In brief

* Ira Chernus offers a "Tale of Two Stories" -- North Korean nukes vs. Iraqi deaths. "The North Korea story continues to dominate the headlines, while the Iraq death toll story has quickly disappeared," he observes. "By all logic it should have been the other way around."

* It's generally conclusive: grizzled political veterans hate the new Lancet report on Iraq mortality, preferring to ignore it altogether. In contrast, the people who actually study stuff like mortality -- ya know, those damn "experts" -- are almost uniformly taking up the opposite stance. But, again, what do they know...

* The worst in Iraq is yet to come? Dear lord, let's hope not. Already, we could be seeing the beginning of the dissolution of the central government in Baghdad.

* Gareth Porter offers about the only sane advice left on Iraq: "pursue the course that the Bush administration has thus far resisted: dropping its threatening demeanor toward Iran and working with it and Iraq’s Arab neighbors to craft a settlement that would constrain the Shiite militia and prompt the kind of political and economic concessions to Sunni minority that could bring a Lebanon-style peace between the two communities. But to get the Sunnis on board, such a settlement would require that Bush agree to a timetable for withdrawal."

* A story that, unfortunately, gets far too little attention: the tragic plight of Christian minorities in Iraq. Related essay, here.

* The American love affair with "democracy" continues shining through in the Palestinian territories. If your guys can't win elections on their own, whattayado? Keep throwing money behind them -- $42M this time around. That's called democracy "promotion," wee ones.

* There's something deeply perturbing about Lynne Stewart's sentencing. Background, here. Plus: Matthew Rothschild on the continued conflation of protest with terrorism.

* Ah, the myth of the spat-upon veteran. Useful one, that is, for the prowarriors.

* Keep up those cheers for American health care. We all should be very proud of our current system.

* Infrastructure? Pfft. Who needs to invest in infrastructure? The magical market genie will do that, if need be.