Insta-Hoglets 8th Dec.

If you're wondering why this post is a day late then blame the Texas power grid. The least little bit of bad weather causes power spikes and outages which means the computer gets switched off until things stabilize. Anyway...on with the hoglets!

Remember I mentioned a murder case that involves an Abramoff business deal? Well, his business partner in the deal has copped a plea on fraud charges surrounding that deal and will testify against Abramoff. This could get messy for Abramoff real fast. Three known mobsters have been charged with murdering the guy Abramoff and his partner, Kidan, bought Sun Cruz from using money allegedly obtained by fraud back in 2000. No-one has yet been charged for ordering the contract killing. Josh Marshall has some relevant thoughts on who ordered the hit. Can you guess?

Donald Rumsfeld finally proves he is a tinfoil-hat wearer as he climbs aboard the Freeper "Islamic Caliphate" paranoia bandwagon in public. Believing this hoary old chestnut means fogetting that Sunni and Shia have the kind of long-term differences that make the Irish troubles between Catholic and Protestant seem like a a mild difference of opinion and forgetting the long-term rivalries between moslem states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Still, its a popular xenophobic delusion. You can immediately see how espousing it will help US diplomacy in moslem countries, can't you? Alternet says "We now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something?"

Talking of disconnects from reality, have a read at Wesley Clark's plan to reduce the number of troops in Iraq while still keeping that nation as an American protectorate. It's full of stuff the U.S. should make the Iraqis do - change their constitution to prevent autonomy, declare oil revenues federal business, reduse sectarioan tensions - without a blessed clue as to how the U.S. will actually get the Iraqis to do these things! Oh, and no mention of properly equipping the Iraqi military again so yet again no real sovereignty for the Satrapy of Iraq. A gilt-edged Newshog no-prize to the first person to spot a plan that actually tackles this issue instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

Quote of the week: “Some who have been critical of the Bush administration have confused torture with cruel, inhumane treatment.” How's that for nuance? It comes from John Yoo, a University of California-Berkeley, law professor. As a Justice Department lawyer, he helped write internal memos in 2002 designed to give the government more leeway in aggressive questioning of terrorist suspects. Yoo gave the quote as part of an MSNBC report on recent polls that seem to say most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances. Italians and Spaniards disagree though.

A report by the U.S. Army War College says that, despite the heavy rhetoric, Israel's air force is militarily incapable of halting Iran's nuclear weapons program on its own. (If such a program exists, of course - a big "if" and a caveat the World Tribune doesn't bother making. Thus the spin is spun.)

There's some bad news from the Middle East. In Egypt, voters have welcomed the spread of democracy in the region by electing a record number of Islamist extremist candidates. The Islamist movement is the primary opposition to pro-US President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. Mubarak's idea of "spreading freedom" is to have police blockade polling places and brutalize opposition activists.

Yesterday the Prezididn't released yet another bullet-pointed PR document which purported to show that things were improving in Iraq but was seriously short on anything approaching hard figures. Today the Washington Post is there with an article showing some of the shortfalls in Bush's claims. Like "nasty Mosul" as one US senior official described the city yesterday - when the White House reports that Condi visited the city what they mean is that she flew past it in a military helicopter to the US base outside the city and never actually set foot in Mosul itself. Or Najaf which the White House says is now under control of the Iraqi government but is actually controlled by Shia extremist Moqtada Sadr's militiamen.

At least they realise that Shia extremism and the Iraqi government are becoming increasingly congruent.