George Carlin is dead, but his words live on. Especially his big seven from his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" on the 1972 album Class Clown:

Courtesy of Justin R. Erenkrantz, here's a transcription of that complete routine:

Why Uzbekistan is something to think about on this day.

By this time on the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 horror, you will have seen plenty of images of pols trying to launch themselves from the sacralized Ground Zero — though Rudy Giuliani got scorched on his latest takeoff when some victims' families accused him of exploiting the tragedy now that he's a presidential candidate.

Giuliani, who would never have been a presidential candidate if not for 9/11, was the first pol to exploit Ground Zero, but he's not the last, of course, and he's probably not even the most worrisome. In 2002, Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov used the sacralized 9/11 site as a photo-op — with the blessing of Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg.

Why bring up Karimov's Ground Zero visit five years after the fact? Who cares if a foreign pol desecrated what has become sacred ground? The reason is that Uzbekistan is nothing but an Iran in the making, Karimov is its shah, and we're the dupes who have helped prop him up. All that in a world that's more dangerous than it was six years ago.

Iraq has become a training ground for terrorists since our 2003 invasion. Uzbekistan, which is about as geopolitically strategic (see map below), is liable to become such a training ground for terrorists even without a U.S. invasion.

Our fairly warm relationship with Karimov grew warmer after 9/11, when we enlisted in our "war on terror" this dictator who conducts a war of terror on his own people. Dangerous move by the Bush regime, because the radical Muslims who will probably take over undemocratic Uzbekistan when the aging despot dies or is deposed will also have long memories. They're sure to remember that, under the once-secret "rendition" scheme, we shipped Muslim prisoners to his jails for interrogation. They'll also remember how our government stood by and did nothing during Karimov's notorious Andijan massacre of dissidents in the spring of 2005 and then tried to suppress an independent investigation of the slaughter.

Expect to see those images of Karimov at Ground Zero and cuddling with Bush used eventually as devices to stir up hatred of the U.S.

The Central Asian "republic" is destined to be the next "-stan" to push its way into headlines, and the news will be bad. Am I crazy? Yes. Am I wrong about Uzbekistan? I don't think so. Here's how the mainstream International Crisis Group summed things up late last month:

If understanding our history with Karimov and Uzbekistan is important, then recalling how we "handled" the shah and Iran is instructive.

Yes, Karimov is following right in the footsteps of Shah Reza Pahlavi. What's worse is that our government is traipsing down the same garden path with Uzbek's dictator as we did with the shah. And our relationship with Karimov and his NSS is similar to our relationship with the shah and his dreaded secret service, SAVAK, which was shaped by the CIA. Alfred McCoy, in A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, wrote:

Karimov rules the same way the shah did. We haven't been as close to Karimov as we were to the shah, but our allowing Karimov to use 9/11 as a symbol back in 2002 was cynical: The Bush regime buttered him up as an ally, and Bloomberg was careful not to offend him because of New York's large number of Bukharan Jewish emigres, many of whom supported him.

Karimov himself is pretty cynical: In his own nation, he generally tolerates Jews and even protects them, because the Bukharan Jews have lived there for a thousand years and pose no threat to his power. But he harshly represses Christians — and even the Muslims who make up nearly 90 percent of the California-sized country of 27 million people.

As I pointed out a couple of years ago, New York's Jewish Week described the strange embrace of Karimov by the city's Bukharan Jews:

George W. Bush's relationship with Karimov isn't quite as old as Karimov's relationship with Uzbek Jews. Bush's dealings with Karimov date back to 1997, when Dubya was still the hangingest governor in U.S. history: Enron's Ken Lay, Bush's biggest campaign contributor, wanted to make a deal with Uzbekistan so Lay instructed Dubya to meet with one of Karimov's minions to grease the skids.

By 2002, the Bush regime wanted to curry favor with Karimov because Uzbekistan borders on Afghanistan. When Karimov visited the States, he got the royal treatment. At Ground Zero, the dictator looked like the religious type, right? I mean, he laid a wreath and even signed his name on a memorial wall.

Bloomberg gave Karimov freer rein in New York City than he gave the 500,000 Americans protesting at the Republican National Convention in 2004. And in December 2005, Bloomberg blasted a New York transit strike as "morally reprehensible." But it was OK for the mayor to roll out the red carpet three years earlier for a morally reprehensible dictator.

Anyway, by the time of the 2002 visit, Karimov was already known as a harsh despot, and Bloomberg tried to keep the news pretty quiet that he was schlepping a dictator around town. You couldn't find on the mayor's website the photos of him and Karimov in the mayor's office or of Karimov at Ground Zero. But the pix were trumpeted on the Uzbekistan government site.

Five years after his visit to Ground Zero, Karimov is surely nearing the end of his 20-year reign — one sign is that there's more and more repression in Uzbekistan. Forum 18, an Oslo-based religious-freedom group that snoops on repressive regimes around the world, noted just the other day that Karimov and his secret police, the National Security Service, have stepped up their spying on religious communities. Forum 18's Felix Corley wrote on September 5:

It's one thing for a predominantly Muslim country to spy on Christians or for a predominantly Christian nation to spy on Muslims — that happens in many places. But Karimov is playing with fire, just as the shah did in Iran, because he's hassling Muslims in a Muslim country. Forum 18's Corley noted:

Karimov's day of reckoning with his country's Muslim radicals is approaching. And it won't help Americans worried about the spread of terrorists that our government is supporting him till the bitter end.

On January 6, 2005, Texas senator John Cornyn kicked off the confirmation hearings for attorney general wannabe Alberto Gonzales by introducing him as "an inspiration to anyone." Well, Gonzales certainly inspired Chuck Schumer yesterday. The New York senator brought out the perspiration in Gonzales.

Call me Ishmael, but Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel did a whale of a job on tpmmuckracker.com, quickly posting commentary and clips of Schumer and Arlen Specter lobbing spears at the AG's blowhole.

At one point, Gonzales said he "clarified" a previous statement by calling Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen and retracting it. A few minutes later, Gonzales was forced to admit that one of his aides actually contacted Eggen and that Gonzales himself didn't know what was said.

Eggen was more charitable in his front-page story this morning, but his nut graf was this:

What a tough job it is to be one of the handlers of Gonzales or Bush. You got to watch those two like a hawk. And what the hell do you do when either of them is nakedly grilled? (See the full transcript of yesterday's hearing for an answer.)

In unrehearsed moments, their performances are staggering. Death-penalty foe Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) recalls an anecdote by Tucker Carlson that left even that Bush fan astonished at the president's callousness and stupidity while the two discussed one of the people Bush had killed, Karla Faye Tucker.

Has there ever been a lawyer who's worse at thinking on his feet? Not much of a shock that Gonzales looked stupid yesterday. Sometimes pols intentionally act that way, of course. It may be difficult to tell whether Gonzales is lying or just plain dumb as a post, but the probable answer: both. He was grossly unqualified in the first place to be attorney general, as the confirmation hearings a year and a half ago showed. See my "Torture in Real Time" coverage of Gonzales trying to answer questions about the then-fresh Abu Ghraib scandal. (The full transcript of the January 6, 2005, session is here.)

Ted Kennedy was apoplectic during the confirmation hearings as he questioned Gonzales on the "techniques" of "live burial."

Yesterday's hearing showed how that's actually carried out.

Nobody should be surprised at Gonzales's performance. Russ Feingold noted back in January 2005 that, during Gonzales's term as counsel to Governor George W. Bush — when Bush became the hangingest governor in U.S. history — Gonzo didn't prepare memos on each case until the day of the execution.

Gonzales insisted that the memos merely "summarized discussions," what he called a "rolling series of discussions" with Bush "about every execution."

That was a lie. Alan Berlow's masterful "The Hanging Governor," way, way back in May 2000 in Salon, noted:

A lot shorter, in other words, than yesterday's strangling.

It was a close call, but on a 2-1 decision June 11 by a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals preserved the Constitution — at least for now — by saying that even "criminal civilians" can't be held indefinitely in military detention. In other words, the basic habeas corpus right has survived — for the Bush regime to fight against another day.

Read the brilliant opinion in al-Marri v. Wright penned by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, and check out the dissent, which is tacked on to the same document.

The 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Virginia, isn't exactly the most liberal appellate court. Far from it, in fact. But Motz's opinion speaks loud and clear, at least (as I said yesterday) for now:

The judge wound up agreeing with lawyer Jonathan Hafetz of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, which tackles lots of fascinating constitutional issues. Check this Brennan Center page for background of the case. And just in case you've forgotten that habeas is so important that it's actually written into the Constitution, see Hafetz's Ten Things You Should Know About Habeas Corpus. Speaking of yesterday's decision, Hafetz noted:

Just for good measure, here's another morsel from Motz:

The case is a flash point for the conflict between Dick Cheney's — I mean, the president's — power and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Almost as interesting (and heartening) as Motz's opinion was the amicus brief filed last November in the case by a gaggle of former Justice Department officials (including Janet Reno). As the excellent Jurist site reported at the time, those people argued that

Yeah, and don't you forget it.

Now that Uzbekistan is finally boiling over, it's heartening to know that millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used by dictator Islam Karimov to kill his rebelling citizens.

You didn't know that? It's old news. In 2002, British ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray publicized Karimov's appalling torture—and the fact that the U.S. and Great Britain used Uzbekistan to torture terrorism suspects—and the British Foreign Office fired him and tried to silence him. But the press picked up on Murray's courageous rendition of Karimov's sordid abuses. Back in May 2003, Nick Paton Walsh of the Guardian (U.K.) pointed out the hell that Uzbeks endure:

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The U.S. condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in Central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The U.S. is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500 million in aid. The police and intelligence services—which the State Department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique"—received $79 million of this sum.

Mr. Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March [2002]. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies."

You didn't know about Karimov's visit? EurasiaNet's Kenan Aliyev explained at the time:

Uzbek President Islam Karimov is maintaining a low profile during his visit to the United States, apparently out of a desire to keep controversy over Uzbekistan’s human-rights record to a minimum.

Karimov was scheduled to meet with U..S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld early March 13, then travel to New York for several appointments, including a discussion with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

On March 12, Karimov had a 45-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush. After the meeting, Karimov left the White House without pausing to speak with gathered journalists. In general, Uzbek Embassy representatives have been reluctant to divulge information about the visit, and media access to members of the visiting Uzbek delegation has been extremely limited. U.S. officials have likewise provided only general information concerning the Karimov visit, declining to reveal specifics about discussions.

You can be sure that the next regime in charge of Uzbekistan will remember not only that Karimov's government has boiled prisoners to death but also how the Bush regime has propped him up. Bill Clinton's crew would occasionally condemn human-rights abuses in Uzbekistan, but our military help to Karimov began during Clinton's regime, as Bob Kaiser of the Washington Post reported back in August 2002 in a prescient piece titled "U.S. Plants Footprint in Shaky Central Asia":

During the 1990s the United States began to quietly build influence in the area. Washington established significant military-to-military relationships with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Soldiers from those countries have been trained by Americans. Uzbekistan alone will receive $43 million in U.S. military aid this year. The militaries of all three have an ongoing relationship with the National Guard of a U.S. state—Kazakhstan with Arizona, Kyrgyzstan with Montana, Uzbekistan with Louisiana. The countries also participated in NATO's Partnership for Peace program.

"We wanted to extend our influence in the region, and promote American values, too," said Jeffrey Starr, a Pentagon official who was responsible for these relationships during the second Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Under Bush's handlers, any half-hearted attempts to pressure Karimov were forgotten after 9/11, and we stepped up our training of Karimov's military.

The Uzbek people will remember that—in their nightmares. As the U.N. news service IRIN reports from a refugee camp (see photo) across the border in Kyrgyzstan:

The refugees told IRIN they wanted to stay in Kyrgyzstan in order to escape persecution in Uzbekistan.

"What we witnessed in Andijan was slaughter—a regime capable of that is capable of anything," said a woman who had left her two children behind in the city when she fled for her life early on Saturday morning.

The next government of Uzbekistan will be Islamic—you can bet on it. As Bagila Bukharbayeva of the Associated Press writes this morning from Korasuv:

The leader of a group of rebels claiming to control this Uzbek border town said Wednesday that he and his supporters intend to build an Islamic state and would fight back if government troops attempt to crush their revolt.

"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Koran," Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press while leaning down from the back of a horse.

That's just one town and one horseman. But this is no game. Robin Williams (see photo) won't be back here any time soon. This is just another chapter in the Great Game, and we're on the wrong side, in a more obvious way than we were in the recent (and successful) populist revolt against Kyrgyz dictator Askar Akayev. Akayev didn't get our strong support because he balked at cooperating with the Bush regime's War of Terror. Karimov, on the other hand, has been one of our stalwarts, a part of the "coalition of the willing."

That must be troubling to the thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in Uzbekistan, especially at Karshi-Khanabad, where the New York-flavored troops have given the "streets," where they pitch their tents and build permanent structures, such names as Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and the Long Island Expressway. (That's old news, too, reported by the Washington Post's Kaiser.)

Here in America, New Yorkers complain about the traffic jams on the L.I.E. as they go to the Hamptons for polo matches. But in Uzbekistan, the New York-based soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, who proudly travel on their own L.I.E., are faced with horsemen of a different color.

How much longer will we be keeping our permanent-looking base at Karshi-Khanabad? Will it survive if Uzbekistan, currently ruled by a hardline secular regime, is taken over by a hardline Islamic regime?

Our soldiers sit in the midst of 25 million angry Muslims long repressed by a dictator we're arming and have kept in power. A question for Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney: Will you dispatch troops from the base to help Karimov "maintain order"?

The dictator is keeping his usual tight grip on information, so we don't know what's happening with this inevitable, bloody revolt against his rule. As IRIN puts it:

A Western diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, told IRIN that a government-organized trip to Andijan—the scene of mass killings by Uzbek forces on Friday—had been "completely stage managed by Tashkent" in order to prevent foreigners and journalists from gaining information to support claims that more than 500 people were gunned down in and around the city's central square. "We were not allowed to talk to local people, see hospitals or morgues, or move freely around the city," the diplomat said.

Sooner or later, though, Karimov will fall, and we may still be clutching at his coattails as he plummets.

Our high-priced spread of "democracy" is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of 25 million angry Muslims in Uzbekistan as an ominous revolt spreads across Central Asia.

Not even a major clampdown on information by Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov can stop the news of his goonish behavior—CNN reports tonight about the blood in the streets, with 500 corpses laid out on the pavement in the city of Andijan, in the fertile Fergana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan.

By the way, in the coming months, as Central Asia's corrupt "republics" crumble, you'll be reading all about the strategically key Fergana Valley, by the way.

Neighboring Kyrgyzstan's dictator, Askar Akayev, has already been driven out. Karimov is thrashing in the final throes of his torturous and tortured reign and, wouldn't you know it, we've been his richest uncle lately.

What's worse for our future credibility with Uzbekistan's next generation of leaders is that Karimov's goons have been cracking heads in the act of defending the U.S. embassy in the capital, Tashkent, according to death-defying dispatches filed by the Institute of War & Peace Reporting's project director in Uzbekistan, Galima Bukharbaeva.

Every new report from Uzbekistan presages the likely overthrow of Karimov—he's unlikely to be hanging with Don Rumsfeld any more—not that Karimov won't be hanging.

For evidence backing that observation, go back a few days to the intrepid IWPR journalist Bukharbaeva's report of the cruel, vindictive, and sorry-ass behavior of the dictator's domos.

It was May 4, and a group of about 70 peasants—mostly women, and some with children—had trekked to Tashkent to demand that the government return a farm it wrongly seized—they were also incensed about having to live in poverty, and they called for government officials to resign. The peasants headed to the U.S. embassy and camped right outside, hoping to stir the U.S. State Department into action. Good luck. The U.S. ambassador, Jon Purnell, has said barely anything about Karimov's insane tortures of the citizenry—unlike his former British counterpart, Craig Murray. On the scene of the protest, Bukharbaeva wrote:

The group set up tents on the pavement outside the embassy compound and said they would remain there until their demands were met. They chose the venue because they said they would seek asylum in the U.S. if their own government refused to respond.

Placards and banners called on government officials to resign and called for an end to poverty.

Although the protest clearly reflected local concerns rather than opposition politics, and there were so many women and children present, the authorities resorted to tough measures.

No surprise, considering that Karimov's government has been known to boil people to death.

Anyway, 50 plainclothes cops and an array of fire trucks, ambulances, and police vans converged on the scene. Here's Bukharbaeva again:

At 11:20 in the evening, when some of the adults and children were asleep inside the tents, two buses drew up and about 50 people armed with truncheons jumped out. Some were in police uniform and others in camouflage, but most were in plain clothes.

The demonstrators were so intimidated that they put their hands in the air and called out that they would stop their protest action and go home immediately.

Their pleas were ignored and the security forces waded in, beating people apparently indiscriminately.

Reports of various broken bones couldn't be confirmed, but the protesters were dragged away, and so were some journalists. A Tashkent cop rescued the journalists. The farmers, who had traveled a long way from their homes in southwestern Uzbekistan, were sent back home. The IWPR report continued:

A spokesman for the Uzbek interior ministry, Vyacheslav Tutin, said the following day that all the participants in the protest had been put on buses and sent back home. The spokesman said 11 men, 13 women, and 19 children were detained in all.

Tutin said it was the protesters’ own fault if security forces behaved in a heavy-handed way, because earlier in the day, police and National Security Service officers had been stoned by the crowd.

Speaking before the evening police assault, protesters said they had thrown stones that morning, but only when members of the security forces attempted to grab a 9-month-old baby from its mother’s arms. They said police retreated after this initial intervention.

Caught in the middle was the U.S. embassy, which issued a statement saying the protesters were simply "exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly accorded them in United Nations conventions," as the IWPR reporter put it. women in the war zone.

That's funny. No such message was forthcoming last summer from U.S. officials when Americans were prevented from protesting at Republican Square Garden during the GOP convention.

Karimov always insists that he's fighting terrorists, but the whole damn country wants to give him the bum's rush. As a United Press International story after the Tashkent protest noted:

"Having trusted Karimov's promises, we were left with nothing," one protester said. "We can't study. We have no food to eat. We were left on the street with nothing."

After the group threatened to set up a tent city, police encircled them, and soon after, several protesters were beaten and bloodied by batons, the report said.

The Tashkent protesters were probably lucky that they were merely sent home—if, indeed, that's what happened to them. They had come to Tashkent hungry and stayed that way. As the IWPR's Bukharbaeva wrote:

It did appear that the protesters were an unusually vulnerable group. They began their action without providing themselves with food and water. For the first few hours, residents of a nearby apartment block supplied them with tea and water until police ordered them to stop, so by the evening they were in no fit state to go on.

A foreign observer present on the scene said it made no sense to use crude force against such an unthreatening group of people who could easily have been persuaded to end their protest.

"Brute force against a group of women and children and the deployment of resources en masse may, on the one hand, demonstrate the power of the state. On the other hand, it may be a sign of cowardice," said the Westerner, who asked not to be named.

Karimov's regime won't last much longer, unless the U.S. intervenes in his behalf—there's a huge U.S. base in the country. But even Rumsfeld and the other handlers of George W. Bush are unlikely to overtly offer the dictator support at this point. Uzbekistan is headed for a major revolution, if the Uzbeks who talked to Bukharbaeva are correct: Tolib Yakubov of Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan condemned the way the police had acted, and said it seemed inevitable both that the regime would grow ever more repressive and that people would continue protesting against it.

"There’s no other option—either for them or for us," he said.

Whatever plans George W. Bush's handlers have for the rest of the world, they'd better get it in gear.

We don't know how many revolutions per minute the POTUS was spinning Wednesday on his bike ride while that Cessna, unbeknownst to him, was heading for the White House. But on the other side of the planet, it's no joke: Things are spinning out of control in the dictatorships we've embraced.

Their revolutions, in other words, may trump Bush's, and his helmet (see photo above) won't protect him when he crashes.

Anti-American rioting has spread from Afghanistan into Pakistan, as the Washington Post reports:

The unrest was triggered by a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek that interrogators at Guantánamo had placed Korans in bathrooms and "flushed a holy book down the toilet." Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan protested to the U.S. government last weekend about the alleged abuse.

Diplomats and officials have been taken aback by the intense reaction, which was exacerbated by a police crackdown on anti-U.S. protesters in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday that left four dead and more than 70 wounded.

How in the world could they be taken aback?

Anyway, there's more. The long-oppressed people of Uzbekistan, one of the Bush regime's key allies, are starting to openly rebel against dictator Islam Karimov, whose 15 years of arresting people for practicing Islam are surely coming to an end.

Prisoners in Uzbekistan are beaten and boiled to death and their family members are raped in front of them. Meanwhile, Karimov's strictly controlled press celebrates his reign, and he proudly shows himself off with celebrities like Don Rumsfeld.

U.S. officials have had many chances to speak out against Karimov's outrageous human-rights violations—as the U.K.'s Craig Murray courageously did when he was ambassador to Tashkent—but we pointedly haven't. Our ambassador, Jon Purnell, has barely opened his mouth.

Forget the hype from the Bush regime. When it comes to democracy, this administration is usually on the wrong side.

That's certainly true in Asia. In a February 24, 2004, press conference in Tashkent starring Rumsfeld, Karimov, and Purnell, a Reuters reporter had this exchange with Rumsfeld:

Reuters: You spoke of this strategic framework, of the relationship between two countries. Uzbekistan said yesterday they’re going to free a 62-year-old woman from jail, who human rights activists say was jailed on trumped-up charges because she revealed that her son had been tortured to death in prison. Do you welcome this, sir, and to what extent will improvements in human rights in this country deal with continued U.S. military aid to Uzbekistan?

Rumsfeld: Well, obviously our relationship with this country and other countries is multi-faceted. I mentioned the military-to-military relationship because I’m involved with the Department of Defense, but it’s also a political and economic relationship. Needless to say the United States and the other NATO countries are always interested in seeing reform not just in the military, but also in the political and economic areas. I’m not intimately knowledgeable about the statement you just made, but my understanding is that from the Ambassador that—that is in fact the case and that the Embassy has expressed their awareness of that and I forget what the phrase was but—the Ambassador pointed out that they were pleased that the decision was made.

No wonder we're seen by common folk the world over as a defender of human rights and democracy. The Reuters reporter pressed the issue:

Reuters: Sir, did you discuss human rights with the President and the other officials?

Rumsfeld: In all of our meetings, the broad range of topics were discussed, the political and human-rights issues, as well as, economic issues and military-to-military issues. Yes—

A little more than a year later, Karimov had better get on his own bicycle and pedal his way out of the country as fast as he can. Peter Finn of the Washington Post explains why:

Resentment over a government campaign against alleged Islamic extremists exploded into violence in the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan Friday when protesters stormed a local prison in the eastern city of Andijan, freeing thousands of inmates and triggering protests that left at least nine people dead, according to government officials and telephone interviews with local residents.

We've got a big military base in Uzbekistan—built by Halliburton, of course. If we have to start packing it up, why not hire Halliburton to do it for us?

The fact is that the enmity we've sowed in the Muslim world is just about ready for harvest.

Meanwhile, Bush pedals away, and if anyone needed more proof that he's merely a prop for Dick Cheney et al., the Cessna scare the other day in D.C. was it.

A testy press briefing by White House flack Scott McClellan yesterday reads like a "Who's on First Alert?" routine. (Thanks to colleague Syd Schanberg for the tip.) Editor & Publisher scooped it up, publishing choice excerpts and saying:

On the day after more than 30,000 people—including the vice president, the first lady, and a former first lady—were evacuated from their offices or homes in Washington, D.C., but the president, who was biking in Maryland, was not notified until the threat passed, reporters grilled Press Secretary Scott McClellan at his daily briefing.

For those who might have missed it on TV—that is, nearly everyone— … McClellan continually refers to "protocols" and reporters essentially ask, "Wouldn't most men like to know when their home is evacuated and their wife is hustled to a secure bunker?" They also wonder about the small matter of the president being commander in chief and the capital, theoretically, coming under attack.

What's even more bizarre is that Cheney was evacuated and taken away from the place while Laura Bush and Nancy Reagan, who was visiting the White House at the time, weren't. Meanwhile, George W. Bush, who was riding his bike outside the city, wasn't even notified about the Cessna incident until after it was over. Sure, he was riding his little bike and he had his little helmet on, but c'mon.

Now we're told there's an investigation of this "47-minute delay" in notifying the president. Can't wait for the results of that probe.

Meanwhile, here's part of the exchange between reporters and McClellan, from the White House site:

Q: I'm just finishing up the timeline. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Reagan were put in a secure location in the White House—so the bunker, I assume?

McClellan: I will just leave it at that they were taken to a secure location.

Q: In the White House?

Q: On the grounds?

McClellan: They were here at the White House and they were taken to a secure location.

Q: You can't say on the grounds or off the grounds? All right. But you're saying that—but the Vice President was actually evacuated—

McClellan: That's right.

Q: —off the grounds?

McClellan: That's correct.

Q: That's correct. Why the distinction, given the history of this?

McClellan: Well, the Secret Service has security precaution protocols that are in place. And as I mentioned at the beginning, those precautions were followed. That's what they have in place. And it was consistent with the protocols that were in place.

In other words, if Bush is pedaling his bike, don't bother the little feller. Let him play. We'll put him before the cameras when we need him. But for God's sake, protect Cheney. He's the one who made all the decisions, such as they were, on 9/11. As long as there's oil underneath other countries, protect Cheney.

In the unlikely event that Bush isn't biking but is reading—say, The Pet Goat—don't disturb him then either. The grownups have everything under control. Except for the billions of Muslims angry at us.

Thursday's British election will cap a delightfully raucous campaign—delightful even if you forget about the underlying issues of the Bush-Blair war of terror.

No one puts this in clearer focus than Craig Murray, who was hounded out of his post as U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan after he publicly rebuked that dictatorship for torture, including boiling people to death. Now Murray is running for Parliament in Thursday's election against his former boss, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Murray's a key figure in exposing the evil practice of "rendition," in which the U.S. and Great Britain send detainees to Uzbekistan and other countries to be literally squeezed for information. The CIA, in fact, has done this.

Since the Bush regime's deadly combination of neocons and profiteers decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to launch a "war on terror," Uzbekistan's dictator, Islam Karimov, has become a big buddy of ours.

And for all the God talk by the Bush regime, it's supporting a dictator who tortures people for practicing their religion—in Karimov's case, the main religion he persecutes is Islam, so I guess it's OK. Here's how Guardian (U.K.) columnist George Monbiot wrote about it in '03:

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion.

Strictly by coincidence, Halliburton "won" a $22.1 million contract to build something called Camp Stronghold Freedom in Uzbekistan.

Karimov is a harsh, repressive schmuck, like Saddam Hussein, who, as you may recall, was once our pal. In the '80s, Don Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq to pal around with Saddam. Now he does the same thing with Karimov (see photo below).

Don Van Natta of the New York Times wrote a lengthy piece about the U.S.'s "rough ally" a couple of days ago, including this passage:

Uzbekistan's role as a surrogate jailer for the United States was confirmed by a half-dozen current and former intelligence officials working in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the prisoner transfer program, but an intelligence official estimated that the number of terrorism suspects sent by the United States to Tashkent was in the dozens.

Big surprise. Murray has been talking about this for a couple of years, making headlines everywhere in the world except the U.S.

Not until the jump did Van Natta's May 1 story mention Murray:

"If you talk to anyone there, Uzbeks know that torture is used—it's common even in run-of-the-mill criminal cases," said Allison Gill, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who is working inside Uzbekistan. "Anyone in the United States or Europe who does not know the extent of the torture problem in Uzbekistan is being willfully ignorant."

Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he learned during his posting to Tashkent that the C.I.A. used Uzbekistan as a place to hold foreign terrorism suspects. During 2003 and early 2004, Mr. Murray said in an interview, "C.I.A. flights flew to Tashkent often, usually twice a week."

In July 2004, Mr. Murray wrote a confidential memo to the British Foreign Office accusing the C.I.A. of violating the United Nations' Prohibition Against Torture. He urged his colleagues to stop using intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan from terrorism suspects because it had been elicited through torture and other coercive means. Mr. Murray said he knew about the practice through his own investigation and interviews with scores of people who claimed to have been brutally treated inside Uzbekistan's jails.

"We should cease all cooperation with the Uzbek security services—they are beyond the pale," Mr. Murray wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Times.

Well, they didn't. In fact, Murray got into trouble with his bosses. Van Natta glossed over it, writing:

Mr. Murray, who has previously spoken publicly about prisoner transfers to Uzbekistan, said his superiors in London were furious with his questions, and he was told that the intelligence gleaned in Uzbekistan could still be used by British officials, even if it was elicited by torture, as long as the mistreatment was not at the hands of British interrogators. "I was astonished," Mr. Murray said in an interview. "It was as if the goal posts had moved. Their perspective had changed since Sept. 11."

A Foreign Office spokesman declined to address Mr. Murray's allegations. Last year, Mr. Murray resigned from the Foreign Office, which had investigated accusations that he mismanaged the embassy in Tashkent. An inquiry into those allegations was closed without any disciplinary action being taken against him.

Actually, the Foreign Office went to war on Murray. They fired his staff and then Murray was accused of sexual hijinks—selling visas for sex. He was chewed out a few times by his bosses, collapsed of a nervous breakdown, suffered a near-fatal pulmonary embolism, and finally was cleared of all allegations.

After he rested up, he traveled from his home in Scotland to Blackburn, where he's challenging Jack Straw's seat in Parliament. Could he upset Straw? Murray thinks it's possible.

He's been charting his campaign progress in a column in the Guardian (U.K.). Murray refuses to let the Blair government "move on" from its disastrous decision to tag along with the Bush regime and invade Iraq. Here's a snatch from Murray's April 21 column:

I could actually win this election. The realization came as something of a shock. It was not really part of the original game plan. Two months ago I arrived here alone, standing forlornly with my rucksack on Blackburn railway station, in the midnight snow. I wanted to make a stand on principle against illegal war, and against Jack Straw's decision that we should use intelligence obtained under torture. I wanted to get some national publicity for these issues during the campaign, to counter Tony Blair's mantra: "Let's move on" from the war.

(Am I the only one to find this mantra insulting? I think I'll rob a bank to get some campaign funds. When the police come to take me away, I'll say, "Hey, let's move on. OK, so I robbed a bank. Whatever the rights and wrongs, that phase is over. What is important is that we all come together now and get behind the really great things I'm going to do with the money.")

Sorry, Craig, but Paul Wolfowitz got to the bank ahead of you.