Let's go watch the movie "The Three Stooges in Iraq."

Allies to Begin Seizing Weapons From Most Iraqis

Iraqi citizens will be required to turn over automatic weapons and heavy weapons under a proclamation that allied authorities plan to issue this week, allied officials said today.

The aim of the proclamation is to help stabilize Iraq by confiscating the huge supply of AK-47's, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons that are used by criminal gangs, paramilitary groups and remnants of the Saddam Hussein government.

Iraqis who refuse to comply with the edict will be subject to arrest. Only Iraqis authorized to use military-type weapons because of their police or military duties will be exempt.
[more]

This should be fun to watch. I would feel a lot safer if our government would start taking automatic weapons away from US citizens.

Who is the U.S. trying to fool?

It is hard to see where the Bush administration thinks it is going in Iraq, or whether it grasps how much its dissimulation and bad faith over the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" will cost it.

The situation in Iraq, even by friendly accounts, seems to be deteriorating, and unfriendly accounts in both the British and the French press are scathing.

Major combat was pronounced finished a month ago, but U.S. authorities in Baghdad, seemingly still confused or in dispute over how to restore order and a functioning administration, have yet to get a grip on the situation. Visitors to U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad, situated in one of Saddam's former palaces, are given elaborate PowerPoint presentations on the military security situation, irrelevant to the reigning lawlessness and disorder Baghdad's citizens experience. U.S. officials go out only in escorted convoys.

The civilian authority run by the newly arrived ambassador L. Paul Bremer, still locked in its own and Washington's bureaucratic struggle over what to do and whom to blame, remains inaccessible to aid organizations and nongovernmental representatives.
[more]

  thanks to Cursor

Looting Is Derailing Detailed U.S. Plan to Restore Iraq

Long before President Bush ordered the attack against Iraq, the White House and the Pentagon drew up a plan for rebuilding and running the country after the war that was nearly as meticulous as the battle plan.

But over the past two to three weeks, the wheels have threatened to come off their vehicle for establishing the peace.

The looting, lawlessness and violence that planners thought would mar only the first few weeks has proved more widespread and enduring than Mr. Bush and his aides expected and is threatening to undermine the American plan.
[more]

Those pesky Iraqis just need to get with our program.

Dinar Is Served
Saddam Dinar Rises Against Dollar

I'm shocked – shocked! – but it appears that neither Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld nor General Tommy Franks has read Ludwig von Mises, or even David Hume. Their economic ignorance has led to the only American defeat -- not on the battlefield, but on the economic front. The 'Saddam dinar' (picture on the left) has beaten the dollar hands down as the currency of choice in Iraq.
[...]

"If you have one million pensioners getting $40 apiece, that's $40 million coming onto the streets," said Ahmed Muhammad Ali, a trader on Kifah Street. "What did you expect would happen?"
[more]

  thanks to Cursor