So anyone who questions the killing of innocent people in Lebanon is now a F'ing fool, idiot, blah, blah, blah.

Ozzy makes Hizbullah look pretty damn good, with that charming argument. Gee, I'm really reconsidering my liberal, humanist point of view, now that I see that the only truth is his truth.

How can such hate ever be an acceptable point of view? How can such extremism be an acceptable alternative to another extremism? Who wants to live in either world being proposed? Total domination. Total war. Total tyranny.

The alternatives represented by Israeli and Hizbullah extremists are not the only alternatives. Those who stand for peace, stand for the that idea, first. Isolating and condemning extremists of both stripes must be the next step. Finding those other alternatives and putting them effectively into practice is, at last, the only way to ensure a future worth inhabiting.

This is a messy business, full of difficulties and subtleties that mere vitriol and hate cannot comprehend, much less resolve.

Once again, Greenwald says it better than I can, but I can't help adding two cents.

Leaving aside the remarkable coincidence that this bust fits neatly into a right-wing August news assault, there are two major points that need to be made, over and over, in Cheney fashion:

1) This was a LAW-ENFORCEMENT action, NOT another ill-conceived, bungled military adventure, and it will presumably be handled in the British COURTS, not in some hidden prison in the nether regions of the Balkans.

2) This was a BRITISH success story, despite Chertoff and Bush leaping into the spotlight, like June-Bugs on a summer night!

BSG is just a soap opera shot on grim, industrial sets with lights flashing in the background. The characters are so serious about their petty grievances and misdirected affections that much of the action consists of furtive glances cast despairingly into the eyes of the other him or her or it that inhabits the scene.

The reason it doesn't seem like a sci-fi show is that it isn't. Making the enemy inhuman is just what people do in war. The fact that the Cylons (which sounds gratingly like the name for an '80s girl band) seem almost too human is not profound, but blank-faced boring.

The supposedly real human drama so gushingly admired in BSG is really just "Days of Our Lives In Space."

I'm very grateful to Ms. Havrilesky for having suffered through viewing what must have been grueling hours of docu-dramatics. I was fairly well resolved to avoid the TV commemoratives, but I'm now utterly committed.

The real fun will have to wait until we finally get the Bush impeachment trial going. Now, THAT will be a drama that will have me glued to the set.

I've read and cursed a number of the essays posted by Mr. Leonard -- mostly because they seem to over-value the positive aspects of "creative destruction" brought on by (to my way of thinking) mindless free-market globalism.

This latest missive is a good indicator that I've been reading too harsh a conviction into his public coming-to-terms with our wild economic world. The ability to re-evaluate a strongly argued point of view should be greatly respected. I'm on the road to that destination.

Greenwald hits all the major points spot on.

The public had begun to doubt that anyone being held at Gitmo was actually a terrorist and had expressed its relief that SCOTUS was finally putting some muscle back into the separation of powers. Bush has tanked in his popularity and in the perception of his competence.

What else could they do? They had to either produce a miracle in Iraq, arm wrestle Ahmadinejad into submission, or produce the head of Bin Laden on a silver platter. Since they, after all, are truly incompetent -- not just putting on a show to lure Democrats into a false sense of security -- they had to conjure an illusion to capture the attention of the public and rally the Republican base.

The illusion is that Gitmo will now house some real terrorists, who will genuinely deserve to be prosecuted in a kangaroo court. When Democrats object to giving Bush the power to convict the terrorists through such sleight of hand as hearsay testimony, secret evidence, and hog-tied defense attorneys, Bush and his assassins will pounce on them.

We are heading straight down the same cynical path that we've trod so many times before. Any ideas how we can avoid the same outcome, this November?

There is something unsettling about the phrase "anniversary fatigue." It rattles me.

The word "anniversary" conjures in me memories of candle-lit celebrations. Generally, it is a comforting word, a token of remembrance, a salutation -- a gentle, wistful smile of a word.

Used in connection with 9/11, the whole concept seems, somehow, unclean and inappropriate. There can be no celebration, no solace, no warm touch.

We all contemplate death in our own ways. We live with absence and emptiness, sometimes cursing and sometimes crying. We shoulder a burden, sometimes well and sometimes not. Some of us are crushed by the load. Others become emboldened and strong. But fatigued? No.

There is a sacred duty to loving those who have died. It can even become a kind of comforting ritual, but it does not have a day or an hour. It is worn like air -- everywhere, essential and unnoticed.

What is demanded of us in these public displays of memorial pomp is not reverence, not honor, not even allegiance. What is demanded is anger, hate and vengeance.

Of the annual stoking of these, I am indeed greatly fatigued.