Random News & Views Roundup

- Yo mamma wears army boots!..Ya? Well yo mamma had to tie a pork chop around your neck so the dogs would play with you! November '08 can't come soon enough.

- I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. I had just followed a link from memeorandum to the NYT's piece headlined "Militants Using Chemical Bombs in Iraq" when I noticed they had changed their headline to "Iraqi Militants Use Chlorine in 3 Bombings". AP didn't fare much better with the headline "Iraqi insurgents use 2nd 'dirty' bomb". Those are obviously very loaded phrases and the MSM ought to be careful with their choice of words. It's horrendous enough that trucks containing chlorine are being blown up. That should just stand on its own.

- Cheney's still being his arrogant, assholish, fearmongering self:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday harshly criticized Democrats' attempts to thwart President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, saying their approach would "validate the al-Qaida strategy." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired back that Cheney was questioning critics' patriotism.

Pelosi also took a swipe at the WH spin about how loverly it is that the Brits have been able to withdraw from Iraq now:

As for Cheney's assertion that the partial British pullout is a sign that things are going well in Iraq, Pelosi said: "If it's going so well, we'd like to withdraw our troops as well."

Eaxctly. Touche. Now use your congressional power to actually do something about that, Nancy.

- Patrick Cockburn bolsters that assertion:

It is an admission of defeat. Iraq is turning into one of the world's bloodiest battlefields in which nobody is safe. Blind to this reality, Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain could safely cut its forces in Iraq because the apparatus of the Iraqi government is growing stronger.

In fact the civil war is getting worse by the day. Food is short in parts of the country. A quarter of the population would starve without government rations. Many Iraqis are ill because their only drinking water comes from the highly polluted Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Nowhere in Mr Blair's statement was any admission of regret for reducing Iraq to a wasteland from which 2 million people have fled and 1.5 million are displaced internally.

- Juan Cole has more. "This is a rout, there should be no mistake."

- Robert Fisk explains how Lebanon will be first victim of Iran crisis.

- Al Gore's in Canada and he's a hot ticket.

- The US military has announced that it will conduct its own investigation into rape allegations made by an Iraqi woman against members of Iraq's security force after a pompous al-Maliki declared the case was closed and said the woman was lying. That's "justice", al-Maliki style.

- Seven Saudis have been released from Gitmo. We have one Canadian there. Why can't we get him out?