ROBERT ALT posts an interesting report from Baghdad.

UNDER THE RADAR?

Think the Republicans got lost somewhere in cyberspace? Think again. The GOP’s underreported e-campaign may lack the media razzle-dazzle of the Deaniac phenomenon, but it promises to leave no less a mark on the annals of political campaign history.

It all comes down to a difference in style and strategy.

Interesting report. The Bush blog has certainly improved of late. It’s also interesting to see Larry Purpuro saying some things about Internet campaigning that seem a lot more progressive than his famous dissing of the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Here, by the way, is a Washington Post story on BlogAds and candidates that I meant to link earlier but forgot to.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Bush blog’s new Morning Reads feature seems to be quite well done.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER, I GUESS:

A U.N. fact-finding team is set to travel to Sudan’s Darfur region to investigate claims of genocide by Arab militias against black African residents.

Violence in the country’s oil-rich Darfur region has raged for more than a year, displacing as many as one million people inside Sudan and forcing over 110,000 into neighboring Chad, according to U. N. estimates.

Rebel groups accuse Sudan’s government of arming Arab militia groups to carry out attacks.

Oxblog has more.

IT’S STEVEN DEN BESTE vs. a French reporter. You make the call.

LOTS OF INTERESTING DISCUSSION regarding illegal combatants and habeas corpus over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Just keep scrolling.

AMERICA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL LAW PROFESSORS? LawTV is taking nominations.

BOTH ZAPATERO AND MICHAEL MOORE appear to be mistaken. Related developments here. Meanwhile Iraqi blogger Mohammed has some birthday thoughts, including this one: “Why should I be strong while watching others run away; Spain, Honduras, Thailand, human organizations, the UN and all the others who want (and it’s their right I must say) to avoid the dangers. But why did they disappoint us? Why abandon us in this moment when we really need them? . . . Why do others get discouraged easily? Don’t mistake me. I’m upset but will NEVER run away like some people did.”

THE “UNSCAM” OIL-FOR-FOOD SCANDAL IS GETTING MORE COVERAGE:

Iraqi oil pumped under Sevan’s direct supervision for seven full years was openly sold to whoever lined Saddam and Sevan’s pockets. . . . The former Iraqi oil minister claims that the UN “was stealing money from the Iraqi people,” alleging that as many as 300 UN bureaucrats were employed to administer the programme. “We were not pumping oil to feed Iraqis, but to feed (300) UN bureaucrats in New York.”

Before Sevan’s recent mysterious disappearance into the nether world, facilitated by boss Annan, who shrewdly packed him off on long leave before retirement, Sevan nonchalantly admitted, ” that as much as 10 percent” of the programme’s revenues may have been “ripped off,” telling a TV channel: “Even if 10 percent of the revenue was stolen, 90 percent got to the people it was intended for. Why does nobody report that?” he asked peevishly.

More here:

In the 12 months since the fall of the Iraqi dictatorship, a clear picture has emerged of how Saddam Hussein abused the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program. The Iraqi Governing Council has begun to release critical information detailing how, in the words of The New York Times, “Saddam Hussein’s government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.” In effect the program was little more than “an open bazaar of payoffs, favoritism and kickbacks.”

Read the whole thing. And there’s new blog set up to follow the oil-for-food scandal that’ll probably be a must-visit site over the coming months.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to today’s Congressional hearing testimony on UNSCAM, and here’s a story on the U.N. Security Council probe going ahead. I suspect a certain amount of halfheartedness on the part of those UN bureaucrats, however.

Tom Magure has more, with many links. And there’s more here.

REALITY ON THE GROUND: A report from Iraq.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn says that mideast instability is a good thing.

DANIEL DREZNER has advice for bloggers interested in reviewing books.

SLATE’S “EXPLAINER” has an interesting item on NASA Planetary Protection Officer John Rummel, whose job is to prevent cross-contamination between the Earth and other planets. I’ve met Rummel on one or two occasions and he seems quite sharp. Here’s a column I wrote on related issues a while back.

IS AL JAZEERA CONNECTED WITH THE TERRORISTS? It seems likely. Quite some time ago I linked a military blogger’s report of Al Jazeera reporters paying people to shoot at Coalition troops. Now Robert Alt writes: “While telling half of the story is bad enough, there is substantial evidence that outlets like Al Jazeera are in fact acting in concert with terrorists to generate overtly false and misleading news reports.” Imagine that.

UPDATE: More evidence here.

WENT OFF DRIVING AROUND THE MOUNTAINS today — down to the Cherohala Skyway and Bald River Falls. Back blogging later.

In the meantime Virginia Postrel has several interesting, and worrying, posts on malaria and DDT. Go read ’em.

ROGER SIMON on the “UNSCAM” oil-for-food scandal:

As a supporter of the United Nations (yes, I believe it necessary), I find this potentially immensely destructive to the organization. If the Oil-for-Food allegations are true, and it increasingly looks as if they are, without a deep and full bloodletting (probably including the resignation of Annan) the UN will never recover the confidence of the American people, nor should it. By not being on this with Watergate-style intensity, the media is aiding and abetting the downfall of the organization they wish to save.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Austin Bay — also a UN fan — has more thoughts on what this scandal means: “If the United States doesn’t force the United Nations to come clean about the deeply corrupted Oil for Food program and account for billions of skimmed Iraqi oil dollars, then we’re not merely fools, we’re party to the further degradation of a vital international institution.”

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, JOIN ‘EM: My TechCentralStation column looks at media and campaign finance.

LITIGATION AS A MILITARY TACTIC: Eugene Volokh has thoughts on habeas corpus for enemy combatants.

HERE’S SOME INTERESTING CAMPAIGN PHOTO-BLOGGING from a South Dakota Indian reservation.

THE PATH TO SUCCESS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: Have the Rittenhouse Review issue an abortive delinking fatwa against you! Since that happened, Wonkette has been featured in the New York Times, on Slashdot, and countless other places, and seen her traffic soar. She’s even on TV!

Who will be the next lucky blogger to receive a “Capozzolaunch?”

GEOFFREY NUNBERG HAS THOUGHTS on blogging, and Edward Boyd has thoughts on Nunberg.

“MERCENARIES AND SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE” working for the United Nations? Say it ain’t so!

CHIEF WIGGLES HAS MOVED to a new, improved site.

UNSCAM UPDATE: ABC News has more on the unfolding U.N. oil-for-food scandal:

April 20 — At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS.

One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

In what has been described as the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken, the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began in 1996 to help Iraqis who were suffering under sanctions imposed following the first Gulf War.

The program allowed Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil, under supposedly tight U.N. supervision, to finance the purchase of much-needed humanitarian goods.

Most prominent among those accused in the scandal is Benon Sevan, the Cyprus-born U.N. undersecretary general who ran the program for six years.

In an interview with ABCNEWS last year, Sevan denied any wrongdoing. . . .

But documents have surfaced in Baghdad, in the files of the former Iraqi Oil Ministry, allegedly linking Sevan to a pay-off scheme in which some 270 prominent foreign officials received the right to trade in Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices.

“It’s almost like having coupons of bonds or shares. You can sell those coupons to other people who are normal oil traders,” said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British adviser to the Iraq Governing Council.

Investigators say the smoking gun is a letter to former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammed Rasheed, obtained by ABCNEWS and not yet in the hands of the United Nations.

There’s much more. Read the whole thing.

STUART BENJAMIN thinks that the FCC’s efforts to regulate broadcast content more aggressively are likely to backfire.

ED MORRISSEY HAS A LENGTHY POST on the CPA memo mentioned in the Village Voice article discussed below, and subsequently made available on the web. Morrissey writes:

The subhead of the article, in fact, reads “A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq”.

However, in reading the actual memo, the author points not to an inevitable civil war but instead to the numerous opportunities surrounding the CPA to improve its performance and its position with the Iraqis, the vast majority of which want to see the US succeed. . . .

The Village Voice cherry-picked a bit to write its analysis, but give them credit for releasing a near-complete text of the memo for everyone to analyze on their own. In truth, people use bits and pieces of this memo to support a number of political stances. However, when one reads the memo in its entirety, the inescapable conclusion is not that the writer has given up on American efforts in Iraq, but that only American efforts will solve the problems.

Yes, the memo’s insights won’t be exactly shocking to blog readers. Read the whole thing.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: DPreview has just posted reviews of five 8-Megapixel digital cameras.