I was just moaning to friends that Bataman sucks, is totally full of itself, and seems to be parroting Bush's favorite messaging on terror. I guess someone at WSJ agrees.

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.

Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell. "The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

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It certainly does. Bush's legacy, indeed.

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When Saad Tawfiq watched Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on February 5 2003 he shed bitter tears as he realised he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing.

As one of Saddam Hussein's most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1995 -- and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.

<snip>

From the end of 2002 the US spy agency had sources inside Iraq's weapons plants telling them clearly what the whole world now knows -- that Saddam had ended efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Nevertheless in March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq to disarm Saddam of this non-existent arsenal and in the process triggered the effective collapse of the Iraqi state, plunging it into chaos and bringing thousands of deaths.

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Remember that crap BushCo tried to sell about Saddam having ties to Al Qaida via Zarqawi? Surprise! It was totally false. In fact, Hussein saw Zarqawa the same way he saw all of al-Qaida: as a threat to his regime, to be captured or killed. At least Saddam tried to go after Zarqawi, unlike Bush.

Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat - Yahoo! News

It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi." In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.

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Lots of exciting primaries next week. In honor of Joementum..."Joe & George"

Don't forget about Colorado's CD 7 where true Dem Peggy Lamm takes on a fair-weather Dem with an entitlement-complex.

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W says "Happy B-day Kel!" In honor of your Belfast roots.

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Why can't the press corps accept that the rest of us aren't in love with W?

Firedoglake» Frothy Junior

Perhaps someone can explain to me the strange male attraction to George W. Bush. I have never encountered anything quite like it. From day one, DC nerds like Klein have had massive man-crushes on Junior, describing him as "loose-hipped" and "swaggering" and showing all manner of strange obsession with his masculine body language. Klein seems to barely be able to contain his squeal as he writes about Bush’s "strut" and his "full jaunty" (which sounds suspiciously like "full monty" — giving full rise, as it were, to speculation about what Klein was thinking about when he came up with it.) But, can someone please tell me what in the hell he’s talking about when says that Bush was "downright frothy?" What in god’s name was Klein doing while he wrote this column? (Don’t go there…)

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Here's a little screenshot from the aol front page. You gotta love the news media pushing for that "Bush bounce" after his "Best week in ages." There's about 2,500 soldiers who aren't having such a great week, but the press just loves the "shock and awe." Please show us more terrorist corpses...it's like dangling keys in front of a baby.

I should have taken a screen shot of yestedays front page too about whether the likes of Anne Coulter, Pat Robertson, and Michael Moore were "True Believers," or just trying to sell books. They noted Coulter's "harpies" comment, and Robertson's, Chavez assanitation request, but simply said this about Moore, "He's not subtle." Equivocation is not objective journalism. The left has no Coulter or Robertson equivalent. We have some crack pots, like the lady who wants to legalize drunk drivig on the weekends featured on The Daily Show this week, but no bestsellers spouting certifiable crap.

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It's about time. Why would the Administration flirt with treason just smear Joe Wilson and his wife? It can't be just because they didn't like him contradicting them. It's because he was pulling back the covers on a much wider misinformation campaign being run out of the White House and Pentagon.  Again, information we could've used a few years ago.

VANITY FAIR : The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed

The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links to the White House

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As the "few bad apples" meme starts to spread from the Administration, remember this article.  Like the massacres in Vietnam, this is the result of soldiers pushed to the breaking point, living in conditions that make them survivalists...killers.  The easy political move with all these tragedies is to take a parting shot at the Bush Administration and call them "incompetent," maybe, "corrupt."  The real story is not of their failures, but their success.  They implemented their plan exactly as they wanted.  These consequences are not a result of the incompetent, but the supremely confident.  These are the consequences of their policies, not their mistakes.

'Marines are good at killing. Nothing else. They like it'

The day before my arrival one soldier had shot himself in the head with his M16. No one would discuss why.

The washing facilities were at the top and the main lavatories at the base. With about 800 steps between them, many did not bother to use the official facilities.

Instead, a number had moved into small encampments around the dam's entrances that resembled something from Lord of the Flies. Entering one, a marine was pulling apart planks of wood with his dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire.

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