COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Five days into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, with the superpowers on the brink of confrontation, President Nixon was too drunk to discuss the crisis with the British prime minister, according to newly released transcripts of tape recordings. …must not give in to desire to play with “find and replace”… 1973 Arab-Israeli war=Second Gulf War confrontation=open defiance in the U.N. President Nixon=President Chimpy

LONDON – Far from being crippled by the U.S.-led war on terror, al-Qaida has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq (news – web sites) is swelling its ranks, a report said Tuesday. Gee, that prisoner abuse story couldn’t have worked out better for the bad guys. Way to go, military-industrial complex.

Of most concern, the official said, is that terrorists may possess and use a chemical, biological or radiological weapon that could cause much more damage and casualties than a conventional bomb. Fabulous. Time to buy the duct tape.

A couple of major news organizations have picked up the “Iraqi prison rape” story – The Seattle Times and The Guardian (UK). And if the U.S. military has no jurisdiction over these freelance cowboys, you can be sure no one else in Iraq does. So I guess they can do anything they like. This is a prescription for further trouble. That’s actually a blog entry from my old hometown paper – bloggers are go! It’s a commentary on the item in the Guardian, which seems to be the first “major” running the story. One civilian contractor was accused of raping…

Adam Felbers has a solution to our problem in Iraq: The latest revelations out of Abu Ghraib are so mind-bogglingly horrifying that we need to act now, and act hard. What’s notable about this is that if we have any intention of getting the hearts and minds of the Arab world while said organs are still in their hosts’ bodies, we’re going to have to use Bush administration tactics. We have to go into Commando Apology mode. Give it a neat-sounding mission name like “Operation Iron Contrition,” or “Operation Enduring Oops.” Excellent gambit! We could also drop thousands of personalized…

SPRINGFIELD — For the past 10 days, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama hasn’t been able to go to the bathroom or talk to his wife on his cell phone without having a camera-toting political gofer from his Republican rival filming a few feet away. In what has to be a first in Illinois politics, Republican Jack Ryan has assigned one of his campaign workers to record every movement and every word of the state senator while he is in public. What, do they think he’s going to boost a car or something? Obama’s got my vote and my husband’s vote.…

Reporters who entered the office compound after the raid found a scene of destruction. Computers had been seized, furniture had been overturned, doors broken down and framed photographs of Mr. Chalabi smashed. Aides to Mr. Chalabi said members of the raiding party had helped themselves to food and beverages from the refrigerator. What the hell are we doing in Iraq? Have we gone totally apeshit? What is our policy? Are we now the jackbooted bullies of the world? We go in for no good reason, we screw with people, we imprison them (see “no good reason” above) and nobody had…

WASHINGTON, May 19 – The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly. Very interesting. They actually call it a form of covert propaganda. It’s about time somebody called them on this kind of thing.

It was the 17th perfect game in major league history, the 15th since the modern era began in 1900 and the first since the New York Yankees’ David Cone against Montreal on July 18, 1999. “It didn’t faze me,” Johnson said. “The bottom line was we needed to win the game. Winning the game was the biggest, most important thing.” Cy Young, then 37, had been the oldest to throw a perfect game, doing it in 1904. Johnson sure didn’t act his age, getting stronger as the game went along on a pleasantly warm night in Atlanta. “Not bad for…

Joi Itoquotes Lauren Weinstein: Greetings. Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, who exposed so many aspects of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story, now reports that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice secretly approved the expansion of a clandestine program that encouraged physical coercion, sexual humiliation, and blackmail of Iraqi prisoners, setting the stage for the abuses that these same officials have recently been condemning so publicly. According to the report, President Bush was kept informed regarding this program. The Department of Defense called the accusations in the story “outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and…