Cobra2

* xymphora: "Michael Gordon co-wrote, with Judith Miller, the infamous aluminum tube article in the New York Times, the article which formed much of the basis for the PR spin by the Bush Administration, particularly Dick Cheney, to lead to the attack on Iraq. Gordon is now flogging a book (Cobra2) he wrote on the very war his misleading article helped to cause! It's enough to make you sick."

* the AP's Nedra Pickler is all confused because Blinky said 'kerfuffle'. MyDD: "if Bush has lost Nedra Pickler, he's lost the nation."

* froomkin: "One problem with the Bush presidency, particularly since the 2004 campaign, has been that Bush was so reluctant to be questioned. It's not clear whether his sudden willingness is a blip, or a welcome shift. But either way, the other problem remains: His answers."

* froomkin: "Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "The people running this country sound convinced that reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.""

* kos: "The Civil War I partly lived through, in El Salvador, cost 100,000 lives over 12 years.
That's an average of 23 per day.
The civil war in Algeria has cost 200,000 lives since 1988, or roughly 37 killed per day.
And so on. What we're seeing in Iraq is far more horrific than your garden-variety modern-day civil war. It truly, honestly, isn't a matter of debate anymore. As for temperature, it's already twice to three times as hot of some of the most recent, deadliest civil wars."

* "In the period before the Iraq war, the CIA and the Bush administration erroneously believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding major programs for weapons of mass destruction. Now NBC News has learned that for a short time the CIA had contact with a secret source at the highest levels within Saddam Hussein’s government, who gave them information far more accurate than what they believed. It is a spy story that has never been told before, and raises new questions about prewar intelligence." (link)