Self-flagellation, sure, but will they dance even one polka?

So we’ve renamed Saddam Hussein International Airport. Evidently we’ve gotten to the “I claim this land in the name of Queen Isabella” stage where we get to name everything. They’re calling it Baghdad International Airport, until they get around to deciding whether Baghdad will be New Dallas, New Crawford or maybe New Kennebunkport. Saddam Hussein himself has been renamed Osama bin Laden. Now that we have the airport, we’re planning to really piss Saddam off by losing his luggage. That just leaves the problem of the airport code (LAX, SFO, that kind of thing). If it’s no longer SDA, it can’t be BDI, which is taken. The Guardian helpfully points out that GWB is available.

Britain’s defense minister Geoffrey Hoon, trying to prove he can be as big an asshole as Rummy, says that the mothers of children killed by cluster bombs in Iraq will one day thank Britain.

Guardian on some of the mysteries of the war. Including what happened to the electricity in Baghdad.

Times on why we are encouraging Iraqis to loot.

The Shanghai Communist Party has resumed use of the title “comrade.” Only problem is, the term now pretty much means homosexual, a usage spread to the Mainland from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

British soldiers in Iraq are using the internet to order British flags, so that the Americans will stop killing them.

Shiites in newly liberated Umm Qasr have used their new freedom to resume traditional religious habits not allowed by Saddam’s Sunnis. Public self-flagellation at funerals, for example. Freedom, ain’t it grand.

Bush and Blair will have a summit next week on how to bring peace and tranquility in Iraq, and then the Middle East. The summit will be held in Belfast, and I couldn’t possibly have made that up.

Can you believe that the Bushies still haven’t decided who’s going to run the Iraqi puppet government? The WashPost says no expatriates, while the Telegraph in the same day (Saturday) says expatriates will run the whole thing, starting with the convicted bank fraud.

Tina Brown has a piece somewhere in which she comments that GeeDubya, even when he’s trying to be charming, has the permanently pissed-off look of the dry drunk. I don’t know about that, but I increasingly think that Bush is a textbook sociopath, unable to believe that other people have existences of their own. The pissed off quality is brought on by people not acting out their supporting roles according to his script. All that talk about how much he values loyalty--nope, he actually doesn’t think other people are real. If he hadn’t been born rich, he’d be living in a cabin in a woods filled with shallow graves for the bodies of drifters and hitchhikers.