Miscellany

* In separate pieces, Patrick Cockburn reports on the suspected theft of over $1 billion from Iraq's defense ministry and "Baghdad's worst day of slaughter since the fall of Saddam...when more than a dozen co-ordinated attacks thundered across Baghdad from dawn into the late afternoon - claiming 152 lives and wounding 542."

* While a US-insurgent stalemate is reported in Iraq's Anbar province, the "Fallujah model" again made its way to another Iraqi city recently. This time in Tal Afar.

* Two important books on Iraq have come out recently. Read interesting reviews of these testimonials from Anthony Shadid and George Packer.

* Last Chance for Iraq? Peter Galbraith offers yet another prescription -- a modified break-up -- for the war torn country in the NYRB.

* Goody. Now you can pay for the Iraq mess with money directly from your pocket! Here.

* Michael Klare examines the Americans' losing battle for oil in Iraq.

* Colin Powell is still trying to cover his ass for the Iraq debacle. Unsuccessfully, that is.

* Happy Anniversary, PNAC.

* Jim Lobe and John Basil Utley report on the happenings at a major New America Foundation conference where academics and policy makers galore probed the many shortcomings of the Bush-led "war on terror."

* Mark Danner looks at the GWOT, four years on.

* Lost at Tora Bora. Mary Anne Weaver recounts Osama's infamous escape in the NYT Magazine. She sets the stage thusly: "as the last major battle of the war in Afghanistan began, hidden from view inside the caves were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 well-trained, well-armed men. A mile below, at the base of the caves, some three dozen U.S. Special Forces troops fanned out. They were the only ground forces that senior American military leaders had committed to the Tora Bora campaign."

* IPS' William Fisher reports on the ongoing hunger strike at Gitmo.

* Scott Ritter says the EU's stalled negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program is yet another signpost on the march to eventual US military action.

* The Washington Post recently outlined some changes in US nuclear posture. Jim Lobe adds some missing context.

* We Deliver! According to the AP, "The United States is the largest supplier of weapons to developing nations, delivering more than $9.6 billion in arms to countries including those in the Near East and Asia in 2004, and boosting worldwide sales to those countries to the highest amount since 2000, a congressional study says."

* Is Gaza now free? Hardly. As Charley Reese says, withdrawal is not nearly enough.

* Der Spiegel says Germany lost its recent national election.

* The UN's annual Human Development Report "normally concerns itself with the Third World," according to Paul Vallely of the Independent, "but the 2005 edition scrutinizes inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty. It reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday."

* "Although we haven’t heard President Bush say it much lately," Gene Gerard writes, "he came into office as a self-professed 'compassionate conservative.'" But as an annual Census Bureau study suggests, "the country hasn’t seen much of that compassion in the last five years. Many Americans are working harder, earning less, and without the benefit of health insurance. It’s easy to understand why the report was released a day after the largest natural disaster in a century, when much of the country was distracted."

* Deja vu all over again? Like Katrina, Hurricane Rita is taking aim at the Gulf of Mexico's energy infrastructure. It is also strengthening rapidly as it moves westward.

* Is Katrina a Harbinger of Still More Powerful Hurricanes? Following an MIT study, Science Magazine publishes the second major scientific article in the last two months to suggest global warming is making hurricanes more intense.

* "A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover," reports the Independent. "Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years."

* Project Censored has released its list of the top 25 underreported stories of 2005. Camille T. Taiara has a more detailed run down of the top ten.

* Here's an excerpt from James Howard Kunstler's new book on peak oil and related topics, The Long Emergency.

* In a creative essay excerpted from his new book, The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen uses his own life experience to make concrete the realities of white privilege.

* Here's a very well-deserved smackdown of Victor Davis Hanson, the NRO crowd's favorite historian and "classicist."