AN INSIDE JOB? The AP reports that the massacre of 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers may have been an inside job. Omar at Iraq the Model said so first.

(Hat tip: Patrick Lasswell)

THIS WEEKEND’S ELECTION IN KOSOVO, after five years of U.N. rule, didn’t go over so well. It isn’t all the U.N.’s fault; Kosovo is a tough neighborhood. But it’s Belize compared with Iraq – something worth considering if you think the U.N. might ride to the rescue in Baghdad.

David Batlle emails a story by Richard Rushfield at Slate. He goes under cover, so to speak, disguised as a Kerry voter in conservative Southern California cities and a Bush supporter in liberal Los Angeles neighborhoods. Guess where he encounters the most intolerance?

I’m voting for a Republican president for the first time ever this year. I wouldn’t dare wear a “Bush/Cheney” T-shirt around town. I’m even less likely to stick a yard sign in my lawn. Like Rushfield (who actually supports Kerry) I live in solid Blue America – in my case Portland, Oregon. And Blue America is getting twitchy this year.

The mainstream here supports John Kerry for president. If the election were held only in my neighborhood and the votes were tallied only by counting the names on yard signs, Kerry would win in a landslide that would impress Syria’s Bashar Assad. (The Assad dynasty traditionally gets only 99 percent of the “vote.”)

The “alternative” point of view around here isn’t in favor of President Bush. Those who dissent (at least publicly) reject both Bush and Kerry.

My neighborhood is a battleground, not between Democrats and Republicans but between liberals and radical leftists. Homemade political posters are stapled everywhere to telephone polls. Here’s what some of them say.

Uncle Sam wants you to kick his ass! Bush or Kerry we’re still screwed!

[…]

Hit the streets. Paint the streets. Quit paying taxes. Refuse service.

[…]

After the election it’s time to take action…Spend the day in the streets and the night writing on walls. Make a commitment to yourself and others: I’m not going to be well-behaved…Let’s be ungovernable!

That’s the kind of “discussion” my neighborhood has. Conservatives and swing-voters like me are sitting it out. Richard Rushfield’s Slate experiment suggests we are wise to do so.

Don’t miss Joel Gaines’ new Iraq briefing at Winds of Change.

William Kristol notes that John Kerry’s foreign policy advisor Richard Holbrooke told Bill O’Reilly that Kerry would “reach out to the moderate Arab states. He’d put more pressure on Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia above all.”

Israel is perhaps America’s most loyal ally. Yet Holbrooke lumps it in with Syria and Saudi Arabia “above all.”

Kerry has repeatedly accused President Bush of “pushing our allies away.” This is nonsense on stilts. There is no alternate universe where Bush told Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder they can take their offers of friendship and stuff it. But that’s exactly what Holbrooke is suggesting Kerry will do to our only genuine ally in the Middle East.

Kerry doesn’t necessarily want a bigger alliance or a stronger alliance. He wants a different alliance.

Arthur Chrenkoff says there are two Iraqs. One is dangerous. The other is prosperous and promising.