by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, April 3, 2003 3:10 P.M. EST

'Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy!'
How's that for a patriotic rallying cry? From a report on the liberation of Najaf by the New York Times' Jim Dwyer:

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?

"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

Around him, the crowd roared its approval.

"Bush Says Vice Closing on Saddam's Regime" reads an Associated Press headline. Until we saw Dwyer's report, we thought this was a misspelling.

Lowering Expectations

"The big failure has been in political assessment, and the expectation that southern Iraqis would welcome the American troops and offer minimal resistance."--New York Times editorial, April 2

"When the Iraqi Shiites did not greet U.S. soldiers with flowers and hugs last week, as the hawks had promised . . ."--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, April 2

"In an unexpected sign of popular sentiment, some residents streamed out of [Baghdad] and greeted the American troops as they approached. "--news story, New York Times, April 3

Another One Bits the Dust
Today's New York Times carries this correction:

A front-page article on Tuesday about criticism voiced by American military officers in Iraq over war plans omitted two words from an earlier comment by Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of V Corps. General Wallace had said (with the omission indicated by uppercasing), "The enemy we're fighting is A BIT different from the one we war-gamed against."

Runway Victory
The allied assault on Baghdad's main airport, known as Saddam International, is under way, the Associated Press reports. Let's hope they get Grover Norquist in there quickly to rename the place.

Sky News, meanwhile, reports the allies are just six miles outside of the city of Baghdad. And in liberated Najaf, Reuters reports, "the U.S. military said a senior Shi'ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who had been held under house arrest by Saddam's government, had ordered local people in a 'fatwa' (edict) not to interfere with the U.S.-led invasion troops."

Meanwhile, the Israeli group IMRA interviews Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem, about reports that Saddam's men used a Najaf mosque to fire on allied soldiers. Is this an acceptable use of a mosque? IMRA asks Sabri three times--and Sabri refuses to give a straight answer:

Q: . . . I am asking a question relating to religious law in general. Forget about Iraq. Let us talk about anyplace. Just as a concept.

Sabri: You cannot deal with such a question when there are raiding parties in Iraq. You cannot deal with whether it is permitted or not permitted. The root of it is that there must not be occupying raiding forces in Iraq.

When the American and British forces get out of Iraq I will answer that question.

A Democrat Against Democracy
In a Wall Street Journal essay a couple of weeks ago, Lawrence Kaplan noted that in the name of "anti-imperialism," many Democrats stand in opposition to democracy in Iraq. Now one Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, has come out against democracy in America. "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States," Kerry told a New Hampshire audience, the Boston Globe reports.

Kerry didn't say what kind of regime he wants to replace our democratic republic--a military dictatorship? a monarchy?--but he was very critical of the U.S. for having made what he called an "end run around the U.N." So perhaps he favors replacing the U.S. government with a U.N. protectorate. Such a proposal seems unlikely to go over well with American voters, though.

Another possibility is that Kerry was misusing the word "regime," and that what he meant to call for was a change of administration, which of course would come to pass in the unlikely event that Kerry were elected president. But could this be? After all, Democrats are supposed to be way smarter than Republicans, so you wouldn't expect a guy like Kerry to go around making stupid verbal miscues.

'Fighting to the Death'
The story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch turns out to be quite compelling. Today's Washington Post has an account of the battle in which she was captured:

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, rescued Tuesday from an Iraqi hospital, fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk, continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting March 23, one official said. The ambush took place after a 507th convoy, supporting the advancing 3rd Infantry Division, took a wrong turn near the southern city of Nasiriyah.

"She was fighting to the death," the official said. "She did not want to be taken alive."

You'd think she'd be a feminist heroine, but we checked the Web site of the group that calls itself the National Organization for Women and couldn't find any acknowledgment of this valiant member of the fairer sex. Instead the homepage features two links to articles about the Augusta National Golf Club, one favoring racial preferences, one opposing the confirmation of a woman as a federal judge, one on abortion and one on the pressing problem of " 'educational' pelvic exams performed on unconscious patients." There are two items related to the military: one on sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy and one headlined "In Shadows of War, NOW Continues Urging Peace."

You Don't Say
"POW Reportedly Fought Captors With Gun"--headline, Associated Press, April 3

'Chemical Ali' Goes Underground
CNN reports Iraqi informants have told U.S. Marines that Saddam aide Gen. Ali Hassan "Chemical Ali" al Majeed has recently conducted meetings in the same Nasariya hospital where Pfc. Lynch was held prisoner. "According to an officer with a 2nd Marines reconnaissance unit, one informant, whose information was corroborated by other sources, told Marines that Al Majeed has been hiding his identity by dressing up in plain attire, so he can blend into the populace," CNN reports. "It was also reported that Al Majeed has been driving around in an old red car, possibly a 1979 Nissan."

Chemical Ali probably won't be going home anytime soon; London's Independent reports that his palace has been sacked by looters and now lies in ruins. C'est la vie, Ali.

Happy Warrior?
The Associated Press reports that Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk, the Marine reservist whose quest for "conscientious objector" status we noted yesterday, "has given himself a second way out--he's told military leaders he's gay." At first we thought he was suffering from mood swings--earlier, after all, he said he was depressed--but then we realized he means "gay" in the sense of "homosexual." Well, he certainly seems queer--and we mean that in the sense of "strange."

The AP has a photo of Funk, walking hand in hand with his mom and his sis.

A Horrible Accident
The Miami Herald has an interview with one of the survivors of Monday's incident in which American soldiers opened fire on a Land Rover (earlier described as a van) filled with Iraqi civilians; the death toll is now up to 11. Bakhat Hassan, "who lost his daughters, ages 2 and 5, his son, 3, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces, ages 12 and 15, in the incident," says he was following the instructions of a leaflet instructing Iraqis to "be safe" and get to Karbala:

They stopped at an Army checkpoint on the northbound road near Sahara, about 25 miles south of Karbala, and were told to go on, Hassan said.

But "the Iraqi family misunderstood" what the soldiers were saying, [Sgt. First Class Stephen] Furbush said.

A few miles later, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle came into view. The family waved as it came closer. The soldiers opened fire.

The family is understandably bitter. "We had hope," Hassan tells the Herald. "But then you Americans came to bring us democracy and our hope ended."

It cannot offer much consolation to the Hassan family, but the liberation of Iraq means a rebirth of hope for millions of their countrymen. The San Francisco Chronicle visits the home of an Iraqi dissident's family in northern Iraq:

Afrah Abdulrazak looked up from the large pot of vegetables she was stuffing with minced lamb and rice and squinted at Ahmed Shawkat, her husband, a dissident Iraqi writer who has been imprisoned and tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Just to make sure he was still there.

"My queen," Ahmed called out to her, tenderly, as if these words could dismiss the constant fear Afrah has grown to live with in 29 years of marriage.

It is a fear horribly familiar to anyone whose loved one refuses to acquiesce with Hussein's government: that any day they may come for him, take him away, torture him, kill him. That he will become one of the estimated 3 million Iraqis executed since Hussein's Baath Party came to power in 1968. That she may never see him again.

"Even now, I cannot believe that he is out of prison," Afrah said.

The couple's youngest daughter, five-year-old Zaynab, was born in prison; Saddam's goons had arrested her mother to interrogate her about her father's political views.

Daughters of Freedom
The Associated Press reports on one of the first babies born in free Iraq:

Wednesday, U.S. forces spotted a 20-year-old Iraqi woman in labor in a pickup truck. The woman's family had been displaced from another city and was living in tents in Nasiriyah.

"I got the ambulance and sent her to the battalion aid station and delivered a healthy baby girl and named her America. It was a pretty cool way to start the day," said Navy Hospitalman First Class Kyle Morris, 39, of San Clemente, Calif.

Another girl was born at a Marine camp near Nasiriyah, Reuters reports:

The [mother], Jamila Katham, approached a U.S. military ambulance in a patrol in the Nassiriya area of southern Iraq early on Wednesday to seek help, U.S. Marine surgeons said. . . .

Surgeons Lieutenant Sean Stroup and Lieutenant Michael Humble delivered her of a healthy six-pound girl only 20 minutes after the ambulance had brought her to a U.S. Marine camp.

The baby, Katham's first child, has been named Rogenia. "I think they wanted an American-sounding name," Stroup said.

"The grandmother wanted Americana or something, but the mother wanted Rogenia," said Stroup, of San Jose, California.

Inside Saddam's Prisons
A group of Western journalists got quite a story when they were arrested in Baghdad, London's Guardian reports:

Matthew McAllester, a Briton employed by the US newspaper Newsday, described the terror of his eight days in Abu Ghraib prison just outside Baghdad, one of the biggest prison complexes in the Arab world.

"There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor," McAllester said immediately after his release. He described hearing the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with eyes and faces bloodied and swollen.

"Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured. We thought we were going to be killed at any moment," McAllester said.

Newsday contacted the Vatican and Yasser Arafat, among others, in trying to secure McAllester's release. "We are free because we had the support of such a great network of people," McAllester says. "There are Iraqis still in that prison who do not have that support." It's coming.

Who Says Arabs Don't Want Democracy?
A New York Times report from Jerusalem includes this fascinating aside:

Since 1996, Dr. [Khalil] Shikaki [a Palestinian political scientist] has been polling Palestinians about what governments they admire, and every year Israel has been the top performer, at times receiving more than 80 percent approval. The American system has been the next best, followed by the French and then, distantly trailing, the Jordanian and Egyptian.

In its early days, the Palestinian Authority held fourth place, with about 50 percent approval. Now, it is dead last, under 20 percent. Corruption, mismanagement and the stagnation of the Palestinian predicament have turned the culture of criticism against the Palestinian rulers.

Weasel Watch
The idiom has it that rats desert a sinking ship, but so too, it seems, do weasels. "German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Wednesday he hoped Saddam Hussein's government would collapse quickly," the Associated Press reports from Berlin. Likewise, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reports from Tambov that "President Vladimir Putin told journalists here Wednesday that 'for political and economic reasons Russia is not interested in the defeat of the United States in Iraq.' "

The New York Times' Paris edition notes that in postwar Iraq "politics seem certain to be a major commercial threat to prominent French and German companies":

France and Russia are bracing for major losses in arms sales, a market where they were once the main suppliers.

If France, as seems likely, is cast as the main target of U.S. political ire, an obvious victim would be Airbus, built by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co.--essentially, a French-German consortium. When Iraqi Airways reorders, it is likely to turn to Boeing, diplomats said.

A company often singled out for attacks in Washington is TotalFinaElf, the French oil giant, which has signed a colossal contract with Saddam's government for future rights to Iraqi oil fields. The deal, whose terms remain a commercial secret, would have gone into effect once sanctions were lifted on Iraq. French officials have vowed to defend the contract in international arbitration, while the Bush administration charges that the French company stood to gain a lopsided premium for working with a rogue regime.

"French companies that know Iraq well--like the carmaker Peugeot and the telecom giant Alcatel--have a problem because their contacts and allies tend to be linked with the Ba'ath party rulers, who are liable to be on the wrong side in a new Iraq," a French diplomat said.

The Art of War
This is wonderful: On Slate, Hart Seeley renders some Donald Rumsfeld's quotes as poetry. Here's an example, which Seeley titles "The Digital Revolution":

Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

--June 9, 2001, following European trip

This stuff is actually a lot better than that antiwar garbage.

The Dangers of Metric Football
"A bomb has exploded outside the British consulate in Istanbul," London's Guardian reports. No one was hurt. An act of pro-Saddam terrorism? Maybe not. The paper notes that "the attack occurred shortly after England's 2-0 victory over Turkey in a Euro 2004 qualifier."

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