newly dead

WAR
* another 50 or so people killed in iraq in a few bombs. its hard to keep track - and hardly seems worth mentioning - the stories are the same, but the people are newly dead.

* the trial from that pre-invasion fragging incident in kuwait has just begun LINK

* davidcorn picks up my point that blinky (presumably) erroneously claimed that there are 150k iraqi soldiers.

* mcgovern (read, as always): "Many have asked how it could be that a comparatively small group of intelligence analysts in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was able to get it right on several key Iraq-related issues, while larger agencies like CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency—with, literally, a cast of thousands—got it so wrong. The answer is simple: INR had the guts to be the skunk at the picnic. That's how. State Department analysts showed backbone in resisting White House pressure, as well as in-house prodding from the likes of Under Secretary of State John Bolton, to cook intelligence to the White House recipe...
If plans go forward for an attack on Iran, it may become necessary for those intelligence professionals with the requisite courage—if any are left—to mount their own pre-emptive strike against the kind of corrupted intelligence that greased the skids for war on Iraq. That they would be forced to go to the press, preferably with documentation, is a sad commentary. But no alternatives with any promise are available. " LINK

* flashback: my favourite 911 moment was when someone had the wherewithal to pick up a passport off the ground at the wtc after the planes had hit, but before the buildings had fallen. lo & behold - it belonged to a hijacker - somehow nobody noticed till like 2 years later... i guess it was about the time of the 911comm, which incidentally, was the time the found that footage of the hijackers going thru the airport-screening at logan