Reuters reports from Cairo...

An Egyptian court has jailed a man and his wife for six months for posting pornographic photos and films of themselves on the Internet, security sources said on Thursday.

The man, an engineer in his 40s, and his wife, in her 20s, were arrested after a special police vice squad traced the site on the Internet, the source said.

I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone with an IQ that exceeds their hat size, but it makes me look forward to the dances of joy I'll do when the US can quit having to spend billion of dollars a year on aid to culturally repressive regimes.

We started bribing the Egyptians to keep them from sleeping with the Soviets. Now, we pay them off to leave the Israelis alone, as they are really the only country in the area with the population to be a possible military threat.

But soon, oh so very soon, we will be able to make the alms we hand them contingent purely on their willingness to allow personal freedom of expression, and all those other civil rights we take for granted, in their nations. This will, of course, happen shortly after Saddam's Last Dance.

In doing so, we will be doing no more, even less, than the US federal government does to it's own citizens. Want that tax money for the highways we collected out of your state for the highways? Better dance to our tune then, buddy, and drop those speed linits, clean up that air. The only difference is that we will be dangling wads of cash that did not come from them originally, but from US taxpayers, making this "tyranny" even more benign.

A few generations from now, our children may look upon the events of 9/11 to be the catalyst that allowed the last great wave of political enlightenment to sweep across the globe. This, the Pax Americana, will ultimately prove to be the most fitting memorial to those that died that day, not whatever it is they finally decide to do down at Ground Zero. Of course, I have an opinon on that.

Still, the NYT wonders if it will be worth the cost. How utterly predictable. How easily refutable.