Reuters reports that confusion reigned at a U.S. military tribunal as translators openly disagreed on what was said in testimony, and the presiding officer asked a Yemeni man facing war crimes charges, "Is your understanding of our culture sufficient to make things that appear strange appear not so strange?"

The Washington Post reports that a deal with Moqtada al-Sadr shows that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani can "force both Sadr and the interim government to yield to his middle-ground approach."

The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqi says that after Najaf, "regardless of how this battle ends, America has already lost the war," because the U.S. "thought nothing of violating the sanctity of a sacred Muslim site."

Rational Enquirer extracts choice quotes from a Washington Post story on what Najaf now looks like.

On Empire Notes, Rahul Mahajan writes that the problem in establishing a body count in Najaf is that "if only Arabs have reported it, to the United States it hasn't happened."

'Hush hush, keep it down now, voices carry.' With a massive march set for Sunday in New York City, Tom Hayden disputes "the spreading assertion that anti-war protests at the Republican convention will help Bush." Plus: 'Bring Najaf to New York.'

'I'll Be Backed!' The New York Times reports that California Gov. Schwarzenegger's trip to New York to address the GOP Convention is being financed by no less than 15 major corporations, including the parent companies of every major U.S. television network. Plus: 'The Big Media Back Story.'

The GOP announces more convention performers, including Donnie McClurkin, who, notes John Aravosis, says that gays are "trying to kill our children."

Financial Times reports that some of President Bush's leading Wall Street fundraisers have "stopped active campaigning," and Molly Ivins surveys a lengthening list of conservative war repenters.

The Washington Post spotlights a new report by the NAACP and People for the American Way which details a GOP "campaign to keep African Americans and other minority voters away from the polls this November." Also: 'What Bush has planned for America if he wins.'

'Ashcroft Hits the AstroTurf' The Austin Chronicle reports that a prewritten op-ed piece touting mandatory minimum sentences has been turning up in local newspapers, signed by local U.S. attorneys.

Earlier: Jason Leopold writes that reams of evidence that makes Vice President Dick Cheney "look like Ken Lay's twin brother" is collecting dust instead of attracting mainstream media attention.

'Ah, we did? I don't think so.' The New York Times says that during an interview Bush "appeared unfamiliar" with a new report on climate change in which the administration apparently changed its position on what causes global warming.

'It's the IQ, Stupid.' Howell Raines writes that Senator John Kerry and his running mate "keep talking about what the White House wants them to talk about" instead of forcing Bush outside his "one-trick comfort zone."

"Any student of Bush family campaigns could have seen the swift boat shiv shining a mile away," writes Dick Meyer for CBS. "The big question is why John Kerry didn't."

UC Berkeley News interviews George Lakoff on teaching liberals how to talk, while Gore Vidal takes a 'Last, Long Look From the Heights' and delivers his 'State of the Union 2004.'

Media Patrol is being guest-edited through August 29 by CounterPunch columnist and recording artist David Vest. Send him links to the good stuff at mediapatrol@cursor.org.

August 26

Reuters reports that 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty, health care coverage dropped and incomes were stagnant in 2003. "What ever could have given us that idea?" writes Carpetbagger, in response to official denials that politics played any part in the Bush administration's decision to change the date, location and source for the release of the data.

A Mother Jones analysis by Bradford Plumer finds "a common theme in all of Bush's health proposals," namely "incentive for businesses to drop their current employees."

"Don't shoot the mosque." With U.S. troops "almost at the gate" of the Imam Ali Shrine, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, back in Iraq, calls for march to "save Najaf." Juan Cole writes that Sistani's return raises many questions.

In a PBS "News Hour" interview, New York Times correspondent John Burns said that U.S. forces were in a race to try to effectively control the shrine before Sistani's arrival. Plus: 'No legitimacy in Iraqistan.'

The Christian Science Monitor finds loyalty to Moqtada al-Sadr growing as Sistani returns, while a new PINR spotlights the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, the group it says would likely emerge as an alternative should al-Sadr "fail."

An Uruknet report says that Sunni volunteers from Fallujah have been teaching Shia men and women how to fight.

Back to Iraq's Chris Allbritton, hauled at gunpoint to a "press conference," finds Najaf's finest to be "just like the old regime, only less disciplined."

According to the Los Angeles Times, investigators who charge in a new military report that the CIA played a large role in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were "blocked from pursuing allegations against CIA employees."

A new Los Angeles Times poll shows that attacks on Senator John Kerry's war record appear to be working, while Knight Ridder's John Baer says that "it's still the Electoral College, stupid!"

The CJR Campaign Desk writes that the Swift boat vet ad story was kept afloat in August in part by the fact that "in June and July, the press hardly moved the story an inch" although the Swift boat vets "virtually declared war on Kerry" in May.

In a column on the persistence of myth and misinformation, Editor and Publisher Greg Mitchell asks, "Has the press done enough" to inform people about the war in Iraq, or "is there only so much it can do?"

'The Church of Liebling' Slate's Jack Shafer writes that if A. J. Liebling "didn't invent press criticism, he might as well have," and that he "didn't take press criticism to hell with him when he died, but he might as well have." Earlier: 'Reporting it All.'

The Seattle Times describes NBC Universal's approach to news of Olympic doping and judging scandals: don't cover it.

The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer, Benjamin Ginsberg, resigned, saying his role with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was making sure coordination didn't happen. David Corn finds Ginsberg still spinning for the Swift boat vets during an appearance on ABC's "Nightline." Plus: escaping without a scratch.

Media Matters tracks some Bob Dole claims, and Noel Koch remembers a time when 'When Bob Dole Said No.' Earlier: 'What Wouldn't Bob Do For Koch Oil?'

As the BBC reports on the mission of Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, to encourage Palestinians to launch non-violent campaigns against the Israeli occupation, Haaretz's Amira Hass says "it is a discussion that we Israelis should also conduct. As occupiers."

'Have you ever been to Israel?' According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Senatorial candidate Alan Keyes owns a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol and a .38-caliber "six-shooter" and favors legal machine gun ownership because citizens are on "the front line of the war against terror."

AP reports that the South Carolina state Democratic Party is offering potential new voters a choice: sign up to vote or be drafted and sent to Iraq.

August 25

The Los Angeles Times examines the Bush administration's aggressive efforts to remove what one official calls "impediments" such as "deer, elk, sage grouse" and open up western wildlife habitats for oil and gas development.

USAToday reports that the EPA has issued its highest ever warning level for mercury contamination in U.S. lakes and rivers. Earlier: 'Mercury Emissions Rule Geared to Benefit Industry.'

Revisiting a WABC report on NYPD's 24-hours-a-day surveillance, with one supervisor and six cops assigned to each of "56 primary anarchists," WSWS warns of "the danger of violent confrontations sparked by agents provocateurs" at the GOP convention.

Eric Margolis writes that President Bush has "done more to electrify the international Left and give it a sense of common purpose than anyone since Che Guevara," who a Knight Ridder report called "the Osama bin Laden of his day."

The Dreyfuss Report amplifies an analysis by CIA veteran Raymond Close, who argues that the Bush administration's gambit in Iraq might end with a doomsday scenario involving an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

On Dissident Voice, M. Shahid Alam probes the logic of the "clash of civilizations" thesis as a rationale for the war on terror.

On an ice cream run to the Imam Ali Shrine, Back to Iraq's Chris Allbritton observes that "the long-feared outburst of Shi'a anger just isn't happening," and the Independent reports that Iraq's Defense Minister says the battle for Najaf is "in its last hours."

Human Rights Watch says the report of the Schlesinger Panel on abuse of detainees "talks about management failures when it should be talking about policy failures," and a Washington Post analysis says that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's leadership has been "weighed by a jury of his peers and found somewhat wanting."

The Government Accountability Office says that "soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan have had to spend a year or more straightening out problems affecting their pay, allowances and tax benefits."

The Guardian reported that Palestinian leaders are accusing the U.S. of "destroying hopes for peace in the Middle East by giving its covert support to Israel's expansion of controversial settlements in the West Bank." Plus: Asking Israel to 'let us know what it is they are doing.'

The Independent's Andrew Buncombe covers a civil action in California in the case of the murder of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, 24 years after his death.

'Tide? Or Ivory Snow?' In a recent talk featured on Democracy Now!, Arundhati Roy says that "underneath the shrill exchange of insults, there is almost absolute consensus. It looks as though even if Americans vote for Kerry, they'll still get Bush. President John Kerbush or President George Berry." Plus: 'Whoever wins ... We lose.'

John Marshall digs up a quote from last December's Financial Times, attributed to a "senior Republican": "By the time the White House finishes with Kerry, no one will know what side of the (Vietnam) war he fought on." Plus: 'Got DD-214?'

The Washington Post reports that Jamie Rubin, a top national security adviser to Kerry, now says he made a "mistake" in saying that Kerry, had he been president, "in all probability" would have waged war against Iraq.

Larry Sabato writes that, like the Civil War before it, the Vietnam War "will shadow national politics until generational replacement" has removed all the participants, and David Broder says that only the fact that the boomers are now in their sixties will "save the country" from the ongoing '60s culture war.

Carpetbagger responds to a New York Times report on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-backed November Fund, set to attack Senator John Edwards' career as a trial lawyer, by saying "the Republicans haven't thought this one through."

Brad DeLong argues that a Kerry idea to help health care work better as a market would be a good Bush idea, too.

In an Editor and Publisher article, William E. Jackson Jr. muses that since contempt charges against Time's Matthew Cooper have now been dismissed, New York Times reporter Judith Miller may now receive even more attention from investigators.

August 24

The Telegraph reports that in Najaf's Wadi al-Salam cemetery, U.S. troops are under orders to frisk the dead in their coffins.

Iraq's Olympic soccer coach says his team is no symbol of freedom, because "We do not have freedom in Iraq, we have an occupying force."

Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, the chairman of Arab Media Watch asks, what is so radical about "radical cleric" Moqtada al-Sadr? Plus: Sami Ramadani says there's more to Sadr than meets the eye.

Western diplomats tell the New York Times that Pakistan is "turning a blind eye" to efforts to disrupt the Afghani election from its soil.

Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell demonstrates, by quoting from an editorial and four columns from February 6, 2003, that if the Washington Post's news coverage leading up to the war was one-sidedly hawkish and pro-administration, the paper's editorial page "was even worse."

The New York Times reports that a panel appointed by Donald Rumsfeld will issue a report that implicitly criticizes the Defense Secretary for "not exercising sufficient oversight" over U.S. detention centers in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.

An Australian radio transcript from Guantanamo details rigid restrictions on journalists covering the trial of David Hicks, which a military spokesperson defends by saying, "We don't know that there's a credible threat, but certainly not something we'd take a chance on."

A Chicago Tribune editorial joins the chorus urging reporters to reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame case.

The Washington Post reports that Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush's nominee to head the CIA, sponsored legislation calling for larger cuts in intelligence than those the White House called "deeply irresponsible" when proposed by Senator John Kerry.

The latest Zogby poll of 16 battleground states shows Kerry leading Bush in 14 of them.

Andrew Sullivan writes, "How the president turns this around is not easy to see," and a Guardian analysis says that Bush "needs good news on the economy and he needs it fast." However: 'economic models predict Bush win.'

'Vote early, vote often.' A New York Daily News investigation finds that 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both New York City and Florida.

Cosmic Iguana flags a Washington Post story on a "confusing" new Florida absentee ballot design, which requires voters to connect broken arrows, and says it shows life imitating art.

After President Bush again denounces all 527 campaign ads, but "singles out" none in particular, Tapped's Nick Confessore writes that "if President Bush is opposed to 527s, somebody better tell his senior campaign staff, and quick."

American Prospect's Michael Tomasky writes, apropos of Sunday's swift-boat story in the Washington Post, that "You'd think a press corps that has now officially acknowledged that it was had by this administration on the pre-Iraq war propaganda would think twice before letting itself get used one more time."

Juan Cole concludes that both Bush and Kerry suffered 'Superficial Wounds in the Vietnam Era.' Plus: great moments in headlines and the love connection.

Mathew Gross writes that Bush campaign adviser Matthew Dowd walked right into one when he said that for Bush not to mention 9/11 at the GOP convention "would be like Roosevelt not talking about Pearl Harbor."

The New York Times magazine looks at the pharmaceutical industry's success at marketing depression in Japan.

August 23

A USA Today analysis finds Iraqi insurgency unslowed by the transfer of sovereignty and quotes one expert as saying, "I could see this going on for 10 years."

Asking 'Who is in charge in Iraq,' William Pfaff argues that the U.S. "should simply get out, cutting its losses now."

The Telegraph's Toby Harnden interviews child soldiers preparing to face U.S. tanks at the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, the Christian Science Monitor's Scott Baldauf says that for Najaf police, "the thin blue line has never been blurrier," and Knight Ridder's Hannah Allam finds Iraqi national guardsmen reluctant to fight the Mahdi Army.

Cosmic Iguana flags a Middle East Newsline story reporting an 80 percent desertion rate for Iraqi security forces ordered to prepare for an offensive in Najaf.

'What Went Wrong in Iraq.' Writing in Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond argues that the consequences of U.S. blunders are "just now becoming clear" and doubts that the new Iraqi government will be strong enough to demobilize the country's heavily-armed militias. Plus: plans to fire 30,000 police, and al-Sadr secures the release of a kidnapped journalist.

CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee follows the money, hot on the contrail of 'The Thief of Baghdad.'

Pat Buchanan writes that if the neocons "can ignite a new war [in Iran], the country may forget how they bungled the old war." In "Where the Right Went Wrong," Buchanan says that after 9/11, neocons told Bush that "if he did not follow their war plans, he would be publicly charged with a 'decisive surrender' to terrorism."

BeliefNet profiles Deal Hudson, "the man who told Republican leaders how to connect to Catholic voters," who resigned as an advisor to the Bush campaign when reports of a sex scandal surfaced.

Body and Soul reviews some of the evidence the Pentagon says it doesn't have with regard to charges that military doctors facilitated abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

A military attorney assigned to defend one of four suspects at military trials set to begin this week at Guantanamo Bay tells the Washington Post that "These commissions are a lie behind the claim that all men are created equal, that we are innocent until proven guilty, that we as a society believe in the rule of law above all else."

The Denver Post investigates the routine military practice of allowing troops accused of abuse and human rights violations to avoid trial by simply dismissing them from the service, even in cases involving prisoner death.

A CIA report will not forecast what Iraq's WMD programs might have looked like if the U.S. had not invaded, the head of the CIA's weapons search team tells the Los Angeles Times, contrary to a previous report.

Under the Same Sun flags a story in the New York Times and an article in The Nation on the increasing use of video games as military recruiting tools.

The Independent quotes Graham Allison, author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," as saying that "On the current course, nuclear terrorism is inevitable."

The Los Angeles Times investigates the threat of agroterrorism, which would turn animals into weapons, and quotes on expert as saying, "The expertise needed to mount a serious attack is quite small."

The White House was shocked and the Kerry campaign was pleased, says a story in the Washington Post, by a plan to reorganize national intelligence put forward by Senator Pat Roberts and eight other Republicans.

The New York Times cites estimates that the GOP convention could attract 250,000 protesters and reports on GOP plans to "turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president."

David Neiwert finds "a chilling harbinger of what awaits us if Kerry wins the presidency" by investigating "dirty tricks operation" Citizens United's role in recent attacks on Kerry.

Time's Joe Klein wants to know why Kerry keeps offering "nostrums" that "sound distressingly like market-tested pap" instead of "hammering Bush on his conduct of the Iraq war." Left I On the News seconds that emotion.

Paul Craig Roberts asks, "What does the persistence of ... extraordinary falsehoods say about the U.S. media?" Plus: 'How the Mighty Post Has Fallen' and what Wal-Mart wants.

August 20-22

Tapped's Mark Goldberg recalls an anniversary forgotten, at least on major U.S. editorial pages: the deaths of Sergio Vieira de Mello and 22 colleagues at UN headquarters in Iraq, "a harbinger of the unrelenting calamities to come."

AP summarizes a report in The Lancet, excerpted by Under the Same Sun, which charges that U.S. military doctors were active collaborators in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, covering up homicides and reviving an unconscious detainee for further torture. Plus: 'Abu Ghraib Probe Points to Top Brass.'

The Christian Science Monitor's Scott Baldauf goes inside the Imam Ali Shrine after being warned by a U.S. Army officer, "That shrine might not be around much longer."

The Independent's Donald Macintyre reports seeing "Sadr's soldiers dig in for the final assault," while the BBC says U.S. warplanes are bombarding Najaf, and Juan Cole asks, 'Could Najaf Cost Bush the Election?'

An AFP story says that Iran's defense minister has threatened to launch a preemptive strike against U.S. forces in the region to protect its nuclear facilities.

Spiked's Brendan O'Neill ponders a paper by David Rapoport, editor of the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, which argues that WMDs have historically been less destructive than conventional weapons.

Sports Illustrated finds that a midfielder on Iraq's Olympic soccer team objects to the mention of Iraqi athletes in a Bush campaign ad, and says President Bush should "find another way to advertise himself." A teammate asks, "How will he meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women?" and adds that if he were home he would be fighting in the resistance.

In Mother Jones, Tom Engelhardt says the media are still using language on Iraq that "might have been taken from Bush press releases."

According to the Los Angeles Times, the CIA will release a report next month speculating on what Iraq's WMD capabilities might have looked like in 2008 had the U.S. not invaded last year.

Media watch group FAIR has called on reporters involved in the Valerie Plame and Wen Ho Lee cases to reveal their sources, since the sources were "not revealing government wrongdoing, but committing government wrongdoing."

The New York Times charts and chronicles 'The Birth of An Anti-Kerry Ad,' pointing out that "several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry 'unfit' had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year."

In a PBS "News Hour" segment on the controversy over attacks on Kerry's war record, host Jim Lehrer introduced John O'Neill, co-founder of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as the author of "Unfit for Command." Neither Lehrer nor O'Neill mentioned the existence of O'Neill's co-author.

A Salon article on the book mentions a remark on CNN by Republican Congressman Christopher Shays: "I don't think the Swift Boat Veterans are helping the Republican cause or helping the president. I mean, John Kerry served in Vietnam. He's a war hero."

The Nation's David Corn recaps the fight thus far, and Paul Waldman of Gadflyer writes that the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell probed the Swift Boat issue with him both during and after a Fox News "O'Reilly Factor" segment.

Oliver Willis rounds up coverage of Michelle Malkin's appearance on MSNBC's "Hardball" in which she suggested that Chris Mathews should ask Kerry whether he shot himself on purpose in Vietnam, and her subsequent claim that she is a victim of ambush journalism.

Molly Ivins writes that "Sooner or later, someone is going to ask Kerry the question he so famously asked about Vietnam: How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake? He'd better have an answer ready."

AP reports on the controversy in Venezuela over a U.S. firm's exit poll, which wrongly predicted a defeat for President Hugo Chavez. The poll was based on field work by a group that received a $53,400 grant from the congressionally-funded National Endowment for Democracy.

The Washington Post reports that a Bush-Cheney campaign advisor on Catholic issues resigned shortly before the publication of a National Catholic Reporter investigation into allegations of sexual harassment. Earlier: hands-off church membership directories.

A New York Times story calls anarchists the wild card of the GOP convention, and AP reports that NYPD plans to deploy ear-splitting acoustic weapons, which the military is already using against insurgents in Iraq, against protesters at the GOP convention, but promises to use them "only to communicate."

Early-bird delegates may wish to take in a play. "John Walker: The Musical" is scheduled to close on August 29.

August 19

ARCHIVES

Current month
July, 2004
June, 2004
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.