Retired Major General slams Rummy; Iraq Casualty Map

Retired Army major general Paul D. Eaton wrote a scathing op-ed for the NY Times yesterday, in which he thoroughly takes our Secretary of Defense to task for, well his handling of the mess in Iraq as well as his destructive impact on the Pentagon. While I would disagree that Joe "Joe-mentum" Lieberman is a "true democrat", I'd agree with everything else he has said, especially the part about how Congress needs to re-assert itself and actually provide a check to our fearful leader (another reason why glenn's book is so important).

Also, Newsweek has an extremely sobering interactive map which lists the casualty numbers for Iraq since the US invasion. So sad and depressing to say the least.

Glenn is writing an important book…

Glenn Greenwald, whose blog I have linked to repeatedly, is writing a very timely book about the NSA illegal wiretapping scandal. The link is to the post on his blog where he talks about the book for the first time; I would highly, highly encourage reading it.

It’s the lying…

A great post over at firedoglake about one reason why this administration's approval rating is so low.

Cal v. UCLA; battle for First place?

Cal's men's basketball team hosts the UCLA Bruins tomorrow night, with both teams at or near the top of the Pac-10 standings. Cal trails the 1st place bruins by a game, but has beaten UCLA in their only meeting, at UCLA, this season. A win tomorrow would tie the bears and Bruins atop the Pac-10 (along with Washingtion if they beat ASU), but the Bears would hold the tie-breaker (for Pac-10 tourney seeding) over UCLA due to having swept them (again, if the bears win tomorrow night).

The bears really tanked their game against ASU after having beaten Arizona, which leaves Cal with little room for error if they want to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. My best guess is that Cal needs 3 more wins to be in the tourney safely, whether that comes with 2 this week and one in the tourney, or 1 this week and 2 in the tourney. We shall see.

What Bush KNEW BEFORE Katrina struck

The AP has obtained a video which shows our fearful leader being briefed on how bad the impact of Katrina would be *BEFORE* Katrina struck landfall. The video belies much of what was said by the president in the wake of Katrina, i.e. the "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees", etc.

A must read every day…

Glenn Greenwald's "Unclaimed Territory" Blog. Absolutely essential reading everyday. I keep linking to articles he writes. His latest two pieces, about the latest in the NSA illegal wiretapping scandal as well as the "conservatives'" abdication of personal responsibility are spot-on and should be required reading for everyone. I've been remiss in posting; i'll try to be more up to date, although I've definitely been suffering from the scandal fatigue that Peter Daou talks about in one of his blog posts i've linked to in an entry below.