Got caught up in the debate and burned the lasagna. Here's some of what I jotted down on the marinara-stained legal pad. Overall, I was impressed with the questions — they were more focused and direct than those from Lehrer or Ifill. Kudos to the folks in St. Louis and to Charlie Gibson for that. Kerry came out hammering Bush with the Duelfer report and it took Bush a while to gain his comfort level. The CSPAN split-screen still showed... Read more
In two recent posts, I discuss Abu Musab Zarqawi's terrorist training camp at Khurmal, in northern Iraq, which was discovered, but not disturbed, in early 2003. The camp at Khurmal presented: A. A legitimate military target in an already declared, justifiable war that was being waged with the full approval and cooperation of the "opinions of mankind;" B. A military target isolated from nearly all entanglements with the non-combatant civilian populations; C. A military target located in the northern no-fly... Read more
The lead story on the front page of today's (Del.) News Journal bears this bold, black headline: Report concludes Iraq had no WMDs. (The Journal doesn't post wire stories on its site, but you can read the report by the Associated Press' Ken Guggenheim here.) That's page A1. Here's the lead story from page B1: N.J. lawmaker presses Army on VX. Next to that is the B1 package headline: Mustard gas shells to be destroyed. Looking for weapons of mass... Read more
Slate's Fred Kaplan offered this two-paragraph summary of the Bush administration's deadly debacle of refusing to stop Abu Musab Zarqawi when they could have: Then came news reports of a CIA analysis — ordered by Cheney — showing that Rumsfeld hadn't been misunderstood at all. The analysis concluded that there probably was no working relationship between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Musab Zarqawi. This is significant in two ways. First, in the lead up to the war last year,... Read more
Abu Musab Zarqawi is a despicable terrorist who is thought to be behind a series of kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq where he apparently now leads a network called Tawid and Jihad. He has also been linked to deadly and indiscriminate suicide bombings throughout Iraq and to attacks last year in Casablanca and Istanbul. Zarqawi is currently believed to be in Fallujah, a city of several hundred thousand in Iraq's "Sunni Triangle" that remains under the control of insurgents. He... Read more
This weekend I canvassed myself. (That sounds dirty, perhaps even illegal, but it's not.) Eighteen months ago I moved about four blocks. I got to keep my home phone number, but I also crossed over into a new precinct. Thus my name turned up on a list of "infrequent voters." A good chunk of my neighbors in the building also turned up on that list. Most of them seem, like me, to be frequent, habitual, dedicated voters — but also... Read more
Ralph Begleiter, a former world affairs correspondent for CNN, is now teaching journalism students at the University of Delaware. Begleiter seems to believe that journalists must be willing to ask inconvenient questions — which means his students will be well-trained but likely unemployable. Begleiter filed a lawsuit on Monday: A University of Delaware journalism professor sued the U.S. Department of Defense and the Air Force on Monday to try to get the government to release images of flag-draped coffins arriving... Read more
Props to Jennifer Goldblatt of The (Del.) News Journal for drawing attention to the latest trend in corporate cost-cutting and health benefits. With the cost of health insurance still rising far faster than inflation, many employers are trying to save money by only offering coverage for employees' spouses if they absolutely have to: A growing number of companies are instituting what's known as a spousal surcharge, a penalty for having your mate on your health care plan when benefits are... Read more
After his collapse in last Thursday's debate, President Bush has been trying to regain some traction by misrepresenting what his opponent, Sen. Kerry, said. Here is the statement in question: Sen. Kerry: "The president always has the right and always has had the right for pre-emptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control. No president through all of American history has... Read more
Farnaz Fassihi, a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad, sends a long, forthright e-mail to a few friends about the reality of the liberation of Iraq. Those friends forward it along to some others, etc., and eventually it ends up posted on Poynter's forums. And then it gets excerpted here: It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi... Read more
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