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There’s wide-spread looting in Iraq today. Not very surprisingly, the social structure of the country is in chaos. Hospitals are being looted; suspected looters are being killed in the street. On the BBC this morning, a reporter talked about seeing a man beat to death in front of him. The killers said “He wasn’t from this neighborhood.” Was he a looter? Maybe, maybe not. But man, it’s getting rough out there.

This is about as indicative of the future of Iraq as the cheering was yesterday. The fact that Iraqis cheered Americans yesterday does not mean that they will be cheering six months from now. The fact that there is widespread looting today does not mean that there will be looting six months from now.

And that’s why I feel we while we should not be saying “Sure, but…” (an excellent post by Philippe de Croy, btw), I feel we should all be saying “Let’s wait till things have stabilized.”

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My brother’s tres hip internationally acclaimed (really!) design group, Release1 (warning: Flash site, but it’s cool, and it’s my family, so don’t complain), opened the McDonald’s Project tonight. I just got back. Awesome opening — the place was packed, quite literally. There was a line of people outside waiting for people to leave, cause the gallery was over capacity. It’s down at the Berwick Research Project, in Boston, and runs through next weekend. It’ll be in New York in August.

It’s cool stuff. The intention is not culturejamming, although there’s a bit of that — it’s a light-hearted look at ways to use the McDonald’s brand. I’d recommend going on down and taking a look if you’re in Boston.

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Frontline ran an excellent piece on North Korea tonight. As usual, they stuck all the good stuff up on their Web site. Gotta love it.

And, since (as we all know) PBS is hopelessly liberal and biased, they made sure to include an interview with the highest ranking North Korean ever to defect in which he praises Bush to the skies. Cunning, those liberals.

My cynicism aside, I particularly liked the Ashton Carter interview. He has lots of good insights, and he takes a pretty rational appearing line on the implications of a war on the Korean peninsula. Also, he has the quote of the entire piece:

I remember in 1994, when we were dealing with North Korea, the intelligence experts would come in, and they would say, “That’s a very interesting statement by the North Koreans. It’s rather conciliatory.” I’d say, “How can you tell that’s conciliatory?” And they would say, in effect, “Well, you know, it doesn’t say anything about your mother.”