be just

The Corpse on the Gurney: The 'Success' Mantra in Iraq - by Tom Engelhardt : "The other day, as we reached the first anniversary of the President's announcement of his 'surge' strategy, his 'new way forward' in Iraq, I found myself thinking about the earliest paid book-editing work I ever did. An editor at a San Francisco textbook publisher hired me to 'doctor' god-awful texts designed for audiences of captive kids. Each of these 'books' was not only in a woeful state of disrepair, but essentially D.O.A. I was nonetheless supposed to do a lively rewrite of the mess and add seductive 'sidebars'; another technician then simplified the language to 'grade level' and a designer provided a flashy layout and look. Zap! Pow! Kebang! During the years that I freelanced for that company in the early 1970s, an image of what I was doing formed in my mind – and it suddenly came back to me this week. I used to describe it this way: The ...

The Hormuz Hoax- by Justin Raimondo : "Following up on the alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz with those five Iranian speedboats, remember that radioed threat supposedly coming from the Iranian side? Now they're blaming it on – are you ready for this? – 'the Filipino Monkey,' some crazy guy (or guys) whose obscene remarks have come crackling over ship radios in the area for years. Notice how quickly the official story is changing. First the transmission was a threat coming from the Iranians: now they're 'unsure.' This is contrary to the President's characterization of what occurred, and the Pentagon's video presentation of a threat emanating from the speedboats: the allegedly 'aggressive' actions of the Iranians are underscored by an audio overlay in which a voice interpolates 'I am coming to you, you will explode in a few minutes.'"

16 die in latest fighting in Somalia : "Islamic militants fired mortar shells and guns in the Somali capital on Thursday, sparking crossfire with Ethiopian troops and their Somali government allies that killed at least 16 people, witnesses said."

U.S. Boosts Its Use of Airstrikes In Iraq - washingtonpost.com : "The U.S.-led coalition dropped 1,447 bombs on Iraq last year, an average of nearly four a day, compared with 229 bombs, or about four each week, in 2006."