***Dave Does the Blog

(With apologies to Dora.) Here’s a fun “pin the country name on the country” game, focusing on the Middle East and Saharan Africa — the Islamic world, more or less.

I got 21 right before those non-Mediterranean African nations and those ex-Soviet republics started screwing me up.

(via ASM)

There are more indications that the looting of the Baghdad Museum was not just a random orgy of unrestrained violence, but at least in part a calculated plan.

Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting.
The U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.
Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of the thieves clearly knew what they were looking for and where to find it, suggesting they were prepared professionals.
“It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action,” said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. “They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes.”

Which raises the question of who did it, as well as when it happened, as well.

When was the last time some of those items were seen? Sez who? And have you checked their bank account — or their desire to go on working at the Museum?

(via ASM)

More exonerating detail on the “cover-up” of Picasso’s Guernica at the UN during press interviews with Colin Powell. Not that folks who like the symbolism are that interested in whether it’s accurate or not.

UPDATE: Hey, it would be helpful if I learned how to do links correctly, wouldn’t it?

(via Andrea)

I don’t expect to see a military confrontation with them any time soon, but here’s an interesting analysis of Syria’s military capabilities.

Summary: crappy conventional forces, some paramilitary, plenty of chemical weapons.

Abu Abbas is captured and in American custody. The US suspected Iraq had given him sanctuary (but, no, there’s no link between Iraq and terrorism, no sirree), but evidently he’d decided it wasn’t safe to stay in Baghdad any longer (wonder why) and hightailed it off to Syria — where he was turned back at the border (heh).

Remarkably enough, the Palestinian Authority is now demanding that he be released.

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called on Washington to respect the 1995 peace deal – signed by then President Bill Clinton – which specified that PLO members could not be persecuted for acts of violence committed before 1993.
Under the deal, Israel’s Supreme Court in 1998 declared Abbas immune from prosecution in Israel over the Achille Lauro hijacking.
Abbas had visited the West Bank and Gaza many times in co-ordination with the Americans and the Israelis, Mr Erekat said.

But the 1995 peace deal — “Oslo II” — was between Israel and the PLO. It was signed in witness by Clinton, as well as by Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway and the EU, but witnessing an agreement is not the same as being bound by it.

(The pertenant section, btw, is Article XVI, Sect. 3. Again, the Article refers to “both parties,” meaning Israel and the PLO.)

So really the only question is, will he be brought back to the US for trial (for, if nothing else, the killing and dumping overboard of an American Jew, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer), or will we let the Italians (who let him go once, but since found him guilty in absentia for masterminding the terrorist hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, and sentenced to five life terms) have their way with him? The PA, at any rate, has no legs to stand on in this case.