The last true thing that the administration told us was just when the war was starting, and they said that sometimes they would be lying to us.

A few days later, they said that they wouldn't lie, which was, of course, a lie.

After that, everything is suspect.

one has to wonder whether any of this is true. The war, the dead, the maimed, Bush, the real leader President Cheney, the Congress, the Senate and most definitely, the Press. They all seem to play some sort of role in this surreal adventure but being only a bit playing extra in this awful movie script myself, I really wish it would end and we can go home and read a few new scripts. Maybe a comedy rather than a comedy of errors...

Bergner says that Shahid...participated in the creation of al-Baghdadi, played by an actor, and the group for which he supposedly speaks, the Islamic State of Iraq, as a front for al-Qaida in Iraq. This was aimed, Bergner said, at convincing Iraqis that the group is really Iraqi in nature.

And Bush, in the last few months, has been trying to convince us that Al-Qaida in Iraq is really not Iraqi in nature. Isn't this story just oh so convenient for the Bushies?

is one of Prokofiev's most popular pieces of music. It was written for a satirical film about venal bureaucrats in old Tsarist Russia who find that they've inadvertently created a nonexistent Lt. Kiji through a typographical error, and now one of their superiors wants to talk to the guy. So they invent an elaborate life history and heroic death for him in order to deal with the situation. I'm sure it was a very funny film and certainly an excellent score, but in real life the humor is balanced by the sheer terror of realizing that not only do we not know who we're fighting, we don't know whether some of the people we're fighting actually exist or not.

...the number twos in Al Qaeda that we keep bumping off, is this really a surprise? Curveball, anyone?

al-Qaida In Iraq created a fiction to convince Iraqis that al-Qaida was a big part of the home grown insurgency. The Bush Administration also wants to convince Americans that al-Qaida is a big part of the Iraqi insurgency. It seems both al-Qaida and the Bush Administration find themselves wanting the same things again.

It also seems that some Republicans think that an al-Qaida attack in the US might be just the thing to shore up the GOP's waning support.

I look forward to having an administration in this country whose aims actually conflict with al-Qaida and who will definitely *not* benefit from what al-Qaida wants to accomplish.

Clearly he hasn't been tortured enough.

No wonder we're losing.

and, if he's not too busy, perhaps James Bond too.