You’ll get no credible answer asking the parties directly involved: each was quick to blame the other and to warn of “consequences” should anything further of this sort occur. Israeli officials even spoke of their troops being caught in an “ambush.”

No, the best bet for establishing further facts would seem to be finding some report from an on-the-scene but neutral observer. And we have one, from the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, namely Ulrike Putz and her article Observers puzzle over the background of Mideast firefight. I mean, “Ulrike Putz” sounds like a name you can trust, right? She’s a female, and of course she’s German, and I think those two things combined amount to a mark of journalistic objectivity as good as any other.

Plus, you don’t have to scroll down too far in her article to find bullet-points that lay everything out as clear as it can presently be ascertained:

• Where exactly was that infamous tree at the center of all this: on Israeli or on Lebanese territory? A UN spokesperson is willing to confirm that it was on the Israeli side.
  
• So who opened fire first? We get UN testimony again on this: the Lebanese did. Then the Israelis naturally reacted, but by throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, e.g. artillery, combat helicopters. But I understand Israelis tend to do that in the face of a provocation.
  
• OK then: Why did all this happen? Well, there are some clues. You’ll note that among the casualties was a Lebanese journalist – well, what was he doing there just at the right place and time to watch something interesting happen? Also, according to Israeli sources the Lebanese brigade commander responsible for that sector is a Shi’ite with rather extreme anti-Israeli attitudes. So the suggestion is that he had just been waiting for an excuse to open fire on the IDF, operating entirely under his own authority. (Yes, I realize that with this analysis Frau Putz seems to go over to the Israeli side. But assessing motivations is the hardest task of all, and that’s the only source where she can get her information.)
  

Similarly, Frau Putz reports that the Israelis also seriously considered reacting to the incident by unleashing a general bombing campaign against Lebanese Army positions, but then decided not to. But don’t sit back and relax yet: this piece in today’s L’Express (with a couple interesting pictures of deployed IDF equipment) reports that both sides (meaning Israeli and Lebanese) are moving more troops up to the border.

                          

Anyway, the commission will be headed by Chile’s ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Muñoz, assisted by former Indonesian public prosecutor Marzuki Darusman and the former Irish policeman Peter Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald actually has some experience in this sort of thing, as he was heavily involved in the UN’s investigation into the February 2005 bombing-assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Strangely, though, back then Fitzgerald and his UN staff were on the scene in Lebanon to begin their inquiries only eleven days after the crime was committed, and he issued his report the following month. I wonder what his private thoughts must be about the considerable delay involved here.

There’s another, more subtle problem present as well. Presumably, as was certainly the case in Lebanon, an important reason for this UN measure is the generally-accepted skepticism that the Pakistani authorities themselves could ever conduct a thorough and impartial investigation. The “whodunit?” here is simply too politicized; if you ask the government in power at the time (headed by former general Pervez Musharraf), you get the answer that the Pakistani Taliban were the culprits, but the current government (headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower) instead points the finger at Musharraf. Yet the Nieuwsblad article notes that commission-member Darusman has already indicated that it will rely on the current Pakistani government to bring forward suspects.

In all, then, this whole UN effort looks like a farce – one-and-a-half years is surely long enough for any murder-trail to go stone-cold. But the article also reminds us that, for whatever reason, the Pakistani authorities at the time made sure to hamper any proper collection of evidence, no matter how prompt, by thoroughly hosing down the site of the assassination just as soon as the bodies and the wreckage of the vehicle in which Ms. Bhutto had been riding could be removed.

                          

Now according to a further NRC article, it looks like NATO has actually taken notice of Clinton’s remarks and realized that it needs to come up with something to fix this situation. But that NRC report still does not paint what you could call a very reassuring picture. In fact, you could break down its news a follows:

• The Good: It’s no less than the NATO Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who is reported by the NRC to be determined not only to give NATO’s anti-piracy involvement off the Somali coast a “more long-term character,” but also to make it “more robust,” meaning at the very least the scrapping of this “throw them back” practice. Through his NATO spokesman, De Hoop Scheffer admitted that, up to now, it had been assumed that participating NATO member-states could get by simply with their own national law and the international law of the high seas in their dealings with such pirates. But now that is clearly by the wayside, and efforts are starting to draw up common NATO rules of engagement.
  
• The Bad: But there is another problem coming up which might even slightly delay that writing of the new rules of engagement: most of the NATO ships now on anti-piracy watch off of Somalia are shortly due to leave for other missions, mostly official visits to various ports in Asia! So NATO representatives are now meeting to address that problem first and find some replacement ships (or cancel those port-calls) to ensure a continue naval presence there even as pirate attacks show no sign of abating even after the recent successful, and deadly, US hostage-saving action.
  
• The Indifferent: Even as those NATO officials meet in Brussels, another conference is now going on there, under the sponsorship of the United Nations. Yes, its purpose is to gather together monetary contributions, mainly towards the cause of getting Somalia back on its feet towards becoming a functioning government again which can finally take action against its own pirate-citizens. The sum of $31 million is supposed to go towards building up the Somali police, and a further $134 as a contribution to the work of the peace-keeping mission, sponsored by the African Union, that is currently in that country.

Long-time €S readers will recall that we’ve covered this whole pirates issue here a number of times before. Viewed from that background, to me the truly mysterious aspect of how NATO currently seems to be fumbling the ball in its approach to the Somali pirates is how inconsistent policy is even among the different NATO member states. Yes, we have fresh examples of the Dutch and the Canadians just throwing back the pirates they caught, but we have also noted here before how the Germans at least are willing to deliver the pirates they catch to the authorities at “a Kenyan port,” which probably should be interpreted as Mombasa. And the New York Times has a useful article up about how – somewhat surprisingly – those Kenyan authorities in Mombasa might very well be both willing and able to prosecute – well, as “able” as the government in a relatively poor African country can be. And there is also European Union money apparently already allocated for the Kenyans to bring their maritime judicial facilities a bit closer to the modern age. In any event, Mombasa is clearly a better option than “throwing them back”; why can’t the Dutch and Canadians avail themselves of it?

                          

The second-order discussion here, of course, is over what can be done to eradicate these dangerous maritime nuisances, who since the latter part of last year have become particularly audacious. If you have any ideas and are looking to get into a discussion, then you can of course e-mail me at this weblog, and/or you can resort to fora from the New York Times or the BBC. In the meantime, though, the Danish legislature (the Folketing) has an official solution that it would like brought up before the United Nations, as reported in Berlingske Tidende (Danish proposal should go to UN).

It should be no surprise that the Danes already have a solution to propose, for at least two reasons: 1) The Danes come out of an activist, Protestant, we-can-change-the-world-if-we-try culture that finds it impossible to encounter a problem like this and just shrug its shoulders and move on, and 2) They are heavily involved in international shipping. Indeed, that container ship at the center of the current stand-off, the Maersk Alabama, is owned by a Danish conglomerate, the A.P. Møller-Mærsk Group. The Folketing’s plan was drawn up by the Danish Institute for Military Studies, and it’s a fairly simple one, that starts with the establishment of a regional coast guard for the Somali coast, with start-up costs paid for by the UN, that can serve to warn passing shipping about the specific presence of pirates. But the second essential element is the establishment of some sort of court, with a firm basis in international law to be able to try pirates for their crimes. For one glaring problem is that, too often, Western naval personnel who have actually captured pirates have basically had to throw them right back, like fish that local gaming regulations won’t allow you to keep. We’ve covered this particular problem before here, and this does raise the question about – even if some sort of international court is established to try the pirates – who will be responsible for ensuring that whatever punishment that court prescribes is actually carried out? That point still seems to be a hole in the Danish proposal.

Anyway, though, a parliamentary majority is in place in the Folketing to send it on its way to the UN, although some doubts were expressed by the defense spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, who worried that sending such a proposal to the UN was the quickest way to make sure it got stuck in bureaucracy and went nowhere.

                          

The current “Somali government” is called the Transitional Federal Government (“TFG” for short). It was established in 2004, with backing from the UN, the US, and Ethiopia, but basically had to stay in Kenya for a while until the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian forces drove back various Islamist insurgent groups and so enabled the TFG to set up shop in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. You can even see a picture of the current TFG prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, accompanying that Reformatorisch Dagblad article – so are you satisfied, doubting Thomases? He’s of course the guy on the right.

But Hussein and his government aren’t doing too well these days. Yes, we already knew that they were essentially powerless to hinder in any way the many pirates operating from their shores, but it’s even worse than that. Not that anyone from that government itself would bother to let us know, mind you: the alarming tidings come instead from Dumisani Kumalo, the South African head of the MGS, or “Monitoring Group on Somalia” which reports to the UN Security Council. Probably the most alarming bit of Kumalo’s report is that the TFG has lost more than 80% of its soldiers and policemen and of course their weapons as well, most of which it would seem have been sold on to various armed bands. Anyone thinking about simply contributing more funds to buy new weapons for the TFG should also be aware, Dumisani’s report adds, that most of that government’s defense budget (which of course takes up the lion’s share of its over-all spending) seems to be regularly lost to corruption.

More bad news: Ethiopia has had troop contingents remaining within Somalia ever since it invaded in 2006, but has announced that it will withdraw them with the new year. That leaves only 3,000 outside peace-keeping troops there, under the flag of the African Union (AU) but originating mainly from Uganda and Burundi. Unfortunately, according to current AU head Jean (“Ping me!”) Ping, those countries are also currently reconsidering their participation. Both are themselves uncomfortably close to the current armed hostilities raging in Eastern Congo.

                          

“Everybody loves the skull-and-crossbones,” he begins – hey, think of Errol Flynn, think of Johnny Depp! But we need to realize, he continues, that these pirates operating off of the Somali coast are not “desperate fisherman” (verzweifelte Fischer) but rather “a professionally-run business, run by gangsters and financed by serious businessmen.”

(Actually, that BBC article on these pirates that I cited in the previous blogpost does list “ex-fishermen” as an important component of these pirate gangs. There’s no mention there about how “desperate” they might be, but they are termed “the brains of the operation because they know the sea.” Oh, and from everything I’ve read the Somali pirates also do not display the “skull-and-crossbones” flag, or any flag for that matter. That’s either because they rely on sneaking up on ships and taking them by surprise to capture them, or because they have yet to hire a proper media advisor – or perhaps both.)

(UPDATE: And then again, if they are so objectionable, why is it that venture capitalists [are investing] in Somali pirates? H/t LOLFed.com.)

But Die Tageszeitung is a distinctly left-wing newspaper, in a left-wing country (by American standards), and even operating out of headquarters located in a distinctly left-wing quarter (Kreuzberg) of that country’s capital (I mean Berlin, of course), so Semler’s rhetorical fire does not stay on the pirates for long. The “Great Powers” get a swipe for their supposed responsibility for letting Somalia deteriorate into the sort of mess that allows such pirates to operate with impunity, for sure, but the ship-owners themselves hardly come away from his scrutiny unscathed. “They often sail under flags-of-convenience [Billigflaggen], pay starvation-wages when they pay at all, have contempt for environtmental rules and/or transport war-materiel into crisis-areas.” Wait: aren’t they among the victims here? Or, if they are really so evil as Semler seems to believe, can we at least start to sympathize with the Somali pirates’ own claims that they are merely a “coast guard” operating to repel these rapacious capitalists from their country’s waters?

Pirate Jurisprudence

Finally, Semler devotes some considerable attention to the issue of the basis upon which these pirates can be prosecuted by the German warships that have been sent – authorized by a UN Security Council resolution – to deal with them. And there he also sees a problem, since formally-speaking these pirates are not enemy soldiers but rather simply criminals – and it is the German police and justice systems that are authorized to deal with criminals, not the German armed forces. “Under no circumstances may police powers be granted to the [German] Federal Navy,” he writes. If you think about it a bit, you can easily understand his concern: that vital dividing line between the armed forces and police has not only been of considerable concern in Germany’s own notorious past, but is also a contemporary issue for many critics of the Bush administration, alarmed at the recent establishment of a “Northern Command” administrative structure enabling operations for the US armed forces within the US itself.

As Semler himself reports, the German Defense Ministry has taken steps to address this concern, namely including on those ships it is sending towards Somalia actual police officers to take custody of any pirate-prisoners, who then would be tried by the Hamburg criminal court (and presumably jailed in Germany if convicted). But this strikes him as an absurd set-up. Why not just start a convoy-system for merchant ships instead? he suggests.

Well, that did (ultimately) succeed against the German U-boat threat in both World Wars I and II. Tell you what, though, Herr Semler: what if we also change the Kreuzberg traffic rules so that you are only allowed to drive to and from work every day in convoy?

                          

One aspect of the ongoing crisis around the alleged attempts by the Iranian government to develop nuclear weapons that usually goes unexamined is the attitude of Arab states, especially those in Iran’s immediate neighborhood. (Well, it’s true that the vagaries of the Iraq-Iran relationship have certainly received their fair share of attention – but let’s treat that as a special case.) Sami Al Faraj, President of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies (all I could find on the Net was this), gives an enlightening interview to Der Tagesspiegel about the Gulf state perspective on Iran (specifically, that of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia) in the article “Against Iran Much Harder Economic Sanctions Are Necessary”.

To be sure, the Gulf states also recoil in horror at the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, al Faraj makes it clear. There is a fundamental Sunni-vs.-Shia divide operating there that does not want to see Iran able to expand its sphere of inluence anymore. It just seems like no one is really doing anything about stopping them. Not the Europeans: they don’t understand how Iran is simply talking to draw things out and gain more time; and not the UN, that up to now has imposed meaningless sanctions (in his view) and otherwise just talks on the issue to hear itself talk. Anyway, whenever any tougher sanctions seem to be in the offing, it is Russia and China that block them. It’s time for the Gulf states to act together in a more unified way and approach new Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to make it clear that future sales of nuclear technology to the Arab Middle East (including to Egypt or Jordan, since its the Arab oil producers who will ultimately be paying the bills for that as well) will depend on Russian cooperation versus Iran. Dealings with the Chinese might be more difficult, considering their culture’s preoccuptation with not “losing face,” but the Arabs operate themselves within a “bazaar culture” and should be able to bring them around.

Gotta Cover Our Arab Tracks . . .

Those who do seem willing to do something about Iran – at least occasionally – are of course the US and Israel, from whom periodic warnings arise about a possible military strike against Iran. Al Faraj advances the quite striking view that the Gulf states would be willing to accept such a military strike, if there turns out to be no other way to dissuade the Iranians from their (alleged) course towards nuclear weapons. Naturally, that would unlease a grave crisis, and the GCC nations would unfortunately have front-row seats from their location right across the Persian Gulf (which they refer to as the “Arabian Gulf,” BTW). But if that has to happen, fine: in his view things are already too close to getting out of hand witht he Iranians. Now get this: If there has to be such a military strike, Al Faraj argues that the Gulf states would prefer that it be carried out by Israel. Why? Because then Teheran will assume that the GCC was in no way involved, so that maybe Iran would think twice before doing any retaliation against them, and maybe also Iran-GCC relations would have that much better a chance of being resuscitates when the dust finally cleared.

That’s certainly an interesting perspective. Frankly, Al Faraj’s anti-Teheran rhetoric in this interview is what is striking. (One can assume he is a Kuwaiti.) Not only is his view of the sanctions that should be imposed on Iran somewhat extreme – “There should be absolutely no more trade with Iran. No technology transfer, no financial transactions, no trade, nichts” – but he also expresses alarm over the trade and financial links already existing across the Persian/Arabian Gulf: “We Gulf states don’t need Iran for our economy. We only manage their money, we don’t need it. We have even created thousands of Jobs for the Iranians!” In normal times, it’s that sort of economic intercourse between countries that generally acts to make all parties well off – it’s called the “gains of trade.” Sami Al Faraj seems unable to imagine a world, in the past or in the future, where the countries around the Persian/Arabian Gulf can peacefully work together towards the prosperity of all.

                          

Is there any doubt what that is? This is France we’re talking about here, after all, not to mention one of that country’s leading intellectual flagships. Anyway, no less than Editor-in-Chief Ignacio Ramonet takes up his keyboard to record the paper’s displeasure at the prospect of Bush II.

For many readers his piece will be like cod liver oil: unpleasant, but good for you, because insights about what the “other side” is thinking are always valuable. On the other hand, even though I note that M. Ramonet’s direct phone number in Paris is available from a web-backpage connected to the Le Monde Diplomatique site, I think that rather than give you the link I’ll just let those of you contemplating using it go find it yourselves.

Ramonet’s main message: A record such as that accumulated by George W. Bush during his first term in office should ordinarily get one banned from the civilized world. Instead, of course, the man gets to continue “to occupy the central place in the world’s international political apparatus.” (The newspaper’s editor-in-chief is kind enough to grant that – this time – Bush won that right fair and square.)

What “record” does Ramonet specifically mean? There is a long list of accusations:

• Of deceiving his electorate and the Congress to gain authorization for his “preventative war” against Iraq (never authorized properly by the United Nations);
  
• Of, during that war, encouraging a disproportionate use of force that has led to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians;
  
• Of ordering the execution of suspected terrorists, in violation of the 1976 “executive order” issued by then-President Gerald Ford that forbids assassinations. (But you’d think that, as the current President, Bush could easily revoke that order. Also, the article’s footnote on this point refers to a book by Seymour Hersh entitled something like Permission to Kill: The New Secret Services or something like that – title translated from the French, of course. I can’t find any such work, including on the page that the LMD footnote links to.)
  
• Of violating the provisions of the Geneva Convention relating to treatment of prisoners of war;
  
• Separately, of permitting the use of torture in the Abu Ghraib prison and other secret detention centers;
  
• And of having revived the spirit of McCarthyism, “which consists in considering as guilty each citizen merely capable of being suspected of ties with an enemy organization.”
  

And that’s not all: The Frenchman takes a particularly dim view of the two second-term appointments the Bush administration had announced by the time this article went to press. (That is, Ramonet was a little too early to delight in the Bernard Kerik nomination misadventure.) Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General: Well, Gonzalez was the main author behind the internal memos authorizing the use of torture, under the doctrine of “in the conduct of war, the president’s authority is total.” And as for Condolezza Rice for the State Department: This just confirms the President’s inclinations towards unilateralism when it comes to conducting foreign policy, a trend that is now assuming a menacing shape anew around policy towards Iran.

Of course, in the continued inability to pacify Iraq the United States is now running up against the limits of more-or-less unilateral action – well, I’d call it action mostly in concert with British military allies, but that’s just about it. So Ramonet ends his piece by wondering if M. Bush will end up by finally realizing that the bad effects of globalization (alleged to be injustice, greater poverty, etc.) require multilateral solutions. Will he realize that one actor in the world, no matter how powerful, cannot impose the law on its own? Wait, though: one of the criticisms frequently levelled by the French cultural phalanx at Hollywood-style American movies is that they always seem to have a happy, hopeful ending. Can we now direct the same criticism at French newspaper editorials?

                          

German Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder is apparently serious in wanting to follow up his contention that Germany’s standing in the world (third-largest economy; biggest nation of the European Union; etc.) justifies that status, and so has been trying to gather support for that permanent seat for months. But the American government stands in the way. The Volkskrant article quotes from an unnamed American diplomat that this just isn’t the right time to put through this change. Why? “Since Germany became a [non-permanent] member of the Security Council [for the last year-and-a-half] we’ve had more problems than ever,” that diplomat explains. According to this account, Germany was the country responsible for derailing the American attempt to get immunity for its soldiers from the International Criminal Court. And of course we all remember Germany teaming with France at the Security Council to counter American attempts to get the sort of resolutions passed that they wanted in the run-up to the War in Iraq. What’s more, reports the Volkskrant, the American powers-that-be don’t really like Germany’s current UN ambassador, Gunter Pleuger; he’s regarded as a sort of hair-splitter.

Be that as it may, it’s pretty clear that the particular personality of one ambassador or another should not be a factor in weighty questions of this sort. In any event, when contacted about this a German government spokesman denied any such American blocking of Germany’s UN desires.

                          

The similar reports you often find in the various Dutch newspapers makes it clear how often they get their reports from the same sources, so we might as well take up the account given in the Christian Reformatorisch Dagblad. Like the other reports, the RD won’t give the casualty’s name – but why do we need that, anyway? – but says he was a 36-year-old “sergeant-1″ (i.e. a senior non-commissioned officer), a member of the luchtmobiele brigade or “airmobile brigade” that is now performing the occupations duties in the sector the Dutch have been assigned that includes the city of As-Samawah. It was there, on a bridge across the Euphrates river, that grenades thrown from a passing scooter exploded and inflicted on both the sergeant-1 and his 20-year-old colleague wounds that made it imperative to evacuate them immediately to the field hospital at the Dutch Camp Smitty. It was there that the sergeant-1 died, while the younger soldier is now in stable condition. The RD notes that this was the first Dutch combat fatality since one Raviv van Renssen with DUTCHBAT perished in the Srebrenica area back in the summer of 1995.

Both Dutch premier Balkenende and defense minister Kamp responded to the incident by cutting short their May vacations to hurriedly return to The Hague. Naturally, they both issued statements regretting the incident; so did the AFMP, the Dutch soldiers’ union, while warning that more casualties of this type must be expected.

NRC ANALYSIS

As the sole remaining evening newspaper (yet still the Netherlands’ leading general-interest daily in the eyes of many), the NRC Handelsblad operates to a different rhythm from its competitors, and this has held true here. The incident had not even happen as yesterday’s NRC issue came out, and so it had to be left to the other Dutch papers to report it this morning. On the other hand, the NRC has now had the time to examine the political impact of this death, which it does in this evening’s edition in a pair of insightful articles. One is a news article reporting on the reaction within the Tweede Kamer, the lower (and dominant) house of the Dutch parliament: Doubts in the Kamer Grow About Mission in Iraq. Of course, all the political parties found the Dutch soldier’s death “shocking”; the difference in their reactions arose in the meaning they attached to it. Most parties in fact viewed the death as a reason to start to have serious second-thoughts about that upcoming decision about whether to extend the deployment of Dutch troops. Only the VVD and the LPF stood firm (“LPF” standing for “List Pim Fortuyn,” the party supposedly carrying on the legacy of that assassinated Dutch politician).

As the accompanying analysis article by Raymond van den Boogaard makes clear, there are at least two interesting things about this: 1) The doubters included representatives from both D66 and CDA – which are members of the current government coalition! (In fact, the CDA is the party of premier Balkenende.) 2) But not to worry (?), because it is not the Tweede Kamer which has to make the decision about whether the Dutch stay or whether they go: that is a decision for the government, i.e. premier Balkenende’s cabinet, and the Tweede Kamer will only get to uitspreken over it after it is made – basically “pronounce” on it. Of course, the way that decision goes can go far towards influencing who ends up in the Tweede Kamer after the next elections, depending on how it ends up matching the mood of the Dutch electorate, but for the short term this is a decision for the executive branch.

CAUGHT BETWEEN US AND UN

Van den Boogaard’s analysis goes on to make a number of other interesting points. The pressure that is making the idea of a Dutch withdrawal difficult to bear, almost no matter what happens to the Dutch troops, is of course coming mainly from Washington, where the Bush administration is keen to keep the number of countries bailing out of troop commitments to Iraq to a minimum after the highly-publicized withdrawal of Spanish (and some Central American) troops that is now ongoing. And indeed, the desire to keep solidarity with the Americans is identified by the NRC as one major axis of long-standing Dutch foreign policy. But another important element has always been support for strengthening the role of the United Nations, and that throws a twist into the situation. After all, the Spanish, for example, made the continuing presence of their troops in Iraq (ostensibly) conditional on the United Nations taking over authority there, and justified their decision to withdraw by doubts that that would ever be allowed to happen. In juggling their dedication to the US versus that to the UN the Dutch could theoretically go all this way down the spectrum and behave similarly, but at this point that still seems a doubtful course of action. A further complicating factor, of course, is the growing sense that, with things in Iraq having deteriorated so seriously lately, the UN may not even want to become so deeply involved even if permitted to do so by the Americans – a reluctance which seems to be slowly taken up now by the Dutch parliament in the wake of this first fatality.

Despite the confusion of coalition parties seeming to break ranks in the wake of the soldier’s death, things seem to be fundamentally in order. The main opposition party, the PvdA or “Party of Labor” continues to accuse the government of schoothondjesgedraag – i.e. acting as the American’s “lapdog.” The government generally prefers instead to speak of bruggenbouwen, or “bridge-building,” i.e. continuing in support of American policy in Iraq to help heal the political divides that opened up across the Atlantic in the run-up to the War in Iraq itself. Ultimately, “according to the good Hague prescription, the decision will be delayed as long as possible,” van den Boogard concludes, to probably around mid-June. No derisive snorts, please; recent press accounts make clear that this tactic of “delay-and-maybe-some-solution-will-turn-up” is equally at home in Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.

P.S.: Maybe to put all of this in a little perspective, we have the headline from the article in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten about this: Dutch Soldier Among 17 Killed in Iraq. In other words, at least 16 others were also killed elsewhere on Monday, including three or four in a marketplace explosion up in the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and at least 13 of Muqtadar as-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” in Najaf and Kufa. But that’s enough for now; we’ll go more deeply into the Danish press tomorrow.