He saw a threat

Dubya is often at his most entertaining not when he’s extemporizing but when he’s on autopilot. Attacking Kerry’s 1991 vote against the first Gulf War, Bush: “In 1991, when my dad was president, he saw a threat, and that was that Saddam Hussein was going to overrun Kuwait.” Gee, what do you think was the first sign of that threat? Oh yeah, when Saddam actually overran Kuwait.

Russian state tv’s (that’s all of them, now) coverage of the Bush-Kerry debate edited out the two candidates’ criticisms of Putin.

The US will give money to something called the Independent Women’s Forum (Lynne Cheney used to be on its board) to train Iraqi women in democratic skills. The IWF’s website says it was “established to combat the women-as-victims, pro-big-government ideology of radical feminism.” In the US, that is. The website (iwf.org) seems to be down, but you can use Google’s caches.

Patrick Cockburn points out in a story behind a pay barrier in the Indy that while the US is so gosh-darned proud of capturing Samarra, this is the 3rd time it has done so. Personally I’m assuming that this is just more guerilla warfare stuff, with the insurgents having simply faded away to fight another day. The US conquest of Samarra is thus another “catastrophic success.” Cockburn: “The aim of the bombing is to prove to American voters that their army is on the offensive, but without substantially increasing US casualties.”

“Operation Days of Penitence,” the Israeli invasion of Gaza, launched after two Israeli children were killed by rockets, has so far taken the lives of 22 Palestinian children, because 2 wrongs don’t make a right, but 22 do.