Maybe he's reading as fast as he can

More Abu Ghraib photos. There are over 1,000, but not here.

Today is National Prayer Day (and International Tuba Day)(no, sorry, that’s tomorrow), honorary chairman Oliver North. His theme is “freedom,” by which he means prayer in schools, the 10 commandments in public buildings, etc. North owes his freedom less to God than to an ill-considered grant of qualified use immunity by the Congress.

Pull-quote for Maureen Dowd’s column: “Fire Rummy, or make him read faster.”

The NYT reports that one of the Abu Ghraib guards who appears in the photos was recruited from a Pennsylvania prison renounced for beating....and humiliating...its prisoners. Whether this guy participated in that is kept secret by privacy laws, would you believe, although the fact that he beat and stalked his wife, threatened her with guns, etc, not so much. He had 3 restraining orders issued against him, but that raised no red flags for the US military, or indeed the state pen, which continued to employ him. Abu Ghraib isn’t the only American-run prison system with serious problems.

So Bush finally apologizes for all the, ya know, torture and sodomizing prisoners and such. He apologizes to the king of Jordan, in private, and then tells everyone he did so, because he just can’t bear to apologize in public. Why apologize to the king of Jordan? I’m not actually sure if it’s because Abdullah is a Muslim, and one Muslim is the same as any other Muslim to Shrub, or because Abdullah is an Arab, and ditto. “Hey, you’re from Muslimia, you must know Akbar...”

So if Rummy does have to go--heh, heh--who replaces him? You could ask the same question about Powell, and realize how badly this war has tarred the reputation of everyone associated with it. Condi can no longer be secretary of state--can you imagine the confirmation hearings? Wolfowitz of Arabia can’t be secretary of war. And so on. You can see this over in Britain, where Blair just appointed the guy who compiled the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq as the next head of MI6, to universal condemnation, for which, if you care, click.

Here’s a lovely Indy story: “Sexual slavery involving girls as young as 11 has grown into a massive industry in the Balkans, because of demand for their services from the 40,000 international peacekeepers from Nato and the United Nations in Kosovo.”

The UN voted 140-6 (4 Pacific Island states, Israel, and yes of course the US) that Palestinians have a right to sovereignty.

A guy is on trial in Australia for killing a guy, and eating his leg and penis. (Near Darwin, by the way) The trial answers the age old question: penis tastes like...chicken. If any of you already knew that, I don’t wish to know.