*Al-Hayat reported that Adnan Pachachi and another member of the Iraq Governing Council are in Rome for a conference of socialists. Asked about recognizing Israel, Pachachi replied that Iraq is a member of the Arab League and would abide by League policy in this regard. Apparently Ahmad Chalabi, another GC member, had earlier given the US neocons to understand that the first thing he would do if they put him in power was to recognize Israel. Given the disorder into which the country has fallen, the conviction of 41% of Baghdadis that the war was fought for Israel's sake, the fatwas by radical Shiite clerics calling for assassinations of foreign Jews who come to Iraq to buy land, this prospect of a new Iraqi government suddenly embracing and supporting Ariel Sharon seems to have receded dramatically.

*For the possibility that senior Bush administration officials punished Ambassador Joseph Wilson for blowing the whistle on the Bush administration's story about Iraqi uranium by outing his wife as a CIA field officer involved in tracking weapons of mass destruction, see
http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=823
Journalist David Corn notes that the punishment for such outing of an intelligence field officer is 10 years in prison, but that no investigation has yet been launched. The Bushies play hardball, and are sending a signal to other potential whistleblowers that bad things will happen to them if they come clean about the Iraq war WMD deception.