Category Archives: Current Events

Fred Kaplan on a significant change (for the better, sez he) in the U.S. Army.

Glenn Greenwald has more on the story that's not going to go away — the question of who hyped the post-9/11 anthrax scare into a justification for the invasion of Iraq. We've all heard the accusation that the Bush administration "lied us into war." Here's another lie that got us there…and it looks like some members of the press are still protecting confidential sources that crafted that lie.

Once upon a time, a reason for going to war with Iraq was the high probability that the post-9/11 anthrax attacks in this country were the work of ol' Saddam. There was, we were told, evidence to support this assumption. Now, it's starting to look like the anthrax in question originated in a U.S. lab and was even disseminated by someone working in that lab, apparently with no foreign involvement.

While the whole story is full of questions, more so than ever, it does look like pretty much everything we knew or thought we knew at the time was wrong. Moreover, it looks like a lot of members of the press — ABC News, in particular — were fed bogus information and passed it on…and would rather forget the whole thing than deal with this. Glenn Greenwald has the story — what's known of it. I'm not sure what happened but there's definitely someone in this whole mess who did something about which we all oughta be outraged.

John Heilemann on the slinging of mud in the current presidential campaign. Personally, I don't think it's fair to blame John McCain for what John McCain says. He's such a maverick that he doesn't even go along with himself.

Eugene Robinson reminds us of the debate in this country about torture, and adds in some new revelations. He thinks that before Bush leaves office, he'll issue blanket pardons for everyone who has been involved in "enhanced interrogation" techniques. I think that's the least of it. I think Bush is going to pardon almost everyone who ever served him for almost every crime you can think of, including war profiteering and lying to Congress.

Joe Conason points out something that a lot of pundits and reporters don't seem to realize, which is that John McCain is responsible for the John McCain campaign. Anyone remember when the senator from Arizona stood for a loftier, decent kind of politics? Now, it's all right out of the Bush/Rove playbook. The next thing you know, they'll be accusing Obama of having fathered a black baby.

And speaking of The New Yorker, I should link to the piece by Seymour Hersh which describes efforts to get us to war with Iran. Those efforts reportedly included discussions of the U.S. faking some incident that would make it look like Iranians attacked us. Yeah, like we ever need a reason to go to war.

Here's an article I've waited a long time to read. Charles Van Doren was a big winner on the famously-rigged TV game program, Twenty-One. The Robert Redford movie, Quiz Show, was mainly about him. For years, people have told the story of Professor Van Doren and dramatized and fictionalized it but he steadfastly declined to speak for himself. He wouldn't give interviews. He declined all offers to write the story from his perspective.

But now he has. In the current New Yorker, he tells the tale…and I tend to believe his account. Since almost everyone involved is deceased, it would not have been difficult for him to spin some aspects of it to be more favorable to him. He does not do this — nor does he argue as some have that the "scandal" was way overblown — leading me to trust the accuracy of what he writes.

Timothy Noah attempts to make sense of all of John McCain's conflicting votes and statements about tax cuts. It pretty much comes down to this: If you want to be the Republican nominee for president, you have to take a blood oath that you will not raise any tax anywhere at any time, and that's been McCain's position all along except when it hasn't been and those times don't count because he says they don't.

Joe Conason on McCain's insistence that The Surge is a great success. With other Bush-backing politicians and increasingly with McCain, I get the feeling that when they say "The Surge is working," they mean that it's taken some of the heat and embarrassment off them in terms of their domestic Republican base…and that it has almost nothing to do with what's actually occurring in Iraq.

So how long will it be be before the McCain ads just say, "Barack Obama is a Muslim extremist who's on a holy mission to destroy the United States and if you elect him, we'll all die?"

It's only July and they're already getting close to that.

Reading the polls and such, I don't get that McCain is in that much trouble. But he and his campaign managers obviously think otherwise.

This blog post by the ubiquitous political blogger called "hilzoy" summarizes the problems that the al-Maliki statement presents for John McCain and the whole argument for him as a candidate.

Joe Conason on why we oughta lift the embargo on Cuba. As long as I've remembered, I've been hearing that the embargo would bring about the downfall of Castro. For how many decades does it have to have "no impact whatsoever" before we question that prediction?

Joel Stein discusses ways that humorists can get some jokes out of Barack Obama. Obviously, based on what Stein comes up with, the options are pretty feeble. But don't worry, my fellow comedy writers. Before long, Senator Obama will say or do something, or we'll find out something about it that will yield a gusher. There was a time when it would have been tough to write something funny about Larry Craig. Then suddenly and without warning, it became very easy…

Michael Kinsley on why it's so brain-dead stupid of Hillary supporters to say, "If we can't have her, we're voting for McCain." I doubt many will, even though they may think that now. But if any of them do, they're just asking for someone who'll take everything Hillary Clinton stands for and do the opposite.