While President Bush calls John Kerry a traitor for questioning just how rosy things are in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell chimes in to tell us that the situation in Iraq is worsening as we prepare to rig that nation’s elections this January. I sure as hell hope that Senator Kerry is listening, and can now add Secretary Powell’s remarks to his litany. The reality, of course, is that we are killing around twice as many innocent civilians as the insurgents, and once in a while, the President might want to check what his own Pentagon is saying about...

This week’s visit to Beijing’s People’s Daily (as you recall, my theory once was that I would try to provide at least a weekly visit to the two other metropoles– Eastasia and Eurasia — I blog regularly from New York, the financial heart of Oceania, so that one is covered) covers roughly the same subject as yesterday’s visit to Pravda. In this case, the PRC’s house organ tells us that the President’s unilateral strategy as applied to Iraq violated UN protocols and rules, and indeed, as UN Sec. Gen. Kofi Annan said recently, violated international law. Further, Bush’s constant references...

Back to our visits to Pravda, with this account of President Bush’s big anti-terror speech to the UN General Assembly. The money line is that a fair number of UNGA delegates were asleep during the President’s speech. The point, of course, is that since Bush is basically reading the same script he has been reciting for years now, there is nothing new– and the UNGA delegates are not likely to stand and applaud (the way our own Politburo does) when the President hurls meaningless words like “freedom” (the President’s main bitch), “democracy”, or telling everyone how bad Saddam is. As...

This shit seems to be getting old, unless you are a “resolved” “Texan” “leader” who tells us “I will not falterTM”, but in good old Baghdad, six Egyptian workers of the Iraqi mobile phone company were kidnapped from out of their office in broad daylight. Do not be alarmed, I tell you! All is well! The cold-blooded killer we placed in charge of Iraq (via Digby) assures us that life in Iraq is so much better now that the previous cold blooded killer we replaced him with is safely incarcerated. (Yes– if you missed that link– go back and read...

The President continues to remind us all of the Kevin Bacon character screaming “do not be alarmed, all is well” at the end of Animal House, just as he is trampled to death under an escaping crowd, particularly with moves such as parading Iraqi-Puppet-Premier Allawi around Washington to tell us how swimmingly things are and how hopeful he is for Iraq. Fortunately, at least one of the groups he will see lost its sense of irony (or reality) a long time ago, and will have no need even to suspend disbelief. That of course, would be the joint session of...

It had been a while (a few weeks, actually) since a fatal suicide bombing by a Palestinian terrorist in Israel proper, but the string is broken just two days from the Yom Kippur holiday, with a female suicide bomber attached to Arafat’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade blowing herself up at a Jerusalem bus stop killing at least one and injuring dozens. Look for the usual territorial lockdown this year. Suicide bombings by Palestinians are, actually, way down, largely thanks to the presence of Israel’s much vaunted and much maligned security/land grab fence, and in particular, the portion of it that...

Today, we’ll take a look at the fate of two of the poster boys of perfidy, the icons of Islamist terror, the sum of all our fears, Unlawful Combatants Yaser Hamdi (a Saudi national born in Louisiana, making him also a U.S. national, picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan) and Jose Padilla (an American national- a Chicago gang-banger who adopted a Moslem name, picked up on a flight back from Pakistan and alleged to be involved in a “dirty bomb” plot.) Since the Government was ordered by the Supreme Court to afford Hamdi access to our legal system, it...

Via Diana, I give you this text of Senator Kerry’s remarks at New York University today. Let me make it easy: while many will laud the speech, I’m torn between giving it a C+ and B-. Yes, he’s finally talking about the right thing, and in the right (asshole tough guy) way. AND he’s mentioning Al Qaeda and OBL (FINALLY– SOMEONE IS MENTIONING THEM!) His proposed Iraq solution, however, is a fantasy, is wrong, and will piss people off (I must tell you, I’M pissed off by it). His answer: “Go begging for help from our allies and the UN”....

Senator Kerry, addressing National Guard veterans at a convention in Lost Wages, Nevada, chided the President’s statements about Iraq as representing the President’s living in “a fantasy world.” The President, a man who famously has instructed his staff members not to give him any bad news about anything, remarked on the good stuff about Iraq… you know– “freedom”, Saddam in custody (we hear the old dictator’s kind of blue, btw– though not necessarily in a “blue state” kind of way… that would be Osama, according to the Bush-Cheney campaign), and the elections scheduled for… some time in January, 2005 (unless...

That was pretty close to the very first post title on this here eminence gris of blogtopia (yes, I know skippy coined the term) which will celebrate its third anniversary on September 18, 2004. In September, 2001, as now, the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah falls shortly after the 11th. Then, as now, the world faces some anxious times and grave uncertainties. Quite a bit has happened in the last three years, to us, to this City, to this Nation, and this World. Some of that has been discussed in this column. I hope it has been enlightening for...