Trolling for trash

What did he know and when did he know it? Well, does anyone believe Kerry didn’t know that his supporters were running ads using a picture of Osama bin Laden to attack Dean’s credentials?

Speaking of Kerry, Nixon personally wanted to destroy him back in ‘71.

The Organization of American States’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rules that the US violated international law by not giving DC residents the vote.

Israel kills something like 15 people in Gaza in a military raid that, Ha’aretz notes, seems to have had as its sole purpose “so soon after the prime minister announced his intention of dismantling many of the settlements in that area... to show the Palestinians that the decision to withdraw was not a victory for them or for terror”

The family of the Palestinian prime-minister-of-the-week has been accused of supplying cement to build the Wall.

The US is increasingly trying to pretend that the resistance to US occupation of Iraq is Al Qaida. It is not, and I don’t think even Judith Miller is falling for that CD-ROM outlining the connection which the military allegedly found (although they’ve given out several stories about how they found it). Every suicide bomber to date has been a native Iraqi. The AQ claim presumably would provide an ex post facto rationalization for the war. If anyone believed it. And the fact that it’s getting so little play is a sign how little credibility the Mayberry Machiavellis have left.

Reminds me: the story about N Korea testing bio-weapons on political prisoners doesn’t look so well-sourced. Sorry.

Iraqis are claiming the bombings of the last 2 days were done by the Americans to give them an excuse to stay. Which is also unlikely, of course, but you do have to wonder why would-be members of the Iraqi police and military--without which there can be no US pull-out on July 1--were given absolutely no protection but left to line up in the street.

I sorta thought the CIA was getting a bum rap and being set up for a fall, and other Raymond Chandler language, but then I read this. CIA analysts thought intel came from multiple sources when it didn’t, thought it came from good sources when it was third-hand gossip. This is pure amateur hour.

Yet more on Bush & the Nat Guard, and I’m almost getting bored of the subject. Seems he asked for a transfer to Alabama after he actually moved there. Bushies have taken to responding to questions on the subject by throwing hissy fits and refusing to answer (Powell, McClellan)(David Brooks on McNeil-Lehrer was also pretty funny). McClellan: “I'm not going to engage in gutter politics. I'm going to focus on what we're doing to make the world safer, to make the world a better place.” He accused reporters asking for Bush to fulfill his promise on Sunday to release all his records of “trolling for trash,” a Safire-like bit of alliteration that suggests a stonewall prepared in advance. A former assistant deputy assistant gopher of defence (or something) almost takes the position I suggested several days ago the D’s take, and gives it a spin I hadn’t thought of: the government spent $1 million to train him to fly (1969 or 2004 dollars?), and he didn’t show up for his flight physical. But at least we now know what Bush’s teeth looked like in 1973. Historical note: in 1992 Bush the Elder criticized Clinton for having failed to release his military records.