Now, a gay activist with a trimmed beard standing on line for a mud-wrestling contest....

The London Times presents an interesting juxtaposition. Tacked on to the end of a story about Iraqi Taliban-wannabes allegedly killing barbers for trimming beards contrary to the will of Allah is this: “An American military policewoman who took part in a mud-wrestling contest at an Iraqi prison was yesterday demoted and found guilty of indecent exposure.” See, we have our standards, they have their standards.

There must also be something in the Koran about standing in line also being contrary to the will of Allah. Two more queues were bombed today, one of Iraqi policemen waiting to collect their pay, another of applicants to join the Iraqi police. This is only the 853rd and 854th time respectively that this has happened, by my count.

A gay activist, Scott McCoy, is named by D party activists to replace a Utah state senator resigning on health grounds. Should be fun.

George Monbiot writes that we may hear less UN-bashing from the R’s on the subject of the oil-for-food program in Iraq, since the Volker report says that much bigger violations of sanctions occurred through illegal sales of oil--which the US knew about and did nothing to stop, because it benefitted allies we wished to keep sweet, like Turkey and Jordan. Monbiot also has more details of the money that the CPA lost through its non-Western accounting methods: “Some $800m was handed out to US commanders without being counted or even weighed. A further $1.4bn was flown from Baghdad to the Kurdish regional government in the town of Irbil, and has not been seen since.”