Scrapbook

...Although the news from Afghanistan has certainly been more upbeat in recent days," he writes to The Scrapbook, "it's not just the gruesome photos of Northern Alliance troops beating and shooting wounded Taliban soldiers and the approaching endgame at Kandahar that should give us pause...

...While Uday's zoo is flourishing, the state-run zoo is said to be in a deplorable condition...

...Coclanis cautions that the generalizations of Holdich, Superintendent, Frontier Surveys, India, 1892-98, and author of several important studies on South Asia, are decidedly un-PC and won't appeal to everyone, but that his characterization is well worth pondering...

...Circuit Court of Appeals...

...Filkins: "The bodies of the Taliban soldiers lay stiff and straight at odd points across the intersection of Khan-abad Road and Chugha Street...

...Al-Najjar has been living in the United States illegally for more than 15 years...

...This Little Piggy...

...With an estimated net worth of $7 billion, Saddam Hussein and his family certainly have more belongings than anyone in Iraq...

...A local newspaper, Nabidh al-Shabib, said that the municipality has allocated more money to buy more animals in an attempt to revive the zoo...

...He was re-arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service on November 24—11 days after a panel of the same court affirmed a final deportation order against him...

...With all due respect to Ted and Maureen and Christiane, however, the most succinct analysis of what we may be up against here appeared not in the weeks since September 11th, but in the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1910-1911...

...Knickmeyer: "Three other fly-covered Taliban lay dead in empty market stalls...

...They both saw Taliban who'd been bound and executed, but seemed to disagree on the meaning...

...The bird fled Uday's zoo—which is situated in the main presidential compound overlooking the Tigris River...

...Each man's big toes had been looped together with cords to prevent his escape while alive...

...The Afghans are eternally boasting of their lineage, their independence and their prowess...

...Uday is reportedly fond of rare birds...

...the traveler conceals and misrepresents the time and direction of his journey...

...apparently frank and affable in manner, especially when they hope to gain some object, but capable of the grossest brutality when that hope ceases...

...The missing falcon is one of his rarest birds, worth some $20,000...

...The big toes on their bare feet were tied together, an Islamic burial custom . . ." Maybe they're both right...

...Salaries are as low as U.S...

...But a separate track of litigation had continued: The government was appealing a December 2000 federal district court ruling that freed Al-Najjar from an earlier, three-and-a-half-year stretch of detention...

...But Saddam and his sons are not among the Iraqis hawking their possessions...

...The U.S., along with its ally Britain, have been persistent to continue their flagrant aggression and cruel sanctions for the sake of causing more harm to the Iraqi people, especially the children," said Tariq Aziz, Saddam's top henchman, in Baghdad last week...

...Saddam Hussein wants the sanctions lifted because he cares deeply about the suffering of innocent Iraqis...

...Here's what Holdich had to say: The Afghans, inured to bloodshed from childhood, are familiar with death, and audacious in attack, but easily discouraged by failure...

...As the chattering classes keep reminding us, we're hip deep in a rough, tough corner of the world...

...Among themselves the Afghans are quarrelsome, intriguing and distrustful...

...Plainly," the appeals court's unanimous order explained, "the final order of deportation gives the Attorney General unambiguous authority under controlling law to take Al-Najjar into custody...

...2 a month...

...but the charm is not of long duration, and he finds that the Afghan is as cruel and crafty as he is independent...

...He has announced a reward of one million dinars (approximately $500) for the capture of the bird...

...The repression of crime and the demand of taxation he regards alike as tyranny...

...A Najjar Setback Mazen Al-Najjar, whose terrorism-related deportation case The Weekly Standard's David Tell has been closely following these past few weeks, was dealt a devastating blow last Wednesday by the 11th U.S...

...Sobriety and hardiness characterize the bulk of the people, though the higher classes are too often stained with deep and degrading debauchery...

...And of course, were Saddam truly concerned with the well-being of the Iraqi people, he could stop diverting the country's money into his own pockets and his various military and terrorist schemes...

...excessively turbulent and unsubmissive to law or discipline...

...estrangements and affrays are of constant occurrence...

...They look on the Afghans as the first of nations, and each man looks on himself as the equal of any Afghan...

...In other words, barring Supreme Court review, which most observers consider a remote possibility, the man's departure from America has never seemed more likely...

...The first impression made by the Afghan is favourable...

...This authority is "unmistakable" and "unfettered...

...The European, especially if he come from India, is charmed by their apparent frank, open-hearted, hospitable and manly manners...

...Rule Britannica Since September 11, Peter A. Cocla-nis, chairman of the history department at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has been doing what history professors are supposed to do— looking back...

...If from habit and tradition he respects a stranger within his threshold, he yet considers it legitimate to warn a neighbour of the prey that is afoot, or even to overtake and plunder his guest after he has quitted his roof...

...Nowhere is crime committed on such trifling grounds, or with such general impunity, though when it is punished the punishment is atrocious...

...Last week the 11th Circuit vacated the district-level ruling Al-Najjar had won...

...Maybe it's a new custom...

...People have had to sell their belongings in order to survive—first their cars, then household appliances, even their books and furniture...

...As the debate over sanctions continues, The Scrapbook respectfully suggests to the anti-sanctions crowd that they make liquidation of the Hussein family zoo one of their priorities...

...They are capable of enduring great privation, and make excellent soldiers...

...Indeed, sections of the Britannica essay, 'Afghanistan,' written by Sir Thomas Hungerford Hold-ich, trump anything I've read or heard over the past two months about our bitter enemies and new-found friends...

...The Afghan is by breed and nature a bird of prey...

...State Department negotiations with the governments of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates over paperwork to finalize Al-Najjar's deportation to the latter country are already under way...

...The district court held that the Justice Department's use of secret evidence concerning Al-Najjar's ties to terrorist organizations was legally insufficient to justify locking the man up...

...They are unscrupulous in perjury, treacherous, vain and insatiable, passionate in vindictiveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own lives and in the most cruel manner...

...He could even sell one of his 48 presidential palaces, or auction off some of his luxury cars...

...Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press and Dexter Filkins of the New York Times both went to Kunduz on November 26...

...Well, not all people...

...A report on the website for Iraq's government provides more detail...

...Consider this nugget, from David Nissman's indispensable Iraq Report last week: Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, has mobilized Iraq's security services and media in search of a falcon that reportedly escaped from his personal zoo, according to "Iraq Press" from Damascus, on 16 November...