Quick stuff

* "The elections held on Jan. 30 in Iraq were deeply flawed as a democratic process," writes Juan Cole in Salon, "but they represent a political earthquake in Iraq and in the Middle East...For the first time in the Arab Middle East, a Shiite majority has come to power. A Shiite-dominated Parliament in Iraq challenges the implicit Sunni biases of Arab nationalism as it was formulated in Cairo and Algiers. And it will force Iraqis to deal straightforwardly with the multicultural character of their national society, something the pan-Arab Baath Party either papered over or actively attempted to erase. The road ahead is extremely dangerous: Overreaching or miscalculation by any of the involved parties could lead to a crisis, even to civil war. And America's role in the new Iraq is uncertain."

* In the Guardian, Sami Ramadani writes, "On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading 'US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror,' the paper reported that the Americans had been 'surprised and heartened' by the size of the turnout 'despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.' A successful election, it went on, 'has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.' The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny."

* Newsweek has an in-depth feature on the nature of the insurgency in Iraq this week. The piece stresses that it is not a monolithic movement, but rather one fraught with internal disputes, particularly between nationalists and Zarqawi's faction.

* We're halfway there, observes Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe. "The estimated cost of Vietnam in current dollars was $584 billion, according to the Congressional Research Office. Iraq has already cost more in current dollars than either the Civil War or World War I. It is about to pass the Korean War. We are on pace to pass Vietnam in two or three years."

* Judy Fearmonger is back on the prowl, floating rumors that Chalabi is being wooed again by the Bushies.

* The next target? Iran? How 'bout Venezuela?

* Jehangir Pocha charts the emerging battle over oil between the US, China, and India for In These Times.

* Judge Joyce Hens Green pens memo to the Bushists: "Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats...that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years."

* In addition to the case they've filed against Donald Rumsfeld, lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights are now trying to bring up war crimes charges against Alberto Gonzales in Germany. Meanwhile, Dave Lindorff writes in The Nation that Michael Chertoff, the Bush nominee to head Homeland Security, gave free reign to torture, too. His role dates all the way back to the smash up job the military and intel services did on John Walker Lindh.

* Commenting on this piece of news, Maureen Dowd asks in the NY Times, "What good is it for President Bush to speak respectfully of Islam and claim Iraq is not a religious war if the Pentagon denigrates Islamic law - allowing its female interrogators to try to make Muslim men talk in late-night sessions featuring sexual touching, displays of fake menstrual blood, and parading in miniskirt, tight T-shirt, bra and thong underwear?"

* First Amendment rights? A recent survey commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation indicates that a high percentage of teens and young adults could care less about 'em.

* In yet another move to curb inconvenient speech in the academy, partly modeled on similar attempts to go after Middle Eastern specialists, attack dog conservatives are gunning for Ward Churchill. It looks like M. Shahid Alam is next.

* While much of the attention is focused on Bush's goal to privatize social security, the LA Times reports that conservatives are equally eager to dismantle the system of employer-provided health insurance, replacing it with a scheme "in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible 'catastrophic' insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts."

* A new study of the 2004 Presidential election by a consortium of statistical and mathematics professors "shows that the possibility that the overall vote count was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously," and indicates that "precincts with hand-counted paper ballots showed no statistical discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results, but for other voting technologies, the overall discrepancy was far larger than the polls’ margin of error."

* You can watch the CBC's fifth estate program, here, that has Bill O'Reilly all hot and bothered.