“WHO GETS CREDIT IN IRAQ?” asks an article in the Washington Post. That people are fighting over credit tells you most of what you need to know about how things are going . . . .

Meanwhile, liberal columnist Mark Brown is asking What if Bush was right about Iraq?

UPDATE: But on the other hand, the reliably wrong James Carroll writes: “IN THINKING about the election in Iraq, my mind keeps jumping back to last week’s train wreck in California.” Jeez, this guy hasn’t a clue. But, then, we knew that already.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jon Stewart is starting to wonder if Bush might have been right, too.

On the other hand, some people are still looking for an exit strategy. Heh.

THE EXAMINER: A new newspaper debuts in D.C.

BAD NEWS IN DARFUR:

February 1, 2005: Apparently the Sudanese government is once again using its An-24 transports as bomber aircraft in the Darfur region. The An-24 is a two engine Russian aircraft, developed in the 1960s to replace pre-World War II American DC-3s. An-24s can carry up to 50 passengers, or five tons of cargo. Sudan have some of the An-26 versions of the An-24, which has a rear ramp, which bombs are rolled out of. The African Union and various relief agencies report that Sudanese planes bombed the village of Rahad Kabolong in North Darfur state. The attack took place on January 26 and left more than 100 people dead. Some 9000 people fled the village and the surrounding area after the air attack. A monitoring team reported that most of the dead were women and children. As of January 31, the government continued to deny that the air raid took place. The United Nations called the attack a major ceasefire violation– which of course it was. The UN, however, still refuses to call the Sudanese war in Darfur a genocide.

But good news in Afghanistan:

February 1, 2005: In the last week, at least 13 arms and munitions caches have been found throughout the country. The largest of them contained more than 10,000 mortar rounds, 500 122 mm artillery rockets, as well as fuses. In the last four months, 236 weapons caches have been found, and destroyed, throughout the country. More importantly, 99 of those were found because local Afghans reported the location to coalition forces. . . .

In 2003, ten percent of the caches found were because of tips from Afghans. This increased to 31 percent in 2004, and was 42 percent in the past four months. Afghans know that these munitions will be used against them, if any of the local warlords get into a major quarrel. The usual drill is to fire mortars, rockets and artillery at the other warlords villages and towns. More Afghans feel secure enough with the new police force and army to trust them with this information.

Both of these items are from Jim Dunnigan’s StrategyPage, which I highly recommend. (You can also subscribe to their email service, which I get).

Dunnigan has also written quite a few books on warfare — I haven’t read all of them, but I’ve read several and found them quite good. Journalism on military matters would certainly improve if the journalists read some of them, particularly this one, which offers a good introduction to important concepts, and is likely to help readers avoid embarrassing mistakes, like calling Armored Personnel Carriers “tanks.”

UPDATE: The U.N. on Darfur: A Jedi mind trick? It’s not working.

WANT HEALTHCARE BLOGGING? Grand Rounds is up.

DEMOCRACY, VODKA, SEXY?

“Eastern Ukraine is heavily ethnic Russian. The main industry is coal. The miners are rough, tough, and hate Yushchenko for wanting to take Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West,” writes Wheeler. “It was arranged for more than a thousand of them to be taken from Donetsk, the capital of the coal-mining region, by bus and train to Kiev, where, armed with clubs and blunt tools, they would physically beat up the Orange Revolutionaries. Such mass violence was not only to disperse the demonstrators but serve as an excuse for the government to declare martial law, suspending the Ukrainian Parliament (the Rada) and elections indefinitely.”

Now comes the secret weapon: vodka.

“When the miners got on their buses and trains, they found to their joy case after case of vodka – just for them. When they arrived in Kiev, trucks awaited them filled with more cases of vodka – all free provided by ‘friends’ of the Donetsk coal miners. Completely soused, they never made it to Independence Square. Too hammered blind to cause any violence at all, they had a merry time, passed out and were shipped back to Donetsk.” . . .

Wheeler’s column goes on to explain who provided the liquor: teams of Porter Goss’ CIA working with their counterparts in British MI6 intelligence.

I certainly hope that this story is true. I wonder if they used any of this stuff? That would be just too sweet . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Randy Chapman emails:

I don’t want to bring down the high level of discourse on your fine site,
BUT… wasn’t the CIA contributing to the delinquency of miners???

It’s hard to lower the tone around here, but that may have done it. Heh.

JAMES LILEKS responds to Bill Moyers.

ANOTHER FINE MOMENT for the Star Tribune:

I talked to Commentary Editor Eric Ringham today, and he acknowledged that the Strib didn’t do any fact-checking at all before they accused us of not fact-checking. That’s right: None. Zilch. Zippo. Nada.

Memo to the professional journalists: When lawyers start talking about how you’ve repeatedly libeled them, that’s bad.

DARFUR UPDATE: Calling it genocide means you have to do something. The U.N. isn’t calling it genocide. Problem solved! And with the added advantage that it can be spun as a defeat for the U.S., which has called it genocide.

I should be angrier, but true anger at these things comes from disappointment, and I’m long since past being capable of disappointment where the U.N. is concerned.

GREG DJEREJIAN IS ON A ROLL: Just keep scrolling.

ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES, an Air America fan who’s quite anti-war, was nonetheless glued to the television with excitement on Sunday. I told her that I was glad that the election had given other people a taste of what those of us who have been in contact with Iraqi bloggers have known for a while.

My TechCentralStation column explores a similar theme.

ANDREW SULLIVAN is going on hiatus. He’ll be back.

THE IRAQI ELECTIONS inspire poetry, here and also here.

And sort of here.

THIS occurred to me, too. Jeez.

HEH.

UPDATE: And bravo for Barney Frank.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oops, for the BBC: “The BBC has apologised for incorrectly broadcasting figures which suggested more Iraqi civilians had been killed by coalition and Iraqi forces than by insurgents.”

MORE: Roger Simon notices a pattern in the BBC’s mistakes.

THE 2008 RACE IS HEATING UP: There’s already a Draft Condi website.

THE DENTON BLOG EMPIRE continues to grow, with GridSkipper (a travel blog) and LifeHacker (a software blog sponsored by Sony). I guess that means that Sony has more software ambitions, as evidenced by their takeover of the Sonic Foundry product lines.

BIRMINGHAM’S LEGACY: Scott Johnson writes on the Martin Luther King / Condi Rice connection.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here, from Varifrank.

TOM MAGUIRE REMAINS hot on the trail of the Plame affair.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I still wonder why the Valerie Plame story still keeps getitng kicked around, but Sandy Berger’s alleged theft of classified documents seems to be off the radar?”

DAVE KOPEL: “Bill Moyers’ new column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune is stunning for both its mean-spiritedness and for its departure from elementary standards of opinion journalism.” Here’s the column.

NORM GERAS has posts on the impact of the Iraqi elections, — and also on places where they didn’t have an impact.

HAVE WE PASSED THE GLOBAL TEST AFTER ALL? Looks like it.

HEH: “Hey Crown Prince Abdullah, that’s a nice regime you’ve got there. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it . . .”

SOME IRAQI ELECTION PHOTOBLOGGING from a guy who doesn’t like Bush, but who listens.

DAN DARLING writes that Zarqawi gambled — and lost. He also looks at what might come next.

A U.S. SOLDIER WRITES IN THE GUARDIAN:

Every cycle has a mission in Iraq. The units we relieved, the first cycle, were called upon to defeat the major war elements of the Iraqi army, and oust Saddam. The ones that relieve us, the third cycle, will build up the strength of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Our job as the second cycle was to see that Iraq took over its own affairs, and kept the peace intact while they were doing so. Soldiers of this cycle were in Samara and Falluja to do just that. We have built schools and poured money into the infrastructure of this country, trying to get them to ready to stand on their own. To me, that has always been the visible aspects of our mission. That is the stuff that never seems to make CNN. . . .

For all the talk of this being a war for oil, I’ve seen hundreds of thousands of dollars of oil burn in industrial accidents without being ordered to lift a finger to help. For all the talk of being a tool of the imperialist powers trying to take advantage of a little country, I’ve spent hours in the hot sun training the local forces to replace me, and endless hours waiting for our command to come out of local meetings where they hear the local problems and try to assist them. And now, our last mission is complete, the elections went through and Iraq has taken another step toward its own freedom. We can pass this country to the next unit knowing we have done the job. This has been my Iraq and, someday, I want to look back and be proud.

I think he’ll have more to be proud of than some other people.