Nice bazaar you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it...

Forgot to share this bit of loveliness from my Sunday LA Times:

California Army National Guard troops sought unauthorized, off-the-books "rent" from Iraqi-owned businesses inside Baghdad's Green Zone to raise money for a "soldiers fund," military officials and sources within the troops' battalion said Friday...

According to military officials and members of the battalion, soldiers from the battalion's Bravo Company, which is based in Dublin, an East Bay suburb of San Francisco, approached several businesses earlier this year that were owned and operated by Iraqi nationals.

The businesses — a dry cleaner, a convenience store and the like — catered to U.S. soldiers and were located on the fringe of the U.S. military's operating base inside the Green Zone, the fortified hub of the Iraqi government, U.S. occupation officials, embassies and contractor headquarters. The businesses were asked to pay the soldiers "rent."

Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, confirmed Friday that two vendors agreed to pay.

The money was used to create a "soldiers fund," said one member of the battalion, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Such funds are used by troops for a variety of purposes, such as receiving small loans to pay a bill back home or buying commemorative "challenge coins" — often specially minted to foster morale inside a unit.

Hey, they were just using their expertise in the free market! It's the American way, after all. By the way, they hate us for our freedom, right? Not the extortion, but the freedom?

Speaking of Iraq, this week Cindy Sheehan is down at the Bush ranch in Crawford staging a sit-in until she gets a meeting with the President. Despite attempts by Drudge and others to smear her, Sheehan stands in principled opposition to an illegal war, and seeks to help her fellow families by getting their sons and daughters out of harm's way. I don't know if I exactly agree with her about unilateral withdrawal (I've said before that we've reached a point in Iraq where all ideas are pretty much bad ones), but I admire her courage and support her right to engage in nonviolent resistance. There's a rumor that she'll be arrested Thursday, which would be the perfect way for the White House to raise even MORE awareness about her position.

I support her.