Rewind

It is taking me forever to go through just some of the stuff I've missed over the past few days, but here's what I'm finding interesting and relevant thus far:

* According to the AP, the CIA didn't receive the Niger doc evidence until after the SOTU, in February 2003, although Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports that the State Department received copies three months before the SOTU and passed the info on to the CIA "within days." Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois also claims that George Tenet told him that a White House official insisted on including the Niger doc claim in last year's SOTU. In other news: Tenet blames Wolfie.

* Salon's Eric Boehlert and the Guardian's Julian Borger each report on how the so-called "Rumsfeld Intelligence Agency," the Office of Special Plans (OSP), drove the US to war in Iraq.

* India says it won't be providing troops to help the US in Iraq, but may change its tune soon. If it doesn't, there will be hell to pay.

* No surprise here: those high-strength aluminum tubes Bush cited in the SOTU "weren't meant for nuclear bomb production," according to the recent testimony of a high level Iraqi scientist.

* Bush has lied on a great many issues. So what makes the yellowcake lie so special? Timothy Noah has a two-part response on Slate: Part I; Part II.

* What went wrong with the Bush administration's postwar plans for Iraq? The LA Times examines how the "missteps in the planning for the subsequent peace could threaten the lives of soldiers and drain U.S. resources indefinitely" and finds that the "tale of what went wrong is one of agency infighting, ignored warnings and faulty assumptions."

* FAIR suggests that the Bush uranium lie is just the tip of the iceberg, while Jim Lobe reminds us that there's another lie lurking about in the Bush administration's habitual claim of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link. That lie has the PNAC's fingerprints all over it.

* Robert Scheer thinks that we have "the firm basis for bringing a charge of impeachment against the president who employed lies to lead us into war."

* GIs have been speaking out against the Pentagon, and will likely pay for doing so. After all, the journalist who reported this for ABC News has already received his payback.

* With Iraqis cheering the deaths of soldiers, it's no wonder morale is low amongst American forces. The LA Times summarizes their current status: "They're hot, they're cranky, and they're not leaving any time soon." On the homefront, those wives who complain about the predicament of their husbands in Iraq are being scolded for providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

* After a bitter legal battle, Dick Cheney has released his energy task force documents. There's some pretty interesting stuff in them -- like, ya know, maps of Iraqi oil fields dating back to 2001! Can the real reason for war be this crass? More background, here.

* Memo to the President: Make Dick Cheney resign. Read an interview with Ray McGovern, one of three signatories to the memo.

* Due to overstretch, the US may be forced to go back to the UN in order to bail out Bush. Todd Gitlin thinks this a good idea. Kofi Annan does, too, since this is what the UN has been planning for, now that three months have passed since the fall of Baghdad.

* Hey, whattaya know. The media is underplaying the US death toll in Iraq. And, of course, generally ignoring the death toll amongst Iraqi civilians and combatants.

* Agence France Presse reports that, according to UNICEF, "More than 1,000 Iraqi children have been killed or wounded by abandoned weapons and munitions since the April 9 fall of Baghdad."

* One of the "Baghdad Democrats," Jim McDermott, is lamenting the actions of the "Bush Terror Posse -- Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft," who have been engaged in a "fear campaign designed to prepare Americans to do whatever the administration wants us to do" for the past 18 months. Since McDermott's earlier concerns turned out to be quite cogent, will this 21st century "Lord Haw-Haw" ever get an apology? Don't hold your breath.

* Tony Blair fell back on "high-sounding ambiguities" in his address to Congress last week. Not a bad idea, observes Stephen Gowans, especially when "you've just led your country into war on dubious grounds, and people are awakening to the possibility that they've been misled."

* "Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?" asks David Corn. "It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted."

* Regime change or reform in Iran? This question is at the root of the "most contentious foreign policy issue in the Bush administration," according to the Telegraph.

* Don't mind North Korea, even though former defense secretary William Perry is warning that the US could be at war with that Communist nation as early as this year.

* The war in the DRC may be coming to an end, as a tenuous power-sharing plan has been implemented amongst the warring factions.

* A train loaded with radioactive waste is on the move in the US. See if it may be passing by your house.

* Frida Berrigan tells the story of depleted uranium, AKA the gift from the American military that keeps on killing.

* Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting) has been awarded the contract by the DOD for a new online voting system for the military. Lynn Landes wonders: do we really want such a dubious company owned by non-U.S. citizens in charge of potentially 6 million votes?

* This depiction of the federal deficit isn't pretty. In general, why isn't there much alarm over the deficit?

* According to the NY Times, "The first report to document the impact of the government's new formula for financial aid has found that it will reduce the nation's largest grant program [the Pell Grant] by $270 million and bar 84,000 college students from receiving any award at all."

* Pat Robertson is praying for God to smite three Supreme Court justices so they can be replaced by conservatives.

* American masculinity is in crisis, says Kristen Kidder, but no need to worry. Viacom is coming to the rescue. In a related piece, Katha Pollitt delivers a sort of informal State of Feminism for 2003.