When is an Iranian consulate not an Iranian consulate?

In his address to the nation last night, President Bush said:

We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

Hours after that, US forces raided the Iranian consulate in the northern city of Irbil in the Kurdish north, apparently taking 6 employees into custody. Thing is, the Kurdish north is supposed to be the most stable part of the country, and any flow of weapons has always been reported further south.

Gee, I wonder what that's all about. It reminds me of my cousin Al. Al had a weird stalker crush on Irma. Al hated Irma's neighbor Irnie, because Irnie was always hanging out in Irma's house. Al wanted to go over to Irma's house and break all Irnie's toys that he left there, but he knew that Irma's brothers, Sonnie and Shane, would beat him up.

Instead he would go over to Irnie's other neighbor Kurt's house and break all of Irnie's toys that were at Kurt's house because he knew that Kurt needed him to help stop Sonnie and Shane from taking his lunch money at school, and that secretly, Kurt hoped Al would one day grant him sovereignty...which we all thought was weird because we were like 6 years old and we all thought sovereignty was just a stuck up way of saying Earl Grey....I wonder what made me think of that story.

Someone, please mess with Texas!

First it was pork soup being dished up by a French far-right soup kitchen, and now fascism's new favorite food--pork--is at the center of one of the grossest instances of War on Terror fueled racism I've seen in quite a while.
Residents of Katy, Texas, a wealthy, white, Christian suburb of Houston and home to the ever-puckered Renee Zellweger, are protesting the building of a Mosque for fear that it would 'open the door' to terrorism.

How are they staging this protest? In part, by holding Friday night pig races, complete with pork sausages, of course. That's right, by holding a fun fair featuring twice the taboo: ham hocks and the holy night.

In addition to this, residents have formed a group to protect the local 'lifestyle' which is described by KatyTexas.com as "a colorful and affluent community located just 30 minutes due west of Houston, well known for its Southern hospitality and Texas charm". The LA Times and MSNBC are also reporting that one resident has set up a racist website featuring "an odometer-like counter that keeps track of attacks that "Islamic terrorists have carried out" since Sept. 11; a link to the FBI; and a link to a recording of the Muslim call to prayer. "Get used to it," reads the tagline. "You will be hearing it 5 times a day 365 days a year."

It seems that initially, there was no issue in the community, until some sort of misunderstanding between a local pig farmer and marble merchant Craig A. Barker and members of the local Muslim association, the Katy Islamic Association. Mr. Barker felt personally insulted and in turn decided, in true everything's-bigger-in-Texas style, to insult 1.4 billion people around the world by offensively flaunting Islamic practices.

But the members of the Muslim community in the area are simply turning the other cheek, a tactic Mr. Barker is apparently not familiar with. Another resident was quoted as saying that the races are simply "Texas-spirited".