juan cole: This isn't going very well

* from the NYT article on bojinka2 that was banned in the UK:

"In the pocket of one of the suspects, the police found the computer memory stick that showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the United States, a British official said. The man is said to have had a diary that included a list that the police interpreted as a step-by-step plan for an attack. The items included batteries and Lucozade bottles. It also included a reminder to select a date."

best not to forget that.

* juancole:

"Meanwhile, bombings rocked Turkey on Monday. A radical Kurdish group claimed credit, indicating it was trying to sabotage one of Turkey's major industry's, tourism.

The bombings are encouraging Turkey to step up its shelling of northern Iraq, where US-backed Kurdish politicians are harboring the terrorist PKK or Kurdish Workers' Party.

Bombings stretched from Istanbul to southern Iraq on Monday, in a new arc of crisis. This isn't going very well."

* csm:

"The United States is the world's only military superpower and has the globe's largest economy. Yet, by some measures, the US is a second-rate industrial nation - at best."

* lindorff:

"As co-author of The Case for Impeachment, the most common question I get besides "Why hasn't Bush been impeached yet?" comes from right-wing critics, who ask some variant (usually laced with profanities) of: "How can you criticize the president when the country's at war?"

It's understandable that people might ask such a thing, given that we have some 140,000 American troops fighting in Iraq, and another 10,000 or so in Afghanistan, but the truth is that these conflicts aren't what people have in mind (most people don't even think about those wars). They're talking about the so-called "War on Terror.""

* counterpunch:

"How do we get things back on track? How do we get people to start using their rational minds? Cajole them into it. No scare tactics. (We don't want to rouse that reptilian brain). Rational campaigning worked in Connecticut. Senator Joe Lieberman, the old corporate warhorse, was routed in the Democratic primary by a fresh, young face, Ned Lamont. He comes from good billionaire stock. His granduncle, Corliss Lamont, bankrolled left wing causes back in the thirties and forties.

A good start would be to get rid of some of those encrusted incumbents in both the House and the Senate who seem to have become rusted into their seats. If we can get rid of some of those walking dead Democrats and the worst of the Republicans, this November, we might get somewhere by the time the Presidential election rolls around in 2008."

* john walsh:

"When Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut, a prime loser was the Lobby. Like the Israeli army in Lebanon, the Israel Lobby in Connecticut was exposed as a paper tiger. Joe Lieberman is AIPAC's boy; when he speaks at the yearly AIPAC convention in Washington, he elicits wild cheers, standing ovations, shouts of "Go, Joe, Go." Only the considerably less sanctimonious Dick Cheney does as well with that crowd. If the Lobby is on your side, you are supposed to win elections, and if it is not, down you go. But that did not happen in Connecticut despite the full exertion of the Lobby. In the final days of the campaign 1.5 million dollars poured into Lieberman's coffers, and virtually the entire Dem establishment was ordered into the fray on his side."