards the West so we might as well stoke it up some more' count as a grown-up argument?
- they always came over all misty-eyed about the troops. "Our Boys! Bring them home! Now!" Yes, what were formerly units of the English Fascist Imperialist Killing Machine, all through the 30-plus years of keeping the Catholics and Protestants from massacring each other in Northern Ireland, who as an occupying army deserved all they got from those brave kiddy-killing Republicans (but anti-abortionists! the IRA, like Reagan, believed that the sanctity of life began at conception and ended at birth), are now suddenly precious flowers of humanity, not one of whom the most hardline of self-loathing Brit-haters can bear to see suffer so much as a flesh wound.
Right, i think you get the picture now - you have to just park the whole abortionist debate to one side; swallow hard to pretend it doesn't matter that Julie has decided that everyone against the bombing of Iraq was in favour of the IRA - of course there's absolutely no logic to this, but then there seldom is when Burchill is in flow, and just focus on the awesome inability to understand a simple point here.
When someone says "Now there is a war, we must support the troops" and a peace person says "okay, let's do that by taking them out of the danger", it's not done out of a concern for the troops themselves, but merely that it'd be a nice side bonus of not getting involved to have troops at home, safe and well. Julie goes on to pour a gallon of adoring drool over the honest Tommy, and how he (or she) would be quite happy to die for another country, in another country, and says that what they're trained for, and how they're the best in the world. Maybe that's the case - and we'll probably never know the truth of the claims that some of these best troops in the world shot a man in Basra and then raped his wife (as reported by the Russian spooks) - but lets not forget that their healthy pay cheque every month is written by us; it shouldn't be up to the army to decide where they go to kill. They're the people's army. Or they should be.

 
IT WASN'T ABOUT THE OIL. HONEST: It's just coincidence that, in the same way that before the Afghanis were given a chance to organise their own affairs a deal was sealed for a big oil pipeline, before the Iraqis are consulted on their future, a deal is being done to build an Iraq-Israel pipeline. Coincidence.

 
HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS: We're presuming Jay Garner has been appointed colonial chief of Iraq as George Bush's first choice, the somewhat similar Jock Ewing, turned out to be both fictional and dead.
His first visit to Baghdad was interesting, what with him telling reporters that he could be in charge for up to two years - whatever happened to passing over to the Iraqi people as soon as possible? And if the US is keen to get democracy into Iraq quickly, maybe it should have listened to the Shias who are saying they won't work with the Pentagon's placeman.
Jay Garner - as president of SY Coleman made money from the manufacture of the Patriot missiles which were used to batter him into position as unelected leader. Not, perhaps, the most tactful choice.

 
LIFE IN THE NEW ISRAEL: Everyone - which is to say the likes of Labour Friends of Israel - got very excited about Ariel Sharon saying that he was thinking about perhaps moving out of some of the controversial areas of occupation. And if he meant it, it would be a good first step. But its a big 'if', especially when the daily behaviour of Israel seems to point in the opposite direction.