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.

More catch up

My schedule continues to leave me little time to blog, so I'm reduced to playing catch up every once in a while. Here's the latest batch of links. I might go on a more extended hiatus, but for now just expect infrequent link purges like this one.

* A surprise ending: the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq went forward two days earlier than planned, no doubt in an attempt to preempt more violence and bombings from the insurgency.

* The NY Times reports that the US military launched 50 airstrikes in the early moments of the Iraq war aimed at taking out top Iraqi military and government officials, none of which were successful and all of which caused a significant number of civilian casualties.

* Just last week the US military launched aerial strikes on Fallujah allegedly aimed at allies of the mysterious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that killed 22 Iraqis -- and, again, all of them were civilians.

* In related stories, Laura King of the LA Times reports on Fallujah, the "mini-republic that lives largely according to its own rules, in defiance of the potent American military force that remains poised on its doorstep" and Jeffrey Gettleman explores the city's "re-Baathification" in the NY Times Magazine.

* Fallujah isn't the only place rife with radicals and Islamists. Hannah Allam of Knight Ridder reports that extremism is sweeping across large portions of Iraq.

* A joint study by IPS and FPIF has found that the US has spent more than $126 billion on the Iraq war, which will eventually cost every American family an estimated $3,415. And, as Jim Lobe explains, the study emphasizes that the costs of the war extend far beyond financial terms.

* Raed Jarrar of the blog Raed in the Middle and CIVIC have published their survey of civilian war casualties in Baghdad during the first four months of the war.

* "The Pentagon may have wasted billions of dollars in Iraq because of a lack of planning and poor oversight," according to the LA Times. Wonderful. Throw it on the pile.

* As the NY Times reports that the US is diverting $2.5 billion from Iraq's oil revenues to fund auxiliary projects in Iraq, a UN oversight committee is investigating whether the CPA has mismanaged Iraq's oil fund. Additionally, a new Christian Aid report suggests that the CPA cannot account for nearly $20 billion of Iraq's revenues.

* Thomas DeFrank of the NY Daily News reports from the US military's medical treatment center in Landstuhl, Germany -- the first stop for nearly 13,000 patients from Iraq, of which about 4,000 suffered battlefield injuries.

* Over the past 3-4 months, the best reporting from the ground in Iraq has been coming from Dahr Jamail of The NewStandard. He'll be leaving soon, but be sure to support his efforts and browse through the archives of "Iraq Dispatches" for a riveting narrative that isn't appearing elsewhere in the media.

* Walden Bello is cheering for the "failure of the empire" in Iraq, hoping that it will lead to the "emergence of the truly democratic republic that the United States was intended to be before it was hijacked to be an imperial democracy."

* Alix de la Grange profiles some former Saddam Hussein generals who are now members of the Iraqi resistance for the Asia Times Online.

* Is the U.S. government above propaganda? Of course not, says Miren Gutierrez.

* What's Ahmed Chalabi up to now? Dan Murphy of the CS Monitor takes a look.

* Mark Huband of the Financial Times reports on new developments in the Niger uranium story, which Josh Marshall promptly throws cold water on.

* Another torture memo has been revealed publicly, this one from the Justice Department. Circulated in 2002 at the request of the CIA in order to maneuver around legal definitions of torture so that more aggressive measures could be used against Gitmo detainees, the memo set the framework for the March 2003 Defense Department memo that rationalized torture in the quest for better intelligence from prisoners. Both documents, which implicate the very top of the Bush cabinet, provided the intellectual ammunition and institutional momentum for the abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

* Following the release of the Justice Department memo, and in an effort to mute concerns about torture, the Bush administration has done one of its typical document dumps. The CAP breaks down the documents that were released to quell the firestorm.

* If you're having trouble following all of the memos related to the torture scandal, the NY Times has compiled a useful guide, while antiwar.com and the National Security Archive have collated the major documents related to the scandal.

* As part of the fallout from the media's focus on torture, Dana Priest of the Washington Post reports that the CIA has stopped its harshest interrogation techniques, pending further legal review.

* Jason Burke of the Guardian details the US government's secret network of prisons around the world "into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the 'war on terror' began" and Human Rights First has issued a complementary report on the activities at these hidden facilities.

* Another investigation by the Guardian probes the goings-on at detention centers in Afghanistan, where there is "widespread evidence of detainees facing beatings, sexual humiliation and being kept for long periods in painful positions."

* The 9/11 commission has found that Al Qaeda planned to strike inside the US earlier than previously thought and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia played crucial roles in facilitating Al Qaeda's growth.

* The commission has also concluded that Iraq and Al Qaeda had no “collaborative relationship". In response, the administration has stuck to its Big Lie technique and Fox News has been dutifully repeating the administration's spin. For added context, see: "No Link? Who Knew?" and John Stewart's slap down of Dick Cheney's Iraq-Al Qaeda claims.

* In yet another sign of overstretch, the US military is getting ready for an involuntary mobilization of nearly 6,000 reserve troops for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Should we be getting ready for the draft?

* In a great column, Molly Ivins skewers the Bush administration's talking points and the media's willingness to give them a free pass.

* "A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an 'avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked' war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands," reports the Guardian.

* Brendan O'Neill says the claim by the International Institute for Strategic Studies that Al Qaeda's ranks have swelled to 18,000 is bogus.

* "Given all the indignant neoconservative 'outrage' over the financial misdeeds arising from the UN’s socialist oil-for-food program during the 1990s, when the UN embargo was killing untold numbers of Iraqi children, one would think that there would be an equal amount of outrage over a much more disgraceful scandal — the U.S. delivery of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein during the Reagan administration in the 1980s," avers Jacob G. Hornberger.

* The LA Times reports on the release of a joint statement by 26 former senior diplomats and military officials which challenges the foreign policy course taken by the Bush administration and urges voters to remove Bush from office come November.

* A conservative President?: Since 9/11, Federal Spending Under Bush Increases at Fastest Rate in 30 Years.

* The AP has sued for access to all of Bush's Vietnam-era service records.

* Although William Arkin "would love nothing better than to see Bush out of office," he views John Kerry as nothing but a "gloomy alternative. Worse yet, in the short term, his 'me too, only better' approach to the war on terrorism could actually serve to make the United States less safe."

* Steve Shalom presents the case for tactical voting come November.

* The Supreme Court has ruled that Dick Cheney's energy task force documents will remain under lock and key.

* Bill Clinton, if you haven't noticed, is all over the news again with the publication of his autobiography. Revisit Clinton's legacy, courtesy of Ed Herman.

* Seymour Hersh's latest article in the New Yorker claims that Mossad is running covert ops into Iran and Syria with the help of the Kurds and Iyad Allawi, the current Prime Minister of Iraq, ran a European hit squad in the 1970s that helped Saddam Hussein rise through the ranks of the Ba'ath party.

* The NY Times reports on the expansion of Israel's "separation barrier" deep into the West Bank to encase the settlement of Ariel, a move that will confiscate thousands of acres of Palestinian land.

* Reuters reports what's been widely suspected: Israel is planning to relocate settlers evacuated from Gaza to the West Bank. And Palestinians are supposed to be thankful for Sharon's "withdrawal" plan...please.

* A poll conducted by the University of Haifa has found that nearly 64% of Israeli Jews believe their government should encourage Arabs to leave the country. In other words, ~64% think ethnic cleansing is A-OK.

* Speaking of ethnic cleansing, it's been going on in the Sudan for quite some time. But that's ok, too, as long as nobody uses the "G word" or dares to juxtapose what's going on in Darfur with what's happened in Israel since 1948.

* The BBC reports on the continued health effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Be proud, America, be proud...

* A UN study has found that the "pace of desertification has doubled since the 1970s, swallowing an area the size of Rhode Island each year and threatening to turn 135 million people into environmental refugees."

* Global warming is occurring faster than thought, according to recent computer projections by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

* A Harvard University study has found that workers in the United States "have fewer legal rights to time off for family matters than workers in most other countries, and rank near the bottom in pregnancy and sick leave" and a related study by Families USA claims that nearly 82 million people in the US went at least one month over the past two years with no health insurance.

* Want the real unemployment rate in the US? Double the official figure and you're pretty close.

* Randall Shelden and William B. Brown chronicle the new American apartheid -- part I and part II.

* Fahrenheit 9/11 is getting tons of press and attention. It's a film worth seeing, no matter how hard people on the right try to stop it. There are, however, other equally compelling documentaries worth checking out this summer -- like Control Room, a movie that goes behind the scenes at Al Jazeera, Preventive Warriors, which peers behind the Bush adminstration's 2002 National Security Strategy, and The Corporation, which takes a look at the pathology of the dominant cultural and business institution on earth.

* Be on the lookout for fascism, says Norman Solomon.

* "Bomb the living daylights out of them." That's Bill O'Reilly's final solution.

* Paul Street tackles the eternal question: “Do you think if people knew this, they would do something about it?”

The Learning Curve

Hiatus

I won't be posting again until the midpoint of next week sometime soon.

Open the gates

Another round-up

Blogging will continue to be sporadic for the time being. What's below is a sort of summary of the past week.

* Welcome to Planet Reagan. The breadth and scope of the media coverage of Reagan's death has been simply amazing to witness. Obviously, I am not one of the people who fondly recalls the Gipper, but I don't deny those who do the ability to remember him in their own way. However, the American media has not enabled this proper memorialization, instead providing what Eric Boehlert describes as "Reagan porn," an extraordinarily generous review of the ex-President's legacy devoid of any meaningful context or critical discussion. Ironically, the very same tropes of reverence and deference Mark Hertsgaard unearthed in his important book on Reagan's relationship with the press, On Bended Knee, returned with a vengeance this past week.

* To counterbalance the overwhelming tone of the coverage, here are just some of the dissident opinions about Reagan's tenure and legacy to emerge in the past week: FAIR notes the disparities between Reagan's media myth and reality; Tim Wise probes Reagan's racial divide, while Derrick Z. Jackson brings up his shameful record on apartheid; James Galbraith and David E. Rosenbaum weigh in on Reagan's economic policy and fiscal legacy, respectively; Michael Bronski explains the truth about Reagan and AIDS; James Bovard exhumes the foreign policy debacles of the '80s, while other stories revisit the Reagan legacy in Afghanistan, East Timor, and Central America. Particularly relevant to today's political environment, of course, are the Reagan policies that planted the seeds of Al Qaeda, nurtured Bin Laden, and coddled Saddam. Additionally, World Press Review surveys press reaction around the world, Jonathan Steele provides the view from Iraq, David Corn dusts off a list of 66 unflattering truths, and Left End of the Dial provides even more alternative interpretations.

* Turning to the impact on current politics, the NY Times reports that the Gipper's legacy looms over the current presidential campaign and the Boston Globe notes that Kerry and Bush are seizing on it for their own purposes.

* Jim Lobe summarizes the major issues raised by the "torture memo" uncovered by the Wall St. Journal earlier in the week. Additionally, this development spotlights Bush's role in the torture scandal, to which he responds that his office has always urged underlings to stick to the law. A likely story.

* A new report from the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) charges the Bush administration with committing up to ten categories of war crimes and rights violations as a matter of routine policy in Iraq. HRW has also issued a new report which argues that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was "the predictable result of the Bush administration's decision to circumvent international law."

* Donald Rumsfeld's office urged military intelligence to "take the gloves off" while handling John Walker Lindh, according to the LA Times, in an act that "foreshadowed the type of abuse documented in photographs of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib." As you'll recall, Dave Lindorff raised precisely this point last week.

* Truthout collates some of the other torture articles to appear recently.

* Robert Kuttner says it is now "unambiguously clear that the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, and at Abu Ghraib was official policy" and it is an absolute travesty "that a few grunts are taking the fall," rather than the war criminals sitting in the White House and Pentagon.

* In response to some of the recent torture news, Paul Woodward of the War in Context comments, "Bush administration and Congress are embroiled in debate about interpretations of law. Senior officials, aware that a few months from now they may no longer be in office, are at pains to avoid placing themselves in legal jeopardy. What led to this situation was not the legal opinion of any particular lawyer, but a cultural climate in which not only the Bush administration, but also Congress and most of the citizenry participated in post-911 America. As America 'fought back,' the administration tapped into and fueled a visceral response to the attacks that was nothing more than an effort to violently assert America's global dominance. That effort was provided with a narrative -- a 'war on terror' -- and ascribed with moral imperatives, but the underlying force was a crude expression of power. 'For us or against us,' a contempt for international opinion and international bodies, steered by fierce national pride, led America down a path whose brutality would sooner or later become evident not only to the rest of the world but to America itself. The star culprits are now appearing, almost daily, before Congress, but the shock at each new revelation will really only be feigned if America as a whole does not claim its share of the responsibility."

* Let us also not forget a prime legitimizer of torture in post-9/11 America. No, not you, Mr. Alter, or any of the other "pro pain pundits." I'm talking about Alan Dershowitz, who, it seems, is at it again.

* The NY Times reports that the forced nudity of detainees in Iraq was part of a common, institutionalized pattern of treatment and Chris Shumway of The NewStandard reports that the torture of male prisoners is oversadowing the sexual abuse of female detainees in Iraq.

* Thankfully, the legal charges have been dropped against the Abu Ghraib protester at a military recruitment office in Boston.

* Howard LaFranchi of the CS Monitor explains some of the consequences of the recently passed UN Resolution on Iraq.

* "Links to the United States run deep among many in the interim Iraqi government," report Farah Stockman and Thanassis Cambanis of the Boston Globe. "Although about a third of the new government's leaders spent most of their lives under Saddam Hussein's regime, five of the six leading posts in the government are held by people who lived a significant part of their lives abroad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. At least two Cabinet members are US citizens. In addition to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who was involved in a CIA-backed coup attempt against Hussein, at least seven others were members of exile groups funded by the United States." Not surprisingly, many Iraqis think the new government is made up of pawns.

* In a corresponding article, the NY Times reports that the CIA helped Allawi conduct terrorist attacks in Iraq during the early 1990s in a campaign that seems reminiscent of "Operation Mongoose."

* According to the BBC, Moqtada al-Sadr has expressed conditional support for the new interim government in Iraq.

* A LA Times poll has found that most US voters now think the Iraq war was not worth fighting.

* Separate reports from the Washington Post and the Independent depict widespread restentment towards the US presence in Baghdad.

* Joanne Landy outlines the case for an immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

* Bob Woodward says the media should have been more critical of Bush's case for the war in Iraq. Ah, more Monday morning quarterbacking from a media luminary. How quaint.

* The conquest of Iraq was expected to boost oil prospects and help lower the global price of oil. Of course, things haven't quite gone as hoped. Nonetheless, Jim Krane of the AP reports that while US gas prices have ballooned in recent months, "Iraqis pay only about 5 cents a gallon for gasoline -- a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars [of] subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers."

* The NY Times probes the paradox of a decline in oil production alongside a growth in reserves for many oil companies.

* Is the world's oil running out fast? The BBC's Adam Porter reports from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Berlin.

* The AP reports that a SIPRI study has found that global military spending reached $956 billion last year, topping off an astonishing 29% increase since 2001. Moreover, the United States accounts for nearly half of the global expenditures.

* "The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration," according to the LA Times. The report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was released to much fanfare in late April and used to bolster claims that the Bush administration was winning the "war on terror." So much for that. The revised version will indicate that global terrorism has increased rather than declined.

* The St. Petersburg Times has found proof of the long denied flight of Saudis out of Tampa International Airport on September 13, 2001.

* A German television documentary has again raised the claim that the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to the US one year before 9/11.

* In the New Yorker, Ian Buruma profiles one of the most influential players behind the "war on terror" -- Princeton historian Bernard Lewis.

* Tony Blair and the Labour Party got their asses kicked in local elections in Britain this past week, in large part due to backlash against the Iraq war.

* Hamid Karzai is making an appeal to several warlords across Afghanistan to help him with the forthcoming elections, according to the NY Times.

* The recall vote of Hugo Chavez is set for August 15, although his opponents are already raising concerns about the security of the ballots due to the recent implementation of touch-screen voting in Venezuela.

* Marc Lacey of the NY Times reports that the Bush administration is reconsidering its Sudan policy, hoping to take a more aggressive stance on the human rights violations there and avoid repeating the same "mistakes" the Clinton administration made on Rwanda. Still, this new found urgency over the conflict puzzles some Sudanese officials since the situation in Darfur is relatively calm now.

* Elaine Sciolino of the NY Times reports from France on the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Amidst the ceremonies, Mike Davis writes that it's important not to forget about the sacrifices of Soviet soldiers on the eastern front.

* Ha'aretz analyzes the revisions to the recently passed Gaza withdrawal plan and its ramifications for Israeli politics. Regardless, Uri Avnery says the plan is a sham, "a recipe for the continuation of the war in another form."

* Also in Ha'aretz, Danny Rubinstein reports on the changing emphasis Palestinians are placing on the historical events of 1967 and 1948 and Gideon Levy revisits Jenin two years after the IDF's Operation Desert Shield.

* In an article that focuses on the paucity of CNN's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Electronic Intifada's Nigel Parry contends that "citizens of the US — the country that intervenes more than any other to perpetuate the status quo on the ground — are offered a grossly distorted account of events on the ground that gives them no real sense of the imbalance of power between the two sides in the conflict, no idea of the extent of the US role in the conflict, and little impetus to call for a more even-handed US foreign policy in the Middle East." As a consequence of this, Parry claims Americans are presented "the realities of an ethnic conflict in favour of the aggressor," which only serve to prolong the "ongoing genocide" within the West Bank and Gaza.

* Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post reports that gains in the US economy don't seem to be helping Bush in the polls because they are being overshadowed by concerns about Iraq.

* The Guardian reports that a GAO investigation suggests that all of the "50,000 troops who served in the first Gulf war might have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents during the fighting and its aftermath."

* Christopher Getzan of The NewStandard reports that the "Miami Model" of protest regulation was exported to the G8 meeting in Georgia last week and is likely to show up at future protests around the country, too. The Telegraph has more on what went on inside the walls of the summit.

* More Enron tapes showing a deliberate attempt to manufacture the energy crisis of 2000 in California have been uncovered by CBS News. In a related development, Jason Leopold reports on the release of additional documents on the scandal.

* ABC News reports that the Pentagon threw away about $100 million on unused airline tickets over the past few years. Add this waste to the already huge pile.

* Does the Bush administration lie? William M. Arkin says it's no mistake that it's sometimes hard to say.

* Chris Floyd weighs in on recent revelations about Henry Kissinger and the hagiography of Reagan in the Moscow Times.

* It's tough times for the neocons, says Paul Richter in the LA Times. Nevertheless, Stephen Hayes, the neocons' waterboy over at the Weekly Standard, is still hard at work pushing the Iraq-Al Qaeda link and the infamous Feith memo from last November.

* Karen Kwiatkowski critiques Thomas Barnett's much discussed theory about "The Pentagon's New Map."

* Here's the transcript to a recent speech by Noam Chomsky at Oxford University on the topic of Iraq and beyond.

* With Euro 2004 kicking off this weekend, Martin Jacques chronicles the increasing influence of globalization on European soccer in the Observer.

Keeping things in perspective

FYI

Blogging's going to run hot and cold for a little while, as I'm preoccupied with other things.

The week gone by

* The first of June was, according to Justin Huggler of the Independent, "the day the 'stooges' rebelled: first with the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council insisting their man got the presidency and, second, with the new interim government saying they wanted real power in their own country." Meanwhile, many hurdles remain for the US.

* William Rivers Pitt dissects what's going on with the Chalabi story. New revelations have emerged since this piece was written, including an allegation that Chalabi tipped off the Iranians that US intelligence had broken one of its secret communications codes. Needless to say, the formerly cozy "Chalabi alliance" between civilians in and around the Pentagon and the core of the neoconservative movement is in tatters. In the New Yorker, Jane Mayer explores what might come next for Chalabi.

* CIA director George Tenet resigned amidst much "imperial intrigue" last week. Was he spooked? Is he the fall guy? The scapegoat? Speculation continues.

* Judging from two recent polls conducted in Iraq, most Iraqis want the US military to leave immediately. And yet, as FAIR notes, American opinion-makers still demand that the US "stay the course" and prolong an unpopular "occupation for democracy."

* From the BBC: "Weapons of mass destruction do not exist in Iraq and it is 'delusional' to think they will be found, says former chief US weapons inspector David Kay."

* $119.4 billion has been spent thus far on Iraq. Obviously, this money could be used for different purposes.

* Dick Cheney's office played a crucial role in getting Halliburton contracts for Iraq, according to an email obtained by Time Magazine. Of course, Cheney's crew denies this.

* James Cusick of the Sunday Herald investigates the current predicament of global oil politics, particularly in the wake of attacks in Saudi Arabia and the instability fomented by the Iraq conflict.

* "The spring of 2004 may prove to be a turning point not only in the history of America but also in that of the world," writes Michael Lind in the Financial Times. "Until recently, Bush critics could hope the Iraq war would be an unfortunate but minor episode ahead of a long period of benevolent US global hegemony. Now that America's reputation for benevolence and irresistible power has been severely damaged, the US will be forced to settle for a far more modest role in the world than that sought by both neoliberals and neoconservatives. Whether Mr Bush is re-elected or not, his legacy is already apparent."

* In related news, Jim Lobe notes the growing pessimism about US power around the world.

* Taking a closer look at the legacy of departed "image czars" Charlotte Beers and Margaret Tutwiler, Nancy Snow probes some of the successes and failures at rebranding the United States in the wake of 9/11.

* Analysts at an Asia-Pacific Roundtable on security at Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies have concluded that Al Qaeda is winning the global "war on terror", and that the tactics being utilized to battle the threat of terrorism are making the situation worse. See also: small victories add up.

* William Greider says we need to abandon the "war on terror." I only hope other esteemed liberals come to the same conclusion, and soon.

* "Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed — especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11," writes Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, in a NY Times opinion piece.

* As the US military realizes the reality of over-stretch, it is taking steps to address the problem: debating the draft, screwing with reservists, and issuing additional stop-loss orders.

* If Bush is going to give more speeches on Iraq, Chalmers Johnson asks that he addresses these 12 questions.

* Jefferson Morley analyzes the disparities in media coverage of the US military assault that killed over 40 in Western Iraq two weeks ago, noting that the American media was much more willing to swallow the military's line that it did not attack a wedding party than other media around the world.

* Richard Neville asks in the Sydney Morning Herald, "Who killed Nick Berg?"

* The hits keep coming. Michael Massing, Robert Parry, Tim Rutten and Alex Cockburn weigh in on the NY Times' Iraq apology. The public editor of the Times has, too, in an effort to disperse and dilute the blame.

* E&P summarizes the key points of Franklin Foer's New York Magazine article on Judith Miller's Iraq reporting. Coincidentally, in an astonishing display of either chutzpah or ignorance, Miller returned to the Times' pages with this story.

* Get ready for the return of the "stab in the back," says Matthew Yglesias. The stage is being set for the post-Iraq blame game, with the media square in the sights of the prowarriors.

* The Washington Post reports that "Allegations of sexual assault in the U.S. Army have climbed steadily over the past five years, and the problem has been abetted by weak prevention efforts, slow investigations, inadequate field reporting and poor managerial oversight, according to internal Army data and a new report from an Army task force."

* Michael Hirsh and John Barry of Newsweek report that the Abu Ghraib scandal is being covered up and whitewashed. Additionally, the Washington Post reports that "the Army has opened investigations into at least 91 cases of possible misconduct by U.S. soldiers against detainees and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, a total not previously reported and one that points to a broader range of wrongful behavior than defense officials have acknowledged" and USA Today reports that more than 1/3 of the prisoners who have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 15 out of 37 since December 2002 -- were "shot, strangled or beaten by U.S. personnel before they died."

* "How do we square the tales of American cruelty with the promise of democracy we thought we were bringing to Iraq?" asks Frank Rich in the NY Times. "One obvious way might be to acknowledge with some humility that our often proud history has always had a fault line, running from slavery to Wounded Knee to My Lai. (Read accounts of Andersonville, the Confederate-run Civil War prison at which some 13,000 died, for literal echoes of some of Abu Ghraib's inhumanity.) But there's an easier way out in 2004: blame Janet Jackson for what's gone wrong in Iraq, or if not her, then Jenna Jameson."

* Ze'ev Schiff writes in Ha'aretz that the "abuse of prisoners detained at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq proves that it matters not if the occupier declares its aim to enforce democracy or uphold human rights, or if it calls itself an 'enlightened occupation' - the degradation of prisoners is an almost unavoidable consequence of an occupation regime. In the end, the occupation will corrupt the occupiers."

* Remember John Walker Lindh? Dave Lindorff says his case is extremely relevant now, particularly considering how he was handled while in US custody.

* "Most Americans were shocked by the sadistic treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison," observes Bob Herbert. But we shouldn't have been, since many prisoners in the United States are treated similiarly. Even worse, says Herbert, "Very few Americans have raised their voices in opposition to our shameful prison policies. And I'm convinced that's primarily because the inmates are viewed as less than human."

* "One out of every 11 persons in the federal and state prison systems in the US is serving a life sentence, four times the number of 'lifers' in 1984," reports Debra Watson of the WSWS.

* 248K jobs were added to the US economy in May, although the unemployment rate remained unchanged from April. Further analysis of the job figures, here.

* The Bush administration's fiscal agenda, declares Paul Krugman, "is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year."

* Can terrorist warnings sway votes? Perhaps purposefully so, says Ray McGovern.

* The Washington Post reports that Bush's campaign for re-election is the most negative one in history thus far. The AP also reports that "President Bush is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, wringing maximum political mileage from a perk of office paid for by taxpayers."

* "Once more," Charley Reece declares, "the Democratic Party is proving that it is not really a party of opposition, but rather a tweedledee to the Republican tweedledum."

* Josh Marshall outlines what John Kerry's foreign policy might look like in The Atlantic Monthly.

* The Plame leak investigation is heating up. Cheney has been questioned already by prosecutors, and Bush is conferring with private counsel in what John Dean describes as a "stunning and extraordinary development."

* Ronald Reagan has passed away. While I have no love for the man's politics, I have no desire to spit on his grave. I am, however, extremely wary of the immense project of historical engineering the American right is going to kick in to high gear now.

* Molly Ivins connects the dots between the recently unearthed Enron tapes and Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan.

* "A direct line runs from the 'segregation academies' of the post-Brown South and today’s corporate-invented school vouchers 'movement,'" contends the Black Commentator. "Both talk the same language: a 'freedom of choice' double-speak that would preserve and expand racial and economic privilege. In place of Brown, today’s voucher advocates would subsidize the 'choices' that somehow become available in an American social marketplace that has historically devalued Blacks. They would achieve this unregulated educational supermarket by liquidating the principle and promise of universal, quality public education."

* "It's always satisfying to have a pet theory supported by new data," avers John Chuckman. "A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine, that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other advanced societies." For Chuckman, this finding is "strangely both comforting and disturbing."

* "The number of Palestinians the IDF killed in the territories or in foiling attempted attacks in May was the highest since Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002 - 111 compared to 55 in April and 79 in March," reports Arnon Regular in Ha'aretz.

* Genocide in Palestine? Paul de Rooij puts Palestinian misery in perspective.

* Jonathan Freedland contends that Ariel Sharon's recent preoccupation with a Gaza pullout is driven more by demographic pressures than a concern for the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the strip.

* Dominique Vidal probes the cancer of anti-Semitism in the Arab world in Le Monde diplomatique.

* With the recall of Hugo Chavez going forward, Mark Weisbrot observes that the American media has not only failed on Iraq, but also with its reporting on the situation in Venezuela.

* The Guardian reports on efforts to assuage the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.

* Here are several news stories regarding the floods which devasted Haiti and the Dominican Republic ~2 weeks ago.