A Christian Science Monitor analysis describes the resolution as "ambiguous enough that all sides can claim victory," with the exception of a naysaying strawman set up by President Bush.

In Juan Cole's view, "that the US and the UK had to give away so much to get the resolution shows how weak they are in Iraq." He also said the big winner is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the losers are the Kurds, who are threatening to bolt the government. Cole also appeared on PBS' "News Hour," where he said "I don't think anybody in their right mind is going to want to send troops to help out" with Iraq's security situation.

"NewsHour" also interviewed the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story on the March 2003 torture memo. He said that while he doesn't know of a direct connection between various legal memoranda "and what's going on in the field... certainly there is a fair segment of military and national security people who believe that the rules restraining harsh interrogation techniques are no longer appropriate."

The segment also features highlights of testimony by Attorney General Ashcroft before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which he declined to release a 2002 policy memo on the degree of pain and suffering legally permitted during enemy interrogations. And the Los Angeles Times reports that the Defense Secretary's office instructed military intelligence to "take the gloves off" in interrogating John Walker Lindh.

March 2003 memo was scheduled for declassification one year after the next transit of Venus.

The New York Times reports that a power plant capable of supplying nearly 20 percent of Iraq's electricity "plunged nearly to zero" following sabotage attacks on fuel and transmission lines last weekend, "raising new fears that insurgents were targeting major sectors of the Iraqi infrastructure as part of an overall terror plan." Plus: Tigris river also under siege.

Baghdad Burning's Riverbend says that during the last year "a certain sort of special bond has formed between your typical Iraqi and the roof of his or her home," in part because "we sleep on the roof during the endless, powerless nights."

"What we need to do is to help in the cause of, ah, downfall of California," says an Enron employee in new tapes aired by CBS. One employee tells another that "It's called lies. It's all how well you can weave these lies together," drawing the response, "I feel like I'm being corrupted now." "No," says the first employee, "this is marketing." Plus: Can David Mamet compete with Enron employees?

A GAO reports says that the Pentagon has wasted at least $100 million on unused airline tickets, and that it wasn't even aware of the problem until the audit.

The Washington Post reviews James Bamford's "A Pretext For War. In addition to his argument that Bush administration officials were "locked in a plan to wage war in Iraq well before" 9/11, he says that on 9/11, the entire U.S. "mainland was protected by just fourteen planes spread out over seven bases" and "the general in charge of the country's military was completely ignorant of the fact that the United States was under its worst attack in nearly two centuries."

An AP article based on interviews with 9/11 commission panelists, says that draft portions of the final report "offer a stinging rebuke of the FBI and intelligence agencies but refrain from assigning blame to individuals in government to avoid the appearance of partisanship."

A rival presidential candidate has accused Afghan President Karzai of offering cabinet posts to mujahedeen warlords in return for their support in elections scheduled for September. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid says rising violence threatens the elections that the Bush administration is "desperately keen" to see take place to help hide the fact that coalition troops have failed to end terrorism or find bin Laden. Plus: Children kidnapped in Afghanistan said to have been murdered for body parts.

Chris Floyd describes a recent news cycle in which "the image of Kissinger in 1970, calmly ordering mass death, morphed into the picture of Pentagon chief Don Rumsfeld addressing West Point graduates in 2004, exhorting the Army cadets to a life of moral purpose." Floyd notes that in Rumsfeld's address, the target also morphed, from "terrorism" to "global insurgency."

Pollster Daniel Yankelovich says that to win in November, Sen. John Kerry must reframe the debate over Iraq and terrorism and "displant assumptions that keep Americans seeing the problem only through Bush's frame." More from Yankelovich on "Rethinking Islamist Terrorism."

The New Yorker's Ken Auletta discusses his article about PBS, "Big Bird Flies Right," as CNN also takes a right flight.

A CNN correspondent reportedly threw a tantrum after learning that the network had been scooped by ABC on Ronald Reagan's death, which interrupted an annual conference of obituary writers.

In an interview withe the Washington Times, Ted Rall defends his comment that Reagan is "turning crispy brown right about now," and writes in a new column that President Bush "models his approach to foreign policy on that of the original Teflon President. Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art." Plus: Reagan and FDR to faceoff on Fox's "American Idol?"

Although CIA Director George Tenet is said to have been a victim of an Albanian jinx, the number of news reports mentioning him dropped significantly following Reagan's death, from 2,900 between last Thursday and Saturday, to fewer than 500 since Sunday.

Read 'Em and Reap Cursor is seeking an experienced editor/writer with a strong background in media, politics and post-9/11 issues for "Media Patrol." The position is 2-3 days a week and could become full time. Send a brief introduction and links to writing samples -- no attachments please -- to mediapatrol@cursor.org. Finalists will be contacted by mid-June.

June 8

Intel Dump's Phil Carter says a memo leaked to the Wall Street Journal goes much further than other memoranda in "justifying the White House's overall Guantanamo Bay plan," in that "it specifically authorizes the use of torture tactics, up to and including those which may result in the death of a detainee." The memo also claims that the authority to set aside laws is "inherent in the president."

The memo appears to be based on a 2002 Justice Department advisory that "international laws against torture 'may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations' conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism," reports the Washington Post, which quotes a Human Rights Watch spokesman as saying, "It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid accountability."

More on the memo from Jim Lobe, 'New Evidence Prison Torture Was Approved at Top Levels,' the Progress Report, 'Legitimizes Torture, Puts President Above Law,' and Billmon, 'Praise the Lord and Pass the Thumbscrews.'

The New York Times reports that "forced nudity of prisoners was pervasive in the military intelligence unit of Abu Ghraib," with some detainees "ordered to do jumping jacks and sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in the nude, according to several witnesses." The article includes a photo that was taken in April 2003.

As 'Battles take daily toll in Sadr City,' Back to Iraq's Christopher Allbritton writes from Baghdad that "this environment is killing our ability to give a damn about anything other than staying alive." Plus: Iraqi veto out and U.S. troops in.

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram's ombudsman sees an "explosive intensity in readers' demands for good news" from Iraq, adding that they're "not inclined to sympathize" with media complaints of limited access and heightened dangers.

Robert Parry says that what's missing from media commentary about Ronald Reagan, which he calls "fawning almost in a Pravda-like way," is "the one fundamental debate that must be held before any reasonable assessment can be made of Ronald Reagan and his Presidency: "How, why and when was the Cold War 'won'?"

Since Reagan's death, only Parry and the Boston Globe have mentioned "Team B," with the latter editorializing that "In the late '70s, Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives distrusted CIA estimates of Soviet strength and participated in a government ''Team B" exercise replacing the CIA's assumptions with more hawkish ones of their own. When the Iron Curtain crumbled, it turned out the CIA was more on target than Team B, but the hawks quickly forgot that fact." More from Eric Alterman on Team B and on Reagan.

In an interview with "Democracy Now!", Parry said the Bush administration is continuing approaches that became prominent during Reagan's Presidency, including manipulating intelligence and exaggerating foreign policy dangers.

"Paying respect is one thing, and well deserved," writes Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp, "but the way the press is gushing over Reagan is too much to take, sparking renewed talk of putting him on the $10 bill or Mount Rushmore."

Strupp cites a Los Angeles Times editorial as offering "the best assessment" of Reagan's presidency, and a Sacramento Bee editorial claiming that Reagan "took full responsibility" for Iran-contra, as being "among the worst." More on Reagan from Paul Krugman, Christopher Hitchens and Morrissey.

Reagan's name appears in the headline of all but one of 27 CNN segments for Monday, a transcript of a G-8 press conference in which national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said that her boss has been inspired by Reagan's "willingness to tell the truth."

Although a Christian Science Monitor article says this year's G8 Summit "could practically be a love feast," The Scotsman reports that outraged Arab leaders are boycotting it to protest Bush's plans to lay down goals for a Greater Middle East.

Barron's interviews 90-year-old money fund manager Seth Glickenhaus, who says that while Sen. John "Kerry is a mediocrity... Bush has been worse than zero as a president." He predicts that "If Kerry is elected, the doctrinaire Republicans will sell stocks for a day or two, but then the market will go up considerably." Earlier: Glickenhaus questions Gen. Anthony Zinni.

Foreign policy analyst Anthony Cordesman says "there's going to be a hell of a hangover" when the U.S. quits subsidizing gas in Iraq, which sells for 5 cents a gallon.

The Los Angeles Times reports that a Supreme Court decision clearing the way for Mexican trucks to roll onto U.S. highways without an environmental impact statement, was "criticized by environmentalists and by truckers on both sides of the border." A U.S. trucking industry official said: "We don't want them here and they don't want us there. The only ones who are going to benefit are the big boys."

Controversy over airing of 10-year anniversary interview prompts question: "What is this world coming to when you can't trust O.J. Simpson?"

June 7

As the Washington Post is accused of cartoon-level analysis of Reagan's economic record, Billmon writes that "I'll leave the pluses and minuses of Reaganomics for the historians... Reagan's foreign policies, on the other hand, still make my blood boil, even after all these years."

In an interview with NPR, "Dutch" author Edmund Morris says Reagan's "myriad underestimaters... conveniently forgot the fact that he was a very well-informed man," and an Atrios commenter notes that an NPR report described Reagan, who was 18 years old in 1929, as "Growing up in the little town America of Dixon, Illinois, during the Great Depression."

Steve Gilliard eschews instant hagiography for "what Reagan really did," and Howard Kurtz looks at 'The Remaking of the President.' Plus: Why Greg Palast will not be seen on TV this week.

Last November the Daily Camera editorialized in 'Mount Reagan?' on the "propaganda campaign" that "the guardians of Ronald Reagan's legacy are engaged in," and Nathan Callahan previewed the coverage, writing that the "myth-making machinery had plenty of prehumous prep time."

Speak No Evil (Empire) Report on reaction from Russia notes that President Putin issued no statement on Reagan's death. Earlier: David Corn listed "66 things to think about when flying into Reagan National Airport."

As Reagan news swamps D-Day coverage, Tom Engelhardt writes that President Bush's war "will always lack a landing on Jihadi Beach."

The Media Channel's Tim Karr reports that "Italy's largest electric company pulled the plug on two left-wing radio stations" on the morning of Bush's visit to the Pope. An AP article which quotes Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi as calling the demonstrations "a flop," notes that Bush stayed at the home of U.S. ambassador Melvin Sembler.

Introducing a New York Times article on how the Spanish blew the FBI's cover on the arrest of Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield, City Pages' Elaine Cassell writes that if they had not, Mayfield "would probably be facing multiple life sentences -- or the death penalty -- for a crime he did not commit." Plus: 'All the fear that's fit to print.'

As 'Militants give blow-by-blow account of Saudi massacre,' a dispatch from Pakistan asks: 'Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?'

The New Standard's Chris Shumway reports on "evidence gathered by several human rights groups and Pentagon investigators indicating U.S. military personnel have raped and sexually abused Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities." He quotes an Iraqi attorney who said the abuse and torture went beyond Abu Ghraib, and was "happening all across Iraq."

The New York Times does a background check on one of the four people covered in "Democracy Now!'s" 'Exporting America's most notorious prison officials to Abu Ghraib.' Plus: C-Span's Brian Lamb interviews the interviewer.

Amid reports that the U.S. and Iraq have reached agreement on the "coordination" of U.S.-led troops and that American combat operations are being kept to a minimum to avoid "alienating" Iraq's new interim leaders, Eric Margolis posits two acid tests of Iraqi sovereignty: "The ability to order all U.S. forces out of Iraq; and reaffirmation of Iraq's active support of the Palestinian cause."

A report that Vice President Cheney was interviewed as part of the investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, is called "the latest suggestion that the grand jury probe is in a highly active phase." And John Dean describes President Bush's lawyering up as "a rather stunning and extraordinary development."

Al Gore calls Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas "the single most treacherous and dishonest person I dealt with" during the 2000 campaign. Penelas who stopped the Miami-Dade recount, was Gore's campaign manager in the county. The article appeared in the Miami Herald, which requires registration.

Time reports that "The chads may hit the fan this week" when Florida's county elections supervisors meet about Secretary of State Glenda Hood's proposed purging of 47,000 names of suspected felons from Florida's voter rolls. Read an interview with Hood and scroll down to find out 'Just how desperate IS Florida?'

In 'Mr. Bush Won't Be at the Tonys,' Frank Rich writes that no matter how hard the right "tries to set itself in opposition to what it calls the 'homosexual agenda,' it cannot escape the reality that gay people have been stirred into the melting pot of America and its culture, not to be expelled again." A drama about an East German transvestite, "I Am My Own Wife," was named best play and "Assassins" won five awards. Plus: 'Plane to See.'

Texas GOP pledges allegiance to God but not platform.

Radio host Neal Boortz, who wrote "The Terrible Truth About Liberals," is caught lying by the author of "Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."

April 4-6

Get Your War Off  "A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks," writes William Greider. "The 'terrorism war,' like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda -- the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization." Plus: Terror war held to different standards than war on poverty.

Military Victory The Washington Post's "Reliable Source" reports that "After pressure from troops who wanted recognition for fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan -- and not just in one all-encompassing 'Global War on Terrorism' -- President Bush quietly signed legislation Friday night establishing separate new medals for their service." Bush awards medal to Pope, but prize is at home.

In an interview with Beliefnet, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh discusses the Iraqi prison abuse scandal, collective karma and the doctrine of preemption.

"What we know," writes Mark Danner in 'The Logic of Torture,' "is quite enough to show that what happened at Abu Ghraib, whatever it was, did not depend on the sadistic ingenuity of a few bad apples. The real question now, as so often, is not what we know but what we are prepared to do."

Sen. Trent Lott defends "really rough" treatment of Iraqi prisoners, saying, "Hey, nothing wrong with holding a dog up there, unless the dog ate him, scared him with a dog."

Interviewed on "Democracy Now!", former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said George Tenet "was playing a double game.... You don't tell the president what he wants to know. You tell him the truth." McGovern also said he fears that "this administration will resort to extra-legal methods to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush."

"The walls haven't collapsed around George W. Bush," says Slate's Fred Kaplan, but his "risk-rating has just soared." Plus: Tenet resigned before the trifecta hit him.

Robert Dreyfuss offers up a source's take on what happened in the Chalabi case to set the FBI "hot on the trail of some of the neocon ringleaders of Operation Bungle Iraq." Plus: 'A Perle of Wisdom' and Tom Clancy on Paul Wolfowitz: "Is he working for our side?"  

A State Department official confirms that eight DynCorp contractors were involved in the raid on Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress headquarters. The Baltimore Sun article also notes that a Senate report said the number of contract security workers in Iraq, currently estimated at 20,000, "could more than triple over the next several months." The CPA confirms that four from DynCorp were present, calls them "international police advisers."

Adnan Pachachi, the 81-year-old former diplomat who was seen as the U.S.' preferred candidate for the Iraqi presidency, claims he was forced to turn down the job because of a "shabby conspiracy" led by Chalabi. Plus: Iraqi Governing Council is said to have "risen like the phoenix from the ashes of its own disbanding."

An AFP report cites "gloomy experts" who "believe it is only a question of time before terrorists use a 'dirty bomb,'" and the Washington Post editorializes that "on the eve of the Supreme Court's decision in Mr. Padilla's case, which is expected by month's end, the government has delivered a broadside smear against which no defense is possible."

NBC interviews Niaz Kahn, a Pakistani-born British citizen who claims to have tipped off the FBI to a hijacking plot more than a year before 9/11. He says that he was sent to the U.S. after being trained to hijack planes at an al-Qaeda compound in Lahore, but got cold feet and never met his contact, eventually turning himself in -- after blowing al-Qaeda's money in Atlantic City! -- out of fear that his terrorist trainers would track him down.

NBC reports that "Khan said his trainers never told him exactly what his terrorist mission in the United States would be," but the story is sexed up in a Daily Mail profile that quotes him as saying, "We would hijack a plane and fly it into a building."

Danny Schechter says an issue that, in 2003, galvanized more public concern than any other with the exception of the Iraq war -- the FCC's 3-2 decision to loosen rules governing media ownership -- "is being downplayed by a media, in 2004, that tends to investigate every industry but its own." Plus: America's greatest newspaper?

Responding to criticism of "Dateline NBC" for synergizing "The Apprentice," "Friends" and "Frasier," a former NBC executive who is now at the Medill School of Journalism, said: "The line between news and entertainment is so blurred that I don't think people are concerned whether or not 'Dateline' does a serious, tough journalistic story and next week does a little fluffy thing that promotes their own network."

USA! USA! The country leads 14 nations in having the highest rate of mental illness, according to the results of a study by the World Health Organization, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Op-ed argues that Americans may be losing their love for the Hummer.

June 3

Bye George! Big news story broke small.

Asked how big a role the U.S. had in forming Iraq's interim government and selecting the prime minister and president, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said that occupation head Paul "Bremer is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money. He has the signature." Plus: Interim government receives "cautious endorsement" from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

A Telegraph correspondent in Fallujah quotes a U.S. officer as saying, "All we've succeeded in doing is paying off the mujahideen to stop shooting at us. There's a cauldron of hate out there and it's going to boil over."

A Christian Science Monitor report on what it calls an 'All-out war between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud,' quotes a Middle East security analyst as saying that a broad swath of Saudi public opinion has turned against Al Qaeda, creating the conditions for the kingdom to pursue an "open war" against the group. Plus: Expats weigh money or life question.

Russian TV network sacks top anchorman after he protested the axing of his interview with the widow of a Chechen rebel leader killed in Qatar.

Critical Montages looks at the Department of Homeland Security's awarding of an estimated $15 billion border security contract to Bermuda-incorporated Accenture, for US-Visit, a program for tracking entries and exits of all visitors to the United States.

Richard Cohen says that by not using the word "alleged" when writing about Jose Padilla, "The worst I can do is libel the man. The government, though, has cast him into the contemporary version of a dungeon." Plus: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick on 'The Justice Department's triumphant victory over the Constitution.'

With President Bush finding a lawyer to represent him if necessary in the grand jury investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Billmon writes that "it's almost like old times - in those dark days before honor and integrity were restored to the White House."

A Financial Times report that France has banned demonstrations in central Paris "to ensure no hostile protests are in evidence to disturb President George W. Bush's brief presence in the French capital," adds that French officials hope Bush "will not seek to link too openly the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany with the U.S.'s removal of the dictatorship in Baghdad and Mr. Bush's broader war against terrorism."

Bush says that he was never angry with the French over that country's refusal to back his plans to invade Iraq.

Meet the New Boss USA Today reports that at least $340,000 has been spent on U.S. lawyers, lobbyists and PR agents on behalf on Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is said to have "always assumed ... that he didn't need a constituency in Iraq as long as he had one in Washington."

As the FBI begins polygraphing civilian employees at the Pentagon to find out who may have disclosed classified information to Ahmad Chalabi, a Newsweek article suggests that Chalabi may have been compiling oppo research on U.S. officials. And President Bush describes Chalabi as someone he met "just kind of working through the rope line." Plus: What did Chalabi tell the Iranians?

Matthew Yglesias offers up a grand, unified theory to explain President Bush's policies: "The truth, hard as it is to accept, is that Bush is an Iranian agent."

A PINR analysis says the Army's expansion of the "stop-loss" policy is just the latest sign that the occupation of Iraq is causing an "intense strain" to the U.S. military. Plus: 'For some soldiers the war never ends.'

Wedding Party Line The Washington Post's Jefferson Morley contrasts international and U.S. coverage of the American military's May 19 attack in the western Iraqi desert that killed more than 40 people.

John Nichols writes that in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, "Too many journalists, under pressure to appear 'patriotic,' practiced stenography to power, and a BuzzFlash editorial says that the New York Times "was to the Iraq war what Matt Drudge was to the Clinton impeachment."

NPR's ombudsman sees a potential chilling effect on independent election-year journalism if reporters are defensive about a recent Pew poll, which cited an inherent liberal bias among the media. More on the poll from Editor & Publisher.

FactCheck.org weighs Sen. John Kerry's "Optimists" TV spot and finds it lighter than air and devoid of factual claims, while a Star Tribune editorial lauds Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei for their fact checking.

President Bush has one big advantage going into the election:  his ponderous, uncharismatic opponent, writes former New York Times editor Howell Raines, who says that Kerry must "find his voice or fade away." The CJR Campaign Desk says that one must first get past "the conceit of Howell Raines giving anyone PR advice."

An AP report that the Bush-Cheney campaign "is trying to recruit supporters from 1,600 religious congregations in Pennsylvania," quotes the Rev. Barry W. Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State as saying, "I have never in my life seen such a direct campaign to politicize American churches."

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes responds to a lecture by Los Angeles Times editor John S. Carroll, that concluded with Carroll saying, "If Fox News were a factory situated, say, in Minneapolis, it would be trailing a plume of rotting fish all the way to New Orleans." Ailes, who charged Carroll with treating Fox News "worse in his newspaper than he treated the terrorists who recently beheaded an American," was pilloried in letters to Romenesko.

June 2

ARCHIVES

Current month
May, 2004
April, 2004
March, 2004
February, 2004
January, 2004
December, 2003
November, 2003
October, 2003
September, 2003
August, 2003
July, 2003
June, 2003
May, 2003
April, 2003
March, 2003
February, 2003
January, 2003
December, 2002
November, 2002
October, 2002
September, 2002
August, 2002
July, 2002
June, 2002
May, 2002
April, 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
Pre-9/11

We Want Your Link! If you've seen any recent articles that you think other readers might be interested in, send us the link.

Thanks to Francis Hwang for RSS programming.