the morons are in charge.

* EW:

"So let's see. Taking what we can infer from Hoekstra's recent bitching, in which he wants to try those who reveal our illegal rendition programs as Al Qaeda sympathizers. And this, which suggests that Negroponte will fire anyone who admits what anyone who can read already understands--that Iraq is FUBAR. It seems the one thing consistent here is an absolute prohibition on the truth.

I hereby nominate the word "Intelligence" to be today's George Orwell word of the day."

* ew:

"Say Tony (Blair) ?! You know how you've been claiming for years that your involvement with George Bush pressures him to take some action on Israel? Well, the whole world has seen you attempt to influence Bush toward a moderate path. And they've now seen the effect that attempt has had--One Week. Bush will get around to responding to your entreaties in his and Condi's own good time. Still feel like your implication in George Bush's crimes is having a salutary effect on the Middle East crisis?

This business with One Week is nothing more than self-delusion on Israel and the US' part, an attempt to paint a futile attack, largely on civilians, with the face of deliberation."

* garance via EW:

WHY IT'S TAKING SO LONG. A reliable source tells me that the reason the United States has been so slow in evacuating its citizens from Lebanon is that the public diplomacy (i.e., P.R.) issues raised by evacuating under Israeli assault are so complicated. Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety. That's how things normally work. (See Laura Rozen on the evacuation from Albania here.) In this case, however, the diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists, which, when added to the general concern within lower-level diplomatic circles about ever creating a Fall of Saigon-style visual for the news media, have led the Americans to be slower than they could have been about getting U.S. citizens out of harm's way.

On Monday, Steve Clemons raised concerns about "sending a cruise ship, a slow moving huge target, into a war zone" to evacuate Americans. However, it seems to me that such a move would be perfectly consistent with attempting to downplay the severity of the conflict and the nature of the Israeli threat to American citizens in Lebanon.

the morons are in charge.