corrente

This is a two-base hit: it demonstrates both what a fraud the "handover of Iraqi sovereignty" is, and at the same time shows where Attorney Corporal [hell, I demoted the silly twit] John Ashcroft could be devoting his time rather than going after porn movies:

(via Jackson MS Clarion Ledger)

When an interim government takes over from the U.S.-led occupation next week, Iraq will regain its place among the world's sovereign nations - except on the Internet.

The domain assigned to Iraq, ".iq," is stuck in a strange bureaucratic limbo - the company that had administered it is under U.S. criminal indictment - and could remain there for months.

As a result, if Iraq's government, national institutions or regular Iraqis want a Web site, they need to use international domains, such as ".com," ".org" or ".net", which are maintained in the United States.

The Baghdad Museum, which is still trying to recover from its April 2003 looting, could use an ".iq" address to identify itself as Iraqi, just as the Louvre proclaims its Frenchness with www.louvre.fr. Instead, it has registered http://the.iraq.museum .

In 1997, when Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was blocking the Internet, an ICANN body granted responsibility for the ".iq" domain to InfoCom Corp., a Texas-based company that sold computers and Web services in the Middle East. The domain's "technical contact" was listed as Bayan Elashi, InfoCom's chief executive.

In 2002, a grand jury indicted InfoCom, Elashi and four of his brothers on charges that they exported computer equipment to Libya and Syria and funneled money to a member of the Islamic extremist group Hamas. Trial for the Elashi brothers began this month in Dallas.

The case put the ".iq" domain on ice.

Believe it or not this case even outraged a Texas newspaper

Lock 'em up, throw away evidence

Three years after counterterrorism agents sacked their Richardson computer company, five Palestinian-born brothers are getting their day in court. But something's missing: the charges...

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an indictment in 2002 stating a Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook, laundered money with the company's help. Marzook's wife, the government said, is the Elashis' cousin. InfoCom also ran a Web site for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which President Bush called a fund-raising branch of Hamas.

Yet, the brothers are going to trial for black-market computer shipping. The feds won't bring out the Hamas charges until this fall.

The FBI reportedly was investigating the alleged terrorist connections since 1993. Numerous court filings have been sealed. Why not start the trial on the real charges now, and open up this information?

The government's priority ought to be prosecuting terrorism, not low-level shipping fraud. The latter charges, though, would allow Bush and Ashcroft to save face by locking up the Elashis if the now-secret terrorism evidence they touted proves unconvincing.

The Bush Administration is being examined for what it knew before Sept. 11, 2001. For this reason, as well, the Justice Department should come clean on InfoCom. Perhaps investigators did smash a financial pipeline to Hamas.

If they did, their work ought to hold up to public scrutiny in a public trial.

Some snarky folks over at Slashdot had some thoughts on the matter:

www.is-that-your-age-or-your.iq

[Plus, any dissidents there should pick up www.low.iq before USA's Republican Party registers it...:p ]