Who Loves Dictators?

It all depends on the dictator, but they all have their supporters. What's inexplicable is how Mark Steyn has tried to suggest that it's only liberals that get behind dictators. Really? Why then did Jonah Goldberg write such a loving eulogy for Augusto Pinochet? Why did Reagan send his buddy Don Rumsfeld to kick it with Saddam in the 1980s? Those are two examples off the top of my head, the fact is, I don't see dictator support as a liberal quirk.

Iran Not Going for the Bomb

This story has been floating around the blogosphere quite a bit: it appears that the Iranian government abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. While the American intelligence community has been pretty damaged by the Iraq fiasco, but the pressure was undoubtedly on the CIA et cetera to show that there was a bomb being built.

Here's some speculation: 2003 was the invasion of Iraq, could it be that once the American military did away with Iran's greatest existential threat, Saddam and his alleged weapons programs, there was no good reason to develop a deterrent.

Miscellany

Stuff I wanted to post on but didn't until now:

Apparently Christopher Hitchens once praised Saddam as the next Nasser. He has apparently neglected to mention this ever since he started calling for Saddam's ouster.

Bill O'Reilly perfects the homophobia version of Reefer Madness. It is, as you may have guessed, unsubstantiated.

Who cares about the Red Ensign? It has not been Canada's flag in something like fifty years. Nonetheless, the Conservatives seem bent on fetishizing it.

Innovative New Strategy for The Middle East!

That's right kids, the new strategy is to find a strong man and prop him up. According to this post the only thing is that the strong man should be more like a Musharraf than a Saddam Hussein. Minor detail, right?

The CIA Retirement Plan

I suppose that's a very black-humour way of describing what happened to Saddam this morning. Juan Cole has a detailed post that contextualizes Saddam's rise to power. Surprise, surpirse, Western agents enabled him. Go read the whole thing!