I dedicate this diary to journalists who have placed themselves in danger in order to get the story.  This is a dedication to those who have died and those who have thankfully faced down injury and threats of harm and survived.

This is intended to shame the Richard Cohens of our media, the perfumed princes and shrinking violets, who run aghast from inboxes filled with words.  No matter how foul the invective, no matter how righteous the F-bombs, no matter how they shake the crisp styrofoam cups of coffee in their pampered hands in their plush offices, they are nothing compared to what journalists have proudly faced in the service of democracy and a widely informed public.

This is for Richard Cohen.  A knock upside the head.  Grow some skin around those brittle bones.

This is for us.  Please show some love for the immensely brave hearts of the men and women who stuck their necks on the line for us - and still do.

Forgive me if this sort of thing has been posted before, but I just received a missive from an uncle who is normally free-thinking but seems to have quaffed some of the Kool-Aid on this one.  He's passed around an email describing how all the state and locals failed to heed Bush's strong leadership before Katrina even hit.

He's a geologist working in Midland, Texas for Schlumberger - oil, Texas tea - and once, long ago, found himself in a jogging unit with a young scion of a prominent oil family named George W. Bush.  Also undressed with him (to change, for shame!) afterwards in the locker room, so now jokes he's seen a living President naked.  I don't know if that explains why he's very protective of Bush here, where he hasn't been in the past.

If you've seen this and its debunking before (in digest form), please let me know.  If this has been covered copiously (in digest form) on dKos before, please ignore!

Thanks!

This is an issue I have barely followed until the holiday, when my traditionally Republican father started calling it one of the major factors why the Iraq invasion shook out the way it did, if not THE major factor.  Why France and Russia and other countries did not get involved and the UN dragged its feet on resolutions, etc.  Today he sends me a USA Today article quoting Senator Norm Coleman, of the subcommittee for investigating UN irresponsibility, who says Annan should step down for the $23 billion skimmed by Hussein and the kick-backs received by his son through a Swiss subsidiary.  My dad's email indicates this may be the "worst financial scandal the world has ever seen."

I need help verifying a story that came out of the early days of the Iraqi invasion in 2003, I believe involving Ted Koppel.  I heard the story here or elsewhere but it might have been, at that point, hearsay.

The story has Koppel (or other famous, wealthy, peerless anchorman) in his embed gear trying to explain why the Iraqi army had not blown the bridges upon their retreat.  His explanation was that precision-guided American bombs were able to clip the explosive wires before they could detonate, a patently ridiculous volume of hogwash.

Does anybody remember this?  Will a kind soul point me in the right direction to a factual account of this story?  Thanks.

There has been a lot of speculation as to the world's reaction to Bush's re-election.  Will they hold their nose and engage in new relations or will they wither away whatever olive branches they had laid across the gap?

American backpackers have long affixed patches with the Canadian flag to their gear, just in case some anti-American sentiment oozed past the general good-natured Europeans and other people of the world.  At any given time, there were likely more 'Canadians' travelling the globe than there were in Toronoto and Ottawa and Vancouver put together.