U.N. SMOTHERS CRITICAL BAGHDAD REPORT:

Any hope that the report produced by an independent panel headed by for Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari on the August 19 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad would lead to some rethinking of the way that the UN secretariat in New York operates is now a thing of the past.

This is the opinion of many diplomatic observers in New York, as well as of a number of senior UN staff. In his report, Ahtisaari, a no-nonsense administrator indebted to no one, not only qualified the UN security system as “dysfunctional” but also referred to major shortcomings regarding “qualified professionals … internal coordination … threat assessment .. discipline … and accountability”. It was a damning indictment, not only of the way that security threats were addressed in Baghdad, but even more so on how Secretary General Kofi Annan runs his shop.

Many at the UN hoped that, confronted with this indictment, the secretariat would rise to the challenge and launch a process that would open the door to major reforms of the institution. It was not to be. On November 4, Annan decided to appoint a “team” to determine “accountability at all managerial levels” as it regards the Baghdad bombing. Many UN staff members, well versed in the art of reading between the lines of UN communiques, had one word to describe the decision: whitewash.

Color me unsurprised.

HMM. URANIUM FROM AFRICA?

LYON, France, Nov 13 (AFP) – A representative of al-Qaeda bought enriched uranium capable of being used in a so-called dirty bomb from the Congolese opposition in 2000, according to sworn testimony quoted in a French newspaper Thursday.

An unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has told investigators looking into the murders of two Congolese opposition figures in France in December 2000 that he attended a meeting earlier that year at which the uranium was sold, the Lyon-based Le Progres reported.

The man “described a meeting which took place on March 3 in (the German city of) Hamburg between some Congolese men and an Egyptian by the name of Ibrahim Abdul,” the newspaper said.

On the other hand, the story says that what was sold were “two bars of enriched Uranium 138.” Most likely just a typo, but not credibility-enhancing. This bears further watching.

UPDATE: A reader sends a link to this story — which I hadn’t seen before:

James Astill in Nairobi and Rory Carroll in Johannesburg
Wednesday September 25, 2002
The Guardian

Iraqi agents have been negotiating with criminal gangs in the Democratic Republic of Congo to trade Iraqi military weapons and training for high-grade minerals, possibly including uranium, according to evidence obtained by the Guardian.

It comes as the dossier unveiled by Tony Blair accused Saddam Hussein of trying to buy African uranium to give Iraq’s weapons programme a nuclear capability. The dossier did not identify any country allegedly approached by Baghdad but security analysts said the Congo was the likeliest, followed by South Africa.

Hmm. So why all the talk of Niger?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Magure emails:

The excerpts from the National intelligence Estimate that were released in July also mention the Congo:

– Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. Reports suggest Iraq is shifting from domestic mining and milling of uranium to foreign acquisition. Link

And for a trip down memory lane, here is a US White Paper from Feb 1998 assessing Saddam’s WMD program. Link

A hint, not quite buried all the way down in the second paragraph:

On the basis of the last seven years’ experience, the world’s experts conclude that enough production components and data remain hidden and enough expertise has been retained or developed to enable Iraq to resume development and production of WMD. They believe Iraq maintains a small force of Scud-type missiles, a small stockpile of chemical and biological munitions, and the capability to quickly resurrect biological and chemical weapons production.

The world’s experts! And Clinton believed them! Well, he went on to bomb a pharmaceutical factory, so we know how shaky his grasp of intel was. The alternative view, that not every good faith mistake is a “lie”, will never catch on.

Probably not.

ATKINS DIET UPDATE: The InstaWife and I had lunch at a Ruby Tuesday and noticed that they now have a low-carb menu catering to Atkins/South Beach/Zone etc.

Whether or not it’ll take off pounds, the “Turkey Burger Wrap” was good.

ANDREW SULLIVAN WRITES that the BBC is fomenting chaos in London.

IT’S MORE A SCREED THAN A BLEAT TODAY, but whatever, go read Lileks if you haven’t already done so.

MEDPUNDIT SYDNEY SMITH is questioning Howard Dean’s medical credentials. On the upside, though, his Confederate flag statement seems to have attracted some supporters.

ON A BLOG-BREAK — back this afternoon.

I WAS TOO BUSY TO GET OUT MUCH TODAY, but I did manage a brief walk around campus. It’s probably the last pretty day with leaves on the trees, so I snapped a shot for you Knoxville expats out there and anyone else who cares. Enjoy!

UPDATE: It’s not actually the goal of InstaPundit to drive highly compensated presidents of Big Media enterprises wild with jealousy. It’s just, you know, a bonus!

COMMERCE CLAUSE NEWS: I haven’t read the opinion yet, but Larry Solum reports that the Ninth Circuit has held that the federal government can’t ban homemade machine guns under the Commerce Clause, since they’re not in interstate commerce. He notes that this has implications for homegrown marijuana, too.

As I say, I haven’t read the opinion, but it sounds like a defensible position to me. [Any position is defensible with enough homemade machine guns! — Ed. I think you’ve had too many of those brownies. . . .]

UPDATE: Volokh says this is huge.

ANOTHER UPDATE: For some background on these issues, you might want to read this article that Brannon Denning and I wrote in the Wisconsin Law Review on Commerce Clause issues in the lower courts, and this followup piece from the Commerce Clause symposium issue of the Arkansas Law Review. (That symposium was terrific, but as far as I know the whole issue isn’t online. Here, however, is Randy Barnett’s contribution.) We have a long-term, quasi-empirical project looking at how the Lopez case is percolating through the lower courts, and back through the Supreme Court. This case will surely make the next installment.

BA’ATHIST SYRIA IS IN TROUBLE: How do I know? The French are cozying up. That’s always a sign that your days are numbered. . . .

UPDATE: Conrad has some advice for the Administration on Iraq.

THIS SEEMS FAIR:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office Thursday for refusing to obey a federal court order to move his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state courthouse.

The Alabama Court of the Judiciary unanimously imposed the harhest penalty possible after a one-day trial in which Moore said his refusal was a moral and lawful acknowledgment of God. Prosecutors said Moore’s defiance, left unchecked, would harm the judicial system.

If judges don’t obey court orders, who will? (Via Jeff Jarvis).

MORE BAD PRESS for the antiwar movement:

“I can’t believe there are that kind of people in the United States,” said Gerv Hansen, retired Sebastopol postmaster and a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3919.

“It makes me mad,” said Rachel Schneider, who brought her two children to a Veterans Day ceremony sponsored by the VFW post and spontaneously became the hit speaker.

They were reacting to Monday’s discovery of an apparent Iraq war protest by vandals who poured concrete into almost 200 holes that are used to hold flag poles on Veterans Day. The city spent more than $1,000 drilling out the concrete so Boy Scouts could erect flags along city sidewalks Tuesday morning.

Perhaps A.N.S.W.E.R. will take up a collection to reimburse the city. Still, there were voices of sanity:

As for the vandalism, Sebastopol police said Tuesday they had no new information. It was condemned by an anti-war group, Women in Black, which holds weekly silent-vigil protests in the county, and drew reaction throughout the day.

Maybe they’ll condemn Ted Rall, next. . . . (Via Best of the Web).

UPDATE: Canada, too:

OTTAWA (CP) — Vandals spray-painted anti-war slogans on the National War Memorial on Tuesday, just hours before Remembrance Day ceremonies were to begin.

Sigh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In Australia, too:

At today’s service at the Shrine of Remembrance, a bunch of “anti-war protestors” interrupted the service just before the minute of silence with their by now wearisomely familiar shrieks and slogans. According to the afternoon free newspaper here in Melbourne, MX, a war veteran was knocked to the ground in a scuffle with the protestors, two of whom were arrested.

How lame.

IN TODAY’S MAIL: A copy of John Scalzi’s Book of the Dumb. It looks pretty funny: “a celebration of all things stupid.”

REWRITING HISTORY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: An amusing juxtaposition of passages.

Don’t these people know about Nexis?

ANAEROBIC FITNESS: Jim Henley is defending S.U.V.’s, in a novel, but surprisingly persuasive, fashion.

Maybe Gregg Easterbook will post a response!

UPDATE: Roger Simon isn’t Gregg Easterbrook — but he’s got a response.

THE LATEST VOLUNTEER TAILGATE PARTY is up, featuring blog posts on all sorts of things by all sorts of people. Expand your blog-horizons and check ’em out!

MORE ON 1946 AND TODAY: Robert Tagorda excerpts a piece by Walter Lippman on Germany that reads like, well, a piece from today — except that Lippman’s a better writer. “Our experience with the German occupation is a striking illustration of how a nation gets into trouble when it fails to balance its commitments and its power to carry them out.”

A NEW IRAQI SPORTS BLOG IS UP. (Via Jeff Jarvis, who observes: “They had Saddam, we have Steinbrenner.”)

EDWARD BOYD has more on the Credit Lyonnais scandal, which he’s following closely. This bears watching, as the prospect of being prosecuted for fraud is reportedly re-igniting anti-Americanism among French elites. (Re-igniting? That’s what it says. . . )

MICHAEL UBALDI has thoughts on the Iraqi reconstruction. And he’s got links to stories on postwar Japan that reveal conditions worse than anything in Baghdad. Excerpt:

Tokyo endured [the] winter [of 1945-1946] on the workings of an illegal economy. The black market encompassed thousands of sellers and millions of buyers dealing in every commodity of daily life. It was also a vast jungle of lawlessness that began with thefts and led to gang killings, turf wars, and casual murders, becoming at last a criminal demimonde of immense proportions. It embraced all classes and kinds of people. When the war ended, sake, bread, clothing, shoes, sugar and blankets had disappeared from military depots all over the country, pilfered wholesale by officers and enlisted men alike. Small thefts were the routine of daily existence. A bicycle snatched at Ueno’s railway station turned up repainted and for sale two hours later at the station in Shimbashi. Koreans and Chinese, forced-labor immigrants during the war, prospered with goods smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and by the Occupation’s ruling, they could not be arrested by Japanese police.

It was the beginning for many mobster organizations, some of whose descendants still operate today. In Tokyo there were eight major syndicates, each with its own piece of turf around the major train stations…They fought amongst themselves and against other gangs, the Japanese mobs battling constantly for territory against the Koreans and Chinese. Guns were plentiful, another result of looted army depots. Unable or unwilling to intervene, police let gangs have at one another, and the shootouts continued for several years into the Occupation. One day in April 1948, two gangs – one Japanese, one Korean – fought it out with pistols in the Hamamatsu district. The next day, about one hundred Japanese returned to the attack on the Koreans’ black market there and killed or wounded more than 15 men.

There’s more. Read this, too.

FRITZ SCHRANCK offers another tale of local law enforcement gone awry.

JOE KATZMAN offers a communitarian defense of patriotism — against the atomistic moral individualism espoused by liberals. . . .

MORE FROM AMERICA’S EDUCATIONAL QUAGMIRE: Backcountry Conservative points to some interesting comments on the Goose Creek raid from a law enforcement message board in South Carolina, as well as a news story on the raid. Michael Graham remains on top of the story, too.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up. Enjoy!

MORE NEWS from the educational quagmire.