One last joke about Bush’s speech at the Reichstag: He called terrorism the new totalitarian threat, at which point half the deputies thought: I knew Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler was a friend of mine....

Women wishing to join the Indonesian military must pass a virginity test.

In Moscow, Dubya and Pootie-Poot sign the new treaty, which finally has a name (although I believe both sides have their own name for it, which is what happens when you don’t negotiate long enough): the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty. Yes, it’s SORT of a treaty. That should be easy to remember, and to make it easier, before long it’ll be the only acronym you need to know. In 3 weeks the US will renounce the ABM Treaty, and Russia will declare Start II dead in response.

Which reminds me: if you were the leader of a country in danger of nuclear warfare, what would you do to reduce tensions? If you answered, announce a missile test, then your name must be Musharaf, because no one else is that stupid.

Bill Clinton has been in China giving a speech on “The World Trade Organization and the Chinese Real Estate Economy.” Except it wasn’t, because he didn’t do any homework for it, so he just rambled on for 30 minutes about the time he visited China in 1998 and whatnot, and then collected his check for $250,000. Jeez, I hope Carter at least came back from Cuba with a few smuggled Havanas for his trouble.

The Israeli plan to turn the West Bank into not one but eight giant prison camps proceeds apace. Trucks will not be allowed to travel between them, so goods will have to be unloaded and change trucks, for no very good reason except to destroy the Palestinian economy. And Palestinians with Palestinian papers or, amazingly enough, from East Jerusalem, will not be allowed into Israel, nor Israeli Palestinians into Palestine.

The FBI may not have been able to detect terrorism, but it did root out yet more traitors within the Bureau itself, punishing those agents who passed information to the Enemy--the Central Intelligence Agency. The one good piece of news out of all this is that the FBI failed in its attempt to get a warrant to tap Moussaoui. I’d heard that those requests were never ever rejected.