Unqualified Offerings

Finally catching up with McClatchy’s reporting. According to their report yesterday, “American soldiers confiscated perhaps as much as $10 million in U.S. currency from the compound, where the bodies of dead cultists still littered the ground.”
My emphasis.
This being McClatchy, you get more real detail than you do from pretend news organizations like the NYT or […]

Patrick Cockburn’s writeup of what we should maybe call the First Whatever of Najaf brings the counternarrative most of us learned from Healing Iraq to a wider audience but adds only one intriguing smidge of news for obsessives:
The Iraqi authorities have sealed the site and are not letting reporters talk to the wounded.
Interesting. The Independent’s […]

posted by Jim
The Republican Party sucks.
The Democratic Party sucks.
Getting played by your sources, so you can say you HAVE sources, sucks.

By Mona
I never thought I’d live to see this. A major party candidate for president — other than a former Libertarian Party member like Ron Paul — waxes aggressively anti-prohibitionist at his campaign web site:
My position on this issue is to face it directly, though other politicians run away from it. I […]

By Mona
Heartening, that’s what it is, to learn that President Bush pats Congress on the head and permits the poor dears to believe they have some actual authority on the issue of whether and when the United States will go to war. No doubt the citizenry also takes comfort in the […]

Zeyad has much much more recounting and analysis of local sources on the Najaf . . . whatever it was. Including some tentative stabs at what scarequote-really happened. Excerpt:
Another story that is surfacing on several Iraqi message boards goes like this: A mourning procession of 200 pilgrims from the Hawatim tribe, which inhabits the area […]

By Thoreau
Contary to what people have been telling us for several years, it’s actually possible for the regular court system and law enforcement officials to deal with ideological fanatics plotting to use bombs. And you don’t even need to use torture! Can you believe it?
I noticed this story in June of 2006, and […]

By Thoreau
OK, 24 was awesome tonight, for the simple reason that I was left on the edge of my seat wanting more.  Last week I was like “OK, this is weird.”  The week before, I was like “What, nukes again?”  But now they’ve got mysteries, they’ve got multiple storylines being juggled, I was left shouting […]

Oy. Every, er, Emm Ess Emm report seems to feature: 1) yet one more variation on the identity of the “cult leader”; 2) a characterization of the forces at the orchard that is incompatible with all other accounts; 3) utter credulity when it comes to the statements of Iraqi spokespeople. It’s like the media has […]

Dagnabit, I got back from the Y just late enough to miss the all-important HOW Peter Petrelli hooked up with the Invisible Man and WHY he seems to think IM can teach him power control. Otherwise, a lot to like in this episode, including the big “get the secret data off dad’s computer” scene.
Also, if […]

You’re on your own!

This was a pretty good episode, much better than the Days of Our Lives promo led me to fear. The one weakness is the decision of screenwriter Michael Taylor and director Edward James Olmos to heavily crosscut between the climactic scenes of the parallel plot threads - they just weren’t parallel enough. Or orthogonal enough. […]

By Mona
Recently Jim and I have examined two former presidents of the United States — Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower — and how they differed from Bush and his supporters on issues of both the validity of dissent during time of war, as well as peace. It is time to […]

The story evolves. Now it’s “American helicopters and tanks” that “backed” the Iraqi security forces involved. Still there are supposed to be 250 bodies, “most” of them insurgents or militants or whatever. Interestingly, the force size is now reported to range from 100-600. If it’s the low number, that’s some good shooting to kill 250 […]

The early reporting on this battle near Najaf today looks pretty implausible. See the Washington Post, the Daily Star and the Boston Herald for starters. I can buy the idea that there were Sunni insurgents gathering to attack Ashura pilgrims in or near Najaf. I can buy the idea that the Iraqi police caught on […]

This is by Thoreau, not Jim
So, this morning in Sunday school I was telling the first graders about the Prayer of Saint Francis.
One of my students, in response to the parts about “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned” and “Make me an instrument of Your peace” said that the President should stop fighting […]

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad interviews a Mahdi Army platoon commander about his lucrative kidnapping and killing racket. It’s all good:
“We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money,” said Fadhel. “And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway.”
There’s a lot more to the piece, including the Origin of Fadhel. (His family lived in a […]

Walter in Denver takes on the vicious John Hawkins drug war apologia that Mona linked to earlier.

Jeff Stein writes about the burgeoning yet inconsequential army of “national security undead,” the whistleblowers and critics cut loose from their careers for dissenting on aspects of post-9/11 war and intelligence policy. It’s a good story, whose chief takeaway is that in important respects there is no story:
During the Vietnam war, a single national security […]

So I kept to my plan of catching the new Heroes on SciFi Channel Friday at 7, since I missed it Monday night while watching 24. This is a workable method anyone without video recording capability can follow to keep up with both series. But . . .
I like Heroes a lot better than 24.
God […]

I never went to see the 1992 movie Lorenzo’s Oil because the previews painted it pretty clearly as an anti-science quackfest. American movies hate the brain. Hollywood wants you to use the Force. The film version of Searching for Bobby Fischer treats public park chess and tournament chess as a dichotomy, romance and instinct on […]

By Mona
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Pete Guither tears his hair out examining a Human Events piece by Bush-worshipper and ardent drug warrior John Hawkins, a truly imbecilic rant (Hawkins relies on that outstanding authority for all things, Ann Coulter) in defense of criminalizing substances the state dislikes. Hawkins attacks libertarians, and declares that then-”Drug Czar” Bill […]

The other day Matthew Yglesias put the possibility of war with Iran in terms we tend to shy from:
In short, bombing Iran and the following cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, will certainly lead to a lot of people dying. It will certainly lead to lost arms. Severed legs. Severe scarring. Bad burns. Mothers weeping for […]

By Mona
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My nomination for the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s next ad — it is as accurate as their usual fare, but even more entertaining.

Greenwald writes about a Garry Wills essay on this “commander-in-chief” nonsense that “like most politically insightful points, my first exposure to this insight was in the blogosphere.” But he can only trace it back to something Digby wrote in 2006. Bah.
Also, a refresher for the native-born: The President is not “our Commander-in-Chief.” He is Commander-in-Chief […]

On the Eisenhower: Traitor line that Mona’s been examining, it’s worth recognizing its ancient roots. Eisenhower’s perfidy was a central tenet of the John Birch Society. JBS founder Robert Welch officially considered it undecideable whether Ike was a “stooge” of the Communist movement or a witting agent. Wikipedia carries a couple of excerpts from Welch’s […]

By Mona
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Apparently, as UO commenter sglover encountered at a deranged person’s site, not only is Jim Webb considered a traitor in certain quarters, but Dwight Eisenhower was also a cut-and-run appeaser. It is absolutely remarkable — appalling and breathtaking, actually — how many presidents or other officeholders who were former […]