’round the ‘sphere

John Hawkins is interviewing Tammy Bruce

Dr. Sanity has a must read on the Roots of Terrorism. Siggy expounds on it. Both great reads.

Neo-Neocon, typically thoughtful about that word, Islamofascism.

A mildoctor on Why we fight and what is at stake.

This Yankee fan agress: Slappy McBluelips does not deserve to be MVP.

Claudia Rosett on the UN Internet grab and a follow-up

Former President Clinton goes to UAE to please the rich Arabs by stabing his successor in the back on foreign soil. Monica was right, he’s a creep.

STOP THE PRESSES! A pal of mine who works in the news industry just wrote that he’s starting to think maybe the CIA DID try to screw Bush, Bigtime! This is a huge thing, folks. Betsy, writing at Michelle Malkin’s place sees big things here, too. Seems to me the press and the CIA are looking worse every day in this story. Mark has a big roundup.

Ed Morrissey in the Standard, Exploring Rockefeller and other “foreign” forays.

Michael Barone, hitting the mark: The Democrats are trying to relitigate the prewar intelligence issue in the hopes of delegitimizing this administration. But in delegitimizing the administration, they also tend to delegitimize the efforts of the U.S. government, including military personnel, in Iraq and generally in the war against Islamic terrorism. To the extent they delegitimize the United States, they are hurting the cause of freedom for millions of people. I do not say the Democrats are being unpatriotic, a word they seem fixated on. So far as I am aware, no responsible Republican has charged that they are unpatriotic; John McCain refused Bob Schieffer’s invitation to do so. But I do say this: The Democrats who are peddling the Big Lie of “Bush lied” are doing so either (a) deliberately to injure the cause of the United States and of freedom in the world or, as I think, (b) with reckless disregard of whether they injure the cause of the United States and of freedom in the world. What they are doing may suit their political needs, but it hurts our country.

Dick Meyer missing it by a bit: A couple of points: first, notice the rhetorical slight of hand. To rebut the charge that “we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people,” President Bush cites a limited finding in a Senate report that there was “no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community’s judgments.”

Oh, please. One thing has very little to do with the other. You can manipulate intelligence in making policy without pressuring the spies to cook the books; you can mislead the American people without muscling the analysts around.