Is she really that clever, though? "The Breck Girl" . . . "Obambi" . . . she always sounds to me like a more sophisticated version of the schoolyard bully who disses other kids as "pussies" and "fags" (or "sluts" and "hos"). (And references to Bambi and the Breck Girl aren't exactly timely. Aren't satirists expected to stay a little fresher? I guess the Carmela Soprano stuff is reasonably current.)

The fact that Rush Limbaugh always seems to pick up on Dowd's malicious nicknames doesn't seem like strong evidence of her cleverness. (If she were clever, would Limbaugh and his listeners find her funny?)

Nice posts today, by the way; the Digby one was interesting too.

As much as I enjoy your regular (and helpful) de-pantsing of morons like Chris Matthews, the problem you've identified here is so widespread, and so alarming . . .

Like one of the early commenters, I've wondered in the past few weeks whether I were going crazy -- suddenly every Arab we kill is "Qaeda?"

Can the NY Times be shamed into improving their journalism? (I see that there's yet another article today uncritically reporting "administration" claims that the "debate over how to close Guantanamo Bay" is raging in the White House "again" -- because Bush "has made closing the base a priority.")

I do love destroying blastocysts.

Shame on the New York Times for running this op-ed in this form! The fact that this is an "opinion" piece doesn't make Davis's reference to Hicks's "stipulation" any less deceptive or destructive.

I notice, also, that the Times's front-page story this morning includes a reference, in the sub-head, to our war against "Qaeda."

Finally, a quick point:

Even if we take the military's word about everything happening at Guantanamo, the camp, and the "military commissions" conducted there, are a gross violation of every international legal norm and human rights standard. In other words, there's no need to prove that prisoners like Hicks are being sexually assaulted in order to make the case against Bush, Guantanamo, and official "disappearances." (Of course, these policies are also -- apologies to Glenn here -- immoral.)

I'm only pointing this out because a common response by Bush apologists to editorials like these is to say: "Well, of course he claims he was sexually abused." Whether or not Hicks and others in his position were sexually abused (and are continuing to be sexually abused) isn't the primary question. The primary question is: does the U.S. government have the right to carry out kidnappings? Even if the people whom our military has kidnapped are being held at the Ritz Carlton, their ongoing "detention" is still a violation of every core principle of international law, and every fundamental protection enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

That being said: no impartial, rational observer could doubt that U.S. interrogators are sexually abusing detainees as a matter of course. After hearing Josh Casteel, a former interrogator who's now a student at the Playwrights' Workshop here in Iowa City, describe the interrogations he personally participated in (interrogators routinely "fucked" the prisoners with rectal thermometers to punish them for their non-responsiveness), I'm persuaded that rape is not an aberration in these military camps, but an intentional and widespread policy.