Abu Nagi

Dream on...

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:55:08 GMT

It's been a long time I guess.

In the last year and a couple months I have:

1) Gotten married
2) Migrated to France (I was already here since May 2007; with the exception of a couple returns
to Saudi Arabia).
3) Struggled to find work.
4) Became a street musician (Which in fact worked out fairly well.)
5) Became a father (again.)
6) Found work (finally.)

All in all, not the quiestest 15 months I have known.

What I would really like now is about a year without responsibilities during which I could de-stress.

Haha, dream on....

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:25:10 GMT

Sara Marie Boudica Mac Millan
Born 5 June, 2009, 3.2 kilos

Beautiful as only a child can be to his or her parents.

En fin, en France

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:11:33 GMT

What mad marriage time and the stuff that fills it!

After a very long wait, I am en route to legal status in France.

This is the culmination of an effort which required more than a year and not inconsiderable expense (read: the tiny bit of money that I had remaining.)

There were a good many surprises. Nearly every time I believed I had the required papers in order (for various reasons I had to actually replace _all_ of my papers relating to identity etc) I learned there was another additional requirement. This meant repeated trips to the Mairie or other agencies to put everything in order.

Finally having gained the right to claim legal status here, I was informed by the Prefecture (a combination of sort of Police, Sheriff and city hall for those unfamiliar with the in-and-outs of the French administrative system) that it was better to make the request from outside the country.

Again, I had to provide additional papers, well above and beyond what I was told was needed. These required genuine French people to go and sign various other papers in various offices and then send them to me via DHL. In the end it still took much longer than anticipated.

The final surprise was that I am _still_ not permitted to work until sometime after January. Superb.

I am taking advantage of the time to work on a novel - this is the first time I get to to the 40,000+ word mark where I have not been utterly bored with what I write, nor finding it totally irrelevant.

That's all the news.

About that mole the back of your neck...

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:46:17 GMT

It's been going on for years.

I see a barber, they of course get rather intimate with my neck. Sometimes they say:

I don't really like the looks of that mole.

These are not hairstylists, these are good, old-fashioned, blood-letting, circumcising
barbers from Turkey and Pakistan. They know a thing or two about things on your
skin.

I go to the doctor or dermatologist, who depending on how seriously they take the
fact that everyone in one side of my family develops skin cancer, usually says:

Oh. Well. That. Well. We could... well, BIOPSY.

This sends me into a panic every time, I ask them to just remove it. Every time they say
"No, no, no need to remove it unless it's cancerous." and I argue with them, and lose
the argument.

So, today being my last night in Saudi Arabia for at least six months (I live near Paris
now) I passed by the last barber who told me, "I don't like that mole."

With chicken sandwiches in hand, I bravely stepped over that threshhold and said

        Sheel-ha (Which is my baby talk way of saying, "take the bitch.")

It wasn't especially painful. Ok, that's a load of crap. I won't tell you how they did it
except it took two people. As the younger barber who wanted to remove it was just
getting started, the older barber said (in turkish-accented Arabic):

    Oh, this one is really dug in there well, you will have to burn it out from
    the center.

A short while later, though it seemed like about four lifetimes of searing agony, he
showed me the mole which was a nasty, neoplastic looking thing that didn't belong
on my neck at all.

This evening, I realized the mole lasted on my neck, about as long as my marriage
lasted. Somehow, I think that's significant.

The problem of human memory

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:42:26 GMT

The way human memory works has some problems (I am not suggesting that someone needs to fix these items, but I was curious as if this is just me, or a universal issue.)

Let us say you are writing fiction. You refer to the lead character as ???????, thinking "That's not a bad name for a guy who does blah blah blah blah." Forty pages later you realize the name means "Stay where you are!" in one of the languages you know. Suddenly, the name seems less fitting for the protagonist of your story. You try out the name "?????." At first, it seems to work.. but then on hunch, you get out your much dog-eared copy of "Blankety Blank over Blank" from the "Blankland Series" by Blah B. Blah.... Ok, it's not exactly the same name but damn. It has the same letters. This can go on endlessly - you can even use, or write a random name generator, but the fact is... whatever it spits out, your memory can find something to which it seems to refer.

Same problem with music. Imagine for a moment you are into bizarre music from Central Asia (humor me, please): You are writing a folk tune (Don't ask yourself why you write Central Asian folk tunes, that's a dangerous place to go). You are writing it because the main theme came out in one of your improvisations on the kebak kemanja (A kind of folk violin used in Azerbaijan, Iran, and parts of Turkey.)

It's a beautiful piece of music - even though everyone is used to hearing you play this stuff incessantly, it still caught their attention. Your four year old son even stopped running around to listen to you.

You think, "Wow."

All full of pleasure at having been the vehicle for the delivery of a new piece Uzbek Maqqam, you suddenly think to yourself.... "Hmm... what was that piece from Estonia or Latvia again?" You get out your CD of archaic music from Estonia. No, it's not there. Wait.. what about the ancient music of Norway CD? Ah... there's half of the same melody, played slowly on a reed flute. The key is more or less the same, and really what you wrote sounds like it could be a variation on the same piece.

Your confidence shaken, you actually ask someone: "Is this the same piece of music?" and make them sit through the Norse music, and then play your "own" composition. They claim they don't even hear the similarity. You play your composition again, and now you can hardly tell it from the Norse piece.

I am fairly sure we shouldn't ever expect to do anything original, considering the scope of human history. But sometimes it seems a less encyclopedic memory is more useful.

Everything is yet the same

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 12:58:02 GMT

I dissapeared for a bit, because to be honest.. the world two years ago was making me sick and I didn't want to talk about it.

Now, nearly two years after, it is still making me sick and I don't want to talk about it.

In truth I wound up back here through cruising the web site of a former friend from the US. Since most nearly everyone who knew my prior to 1991 is dead, I am in the habit of trying to seek out all the persons I knew roughly between 1989 (after returning to Chicago) and 1997 (leaving Chicago.) I have some admittedly strange notions about not seeing or talking to anyone who has known me more than the last couple of years.

Back to the former friend - someone I treated with respect (not mere human to human respect, I mean, I gave them equal time with anyone else in my life) through most of the time I lived in Chicago. When my business was active, there were several times when I didn't even pay myself in which I helped this person economically (the individual is nearly always jobless and often without fixed abode). For any such help I gave them, I consider myself already rewarded as it were. But I have an occassional habit of looking at their web site and getting outrageously angry at them for ignoring me for two years.

Considering all the people I have ignored, and failed to communicate with in my 4.5 years of expatriation I have no room to talk. Go figure.

Oh, I no longer work for the government of this country, I am now employed by a private company. In some ways this is a good thing: I can speak my mind without concern over how it will affect myself or others close to me. But in truth, I find I have nothing to say about the place that I could not say in front of some high ranking dignitary. Is that because...

I no longer fear the consequences of speaking my mind?

I have bought into the system to such a degree that I think it's normal?

The place is so crappy outside of government employment that I have learned that crappiness is a local condition, and unrelated to the government?
The place has changed so much in the last couple of years that I have nothing to complain about?

I have become rather idiotic in my slightly advanced age?

I am not sure any of the above really captures the truth.

(Please disregard my spelling - I am not even re-reading because I will never post if I do.)

Life without possibility of parole, in a stinking monkey jail

Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:46:10 GMT

My first personal political activism was mostly in the animal rights arena. Although I am not vegetarian (even) any longer, I still think our maltreatment of other living beings is one of the foundations of our maltreatment of other humans.

Here, I is perhaps evidence that the two maltreatments exacerbate each other.

After all, Abu Ghraib probably makes some prisons seem like ClubMed.

To spoon the ocean into a thimble

Mon, 06 Sep 2004 10:20:05 GMT

Lately, I wonder if I am too quixotic for my own good, and the good of those around me.

At times I can't sit still - I feel driven to complete various projects that I involve myself with that are ultimately supposed to contribute to social justice; to find time to write about the things that I consider important.

Consequently, I have no difficulty overlooking my own well-being, and health.

Yet it's apparent that I will not see the benefit, if any, of my own actions.

So, what really motivates me? Is it to set an example for my children? We know pretty well that things generally, do not work out in such a manner. Children, at least those of Westerners, are more likely to develop ideals contrary to those of their parents than in sympathy. And I will admit, that the militancy with which I cling to some of my ideals (food quality, boycotting certain multinationals or companies which do business with certain governments) bugs the crap out of some of those around me.

As I age, I find that I am not "mellowing out" as so many people assured me I would. On the contrary; with age, there are fewer things that seem important to me, and thus have more energy to hurl at a more limited set of goals.

Oh well, back to work.

Ossetia

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 04:35:22 GMT

The beginning of a long list of things about these events which disturb me, in the sense that I cannot reconcile them with "official" versions of things.

Shamil Basayev, one of the major Chechnyan leaders has both denied responsibility, and condemned the operation (so we hear.)
Russian special forces can be seen moving toward the walls of the compound, in film, before the "explosion" which preceded the assault (so we saw).
Why (if it was Chechnyans) carry out the operation at all? At best, it has ensured that everyone will forget about the travesty that was the last general elections (so we wonder).
Is, or is not the region a Muslim region. Some media suggested the population is 70% Muslim. Putin made a point of stating no one should use the crisis as an excuse for ethnic violence, but that makes no sense if the school is primarily Muslim and the hostage takers, supposed Muslims, does it? (so, we ask.)

I am careful to never call my fellow Muslims "kafir", because there is a hadith which warns us, "The one who calls the Muslim kafir, is a kafir." However, if the responsibility of Muslims, these people have gone far outside the religion - and done nothing to help Islam whatsoever.

Which is why, in large part, I am suspicious of the affair - like most things in the Russian sphere of influence.

Lucked out, I guess

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 04:16:12 GMT

|.!....
|.!u+..
+.).)..

If I were a NetHack monster, I would be a unicorn. Most people are only after one thing - I try to maintain a quiet and respectful distance until I feel sure that I can trust someone.

Which NetHack Monster Are You?

How I Lost the War [I should know better.]

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 07:50:46 GMT

I should know better.
Let's face it, my feelings relating to the war on Iraq are well known. I cannot claim to be dispassionate, and when I talk about the war I probably have an agenda, nine times out of ten.

A personal research project of mine, relating to coalition casualties (and my suspicions that they can be correlated to civilian casualties) in the conflict has led me to study similar projects. In the course of this research, I have learned something of how the hoi polloi is reacting to criticism of the American administration.

In short, the criticism against one who questions the wisdom of the Wars on Iraq or Afghanistan, will follow more or less the following path:

It is suggested that criticism (of the war policies) is harmful to the soldiers at the front, and may inspire the enemy.

The critic is labeled as a "liberal", "communist, "Islamofascist" or some combination of these.

An anonymous Vietnam Veteran, suddenly appears calling the critic an idiot who has no idea why people fight wars.

An anonymous poster, supposedly in Iraq, says he/she wishes everyone would just shut up and get behind the president. (by the way, I will personally go and fight in Iraq if "get behind the president" means he will literally stand in front of me.).

If the foolish critic persists, they are branded as a homosexual (Which usually happens to those who object to cluster-bombing civilians.)

Does "Average Joe" or "Average Deepak" in this case, truly believe that a democracy can function at all, if people "Follow the Leader?" In even the worst arguments that I have had with intellectuals, at least people had the common sense to come up with amoral explanations:

America wants Iraqi oil. We have the ability to take it.

They [sic] are accustomed to brutality and dictatorship. Once the dust settles, they will agree things have improved for them. It's just America will be getting the oil, rather than wherever Sadaam sent it."

It is simply a war between cultures. One will survive. That means US.

It goes without saying, that my hand twitches and reaches for the sidearm that I am not wearing when I hear this kind of argument. Nevertheless, I can at least understand the cold, inhuman logic of such pronouncements. I can make the same kind of arguments from a devil's advocate perspective, and probably improve upon the above.

Only a halfwit (collective noun form: Government) can claim democracy is directly endangered by freedom of speech, or freedom of information. Hierarchical controls on the flow of information and ideas are fundamental to all non-democratic models of government. There may be unpleasant consequences to such freedom of speech, and ultimately someone can always use freedom of speech to try to undermine democracy. This is the main reason the Athenian democracy nabbed Socrates after all.

Here I am coming off like the impassioned defender of democracy - an institution which does not really inspire me. After all, I fail to see the difference between American elections and the election of Prom King and Queen - except that the electoral college system guarantees that only the ACCEPTABLE boy and girl will get the honors. None the less, it's a good model to use for governing a secular state.

Most likely this is all preaching to the choir. The average reader stumbled over the word dispassionate and gave up, long ago.

Nameless Iraqis

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:23:04 GMT

I was reading an AP article aloud when I realized that it
contained the phrase "bodies of the men" and I had
no idea who where "the men", only that a Lebanese had been
kidnapped and murdered.

I re-read the previous paragraph and saw the other "bodies"
belonged to "two Iraqi colleagues" who were also
kidnapped and murdered. Here I mean to call attention to the fact
that Iraqi civilian casualties (whoever kills them) are largely
remaining nameless, however foreign civilians and occupation
forces warrant having names, as long as they are not from too far
to the East.

In the hopes of making my point obvious... would it be acceptable
to mention the names of a wanted terrorist killed in America, and
just say: "A number of FBI agents and bystanders died in the
shootout." My example may seem contrived, but it's hard to
imagine the (nameless, and faceless) public not being disturbed by
this kind of reporting.

Conversation with my Dentist

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 20:37:18 GMT

I sometimes get the benefit of light political chit-chat with my Dentist; who is like myself foreign here (from another Arabian country, though he is rather "Europeanized.").

My dentist was asking: Are you in communication with your Embassy? Are you thinking of leaving, etc... When he brought up the issue of voting. He explained how he made a point of voting by proxy in both his home country and the European country where he studied dentistry.

I remembered some of the last years news and reminded him:

"But Doctor! France is a democracy. And for that matter, so is Lebanon. You have every reason to vote in your elections. Why would I bother?" In truth, his homeland had her first "free" elections in quite a while, during the last year.

He was mollified by my comment, apparently accepting my implied statement that America is not a democracy.

Life/Articles from Haaretz(Israeli) English Edition

Mon, 08 Mar 2004 04:15:29 GMT

No time to write lately, preparing for a move to the new apartment (not the one previously
mentioned!) in two days time.

Teaching a class on Open Systems at work. There is something special about finding out on a Wed. that you have to teach a class on Saturday (ie. think, given assignment on Friday, due on Monday)
and succeeding well to bolster ones confidence in ones abilities as an educator. Not that I mean to be a professional educator.

A couple interesting articles at Haaretz.

Talking about democracy, Zvi Bar'ei

The task of the ethicist, Sefi Rachlevsky

Lately....

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 14:19:48 GMT

I have been away from my journal lately because I suffer from a combination of:

writer's block
family responsibility (alhamdulillah)
workload (both official and unofficial)
impending move to new apartment (less than a 1/4 k away from the present)
enthusiastic pursuit of hobbies (mostly, coding a mudlib.)

The first two items are uninteresting. The third leaves me a bit flustered - I am having to charge someone for work done for their business, and it's difficult as in principle my relationship to the client is that of a friend.It seems different if one has the business relationship first - and then later on develops friendship (something which has occurred often in my career.)

The new apartment would seem to be more comfortable. My current dwellings, huge by American standards are tiny according to the locals. The larger salon (there are two) of the new apartment is 2/3 the size of where I now live.

I will be happy enough if I can just have some occassional peace and quiet.

animal, human

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 13:57:22 GMT

The other day, as my son caused chaos about the home in his inimitable 1.725 year old fashion, I thought it fitting to explain to him the difference between humans and animals, with an emphasis on their behavior.

I realized I had no really good definition of the difference, and so improvised the following:

1) Animals sleep or run amok until they desire food.

2) Animals chase other animals, and kill them when they want food.

Humans add an additional step:

3) Humans take the carcass of the dead animal and burn it over a fire, while exaggerating their exploits during steps one and two.

(apologies to any vegetarians.)

Israeli Ambassador Vandalizes Museum Art

Sat, 17 Jan 2004 16:00:34 GMT

I realize I just keep posting articles from Yahoo and other places with minimal content; but the study of history teaches us that events can say much more than the blabbering observer.

Here, an Israeli Ambassador desides to engage in his own little "...Taliban-like destruction of art."

PS. I didn't lift that phrase from an Israeli, it's actually the Turkish Ambassador to Saudi Arabia who uttered the phrase, after the Kingdom tore down (and rebuilt elsewhere) a fort dating from the Turkish occupation of the Penninsula. Still, it's nice to remember what we chose to protest about, and when.

Saudi Newspaper: "Attack the Roots of Our Problems"

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:11:40 GMT

I am not making this article available for the sake of its criticism of Saudi society, but rather because I think the author's assumptions say something about the difference between the rank and file and the so-called "extremist".

I think the position of the writer is close to that of the average Muslim in the kingdom. The vast majority of Muslims here, reject the idea that any Muslim who doesn't belong to their sect are "kafir", and thus lawful to be killed.

No doubt, most Muslims here don't think anyone should be killed. :)

Allah knows best.

US Accused of war crimes in Iraq

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 04:12:25 GMT

In this article the US is accused of "War Crimes." Not that such accusations have done anything to stop other states accused of them from continuing along their merry way.

As the article points out, the US has increasingly adopted similar tactics to those used by Israel in its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

I guess credibility for the US was already in short supply, but the idea of arresting and holding family members hostage looks really bad. It looks bad when Israel does it, and it doesn't look any better when it is America.

Let's see, secret trials, secret evidence, indefinite detentions without charges, collective punishment, blacklisting, abductions, torture (ie. making someone kneel in the dirt until they kak themselves, keeping them without food or water, etc... for 24 hours at a time) - perhaps a better comparison is the Soviet Union under Stalin, circa 1936.

Maybe it really is bin Laden

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 04:23:36 GMT

Until this morning, I admit I mostly didn't believe bin Laden was alive.

Most of the tapes I have seen thus far really did look like montage-work performed in a bad public-access cable-tv studio.

What makes me unsure this time, is bin Laden's warning regarding the precedent of allowing America to topple a Muslim government - "especially after they saw the capture of their former comrade in treachery and collaboration with America" (lifted from the Yahoo news article found here.)

This is "classic" bin Laden, who would never cooperate with a secular leader such as Hussein, who was regarded as a tool of America until Gulf War II (ie, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.)

It's a case however of the "pot calling the kettle black" however; would the real Osama bin Laden forget that he himself was financed and assisted by America in the struggle against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan?

More mad cow madness...

Sat, 03 Jan 2004 17:02:33 GMT

If you had any doubts that the beef industry in America (and Canada, I forgot to mention) get away with almost anything, take a look at this article.

If they meant to feed cows a food product made from "chicken feathers" but instead fed them a product made from "hog's hair" and both are considered safe for cattle feed, what else are they feeding them?

Does it seem wrong to no one other than myself that we feed omnivores (hogs) and their rendered by-products to herbivores (cows)?

Commentary in re: NYT article: Women Find a New Ally: Muhammad's Wife

Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:14:42 GMT

I wanted to draw attention to an article from the New York Times, but they make it difficult to link directly to their pages after a few days. Luckily, by chance the identical text is found here. Imagine that.

A fair article, aside from the usual NYT slant of making it seem as though the Kingdom is about to come apart at the seams from internal stresses. Also, the article is incorrect in suggesting that the idea that women's rights were afforded more recognition in the first Islamic community is something new. This point is obvious to anyone who actually troubles his or herself to read hadith, and even the "standard" tafseer ("explanations") for parts of the Qu'ran.

There is even a stock reply unfortunately, from scholars who have addressed this complaint, which is that public morals were better in the first community (ie, in the time of the Prophet (saw)). As times have changed (the argument continues), thus women must be subject to a further narrowing of their allotted sphere to protect them from men (and themselves by implication.)

From a strictly "safe" Islamic perspective, this is a specious argument: it implies that Allah (swt) was unable to foresee future changes to public morals. If it were intended that women not drive (ie, ride camels), nor leave the house, nor attend the masjid, these restrictions would be explicitly pointed out in the Qu'ran or well attested in the Sunnah.

It is unquestionable that Islam improved conditions for women in the Arabian penninsula, and perhaps elsewhere. Women were granted the right to divorce, the right to testify in court, and guaranteed a share in inheritance when such ideas would have been unthinkable in the other two Ibrahimic religions (technically, they are still unthinkable in the canon law of Catholicism). We should consider advancing the progress that brought us out of the times of ignorance, rather than insisting on upholding cultural tradition over our religion.

Mad Cow disease in USA

Wed, 24 Dec 2003 03:12:34 GMT

Probably everyone has heard of Mad Cow disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. Perhaps you have heard that it caused a lot of people to become vegetarian in the United Kingdom.

Unsurprisingly, the disease is finally confirmed in the United States. There is nothing remarkable about this article except that it says the disease is not yet reported in humans in the USA.

In fact, this may be true to the letter of the law - but it need be pointed out that the disease is not a recognized cause of death, at least in some states (the states for which I am certain of my facts here are Texas and Lousiana). In other words, though you may be diagnosed as having acquired human spongiform encephalopathy, you may not legally die from it.

Instead, you may die of Creutzfeld Jacob Disease, a human form of encephalopathy which is quite similar to BSE in cows, or "Inherited Familial Insomnia" (which also has a BSE like profile).

It's six AM, and I should be sleeping after prayer, but here is the CDC's mention of a "new variant CJD" which looks like Mad Cow Disease.

Add to this, the stringent rules on reporting for beef which die of "natural causes" (that is, laws preventing the report of certain kinds of ailments) and we can wonder how long the disease has been in the US.

What I am hinting at, is that the beef industry is as corrupt as any other big business in America.

If anyone is waiting for me to make a joke, I don't have one.

I do have a question however, for the reader. How did "It's a risk we must take" turn into "Acceptable risk" and now "small risk" becomes "No risk to consumers."

If anyone is interested, or doubtful, I will dig up additional material on this - I have followed it for a long time before most people heard of it.

And moreover...

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:56:37 GMT

I cannot bear the cynicism of my people, using "my" very loosely..I ask again, is America my nation?

I have heard incessantly "America, love it or leave it." Well, I think it's pretty obvious in my case. I have tried to leave since I was in my early twenties , when I discovered to my horror that it's really hard to defect. You can't just go to Russia and burn your passport these days. Probably not even China, now that capitalists are invited to join the communist party. Not that I would feel welcome as a defector even in a real Communist nation. Historically, they look dimly upon religious sorts like myself.

Thanks to the efforts of the State Department in fighting terrorism it's pretty hard to even convince any tiny island nation to sell you a passport in this day and age.

But the truth is, what is the point of a lifetime of dissidence? I can go around criticizing my countrymen, and those who admire them forever... and it won't change them. Or I can sort of fall back into silence, which is I think, the route my father took. I don't think I can stomach that kind of alienation however.

Baghdad, O Baghdad

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:15:19 GMT

Note that I do not ascribe the beliefs in this post to anyone, especially tdj, with whom I have had some exchanges on the nature of the conflict in Iraq (the thread in question, may be found here. This is intended simply to "air out" how I percieve the current exchange in the marketplace of ideas. If I truly believed anyone believed this, I would no more respond to their posts than to those who engage in the empty jingoism of saying Arabs or Islam are evil.

My list of "Apparent assumptions of those who support the Coalition's activities in Iraq."

1) A force of absolute (if ultimately paltry!) evil, hereafter AE, existed in Iraq, which had to be stopped.
2) The United States, for the safety and security of the world, and for the long-suffering Iraqi people, had to remove this AE,
in the person of a dictator, Sadaam Hussein.
3) A small number of malcontents, who want the coalition to leave Iraq (perhaps because as Bush said: "They hate freedom." or
because they benefit from the Ba'ath Party), have banded together, inspired by the AE.
4) The tiny minority of Iraqi people who support them, largely do so out of fear of a return of the AE, or reprisal from the evil
malcontents.
5) There is no such thing as Iraqi patriotism (not sure where people got this idea - they are almost as patriotic as
Palestinians) which would lead to a national resistance movement.

We can distill this position further:

1) The evil dictator and his minions, represent a position of moral wrong.
2) The "Coalition" represents a position of moral rectitude.
3) Therefore, those who oppose the "Coalition" through force (or presumably, any means that doesn't fit within the rapidly
narrowing window of "Freedom of Expression" as understood in America) are opposed to moral rectitude.

A couple of indirectly related assumptions should be voiced:

1) Except in the interest of "National Security", or the morale of Coalition Forces, the Western press does not lie. Any apparent agenda in its releases is either crackpot conspiracy, rogue elements within the media, or the personal (and no doubt well meaning!) viewpoints of editors.
2) The Arab press, and indeed all of the press other than CNN, FOX and other approved media organs, lie like dogs. They do this because of fear of their governments, because they "hate freedom", or in some obscure way, out of resentment for having somehow "lost." (ie., when the Iraqi military was defeated in Gulf War II, and "melted-away" in Gulf War III, this somehow was the loss of all the Arabs and their sympathizers.)

And what of my own assumptions here? So that others may get the opportunity to take a potshot at them?

The Coalition has no moral high-ground in this conflict. Its history with Iraq and Hussein would defame the walls of a men's
toilet in a roadside bar. Control of oil in the region has been a goal of the US and Britain since it was learned oil is useful. America supported Hussein even when he was killing his own people, and even when they were publicly saying otherwise (Please see this rather enlightening article from the Washington Post, via MSN). History backs this opinion up pretty well, and I can bore everyone to tears with a litany of what exactly America and Britain did to Iraq, if anyone insists.

The argument of "fixing the mess caused by the US and Britain after WW I and WW II" is also bankrupt, because even if there were good intentions behind the Coalition's actions (holding back bitter laughter at this point) they have mostly caused damage by attempting yet another imposed "solution" upon the region. In this case, they are dundering idiots who should have their guns and driver's licenses taken away from them, and be subject to competency tests to determine if they are fit to stand before a war crimes tribunal.