The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy Update - Developments in the Corner Comics case I wrote about last night. Laura Gjovaag has a full, detailed report from shop owner Paige Gifford. It's long. If there's a single key passage, it's this one:

So he and his manager are saying that even though the law states that I do not have to recognize inventory because I make less than 1 million a year, they are interpreting the law THE WAY THEY WANT TO in order to benefit them. They are saying that since the 48k worth of inventory sitting in my store is "dead inventory" and has not sold, that it is not considered inventory so it goes into another category all together. Since it goes into another category it turns around and becomes an asset to the store as "supplies" or something (it's all legal tax talk crap...) so it goes back into inventory and therefore is taxable at the end of the fiscal year.

Inventory is not inventory. And because it hasn't sold - which means it has earned Corner Comics no income - it must be taxed.

Dirk Deppey issues a call to action. Read it. He's right. This is important. The issue goes beyond the abuse of one woman, one small business owner, by the government. This case has the power to put most of the country's comic book stores, and most of the country's used book stores, out of business. It probably has implications for second-hand stores of all kinds, which means it poses a huge danger to readers and consumers. You and I will have fewer choices and the ones left to you will cost you more.

The quote that adorns the subject heading comes from Daniel Webster and Chief Justice John Marshall, by the way.

With any luck, I'll have updates to this item throughout the day.

UPDATE: Jesse Walker writing in Hit and Run: "if the law really is what the IRS claims it is, that would just be another reason to hate the IRS."

God Save the Republic - I've been reading the transcript of Tuesday night's "debate" (pitting the Democratic candidates for President against Ted Koppel). The actual policy discussion starts somewhere on page three of the Post's transcript and sticks pretty closely to Iraq until page 5. (They're long pages.) What a bunch of maroons! I mean, really! I don't mean in comparison with President Bush, I mean on an absolute scale. One of these people or George W. Bush will be running the country for four years starting in 2005. We are, as John Kerry might put it, f_____ no matter what. I'll try to stick whatever reactions don't make it into the article on the blog in a couple of days.

Busy writing another article for the Spectator. Blogging will be light for awhile..

The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy, Continued - Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag reports on IRS abuse of her friendly neighborhood comic store.

The owner of my local comic shop, Paige Gifford, was approached by the IRS in March for a "compliance audit". The brand-spankin new agent they had put on her case didn't believe she could make a living selling comics. Once she was able to prove that she was in compliance, and not selling something on the side, and that yes, she did make a living selling comic books, the agent went after her inventory. He said that he knew how much baseball cards are worth, and so old comics must be worth a lot of money. He estimated how much her backstock was worth (based on his own bizarre calculation). He then told her that she hadn't paid taxes on her inventory, and that she owed $14,000 in taxes. She's a small business owner. $14,000 is a lot of money.

So she got some help. At times the thing seemed almost resolved. But the IRS is determined to run her out of business. Within the last week she was told that she cannot have any backstock of comics. She has to destroy her backstock - shred or burn every comic book - by December 31st in order to get out of the debt. And she needs a receipt to prove that she destroyed the comics. Otherwise, she owes the IRS $14,000, and will owe the IRS an inventory tax every year from here on out. Even though her lawyer and accountant are convinced that she's completely in compliance with every pertainable law.

Inventory taxes are already an outrage (a change in inventory tax liability did a great deal to ruin book publisher backstock vitality in my lifetime), but this is an outrage taken to extremes, unless the report is grossly inaccurate. Read the last quoted sentence again:

Even though her lawyer and accountant are convinced that she's completely in compliance with every pertainable law.

The point is, these people are unlikely to be advising her for free. It does not matter that the IRS agent is probably wrong on the law and the ruling will probably be reversed at some point. What matters is that, since last Spring, Paige Gifford has had to deal with this nonsense - deal with it financially, intellectually and emotionally. The familiar regulatory coupling of arrogance and ignorance has forced her to take attention from her proper concerns - her business and her life - and focus them on trying to straighten out interlopers as clueless as they are powerful.

The Folly of "Humanitarian" War, 9,567 in a Series - Canada's National Post reports that

Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts.

Actually, that's a fair description of Kosovo before the war too (just add anti-Albanian violence by the greater Serb presence into the mix), and has certainly been true since the early days of the "peace." The War for the KLA has been put to some bizarre propaganda uses by both Republicans and Democrats during Gulf War Phase II. Democrats have compared how leading Republicans opposed the earlier war to Republican reaction to criticism of the current one. When not doing that they've held up the WFTKLA as a shining example of the multilateral competence the Bush Administration lacks. Republicans have criticised Democrats for opposing war against Saddam Hussein while supporting one against Slobodan Milosevic, who posed not even the theoretical threat to the United States that Iraq posed. Some hawks have even echoed the criticism of Republican opposition to war in 1999, calling it shameful. By so doing, they hope to delegitimize Democratic opposition to the fact or manner of current events.

In fact, the Republican opponents of 1999 were right, and we can only wish that the Democrats of 2002-2003 had their guts. (It was not enough guts, mind you. The Repubs could have used their congressional majority to stop the war, but did not.) The War for the KLA was patently illegal, begun by the President not just without congressional approval but in open defiance of Congress. Post-war Kosovo has been superficially quieter than Iraq, but only because NATO tacitly supported the agenda of the most extremist elements among the Albanians - winking at the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma and others from Kosovo. It some ways, it's as if the US went into Iraq, holed up in a couple of bases and let the Badr Brigade have its way with the Sunnis. As for multilateralism, Southern Europe despised Bill Clinton for Kosovo and the allies were balky during it. (There were widespread reports that Italian pilots so opposed the war that the dropped their bombloads on empty space.) The Kosovo War was every bit the cruel farce the Iraq War has become, maybe moreso.

(Via Tacitus.)

Comics Blogwatch - Today's happy exception to the old saw that it's easier to slam memorably than to praise vividly: Eve Tushnet's comics recommendations for non-comics readers. Wonderfully evocative. Of the things I've read, she makes me slap my head and say That's it! That's what's great about it! Of the things I haven't, she makes me say, Man, I gotta read that. On Love and Rockets: "Imagine how you felt when you heard that first punk record, then the second one, and it was like a whole world of people insane the way you were just opened up. Then imagine if someone remembered that feeling and grew up anyway." The Watchmen accolade is "Cultural Criticism in the Mighty Tushnet Manner!"

Also, How do people get into comics (as readers): one woman's confession.

Your Economic Refresher Course for the Day

50 years ago nobody worked as a computer programmer, yet today there are literally millions of them. 50 years from now, there will millions of new jobs that we haven't even thought of yet.

from Andrew Olmsted.

Smash Your Television - My God. According to this Atrios summary of the latest Democratic Primary debate, it took moderator Ted Koppel 19 questions to actually inquire about someone's policies rather than the horse race. Not that it necessarily matters what candidates say their policies are, but you can see why some of us just spend the evening blogging rather than watching this crap.

Who Lost Russia? - The Russians did, obviously. But how did they lose it? Where did Putinism come from? Answer: from Chechnya. The Yeltsin government, which for all its flaws had many liberal-in-the-European-sense ministers, insisted on prosecuting a cruel and unwinnable war to keep people in a country to which they no longer wished to belong. The war went badly, as it had to. The government persisted, comparing itself to Lincoln. "Chechnya is part of Russia!" they said. "It must stay part of Russia." Liberals countenanced illiberal brutalities, which didn't work for them and haven't worked for their successors. They feared a nationalist backlash, but by granting nationalist premises they ensured it. Putin rode in on a wave of war rage. It is doubtful he will willingly ride back out.

I'm just saying.

Smiling and Crying - You can too. Open RealOne Player. Click Music | Rock. Scroll down for the video of Bruce Springsteen doing a live version of "Mary's Place." (You can get to the video from VH1, but I can't resize the video in their player.) I attempted to convey the greatness of this song a couple of Augusts ago. Reading the last sentence of that item ("I look forward to the day I won't be too choked up to sing along"), I see I'm still not there.

911 - Chief Wiggles needs advice and organizational cachet. If his informant's story is on the level, someone out there may be able to save the lives of four Iraqi girls. You can e-mail his webmaster if your organization is able and willing to sponsor the sisters. I realize that the Chief's informant could be speaking untruly, but at the very least the story is possible and warrants exploration if you're in a position to help.

Certain obvious political implications will not be belabored at this time.

Tech Blog/Political Blog Item Crossover! - Jeff Taylor of Reason observes that the FBI wants to know everything that's in our computers while knowing relatively little of what's in their own.

Reappointment in Samarra - The Financial Times checks in one week later. (Link via Antiwar.com.)

A week after a vicious firefight in the streets of Samarra, in which US forces claim to have killed 54 guerrilla fighters, it was unclear on Sunday who really controlled the town.

On the evidence of the text that follows, the topic sentence is putting it rather gently.

At the one remaining US military compound in the city, US soldiers on Sunday refused to leave their sand-bagged bunkers to meet a western visitor at the gate. "It's dangerous here! Go away!" yelled one. Two other such US compounds within Samarra have been vacated in the past three weeks.

US-paid Iraqi troops of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) have not entered the town since one of their number was killed on Saturday, shot by enraged mourners after his squad crossed paths with a funeral procession for a man slain in last week's shoot-out.

The ICDC men guard checkpoints outside the town. They wear green balaclavas so locals cannot recognise them.

The hell of it is, pulling out of Samarra makes a certain amount of sense. The alternative is the beatings will continue until morale improves plan, and we're already doing rather enough of that elsewhere. And it provides an interesting laboratory in self-government. In the absence of the "stabilizing presence" of US troops and the Iraqi army, will Samarra descend into a "bloodbath" or not? Samarra is officially part of the Sunni Triangle, but it apparently contains a Shia holy site. Desultory attempts to find an ethnic breakdown for the city/province proved fruitless.

The downside is, this is how it went in Lebanon. By the time of the marine barracks bombing, our troops were doing nothing in Beirut except flying a flag out by the airport. We waded in, performed a genuine humanitarian service for the Palestinian refugees, stayed to pick sides in Lebanon's civil war and realized, at length, that we could not accomplish anything. So we pulled back but did not leave because we had to show our resolve. Our error wasn't pulling out after the bombing of the marine barracks, it was not pulling out before.

Covers Update at the bottom of last night's post. Why did I do it that way?

Because I'm fresh out of clever titles for the topic.

Short and Sweet - Glenn Reynolds says most of what needs to be said about the latest of the war's hissing sissies (cowards who, like one of Niven's Puppeteer's , lash out in terror rather than curling into a mewling ball):

I'd call it an unAmerican idea, but in fact we did things like this in the Civil War, and in World Wars I and II. But it's wrong.

And he's right to find the parallel in (pre-Presidential campaign) Sharptonism. (Sharptonism had less sweepingly national power than Yoshida-ism would if it got going, but that was small consolation to the immigrant merchants in Sharptonism's cross-hairs.) One other thing. A key difference between mere authoritarianism and fascism is that fascism attempts, like other revolutionary movements, to energize a mass base. Fascist leaders don't just want to rule, they want you to love it, to insist on it. So when Adam Yoshida urges that war supporters shout at strangers in the streets, ruin businesses they feel are not with the program, cut off friends for their disagreement with current policy, he is being a fascist even if neither the governments of the US or Canada are. As we have been told over and over again, it is not "censorship" when radio stations blacklist the Dixie Chicks for their political views or listeners demand that they do so. But it is a fascist impulse.

Sound Advice for Writers from Rebecca Sean Borgstrom:

It's important not to introduce a dancing army of Popes into your writing without a bit of backstory.

* Where did the dancing Popes come from?
* Why are they an army?
* To what sinister purpose and uses are such forces put?

So I guess I have to explain.

And she does.

Foods Touch Item - Salam Pax reads the autobiographical comic Persepolis, by Iranian expatriot Marjane Satrapani:

It is too scary how much we have in common, Iraqis and Iranians I mean. The hate campaigns which were directed towards each other seem to have had the same effect on Iranians as on us, and the same methods were used.

Perhaps they were each told that the other side only understood "force, pride and saving face."

He also has some gossip on the Great Lost Iraqi Census Proposal and a first-hand account of the Baghdad electrical situation.

The Topic That Will Not Die - More covers! Glen Engel-Cox! Kangaroo Jack! Eve Tushnet! (From last summer, but reflagged just now.) Kesher Talk (from the same time frame). Smarty-pants Diana Moon says "covers" are the norm in classical music," which is like, squaresville, Daddio. She also slyly hints that "Black Magic Woman" was written not by Carlos Santana but by Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green.

We Get Letters! Both Michael Hall and Jesse Walker wrote in to say Dirk Deppey is a silly, silly man who doesn't know who wrote songs. Michael Hall:

Feel free to collect the smarty-pants points I've earned by noting that Bob Dylan didn't write that song: It's performed by Stealers Wheel and credited to "Rafferty/Egan."

People think it's from Bob Dylan because they mishear the announcer played by Steve Wright in "Reservoir Dogs," who refers to the song as a "Dylanesque pop bubblegum classic."

That's about right, and speaking of covers, it's a longtime daydream of mine to be called up on stage to sing that song with Elvis Costello. Does that make any sense? No it does not. Other Costello-related fantasy? To find myself in the same Irish pub, where Costello is playing snooker. I ask - dumb Americanlike - why the pool table has all these extra little red balls on it. Then to his astonishment, I make him sweat through a tough match. The major impediments to this particular fantasy are that: Costello no longer lives in Ireland; he apparently doesn't enjoy hanging around pubs; and I play snooker like hell.

Anton Sherwood writes that he likes

"Pictures of Matchstick Men" (Status Quo) by Camper Van Beethoven
"Black Dog" by Dread Zeppelin

I thought "Pictures of Matchstick Men" was a Slickee Boys original. Shows what I know.

Okay, so what are some really really lame covers? I nominate:

1. 10,000 Maniacs, "Because the Night" (B. Springsteen/P. Smith) - this excrescence from a live "Unplugged" CD proves, definitively, that the politically correct know nothing of passion. Natalie Merchant sings it like warmup music for voice class. Number one on the bad covers chart with a bullet. Except for "Verdi Cries," which is about an emotion Merchant does understand, a forgettable career. Oh, and in answer to the natural question: Patti Smith's, of course. Smith's is better than Springsteen's. (UPDATE: THIS ITEM EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPELLING.)

2. Kate Bush, "Rocket Man" (Elton John) - talk about your histrionics. The speedometer needle on my old car occasionally develops a mind of its own and swings through 30-mile per hour arcs quite independent of the actual speed of the car. So Kate Bush's performance and this song's emotional core.

3. Sarah McLachlan, "Solsbury Hill" (Peter Gabriel) - somewhere out there in music-trading space, you might find a copy of this file whose title includes the description "(Live - Fussy)" Who added that to the filename? I ain't saying.

4. Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane" (Velvet Underground) - Someone did not get that it's the evil mothers who will tell you that life is just made out of dirt. All of the songs listed here are bad. This one is a betrayal.

5. Dolly Parton, "Stairway to Heaven" (Led Zeppelin) - I'm not kdding! This really exists! And no amount of bluegrass chops or postirony excuses it. Yes, I gave this a good 20-second listen in Borders once. I'm just about over it.

6. Ron Sexsmith, "Every Day I Write the Book" (Elvis Costello) - Sexsmith strips away the - well, the fun stuff. Leaves us with a dirge. Gosh, how surprising that Ron Sexsmith would do that!

7. Jane's Addiction, "Sympathy for the Devil" (Rolling Stones) - This manages to combine the worst features of choices 1 and 2 - it sounds like someone on smack doing warmup for voice class. You'll believe in the previously oxymoronic concept of rote caterwauling. David Byrne does a superior version from the same tour that became his live concert film. (He was, apparently, too cheap to pay the royalties including it in the film would have cost, but it's out there.)

8. Hank Williams III - "Atlantic City" (Bruce Springsteen) - You know, this should really be number two. And a close number two. I avoided listening to this again until just now. God damn you, loyal readers. God damn you all.

9. I'll leave this one blank. I'll probably think of some later.

UPDATE 12/9/03: The hits just keep on coming. Jesse Walker posts his top ten. Ginger Stampley has new and old entries. Chad Orzel weighs in. Franklin Harris lists his top . . . one. My Back Pages has a 60s-centric list, which makes sense for a blog called My Back Pages. But hey, Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" really does kick ass. And Jeff Taylor of Reason e-mails his faves:

"Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" -- Revolting Cocks

"freddie's dead" - fishbone

"satisfaction" - devo

"by the time I get to Phoenix" -- Isaac Hayes

"orgasmatron" -- sepultura

"iron man" -- busta rhymes

Every Couple of Years Like Clockwork - another "defining terrorism down" story. This time around, it's the Denver Post.. (Via Hit and Run.) Last time around, January 2002, it was the Saint Petersburg Times. Via - why, that would be - me! Who said, at the time:

They told us the snoop-friendly provisions of [the USA-PATRIOT Act] were narrowly tailored to a specific threat: "terrorism." But federal law enforcement has enormous leeway in how they classify any given alleged offense. Which makes the tailoring "relaxed fit."

Guess I don't have to take that one back.

More Cover Stories from Crooked Timber. I since listened to the Cat Power version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Initial reaction: eh. But it was late and I was keeping the sound down and web-surfing at the same time, so I can't be said to have given it a fair shot yet.

Now I know that this site still has conservative readers, however grudging. Don't any of my fellow righties love covers too?

Also, reader mail continues to arrive on the subject and I'll run more tonight.

It's an Art Form - The funny photo caption, and not many people are actually that good at it. But Norbizness is.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 163 pounds, waist still under 33" but pants feeling subjectively tighter. Ate like a pig and did not exercise. 63 pounds below my Thanksgiving 2002 weight.

For the last 10 years or so, the pattern has been that I gain ten pounds over the winter and lose five of it next Spring and Summer. Obviously, I broke that pattern last year. The key is to avoid the ten pound gain this year. We shall see.

Thought for the Day - Our government repeatedly tells us two things in re Iraq:

1) The US military does everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties.

2) The US military does not track civilian casualties.

It's a management truism that you can't manage what you don't measure.

Cover Me - Everybody likes talking about covers. Matthew Yglesias does. Atrios does. And: advantage: perfectly cromulent blog!

E-mailers love covers too. Michael Croft follows up on the Hooters' "cover" of "Time After Time."

We are cover song fiends ourselves and you may hear more from Ginger or myself or both of us shortly. Just a note on Bruce Baugh's mention of the Hooters--Rob Hyman co-wrote Time After Time with Cyndi Lauper and arranged it with fellow Hooter Eric Bazilian. Lauper described The Hooters as "My band before I had a band."

Dirk Deppey loves covers. He writes in:

Covers, eh? For the longest time, I've been collecting bluegrass/hard-country covers of rock and pop songs. Some of my favorites:

The Meat Purveyors - "Round and Round" (Ratt),
from the album "Sweet in the Pants"
With a lot of bluegrass covers, I'm impressed by how much better the songs sound when rearranged for fiddles, mandolins and the like. Bluegrass by its very nature requires serious musical chops, after all. In this case, it's the fact that the singers are women are women which seals the deal; this version kicks total ass.

Dale Ann Bradley - "Stuck in the Middle with You" (Bob Dylan),
from the album "Old Southern Porches"
See above. I've never been much of a Dylan fan, but this song gains something with the conversion to bluegrass.

The Austin Lounge Lizards - "Brain Damage" (Pink Floyd),
from the album "Lizard Vision"
These guys skirt the edge of comedy-band status with their own music, but this one pushes it over the edge; what keeps it good is their excellent musicianship, and the fact that they play the song blisteringly fast (and relatively straight-faced). Who'd of thought Roger Waters could be improved with a banjo?

Flaco Jimenez with Dwight Yoakum - "Carmelita" (Warren Zevon),
from the album "Partners"
This one probably shouldn't work, in the same way that Art of Noise's cover of the Prince song "Kiss" with Tom Jones shouldn't have worked. It does, though -- in fact, I'd rank this version above the original.

Country Dick Montana - "Karma Chameleon" (Culture Club),
from the EP "The Home Of Country Dick Montana"
Played for laughs, of course, and it does the job admirably. I mean, it's almost conceptual humor: Country Dick Montana sings a cover of "Karma Chameleon." What's not to love?

Andy Prieboy - "Whole Lotta Love" (Led Zeppelin),
from the EP "Montezuma Was a Man of Faith"
Okay, this one's an outright ringer, but I still love it. Prieboy was the guy recruited to fill the suicide slot left when Stan Ridgway left '80s new-wave band Wall of Voodoo, where he replaced Stan's country twang with an ironic sense of Vaudeville. It didn't work, and WoV soon faded away, but Prieboy went on to record a couple of solo albums. Like the last one, this cover is definitely played for laughs, with the Zep classic given a bluegrass-ish retooling for mandolin and piano. Prieboy's currently trying to build up steam for a musical he's written, "White Trash Wins Lotto: The W. Axl Rose Story."

This is the blog that asks the tough questions, so I immediately went into interview mode:

Did you leave Hayseed Dixie off the list by accident or design?

Huh, I'd never heard of 'em. Having now listened to the samples on their website, though, I suspect I would've left 'em off by design. The thing about bluegrass is that there's a serious "throwdown" factor involved -- if you don't have the chops to throw down, it's painfully obvious early on. Hayseed Dixie seem to have one midtempo song in them, and it doesn't seem to be a very polished one. Compare them to, say, Del McCoury or the Lizards, and you hear the difference pretty quick. Mind you, I'm going by 45-second samples here, so there could be something I'm missing.

The band I'm currently searching for more of? The original four-woman incarnation of the Dixie Chicks; specifically, their amazing second album, "Thank Heavens for Dale Evans." I have a dub on cassette, but I know there was a CD minted before they lost two members, hired a replacement singer, signed the Kneepads-For-Nashville contract and quietly deleted their back catalog...

I'd sort of agree re Hayseed Dixie, though I know little of bluegrass. On the AC/DC covers album, the first two songs, "Highway to Hell" and "You Shook Me All Night Long" are pretty darn fun. After that, the joke just peters out.

Julian's test that a cover should offer something wholly new in its approach to a song probably leaves out on of my nominations, Alejandro Escovedo's version of Mott the Hoople's "I Wish I Was Your Mother." But that cello! I didn't list Those Darn Accordians' rendition of Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up," which has a certain novelty value. I also didn't list Costello's live cover of U2's "Please" from a Kennedy Center Celtic/American Country concert a few years ago, but it easily passes Julian's test. In fact, I would rate the U2 studio version as Nothing Much and the live Costello rendition as Stunning. (Donal Lunny plays bosouki on the song. You might be able to find a video clip of this somewhere, as PBS broadcast the concert in its entirety.)

I will continue to "cover the covers" issue like it was a poorly reported battle of ambiguous outcome in a distant land!

Pull the Other One - Hilarious wish-fulfillment fantasy in the Telegraph this morning, in which deliciously-named reporter Con Coughlin finds the source for the famous "45-minute" claim in the British WMD dossier - Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh. Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh is full of - information. For instance:

"I admire Mr Blair because he made Iraq secure from Saddam. If Saddam's people kill me for saying this, I do not mind. I have done my duty to my country and we have got rid of Saddam.

"And if the British Government wants me to come to London to tell the truth about Saddam's secret weapons programme, I am ready to help in any way I can."

Get me out of Iraq where I've been inexplicably de-Ba'athified, and where it sucks anyway, and I'll be happy to come to London!

Hey, I'll bet. al-Dabbagh assures us that the 45-minute claim is

"200 per cent accurate!" he exclaimed. "And forget 45 minutes. We could have fired them within half an hour."

Only those ex-Ba'athist insurgents have kept the Bad Things from being found so far, because those ex-Ba'athist insurgents have them hidden away somewhere while they, um, attack coalition forces and collaborators with everything except chemical and biological weapons because, I don't know, it wouldn't be sporting or something.

But wait, there's more!

According to Lt Col al-Dabbagh, it was at about this time that he and other senior commanders were informed that Saddam intended to deploy his WMD arsenal to defend the country against an American-led attack. At a meeting that took place six months before the war, one of Saddam's senior officials told a group of Iraqi air defence commanders that they had many weapons that could be used to attack the US and UK.

"They told us that they [coalition troops] cannot pass across Iraq because we will use everything, from the knife to nuclear weapons, to defend ourselves," said Lt Col al-Dabbagh.

At this juncture Lt Col al-Dabbagh was commanding one of four air-defence units based in the western desert, and managed to smuggle a detailed map of Saddam's troop deployments along Iraq's border with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia back to the INA's south London headquarters.

"It was very difficult to get this information out," he told me. "The Ba'athists never trusted the military, and as a senior officer I had two Ba'athist officials watching me 24 hours a day."

From the knife to nuclear weapons! Wow. And it never occurs to al-Dabbagh that maybe, just maybe, six months before the war he was being played. ("I had two Ba'athist officials watching me 24 hours a day.")

And then:

The weapons themselves were finally deployed at his own unit towards the end of last year. "They arrived in boxes marked 'Made in Iraq' and looked like something you fired with a rocket-propelled grenade," Lt Col al-Dabbagh explained.

Noted. And

According to information he learnt subsequently from his military colleagues, the weapons were made at factories at Habbaniyah, al-Nahrawan, Nabbai and al-Latifia.

All places we've been in, out, over, around and through in detail, and if we haven't been, I want a tax rebate. And

Saddam's officials also gave elaborate instructions on how to use the weapons. Because of their limited range, those responsible for firing them were to dress in civilian clothes and drive in civilian vehicles with yellow number plates.

"Each military unit was given two four-wheel drive Isuzu cars," said Lt Col al-Dabbagh. "We were not allowed to use them and they had to be kept in good condition." If the war reached a critical stage and Iraq's forces were in danger of being overrun, then designated officers would be given the task of driving the vehicles towards coalition positions and firing the weapons.

You know, there was an awful lot of Fedayeen and Special Republican Guard units in civilian clothes driving toward coalition forces and firing weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades. Quite a bit of that still goes on today. How is it that these guys keep reaching into the wrong ammo box?

He believes that the only reason these weapons were not used during Operation Iraqi Freedom last spring is that the bulk of the Iraqi army refused to fight for Saddam.

But Fedayeen and SRG units did fight, many of them, in their civilian clothes and their civilian trucks. Some of them fight still. And none of them did or do so with chemical or biological weapons, let alone nukes. But wait, there's more:

He did, however, see a group of Fedayeen attempt to use one of the warheads against an American position on the outskirts of Baghdad on April 6. "They were going to use this weapon, but then they realised that they would kill lots of Iraqis who did not have masks, so they put them in their cars and drove off."

Wow. al-Dabbagh was present for the one time all the Fedayeen in Iraq tried to use biological or chemical warheads, let alone "nukes." And they happened to be the nicest Fedayeen in Iraq too, since, you may recall, all the others were ruthlessly deploying human shields and endangering or killing Iraqi civilians to get at coalition troops. They set off car bombs that take out a dozen Iraqis for every American and yet these guys - apparently the only Fedayeen who even thought about using their "secret" weapons, were a couple of old softies. I'll bet their bonus check was a little light on Eid al-Fitr this year!

"All the people who worked on these weapons have either escaped or disappeared. Only when Saddam is captured will these people talk openly about these weapons. Then they will reveal where they are."

Actually we have quite a lot of them in custody and they all say the opposite of what Lieutenant-Colonel al-Dabbagh has to say. (And what is it with Lieutenant Colonels anyway? Are they the official Bullshit Officers in every army? If Andrew Olmsted gets promoted again, should we start ignoring his blog?) But if we are to believe al-Dabbagh, then

o there were massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons deployed to front-line units.
o the bulk of the Iraqi Army disintegrated, but enough units kept good discipline to spirit every single unit of battlefield special weapons away, despite our overrunning massive quantities of ordinary ordnance.
o those same spiriters, who we are told form the backbone of the insurgency, have kept the special weapons hidden, despite the fact that
o the special weapons can be fired by a couple of people from the back of a truck
o a couple people firing from the back of a truck is a fair description of how the insurgency spends the bulk of its time.

Uh.

Huh.

It could be true. And anthrax monkeys might fly out my butt.

(Link via Instapundit, naturally.)

Labor-Saving Device Item - I was going to write about Representative Jim Gibbons spending your money to ease his conscience, but Radley Balko did it for me. I was going to write something about the President's plan "to boldly go where....um....we already went." But Radley Balko did it for me. Quick kibitzing: in the Gibbons piece, Radley concludes

I'm thinking we ought to do something. I'm just not sure what.

Any ideas?

Yeah. Stick more frogs in the goddamn drain. That'll show him.