The chickenhawks reap the whirlwind:

From tomorrow's Washington Post:

Tolerance of the situation in Iraq also appears to be declining within the U.S. military. Especially among career Army officers, an extraordinary anger is building at Rumsfeld and his top advisers. "Like a lot of senior Army guys, I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration, the young general said. He listed two reasons. "One is, I think they are going to break the Army." But what really incites him, he said, is, "I don't think they care." Jeff Smith, a former general counsel of the CIA who has close ties to many senior officers, said, "Some of my friends in the military are exceedingly angry." In the Army, he said, "It's pretty bitter."

"The people in the military are mad as hell," said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a frequent Pentagon consultant. He said that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, should be fired. A spokesman for Myers declined to comment. A Special Forces officer aimed higher, saying that, "Rumsfeld needs to go, as does Wolfowitz."

Asked about such antagonism, Wolfowitz said, "I wish they'd have the -- whatever it takes -- to come tell me to my face."[emphasis added]

I dunno, Paul, it may have something to do with the fact that they're over there fighting, while you sit comfortably behind a desk.

Idiot son update: After spending his first eight months with Serie A also-ran Perugia on the bench, including a three-month stint in the doghouse for failing a drug test, Saadi Ghadafi, son of the Libyan strongman and U.S. ally in the War on Terror, finally made his debut in Italian soccer, playing 15 minutes as a substitute in his team's 1-0 upset victory over Juventus. His coach, Serse Cosmi, explained later that "Gaddafi came on because he is a player and not because any one of us wanted to go into history as the one who first played the son of a head of state in the Italian championship".

I've never been one to compare Bush with Hitler, but his apologists continued use of the line that "if Bush had known about what was happening at Abu Ghraib, he would have stopped it", is really starting to creep me out.

Gore's worst decision:

In his questioning of the panel, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman contrasted the U.S. response to the abuse scandal and terrorist responses to acts perpetrated against Americans. He noted that American leaders apologized to the Iraqi people for the outrages in Abu Ghraib, but he hasn't heard anyone apologize for the 3,000 Americans killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or an apology for the hundreds of Americans killed in liberating Iraq or an apology for the killing and desecration of four security persons in Fallujah.

Perhaps he should take that issue up with the President; certainly, the blood of any American killed in Iraq is as much on Lieberman as anyone else in our government. In the meantime, we have to find a primary challenger (or better yet, an independent), who will challenge this asshole in '06.

In the hagiography of Pat Tillman, one of the aspects to the story that the media has focused on is that he enlisted in the Rangers "in the wake of 9/11"; once The Towers fell, he had an epiphany about the relative lack of importance of playing football, and decided to immediately fight for Uncle Sam. Actually, what is much more interesting is that he didn't enlist immediately. Lots of people rallied round the flag after that fateful Tuesday, sang "God Bless America" and put the Stars and Stripes on their car antennas. Tillman, rather than abandoning his teammates, played out the 2001 season, starting every game, and by turning in another quality season, made himself more marketable as a football player. He didn't actually enlist until May, 2002, when he had nine months to think about the ramifications of what he was doing. His was not an emotional decision, but a reasoned one, and in my view a more patriotic act because of it.

Giving credit where it's due: Andrew Sullivan takes on the rightists' attempts to excommunicate John Kerry from the Catholic Church. Unlike my April 24 post on the same subject, which dealt with the anticipated political fallout, his article focuses on those attempting to lobby the Church, and the unsound religious position they put forward.

Beating and torturing prisoners is not "the America he knows"? Didn't Bush used to be the governor of Texas? Also, good move not going on Al Jazeera; the last thing you want to do is appear on an independent Arab-language station that people actually watch. Those who get suckered by a politician's faux-religiosity are already going to vote for Bush, so why bother with this P.R. stunt if you aren't going to make an appeal to at least some of the people turned off by the revelations of the past week.

What Chalabi Wrought:

In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds. [link mine]

--Joshua Marshall

NaziPundit grows tired of the 14th Amendment, waxes poetically on the benefits of racial profiling. [link via Media Matter] I suppose this story would warm Ilsa's heart, though.

For the duration of the de facto NBA Finals, Matt Yglesias' smug, toxic Lakerphobic site is banned from my blogroll, to be replaced by the wise, sensible analysis of Roger L. Simon. Kobe Akbar !!

Two important stories of note: Josh Marshall, on the increasingly suspicious role that Ahmed Chalabi is playing in the alleged "Oil-for-Food" scandal, and this L.A. Times scoop, on Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds' purchase of a new home in a gated Beverly Hills community. No word yet on who brokered the sale.