China Air Lines. Not "Air China". Brain lapse. Dui bu qi, Taiwan!

A poignant instance of an airport named for a national hero is Ninoy Aquino International in Manila. Benigno Aquino, a political opponent of Ferdinand Marcos, was assassinated on the tarmac there in 1983, after descending the staircase of an Air China flight from the U.S. via Taipei and upon setting foot in his homeland after spending several years in exile.

A small measure of justice was obtained a few years later when the Marcoses were forced by the People Power Revolution to fly to the U.S. (Imelda's shoes stayed behind); Aquino's widow, Cory, became the free Philippines' first president; and Manila's international airport was renamed for her late husband.

Dear Fellow Readers, the thrust of your respective arguments ends in the strong point, well-received, that on this the day after one or more heathen sinners, after 4 years of probing, finally succeeded in penetrating through the unviolated gate guarding the soft underbelly of the sultry Green Zone, we ought not let ourselves become aroused over what might have been just a trifle, a mere affair of the heart, lest we all be licked and licked good when the orgy of violence in the lush valley of the Tigris reaches its climax.

Whereas, I disagree. I submit that these affairs are intimately related; and I say the heart of the matter is that while we know this young daughter of Persia served under Wolfowitz, we have yet to learn at whose pleasure she served. While he lavished money on her and pumped her for the status of Iran's nuclear program, did she serve solely at his pleasure? Or did she also serve at the pleasure of Condi Rice? Or did she serve under and/or at the pleasure of both Rice and Wolfowitz, perhaps at the same time? We simply must know.

Perhaps she served at the pleasure of Paul Wolfowitz AND at the pleasure of Condi Rice -- maybe even at the pleasure of both at the same time. No wonder she feels victimized.

Talking points are passionately being massaged at this very moment which will reveal the woman (codename: Softball)'s intimate connections to the Peacock Throne; and that she is a fine asset who has shaped a body of hard intelligence on Iran's big nuclear missiles (a fantasy, it turns out). She has been tapped to play a key role in Uncle Sam's domination of post-war Iran; and, until liberal media tools exposed her plan and left her naked to the world, her undercover tale of financial intercourse between nations was a thinly-veiled prophylactic to head off any criticism concerning the birth pangs of a new Middle East.

Which leaves us with the following questions: Did she serve at Wolfowitz's pleasure? and, Has this story got legs?

You're really not going to post anything concerning Paul "Iraq is a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon" Wolfowitz's financing of his tawdry sex life with (quite a lot of) World Bank funds? Granted, the list of Gop scandals is growing so long that we practically need an index just to keep up; but damn, I was especially looking forward to the peals of laughter over the public fall of yet another Gop chickenhawk.

The path to clean up racism in media leads straight to Rush's command post in sunny south Florida. Racism, Republicanism, and Right-Wing Media go together like drunken white frat boys, Confederate flags, and African-American strippers. Thus the panicked attempt to deflect the whole mess onto rap music and imply that Imus's "free speech" was violated during a wild party with the liberals of Rutgers women's basketball team.

Excerpt from the MY FAVORITE THINGS section of Condi Rice's personal web page:

"Long morning walks through Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone, strolling arm in arm with Sen. John "Neverland" McCain as we celebrate the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Has anyone actually seen Doug Feith lately? I envision him holed up in a basement office in the Library of Congress, extracting particular phrases from the Founding Fathers to be reworked and then stovepiped (via pneumatic tube) directly onto Cheney's desk.

Imus means nothing to me; but the whole media circus became a kind of comedy today when I realized it was like Day 5 or 6, and IT'S STILL THE MAJOR STORY for America's worthless corporate media -- which apparently has no celebrity court case or missing white woman to go 24/7 on. Imus MUST be praying for war to break out with Iran, something, anything, that will blast him off the headlines like 9/11 did for Gary Condit; but instead, five or six days gp by and . . . nothing. So every day it just gets worse for him. If a major blonde female celebrity doesn't OD soon, I'm afraid before the week is out I'll turn on my TV and see that Imus has been put to death before a live studio audience.

Yeah, I know; he's a despicable old white male scumbag whom time passed by in 1982; but so are at least half the other "entertainers" on TV. Limbaugh and his local imitators say worse things on radio every day. The real story here is that America's mass media simply sucks, to an extent that is probably unimaginable for Salon's overseas audience.