Some reading for today

* Here's a really interesting article by Matt Thompson on how and why the media has dropped the ball on the Sudan story. See also: 'Why Sudan has become a Bush priority.'

* How does the US health care system compare with other industrialized countries? Not very well, according to Bob Herbert of the NY Times.

* Seth Borenstein of Knight Ridder reports that "In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday."

* As their imperial dreams sink in the sands of Iraq, John Judis writes in an article excerpted from his new book Folly of Empire, "the neoconservatives and George W. Bush are likely to learn the same lesson in the early 21st century that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson learned in the early 20th century. Acting on its own, the United States' ability to dominate and transform remains limited, as the ill-fated mission in Iraq and the reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan already suggest. When the United States goes out alone in search of monsters to destroy — venturing in terrain upon which imperial powers have already trod — it can itself become the monster."

* In a related essay, Jerry M. Landay unveils the infrastructure that launched and continues to support the neoconservative movement.