Does it bother anyone that the US government is using former Soviet gulags in Eastern Europe to torture the people they kidnap? That our leader, Dick Cheney, is actively pressuring the senate to exempt the CIA from the new torture ban as his stooge threatens to veto?
Eh, me neither.
Good news! Everything’s swell in Iraq, and getting better – so long as the U.S. stays put. How do I know? I read Cathy Young’s latest. How does she know? She read The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, and Andrew Sullivan. That’s right – after canvassing the gamut of foreign policy viewpoints from A to B, Young assures us that “Iraqis have grounds to hope for a better future” and favorably compares the continued occupation of Iraq with the defeat of Nazism.
I was relieved when former Reason editor-in-chief (and born-again neocon) Virginia Postrel left the magazine, but at least she decried the tyranny of the “Lethal Center,” the “coming together of ‘pragmatic’ liberals and ‘responsible’ conservatives” behind the interventionist state.
Wolcott (here and here) is all over David Corn for agreeing to join the editorial board of the odious Pajamas Media, future web home for war hacks not yet indicted. Like Michael Ledeen. Corn’s response makes it clear that he has no idea what he’s getting into: “I look forward to a new Internet enterprise that seeks to promote varying views, even if the idea came from conservatives.” Well, as Wolcott says,
Does Corn really want to be associated with fun blogs like Little Green Footballs and Gates of Vienna (“At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war”)? I guess he does, because he’ll be appearing on a panel at Pajamas’ gala conference in November in Manhattan, where Roger L. Simon and company will break out the ginger ale and announce their new monicker. Then everybody will adjourn to invade Syria, if they can arrange transportation.The weird thing about Pajamas Media is that it doesn’t even know what it wants to be when, if ever, it grows up. Originally, it was an idea for right-winger and warblogs to make money selling advertising, but they appear to have jettisoned their advertising guys — one of whom fortunately blogs so that we can read the entertaining story of that backstabbing. (Also see the links here – Blowing the cover off Top Secret Pajamas Media Foreign Correspondents.) They claimed to be the “New Media” but the keynote speaker for their New York City gala launch party is none other than Old Media icon Judy “The Aspen Roots of WMD” Miller, who possibly works for the New York Times, which last I checked, was almost the definition of Old Media, according to the New Media.
Well, PJM’s launch party is two weeks away, so they have plenty of time to decide what they are before that. Meantime, a competitor has apppeared on the blog-aggregation scene! Meet Lingere Media:
LINGERE Media is a new blogging venture designed to bring together some of the internet’s more obvious fast-buck artists and will hopefully cobble together a single source that will, in our dreams, complement and re-define journalism in the 21st century, which we can then unload on a gullible public via a stock offering. Upon its official debut in November 2005, LINGERE Media will feature content from over 300, no 70, no 150, no, make it 70 half-assed bloggers. The company was founded in 2004 by acclaimed accountant and blogger Dennis The Peasant and Cletus Barnwell, cesspool manager, hog calling champion, and author of the blog What Smell?With that extensive roster of Quality Bloggers only thing Lingerie Media needs to catch up is to announce a grandiose launch party keynoted by a noted failure in their field! Maybe Scooter Libby is free.
Chalabi returns to the scene of the crime? What’s up with that?
Though his personal electoral base is limited he has forged links with fellow Shi’ite groups, including nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and there is speculation he will put himself forward as prime minister, as he did after January’s ballot.I hope Fitzgerald hands him a subpoena.Some U.S. officials have played down speculation, however, that the trip to Washington indicates an American willingness to promote Chalabi in that role.
“We’ve invited him to the U.S. I wouldn’t read more into it than that,” one official in Baghdad told reporters last week, pointing out Chalabi’s major operational role in handling Iraq’s budget and his position as coordinator of the oil industry.
“We have operational interests to discuss with the man and we’re going to do that,” the official said.
US Senate goes into closed session:
AMERICAblog: CNN just said that by invoking Rule 21, Reid just shut down the Senate, all 100 Senators are called to the Senate floor, they have to turn over their cell phones, blackberries, etc
Talking Points Memo: I’m told Sen. Reid has taken the senate into closed session to discuss the senate’s failure to “phase two” of the Senate Select Committee on Inteligence report on the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure. Phase two, you’ll remember, was to examine alleged administration manipulation of intelligence.
Quick review on the Phase II report: The Report They Forgot
In February 2004, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) announced that it had unanimously agreed to expand its investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence from focus on intelligence community blunders and into the more controversial area of “whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused” by U.S. government officials. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, struck the agreement with Chairman Pat Roberts — provided, Roberts insisted, that the probe into policy-makers’ activities wait until after the presidential election.UPDATE – Daily Kos: As the post below notes, Reid asked the Senate to go into special session on intelligence — that is, a closed session — to discuss prewar intelligence. This mostion, along with a second (provided by Durbin), requires all Senators to report to the Senate floor. It is a non-debatable motion.[…]
Now, this is more than a temporary stunt. The Democratic leadership has promised to call a special session in the Senate every single day until Republicans alllow for a real investigation.
But these people have issues. And they have made the projection of their obsession onto others a matter of national policy.
(Libby link via Matt Welch.)
