What a waste of bandwidth.

What a waste of oxygen.

It reminds me a lot of the Martian leader’s speech in Mars Attacks!

As I listen to it, I’m not hearing anything that he couldn’t have planned to say before the war started. No specifics to indicate that it was made since Wednesday night. If it were really today’s Saddam, he’d be sure to mention the glorious victory in capturing the Americans today.

I write this before the end of the long harangue, but it’s clear to me that it’s simply a tape of something that he put together before the war started, in order to exhort the troops.

He’s either dead, or incapacitated.

For no particular reason, but probably prompted by the fratricidal attack that is now looking like it was the work of a newly minted Islamic terrorist in their own ranks (surprise, surprise), it occurred to me that it’s probably a good thing that Ben Franklin didn’t get his desire.

If he had, the 101st Airborne would be called the “Screaming Turkeys.”

And feeling much recreated, but tired. Why is it relaxing is so exhausting?

We hiked on the north coast, watched seals and whales, and tried to ignore events on the other side of the planet, not altogether successfully. It was particularly brutal, because the hotel television had no news channels except CNN. I saw an interview that Wolf Blitzer did with some woman from the ICRC, trying to get her opinion on the news of the Iraqis videotaping our captured soldiers and giving the tape to (among probably others) Al Jazeera.

She squirmed and twisted and wiggled, and no matter how much he questioned her, she absolutely would not bring herself to directly criticize the Iraqi regime.

“Is it a violation of the Geneva Convention?”

“We adhere to the Geneva Convention, and we understand all the words in it. We expect all parties to adhere to it.”

“But is Iraq in violation of it?”

“States must follow the Geneva Convention, and we expect them all to do so.”

This seems beyond perversity.

[Update on Monday morning]

Here’s the rush transcript. It’s quite enlightening:

BLITZWE: What can you tell us about what you’ve seen about these U.S. POWs who’ve now been paraded out on Iraqi television, Al-Jazeera rebroadcasting that videotape?

TAMARA ALREFI, INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS: What we have seen is obviously what everybody else has seen. Now, as being an organization that works in situations of conflict and that is concerned about the fate of the victims, all of them, so be it wounded people, prisoners of war or civilians, yes, we are as concerned as everybody else is, particularly that the laws are clear under International Humanitarian Law, the Law of Armed Conflict or the Geneva Conventions and particularly the third Geneva Convention related to the treatment of the prisoners of war.

BLITZER: Now, I just interviewed the defense secretary of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld, who said that what Iraqi TV did was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, parading POWs before television cameras. Is that your understanding of the Geneva Conventions?

ALREFI: Well, our understanding of the Geneva Conventions is about reading the articles of the Geneva Conventions, and obviously Article 13 refers specifically to such a situation. Because it says that POWs must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity. And any activity, any act that contradicts any article of the Geneva Convention is a violation.

BLITZER: What you saw on Al-Jazeera, the videotape of Iraqi television, was that a violation, in your opinion, of the Geneva Conventions governing prisoners of war?

ALREFI: What I saw, what we saw on Al-Jazeera is actually something we often referred back to journalists about. It is up to the journalists to have the ethics or not to show what happened.

Now, if we go back to the article I just told you about, then anything against this article is a violation.

BLITZER: Because the article, and I’ll read it specifically. It says “You cannot have outrages against personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Was what we saw on Iraqi television, these American prisoners of war, these soldiers, including one female, was that in your opinion degrading treatment of these POWs?

ALREFI: Well, our concern is the concern of the ICRC and this article in particular, when it comes to publicly displaying prisoners of war, is a concern for their safety and the safety of their families. I mean, we do know that showing publicly prisoners could be detrimental to the safety of their family.

BLITZER: Are you in touch with the Iraqi government now in connection with these American POWs?

ALREFI: We are in constant contact with both parties, actually, and the fact that we — the ICRC has sent out a memorandum at the outbreak of the (inaudible), reminding all the parties to the conflict of their obligations under the Geneva Conventions. All of them are signatory of the Geneva Conventions.

Now, in this aspect, these are POWs. This is a category of victims that falls under the mandate of the ICRC. So the answer is we are going to activate our mandate. We are going to get in touch with the authorities concerned, yes.

BLITZER: The Reuters News Agency is reporting even as we speak right now that there is a statement coming out of the Iraqi government, they will treat these American soldiers, these prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions, which, if that’s going to happen that would obviously be encouraging to the ICRC.

ALREFI: Well, this is exactly what the ICRC hopes for anyway. But this, again, is what we hope for from all parties detaining people, detaining people who are taken as part of the conflict. Yes, this is exactly what we hope for.

BLITZER: As you know, the Iraqi government, when it comes to prisoners of war, doesn’t necessarily have the best track record and I am specifically referring to the 500 or 600 Kuwaiti prisoners who are still missing in Iraq, the Kuwaiti government — we’re in Kuwait right now — still says the Iraqis are refusing to notify them, refusing to tell them whether they have them, refusing to provide any information.

I assume the International Committee of the Red Cross has been in touch with the Iraqi government involving the Kuwaiti POWs from the first Gulf War.

ALREFI: Absolutely. But, again, let’s not mix all the cases. This is a totally different case. This is a case that the ICRC will work on specifically and, as you just mentioned, we did have a kind of a commitment to treat those people as per the Geneva Convention, so I don’t think we should mix everything together.

BLITZER: All right. Tamara, thank you very much. Good luck to you and the Red Cross, the International Committee of the Red Cross.

ALREFI: Thank you very much.

See? While one can infer from what she’s saying that the Iraqis are guilty of violations, she makes every effort to successfully avoid saying that directly. And she makes every effort to make her words apply to both sides, as though there is some equivalence in terms of the respective record both in human rights in general and treatment of POWs in particular. We are apparently supposed to infer that the coalition forces are just as likely to engage in this behavior as the Iraqis, and she’s keeping a close eye on us.

[Update at 10:36 AM PST]

CNN has the spelling wrong on her name. It’s “Al Rifai.” An Arabic name. If I’m reading my Dutch correctly, this article says that she’s Syrian.

Tamara Al-Rifai, de Syrische woordvoerster van het Rode Kruis, doet de hectiek af met een lach: “Ach, ze weten dat het voor de goede zaak is.” Die ‘goede zaak’ is Irak. Het Rode Kruis zit daar al sinds 1981, een jaar na het uitbreken van de bloedige oorlog tegen buurland Iran, en heeft het verval van nabij meegemaakt.

What a shocker.

It’s Patricia’s birthday. We’re up to the Mendocino coast for the weekend. See you Monday. Hope all goes well with the war.

Justin Raimondo says that the San Francisco thugs are giving the anti-war movement a bad name.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, Justin. Of course, in this case, you may have to clean off some retch juice, too.

Lileks comments (among other great things–go read today’s warbleat) that NPR was running BBC yesterday. Yup. I listened to it as I drove past San Luis Obispo yesterday afternoon. I found it difficult to take it seriously–one of the many depredations caused by a misspent youth of watching and listening to Monty Python.

The Brits like to say that Yanks lack a sense of irony. Keep that thought in mind as I relate this one bit.

It was an interview between the oh-so-serious Beeb commentator, an Arabic language expert (complete with Arabic accent) and a Professor of English from Cardiff. The topic? The language being used by the two sides to describe the war, and their respective adversaries.

It starts with a tape of Saddam in his nightgown, in which he calls the President, among other things, a donkey.

Lead question to Mr Arabic expert: “So, is this bad?”

I laughed out loud at the question. We’re at war, people are redecorating with cellophane and duct tape, the terror alert is orange verging on blood red, but this idiot’s worried about a loon in the Middle East comparing the president to a barnyard animal.

But he took it seriously, of course.

“Oh, yes, yes, it is the greatest of insults. There is no lower animal that one can compare an opponent with. It is worse even than a pig. Clearly Saddam is very angry at Mr. Bush.”

But then he goes on to say, or at least imply, that it was in response to a grave American “insult.”

“Last night, they said they made a ‘decapitating strike.’ But what does it mean to decapitate. It is like cutting off the head of a snake. They are calling the Iraqi people a snake, and of course, when you cut off the head, the body dies, so it is obviously a lie that the Americans are not making war on the Iraqi people.”

Then our moderator, without challenging this lunacy in any way, turns to the English English professor. “So, what do you think?”

“Well, they say truth is the first casualty of war, don’t they? Of course, what’s really the first casualty is language, the medium, the conveyer of truth, as it were.”

“Yes, ‘decapitation’ is a euphemism for something else, in this case assassination.”

It goes on in this nonsensical and ridiculous vein for several minutes.

Clearly, Saddam has nothing left but insults, but to think that any American is insulted when he calls Bush a donkey is laughable. I’ve always heard how flowery and eloquent Arabic is, but if that’s the best he has, he couldn’t insult himself out of wad of wet toilet paper. Tim Blair could insult him and his entire family into the middle of next week, probably in his sleep.

The Pentagon’s use of the word “decapitate” is not intended as an insult–it’s a precise description of our intent–to take out the brains of the Iraqi military organization. Yes, Saddam was a target, but that’s because he’s in charge of the military. In a war, the supreme commander is a perfectly legitimate target. As it happens, President Bush is similarly a legitimate target in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, and if the Iraqis were to miraculously come up with some way to kill him, it wouldn’t be an assassination–it would be a means of prosecuting the war.

Assassination is the murder of someone for political purposes, not to accomplish a war aim. If Iraq had a head of state separate from its military head, the latter would be a legitimate target, but not the former.

But one wouldn’t expect a professor of English to understand international law, or an expert on Arabic to understand military terminology, particularly one who doesn’t seem to understand American culture and believes that we, like Arabs, achieve war aims through insult.

Not, that is, unless one is the BBC.

I’m watching the local news from San Francisco, and it looks like the “peace” protests were more violent than the war…

Not that that’s a bad thing…

I just got here. Perhaps more posting later. Today’s space and war related Fox column is up. Regular readers will recognize it from a post last week.

I’m driving up to San Bruno today. No new posts until tonight. Hope the war’s over before I get there.