Lnx

Sorry, but I'm pressed for time. Here are some links to hold you over for a bit:

* The Guardian runs down some of the main claims of the Oxford Research Group's new report on the potential consequences of an American/Israeli attack on Iran.

* "The U.S. intelligence community's top Middle East analyst from 2000 to 2005 has accused the George W. Bush administration of distorting and politicising intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war," reports Jim Lobe. Paul Pillar, formerly the CIA's esteemed expert on the Near East and South Asia, lays out the case in a Foreign Affairs article that appeared last Friday. As Lobe relates, "Pillar's charges that the administration 'cherry-picked' and otherwise manipulated the intelligence process in order to take the country to war are the most serious since the leak of the so-called 'Downing Street Memo' to the London Sunday Times last May."

* Dahr Jamail notes that Iraq is, conveniently, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind."

* It's a long road back for many American soldiers in Iraq. Particularly those who have suffered grievous wounds.

* Fred Kaplan looks at some of the latest data on Iraq and asks, incredulously, "What have we been doing over there for nearly three years? Have we mucked things up entirely? Can anything be done—is it too late to rally some massive multinational effort—to keep this ravaged country from collapsing? Is anybody in the Bush administration looking at these graphs and asking the inescapable questions, much less seeking some practical answers?"

* Knight Ridder's Nancy Youssef notes that, in many ways, it's back to the future in Iraq.

* We're going to have to get used to wars for oil, claims Michael Klare.

* Ilan Pappe wonders, "Why is the history of modern Palestine such a matter of debate? Why is it still regarded as a complex, indeed obscure, chapter in contemporary history that cannot be easily deciphered? Any abecedarian student of its past who comes to it with clean hands would immediately recognize that in fact its story is very simple. For that matter it is not vastly different from other colonialist instances or tales of national liberation."

* Unfortunately, America's use of torture is going to continue no matter what John McCain and Congress do, argues Alfred W. McCoy.

* Again, you'd think a revelation that Cheney and other "senior officials" authorized Scooter Libby's leaking of Valerie Plame's identity would garner more attention than it has.

* Doug Ireland has some questions about Dick Cheney's "shooting accident" over the weekend.

* Hurricane Katrina offers us a nice snapshot of the US government at work.

* Greg Tate reviews some recent books on hip hop culture.