Unqualified Offerings

As I Was Saying – Lying about Iraq’s capabilities didn’t begin with the Bush Administration:
In fact, there is compelling evidence to suggest that the Clinton administration’s false alarms on Iraqi weapons, like Bush’s, were much more than just honest mistakes. One astonishing series of events in particular illustrates the ways in which the Clinton White [...]

Gaudy Several Evenings Later – Zed at MemeMachineGo has more on the science-fictional versus fantasy approaches to the superhero story. Well worth reading, though I’m not completely convinced that his two political attractors are the only possible poles of a science-fictional approach to superheroes. I think we’re just waiting for someone to come up with [...]

were true, you could say differently. But the INC wasn’t working for us. They worked chiefly for themselves and secondarily for certain officials in the Defense Department and Vice President’s office, including especially the top men at both those places.

Reading List – Stuff I haven’t gotten to yet but mean to:
Tomorrow the World – Thomas Powers reviews An End to Eeeeevil!
Ex America by Garet Garrett.
A Prettier Jobs Picture? by Virginia Postrel.
The Much-Discussed “Pentagon Global Warming” Report in its entirety. From the intro: “The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is [...]

I Got Your Vietnam Syndrome for You, Right Here – Nate has an interesting consideration of the Pentagon’s use of private contractors in Iraq on jobs that would traditionally have been done by uniformed service members. Go there for the details. He also has a wealth of links to articles on Private Military Corporations. I’m [...]

Our Kind – Will Wilkinson considers that business about liberalism, education and academic bias, drawing on his own experience as a TA:
When I was TAing for Intro to Phil, and we were doing theism vs. atheism, it was all I could do to not make faces of exasperation and disapproval at the nuttily religious students.
There’s [...]

blogging. Neilalien’s long and substantial caution against groupthink itself echoes things written back in the warblogging day.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Neilalien’s concern is worth heeding. I’ll only ever be a peripheral figure in comics blogging (another parallel!) because I have neither the time nor the inclination to be a completist about what [...]

Conspiracy Theory – Speaking of Justin Raimondo’s column today, the end of it suggests that Ralph Nader’s decision to run for President may be more subtle than many Democrats who blame Nader for costing Al Gore the 2000 election think:
But if I were the Democrats, I wouldn’t worry too much. For some reason, Nader has [...]

Tangled Web – The Iraqi Interim Governing Council says it can’t make a deal on continued US basing rights in the country before sovereignty is handed over, according to Dexter Filkins in the New York Times. Not that we are worried:
Simply put, no Iraqi government could survive without the American forces, according to American commanders.
Isn’t [...]

Anthraxblogging – The Hartford Courant sys the FBI may have a new target in the Anthrax probe.