In a May 24 op-ed in the New York Times, Niall Ferguson--a history professor at Harvard, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire--makes the case for a long-term US occupation of Iraq, drawing some instructive lessons from the experience of British imperialism before the American Century. The Brits, in Ferguson's nostalgic view, were real old-fashioned undisguised and unapologetic imperialists, with no squeamishness about the burdens of colonial policing, and therefore were able to prevail over the Iraqi insurgents of the 1920s--and this, of course, is what the US must now emulate. The piece is tellingly entitled "Cowboys and Indians," implicitly invoking the ugliest colonial conquest of America's own past, although the text does not actually invoke the pacification of the American west (presumably because it is too obvious). Ferguson begins:

"I think that this could still fail." Those words - uttered by a senior American officer in Baghdad last week - probably gave opponents of the war in Iraq, particularly those clamoring for a hasty exit, a bit of a kick. They should be careful what they wish for.

He then predicts disaster if the US leaves, and goes on to draw his comparison with the British experience in Iraq starting in the aftermath of World War I:

In an editorial for the July issue of The Progressive, editor Matthew Rothschild makes a serious case for war crimes charges against Rumsfeld and Bush, as well as other White House and Pentagon figures...

Stripping Rumsfeld and Bush of Impunity
When Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last year, he was asked whether he "ordered or approved the use of sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise, and inducing fear as an interrogation method for a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison." Sanchez, who was head of the Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force-7 in Iraq, swore the answer was no. Under oath, he told the Senators he "never approved any of those measures to be used."

The UN conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has closed with little accomplished in the way of new ways to enforce the fast-unravelling treaty. A May 28 report in the LA Times notes:

The United States tried to keep the focus on alleged nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea instead of its pledges to whittle down its own arsenal. Iran, which contends that its atomic program is strictly for generating electricity, refused to discuss proposals to restrict access to nuclear fuel and objected to being singled out as a "proliferation concern." And Egypt joined Iran in demanding that the conference address Israel's nuclear status and declare the Middle East "a nuclear-free zone." "The conference after a full month ended up where we started, which is a system full of loopholes, ailing and not a road map to fix it," Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters in Vienna as the conference fizzled to a close...

Well, after all the "Newsweek-lied-people-died" gloating, the Pentagon acknowledges Koran abuse at Gitmo (while denying the toilet incident).

Pentagon Admits Five Acts of 'Mishandling' the Koran
By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Friday 27 May 2005

The Pentagon admitted last night it had substantiated five occasions when US military personnel at Guantánamo Bay prison "mishandled" the Koran of Muslim detainees. But it said it found no credible evidence to confirm a complaint that the Islamic holy book had been flushed down a toilet.

A conference questioning Turkey's official position on the World War I-era Armenian genocide has been cancelled following pressure from the government. The conference, entitled "Ottoman Armenians at the Decline of the Empire: Academic Responsibility and Issues of Democracy," was to start on May 26.

James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the House Judiciary Committee chair, has introduced the Orwellianly named "Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act" (HR 1528) would compel people to spy on their family members and neighbors, and even go undercover and wear a wire if needed. Citizens who resisted would face imprisonment.

Under the law, if you "witness" or "learn about" certain drug offenses, you must report the offenses to law enforcement within 24 hours and provide "full assistance in the investigation, apprehension and prosecution" of the people involved. Failure to do so would be a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence, and a maximum sentence of 10 years.

An Islamist prisoner, accused of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombings, has died in a Moroccan prison on hunger strike, al-Jazeera reports. The unidentified man died in Autaita prison in the city of Sidi Qasim, where about 1,000 inmates, members of the so-called Salafia Jihadia organisation, had staged a hunger strike. The strikers deny involvement in the bombings and say they have been tortured. Abu Usama, a prisoner in Autaita jail, told Aljazeera the prisoners were demanding the Moroccan authorities open an investigation into rights violations they faced in Morocco's prisons and jails, including being made to sign confessions under threat of torture.

Stephen Ulph of the national-secuity think-tank The Jamestown Foundation writes that "militant Islamist forums" in Algeria are circulating a statement dated May 8 purporting to announce the formation of a new al-Qaeda cell, apparenrly seeking to revive Algeria's dormant civil war.