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Associated Press:

Saudi Arabia is bristling at international criticism over the sentencing of a rape victim to prison and 200 lashes, insisting the West should stay out of its legal system. But the case could empower voices for change in the kingdom's Islamic courts.

What did she do?

In the case of the Girl of Qatif, the woman — a member of the kingdom's Shiite minority — was attacked in 2006 when she met a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him, since she had recently married. Two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where five others waited, and then the woman — 19 at the time — and her companion were both raped, she has said.

In October last year, she was sentenced to prison and 90 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her — a violation of the kingdom's strict segregation of the sexes. The seven rapists were also convicted.

When her lawyer, Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, appealed the sentence and made public comments about it, he was removed from the case, his license suspended, and the court increased the woman's penalty to six months in prison and 200 lashes.

Interesting that this hasn't yet been muzzled

Guardian:

US corruption investigators have gone behind the back of Downing Street to fly a British witness to Washington to testify about Saudi arms deals with the UK arms firm BAE Systems, the Guardian can disclose. In a hitherto secret move, Swiss federal prosecutors have also agreed to hand over to Washington financial records linked to the Saudi royal family.

The US is seeking - but has so far been refused - more than a million pages of documents seized from BAE, its bankers, Lloyds TSB, and the Ministry of Defence during an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the US, who says there was no impropriety about a £1bn payment he received for brokering arms deals with BAE, has hired a former head of the FBI and a retired British high court judge to defend his position. The British government has been attempting to block all investigations into payments from BAE to members of the Saudi regime.

Bush considers war, and Britain?

Guardian:

Gordon Brown is considering a Saudi plan to limit the supply of uranium to potential nuclear weapons states and will call for new EU sanctions against Iran in the next few weeks, most probably in the form of an end to export credit guarantees.

US-allied Gulf states said yesterday they were planning a consortium to provide enough enriched uranium for Iran's civil nuclear programme, which they believe could be a deterrent against the development of nuclear weapon.

Condoleezza Rice: The Real Ugly American

The BBC has an interesting little article about a statement made by Condoleezza Rice, during a stop in Ireland:

During a stop-over in Shannon, Ireland, Ms Rice told reporters: "There isn't a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to... US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see."

Now, any informed reader knows that Iran is not sending arms to Iraq, despite Bush Administration lies to the contrary. And any informed reader knows that Iran is now allowing IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. And any informed reader would have to wonder why Iran is the focus, when the State Department, just last week, criticized Saudi Arabia for undermining the war effort in Iraq, just as the Administration prepared to sell the Saudis some $20 billion worth of weapons. But nevermind all that. What matters is what Rice said:

"There isn't a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to... US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see."

Taking a closer look at her wording, we see what, in a nutshell, defines Bush Administration foreign policy. Iran constitutes the greatest threat to the kind of Middle East that we want to see! Get it? Rice isn't saying anything about what might be best for the Middle East itself, for that's clearly of no concern. The only thing that matters is U.S. interests, and the Middle East that she wants to create- regardless if it's what people in the Middle East want to see created, or even if such a Middle East is even possible. Given what we know about the Bush Administration's absolute ignorance about the history and cultures of the Middle East- not to mention that there is a history, and that there are separate cultures- it's not likely that her vision for the Middle East even plausibly relates to what's known as reality. Condoleezza Rice has just made herself the personification of the arrogant Ugly American.

Of course, in the real Middle East, in a country called "Iraq", real people are suffering horribly from the disasters wrought by the Bush Administration's Ugly Americanism. The Guardian has this story:

The number of Iraqi children who are born underweight or suffer from malnutrition has increased sharply since the US-led invasion, according to a report by Oxfam and a network of about 80 aid agencies.

The report describes a nationwide catastrophe, with around 8 million Iraqis - almost a third of the population - in need of emergency aid. Many families have dropped out of the food rationing system because they have been displaced by fighting and sectarian conflict. Others suffer from the collapse in basic services caused by the exodus of doctors and hospital staff.

Although the security crisis forced Oxfam and other agencies to withdraw their foreign staff from Iraq to Jordan within a year of the invasion, many Iraqi non-governmental organisations still work in the country and receive supplies from abroad.

And the BBC reported, last week, that:

An international conference in Jordan on the more than two million Iraqi refugees uprooted by war has pledged to help them with their difficulties.

But it insisted the solution to the problem lay in their return home and that the Iraqi government was directly responsible for its displaced citizens.

The UN refugee agency, Unrwa, said some 50,000 more Iraqis were escaping the violence in their homeland each month.

Two million refugees. Eight million in need of emergency aid. Can we just now accept the reality that the Middle East the Bush Administration wants to see isn't much good for the actual human beings that actually live there? Can we just accept that it's actually an astonishing humanitarian disaster?

Of course, Rice has the answer for all the Middle East's problems: sell more weapons. As the Guardian reports:

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, today said plans to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the Middle East would shore up friendly regimes against al-Qaida and Iran.

Ms Rice, who was visiting Egypt with the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, denied the arms sales were a move to ensure the support of states including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"This is not an issue of quid pro quo," she said. "We are working with these states to fight back extremism. We all have the same interest in a stable Iraq that can defend itself ... and be unified."

Right.

Iraq War: Without Purpose, Accountability, or End

We all know that our puppet "government" in Iraq recently missed all the benchmarks that were supposed to measure its progress. We all know that they'll be taking the month of August off, even as our troops continue to fight and die, unable even to take more time off between rotations because the Republicans blocked a bill that would have afforded them that little extra breather. Well, today's New York Times reports:

Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.

The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency, include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.

The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general’s office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared that they had been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed.

How nice.

Forget that it's a waste of billions of our tax dollars, because this speaks to the larger issue: this war is about nothing. It is about itself. We are not creating a democracy, we're not even creating a functioning government. We're creating death and destruction. For no reason. For the profits of the war profiteers, and for the deranged egos of the chickenhawks who are running it. There is no longer even a pretense that we're trying to accomplish anything. The excuses and explanations have absolutely nothing to do with the facts. Need more proof?

In England, the Guardian has this curious story:

The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time yesterday when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government.

The Bush administration warned Saudi Arabia, until this year one of its closest allies, to stop undermining the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

Sounds serious. Our great ally is helping undermine our supposed cause in Iraq. We must do something about that. Right? Well, we are. The New York Times is also reporting:

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq....

But administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this fall.

In talks about the package, the administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

See? That'll teach the Saudis not to mess with our war in Iraq!

The article does say that the Administration will attempt to stave off Congressional opposition by... selling more arms to Israel. Because the fact that the Saudis are undermining our cause in Iraq is irrelevant. There is no cause. The war just is. It must continue because it is. It must not end because then it wouldn't be. That's the fundamental "logic" of it.

And just for fun, we're also going to start arming local Iraqi Sunnis. The Washington Post has this one:

The U.S. military in Iraq is expanding its efforts to recruit and fund armed Sunni residents as local protection forces in order to improve security and promote reconciliation at the neighborhood level, according to senior U.S. commanders.

Within the past month, the U.S. military command in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq ordered subordinate units to step up creation of the local forces, authorizing commanders to pay the fighters with U.S. emergency funds, reward payments and other monies.

The initiative, which extends to all Iraqis, represents at least a temporary departure from the established U.S. policy of building formally trained security forces under the control of the Iraqi government. It also provokes fears within the Shiite-led government that the new Sunni groups will use their arms against it, commanders said.

How long before these untrained local protection forces turn their weapons on our troops?

It just gets worse. It just keeps getting worse.

Lip Service

Guardian:

The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time yesterday when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government.

The Bush administration warned Saudi Arabia, until this year one of its closest allies, to stop undermining the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, are scheduled to visit Jeddah next week.

Reflecting the deteriorating relationship, the US made public claims that the Saudis have been distributing fake documents lying about Mr Maliki.

But...

New York Times:

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

But administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this fall.

In talks about the package, the administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

Serious Military-Industrial Bribery Scandal In Britain

Guardian:

The arms company BAE secretly paid Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia more than £1bn in connection with Britain's biggest ever weapons contract, it is alleged today.

A series of payments from the British firm was allegedly channelled through a US bank in Washington to an account controlled by one of the most colourful members of the Saudi ruling clan, who spent 20 years as their ambassador in the US.

It is claimed that payments of £30m were paid to Prince Bandar every quarter for at least 10 years.

The Prince is so close to the Bush family that's he's known as "Bandar Bush." No wonder he's always smiling. He has more than a billion reasons to be!