Iraq

If Blair Falls can bush Stand

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Bilmon doesn’t think the US has the stuff anymore to take out a president:

Here in land of the fairly free and the not-so-brave, that wouldn’t make much difference, I suppose, since we seem to have lost our taste for White House scandal — not to White House accountability — once Bill Clinton put his slick willy back in his pants. But the British appear to still take these things fairly seriously.

But if Blair really does fall can you imagine the new set of lies and misdirection we will be subject to as the Republican controlled House and Senate dodge their responsibility.
And then again, the bushies may have laid the groundwork for trying to pull their fat out of the fire:

Senior officials in the Bush administration believe Kay’s weapons discoveries should have been revealed as they were made. However, a decision, approved by President Bush, was made to wait until more was discovered and then announce it — probably in September.

See The Left Coaster for more details on Blair’s travails.

Taking Out Journalists

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Taking out the Journalists
It is dangerous in Iraq and mistakes are made:

Reuters news agency is calling for a “comprehensive investigation” after one of its award-winning cameramen was shot and killed by U.S. troops near Baghdad.
Coalition officials say soldiers mistook Mazen Dana’s camera for a shoulder-launched weapon and have described the incident as a “tragic mistake.”
The shooting took place in daylight Sunday afternoon outside the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, scene of an attack Saturday night that killed six Iraqis and wounded nearly 60 others.
U.S. military officials say they are investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.
“They thought he was aiming an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) at them and they engaged him,” a senior Pentagon official told CNN.

We do not know the exact context so it would be wrong to jump to final conclusions but a TV Camera does look a bit different then a rocket propelled grenade launcher.
NB: I’ll bet a few folks would get excited if they got the model with the launcher in their sites.
Update: 8/19 Please go to Body and Soul where Jeanne has has more details on this killing. Via Talkleft.
Update (8/19): A commentor provides this link which provides a much different perspective on the differences between a TV Camera and an RPG. The ones shown do look more like cameras then the one SH is holding in picture I link to above.

Raining on the bush parade

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Moorish Girl says A Storm is Brewing. Check out this Washington Post article:

The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates — in public and behind the scenes — made allegations depicting Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied:

Yep, I think its brewing and can see the lightning on the horizon.

ET, call Iraq?

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Phone users in Baghdad had a brief interlude of phone service until corporate America’s managers realized that it might reduce the value of the monopolies they planned to create:

The U.S.-led authority in Iraq — which wants to hold a tender for three regional mobile phone licences — asked Batelco to shut down. A renegade service provider could throw a spanner into its plans for a tender for the licences, among the most potentially lucrative contracts to be offered in Iraq.
Iraq was frozen out of a global boom in personal portable phones by Saddam’s secret state. But mobile phones sprang unexpectedly to life a week ago, delighting cellphone users who could make and receive calls around the world.

Hmmm, also the military may want to maintain the ‘secret state’ for a while more.
Via David Marston at Catallarchy.