Both stories may have resulted from impressive investigative reporting or from oppo dumps selectively leaked as a package of facts, gift-wrapped and tied with a bow.

I'm betting door number two. It's frustrating and disheartening how much pre-packaged bits play into what passes for news these days. Media companies gutted actual news departments, and came to rely on the quick fix of the pre-packaged piece, usually bought and paid for by PR firms or others out to push a particular agenda. With fewer actual journalists around to sniff out (or even question) the stories, that McNews gets served, instead.

But when something actually newsworthy happens, the spoonfed media companies are left scrambling, unsure what to do or how to report it. That happens more and more, too.

McConnell should stick to his efforts to wean the rich from having to pay estate taxes, versus contemplating the mess we've made in Iraq. So much to go on in that whining of his...

The de-Baathification effort, not passed ... I don't know what their problem is, but this country has made an enormous investment in giving the Iraqis a chance to have a normal government after all of these years of Saddam Hussein and his atrocities.

Is the de-Baathification effort he's referring to more like the re-Baathification effort -- that is, somehow flip-flopping on Bremer's idiotic de-Baathification scheme that created the Sunni insurgency to begin with? Or are we talking some de-de-Baathification?

"[W]hat their problem is?" Wow, Noam Chomsky's probably chuckling over that one, since he's often invoked how we always blame the victims of our foreign policy for it not working, versus the policy itself -- damn those Iraqis for not being shocked and awed enough by our amazing, selfless benevolence. Our lone innovation in the art of empire (and our tragic folly as a nation) is our desire to be loved -- we want to be the popular empire!

And speaking of our foreign policy, what exactly is a "normal government" in Third World terms? You mean a functioning dictatorship? A monarchy? Our favored kind of "normal governments" with regard to our allies in the Third World have rotten human rights records, in case anybody's paying attention. Death squad democracies, you know?

And finally, maybe there'd have been no Saddam Hussein to overthrow if we hadn't supported his regime back when it was politically expedient to do so in the 1980s, eh?

So, Mitch's frustrated because our foreign policy of sponsoring Third World dictatorships in strategic regions at the expense of the will of those countries' populations (in the name of "freedom and democracy" of course) isn't working in Iraq? That the Iraqi people don't want us there? Wow. Who knew a representative dictatorship wouldn't work?

And it took him this long to be frustrated about it? Must be an election bid looming in his future.

"I think they have to be responsible for the consequences of the policy recommendations they make.

Do as you say, not as you do, eh, Dick?

Let's see...

1) Ignore Clinton administration warnings about Al Qaeda

2) Have secret meetings with energy/oil industry representatives

3) Ignore actual intelligence offering warning of upcoming attack

4) When 9/11 happens, you and Bush don't show leadership: you both hide

5) You then build a false case for war in Iraq

6) You use doctored and false intelligence falsely linking Iraq to 9/11

7) You get your war in Iraq, ostensibly to stop the terrorists that weren't actually there

8) Create the insurgency through incompetence and corruption (which then leads to terrorists actually being there, when they weren't before)

9) Throw truckloads of money to private contractors/mercenaries and your buddies, Haliburton, regardless of outcomes

10) Angrily and cynically deny that you've done anything wrong all along

11) Shoot your chum on a hunting trip

Yeah, thanks for the advice, Dick. Helluva job!

it goes on and on, really...

12) Authorize Torture (and/or "Torture Lite") and extraordinary rendition, squandering any remnants of international goodwill and credibility the US still had left

13) Show (and behave with) utter contempt for the rule of law, both at home and abroad

14) Continue to wage an ongoing war of attrition in the Middle East while lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans, guaranteeing an eventual fiscal meltdown

Lordy, man. Whose side are you on, anyway? Besides Haliburton's and Blackwater USA's, that is?

Can't see the bodies, can't watch the war -- out of sight, out of mind. Not the best policy for a (dis)informed electorate, but nice of Bush's proxies in Iraq and the Pentagon to come up with a pretext for it, just in case anybody thought maybe this was to save GOP political bacon from an electoral reckoning in 2008.

At least we can trust in the integrity of our leaders to tell us how well it's going. They've been so honest and forthright with the American people so far.

*koff*