President Bush took away my son, my only son

* via kathleen, peter dale scott reviews suskind at bob parry's place:

"The book can be construed as a well-argued case for impeachment of the Vice-President, and possibly also of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both men are accused of misdirecting the country and even at times of frustrating the clearly expressed will of President Bush, who in this book emerges as far closer to Tenet than many of us had believed. Condoleezza Rice is criticized chiefly for her failure as National Security Adviser to establish a robust process of policy coordination, leaving Cheney and Rumsfeld to prevail."

* athenae:

"It's about the basic human fact that, as old Bill Shakespeare wrote, "the harder matched, the greater victory." It's no real big thing for us to squash a fly of a country beneath our heel, but it is a very big thing for the fly to throw off the boot on its back, slap the great big would-be squasher around and laugh out loud while doing so. Think of it this way. If, as the 101st fighting keyboarders keep telling us, our national manhood is at stake in Iraq and now, by proxy, in Lebanon, imagine what is at stake for the opposition.

* newsday:

""President Bush took away my son, my only son," the mother had said.

Just this once, there was no poor, helpless family member saying that they were proud that their son had died in this war.

Don't ever say that the young man had died in vain, because that is the icy truth of Iraq that people often cannot handle."

* ken:

"Two weeks ago, I reported in this blog that a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was being blocked by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Soon after, six U.S. senators called for a new NIE—and today the Senate passed an amendment, proposed by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, that requires Negroponte “to task the intelligence community” with the preparation of a new NIE on Iraq."

* ken:

"According to Augustus Richard Norton, a professor of international relations at Boston University and Middle East expert, six Israeli civilians had been killed in the six years prior to the Israeli invasion—one by a falling anti-aircraft round fired at Israeli aircraft violating Lebanese airspace and five in an August 2002 Palestinian operation that was likely aided by Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Norton says, roughly twenty Lebanese civilians were killed either by hostile action or by mines left behind by the IDF."