Running down the press:

Times: 'Panel Convicts Bin Laden Driver in Split Verdict'

William Glaberson's story is particularly lame, failing to note until way down on the jump that Salim Hamdan, one of several drivers for Osama bin Laden, was not a war criminal in the first place:

In fact, Hamdan was acquitted on the only charges that amounted to "war crimes." A stunning defeat for the Bush regime.

You'll have a hard time finding the best coverage of the Hamdan trial. That's because it was an oral report yesterday by veteran newsman Fred Graham on Court TV. Graham was one of the few U.S. newspeople who actually covered the trial at Guantánamo.

Solidly in the mainstream, Graham rose above it, describing Hamdan throughout his thoughtful, articulate coverage as a "very low-level driver" and emphasizing that he was hardly a figure whose alleged acts rose to the level of "war crimes."

Even the Washington Post — consistently more reliable than the Times for national and international coverage — didn't rise to Graham's level, fouling up its headline and story:

The hed should have been turned around, leading with the acquittal, and the story's no better. But you're still better off reading the WashPost's version, which includes this pretty high:

As for the tabs' coverage of Hamdan, well, just count on them (as I noted earlier this morning) for news about the other guy known for his drives: Brett Favre.

Times: 'In E-Mail, Hints of Delusions'

Well, the guy was self-aware. As for delusional e-mails, I've received a ton of them and have even written a few. It's unfortunate, of course, that Ivins didn't stick to just writing e-mails, at least if the FBI is to be believed.

Post: 'FEDS BARE CHILLING CASE AGAINST MAD SCIENTIST TO PROVE HE ACTED ALONE IN REIGN OF BIOTERROR'

Now this is the way to promo the anthrax story:

Wall Street Journal: 'FBI Paints Chilling Portrait Of Anthrax-Attack Suspect'

Today's most complete collection of anthrax coverage, starting with the start of the main piece, which is hands-down the most concise and soberly best-written handling of all the main angles:

See Ivins's e-mails here.

Daily News: 'Heath Ledger probe closed, Mary-Kate Olsen doesn't have to talk'

And we don't have to listen to her.

Post: 'FEDS TURN UP HEAT ON GOTTI-CASE "DIRTY COP" '

Can't wait for the movie? Read the story.

Daily News: 'The Scattered Dutchman'

David Krajicek's story is a few days old, but that doesn't matter because it zooms in on an event that's 100 years old. It's the kind of piece that daily papers don't usually do, let alone write so well. Krajicek starts it out:

Makes you want to keep reading.

Times: '500: Deadly U.S. Milestone in Afghan War'

Back to the grim future of 2008: This death story contains the paper's "Quotation of the Day" (for God's sake, loosen up and call it a "quote" instead of "quotation"):

That "quotation," or at least the idea behind it, should have been worked into the paper's Hamdan story — while the U.S. is conducting a show trial (yes, kinda fair, and yes, the Bush regime lost it), there's a war going on.

And speaking of war crimes, the U.S. committed a crime of war years ago by shifting its focus away from Afghanistan so it could unjustifiably invade Iraq.

Times: 'Iraqis Fail to Agree on Provincial Election Law'

Touted electronically by the paper as its top "World" story, it's not.

Times: 'China’s Leaders Are Resilient in Face of Change'

Skip the first few grafs and see this:

"Unmistakable challenges"? That's a dull understatement.

"Not always easy to distinguish the biggest private companies from their state-run counterparts"? You can't.

Think Halliburton as the profit-making arm of the Pentagon in the early days of the Iraq Debacle, and you get the picture.

Times: 'Little Pieces of Politics, Some Obscure, Lure Collectors'

Really? I did not know that.

Times: 'Minorities Often a Majority of the Population Under 20'

Sam Roberts's lede, relying on the hackneyed phrase "tipping point":

A colored country. It's a good thing for Jesse Helms that he finally died.

Times: 'Bush to Urge China to Improve Human Rights'

That, and $5 million, will buy you a cup of coffee in Zimbabwe (where inflation is over 1 million percent).

Bush has "deep concerns" about basic freedoms. Please. Do us a favor and just add this phrase: "constantly criticized at home by human-rights organizations."

That wouldn't be editorializing but simply adding context or perspective, and it would be fair to Bush.

Wall Street Journal: 'Bush Conveys Concerns About Fate of China Dissidents'

Much better and more rational angle about Bush than the Times's less-specific, buy-into-Bush-bullshit version. James Hookway's lede:

Times: 'Freddie Mac’s Big Loss Dims Hopes of Turnaround'

For some background on Freddie Mac that you're unlikely to see anywhere else, take a look at my colleague Wayne Barrett's new piece, "How Andrew Cuomo Gave Birth to the Crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

At last, detailed reporting on a New York politician who's fucking us instead of fucking hookers.

Times: 'State Board Lets Ciprianis Keep Their Liquor Licenses'

Continuing its hard-hitting coverage of NYC's rich snoots (see yesterday's Daily Flog), the paper sez:

Huzzah, my good man! Muffy won't have to bring her 40s wid her.

Times: 'China’s Gold Rush'

Matthew Forney's lame op-ed piece contrasting what China and U.S. do with their athletes is promo'ed this way:

Yes, unlike in the U.S., where colleges train thousands of professional football and basketball players (while giving them free rides and other perks) with just gold as the ultimate goal.

Post: 'Mess for Success'

Danica Lo chides fashion-faux-pas New Yorkers with her "pet peeve don'ts," introducing it this way:

Reinterpret this. I haven't worn socks since May. Danica, you put a sock on it.

The new fuss over Barry Obama's choice as chair of his veep-selection committee shows that the U.S. media have already dropped Dick Cheney into the memory hole.

Sure, many people want to forget the two terms of our de facto president, but even the best reporters are ignoring history.

How can anyone forget Cheney? He has run the presidency — into the ground. Using 9/11 as an excuse, he has encased us in Iraq the way various mastodons got trapped in the La Brea tar pits. He has hastened the dismantling of New Deal protections for the common folk.

Cheney achieved this by his appointment eight years ago as the chair of George W. Bush's veep-selection committee. Who did Cheney, the ultimate D.C. insider, pick? Himself.

Yet the banner headlines this morning, especially in the Washington Post, are that Obama's choice of James A. Johnson as chair of his veep-selection committee is controversial because of insider status and his lucrative consulting deals.

Wasn't Cheney the CEO of Halliburton before he was vice president? Didn't Vice President Cheney wind up making billions for Halliburton — which continued to pay him after he moved into the White House? (See my October 2005 post "Over a Barrel.")

This morning's Washington Post story "Obama's Choice of Insider Draws Fire: Republicans Assail Head of VP Vetting" doesn't even mention Cheney. One sentence would have been enough to at least jog people's memories and put this relative non-fuss over Johnson into context.

But normally excellent reporter Jonathan Weisman's story (co-authored with David S. Hilzenrath) blew it.

They had space to quote a GOP flack but they didn't even mention how Cheney came to rule the White House?

Of course, to even mention Cheney would have made today's A1 splash a relatively non-story, because Johnson is a piker compared with pre-veep Cheney, the classic insider.

The Post's first four paragraphs this morning:

Obama has proven that he's different. Bush has been eminently quotable as a malaprop waiting to happen. Obama is quotable in a far different way. For example, the Post notes:

Juicy, eloquent, witty quote. John McCain, a skilled schmoozer with reporters, is the same way.

No matter who wins the presidency, he'll be a good quote, though not in the way Bush has been.

In the meantime, though, don't forget Cheney. He was a terrible quote most of the time because access to him was severely limited to staged events and he was too clever to accidentally put his foot in his mouth.

In his unguarded moments, however, Cheney was eminently quotable. Cheney's "fuck yourself" to Pat Leahy is particularly memorable — the Post itself wrote an unexpurgated story about that episode in June 2004:

More important — and more obscured by the passage of time — is Cheney's 1998 speech to a bunch of Amarillo oilmen. As I noted in August 2004:

Almost exactly 10 years later, Cheney's attempt to grab the Caspian oil has failed miserably, and he has piled up 4,000 bodies in a futile grab for Iraq's oil.

The job of "worrying about it" has fallen to others.

Not just for kids: a parody of the self-parody administration

Fight off your recession and read this requiem for a lightweight: Goodnight Bush, a parody to end all self-parody presidencies.

It's almost time to say "good night" to George W. Bush, and Erich Origen and Gan Golan pronounce the laugh rites over the administration.

Bush's favorite kiddie book in times of crisis may be The Pet Goat, but mine is now Origen and Golan's Goodnight Bush, which sends the regime up to the moon in the same way that Ralph Kramden was always threatening to do to wife Alice.

This is a very funny book, even if it may induce nightmares instead of sweet dreams. Cute illustrations abound: a refinery plume, piggy war profiteers, a spilt glass of water with Katrina victims floating in it.

The text is warm and fuzzy — not as fuzzy as Bush's brain but warmer than Cheney's heart:

See Dick run. See Dick run away. See Dick run away finally.

And see the book's website here.

Great news for the war profiteers of Cheney's Halliburton

While you're financing the trillion-dollar Iraq debacle, the execs at Halliburton got some good news today from the United Arab Emirates: The UAE's airline, Emirates, is now offering nonstop service to Houston, Dubai's news service reports.

New York already has three flights daily to Dubai. But why now Houston? Halliburton is moving its headquarters to Dubai. And with that move, huge bundles of taxpayer cash are exiting the U.S.

Now it will be easier for Halliburton's execs to shuttle their money to Dubai.

This great news for Halliburton comes on the heels of its championship performance in the Center for Public Integrity's "Windfalls of War" series. The CPI's Bill Buzenberg compiled a list of the top 100 private contractors in the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles.

KBR, which Halliburton is in the process of spinning off for a huge profit, is by far No. 1 with a bullet. Tallying U.S. government contracts for fiscal years 2004 to 2006, Buzenberg reveals that KBR got $16 billion in contracts.

DynCorp was a rich second at $1.8 billion. Shoot, Blackwater was only 12th, garnering a meager $495 million.

Dick Cheney was getting a salary from Halliburton until last year, and he did well by his company. Halliburton's financial picture was shaky until after 9/11, when the Iraq debacle infused it with these huge bundles of taxpayer money. KBR's success helped its parent finance other operations, and spinning off KBR will profit Halliburton as it sells off its shares of the former subsidiary.

Meanwhile, Halliburton has now planted its big feet where the action is.

And Dubai is just the kind of place that Cheney would like. As I wrote in June, our own State Department has catalogued the UAE's notoriously repressive laws, noting:

This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.

New York's tabloids and assorted pols came unglued yesterday about the very idea of Iran's crackpot hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wanting to visit Ground Zero.

Where were they when Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose regime boils people to death, was courted by George W. Bush and Mayor Mike Bloomberg?

Don't let your own blood boil at the thought of a bad guy visiting our sacralized 9/11 site. Condemn it, if you want, but Ahmedinejad was just trying to score political points, as our own pols do all the time at Ground Zero. He got what he wanted: The angry U.S. reaction will play well back home in Tehran, especially with the radical mullahs who really run Iran and like to stir up hatred for the "Great Satan."

Do we even have to say that in international politics, enemies today are pals tomorrow, and vice versa, and that the reasons almost always have to do with greed for money and natural resources?

On the other hand, it would be nice if our press at least reported these events. The Uzbek despot Karimov laid a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002, and there was literally not one word in the U.S. press about it at the time — I'm not talking about criticism or praise but any words at all. Nothing.

So Karimov is not a bad enough guy to get you worked up? Saddam Hussein was brown-nosed by Don Rumsfeld in December 1983. There's no reason to condemn Rumsfeld for that; it was just oil politics — just like the oil politics that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played when they seized upon the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Iraq.

After all, when Texas oil execs questioned Cheney in 1998, when he was still at Halliburton, about the physical dangers of pursuing oil in turbulent parts of Asia, the future vice president and de facto commander in chief told them:

Saddam is gone, but we still don't really have Iraq's oil. We do, however, have such evil people as the Taliban to deal with, right? Well, the Taliban were hailed as Afghan freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan during their triumphant visit to the White House on March 21, 1983. Reagan said at the time:

That's ancient history, huh? In fact, they were still our pals 14 years later. In late 1997, the Taliban were wined and dined at the homes of Bush's pals, the Houston oil execs, during Dubya's reign as the hangingest governor in U.S. history.

The oil schnooks were buttering up the Taliban for pipelines and other bidness, of course. See Wayne Madsen's "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team" for details.

At least that courting of the Taliban less than 10 years ago was reported at the time. Of the many words in the mainstream press, my favorites are from a December 14, 1997, story by Caroline Lees in the Telegraph (U.K.), in which she describes the Taliban officials' visit to Unocal vice president Martin Miller's palatial Houston home:

Still secret: Corruption in the White House.

Over at Secrecy News, the indefatigable Steven Aftergood has posted a heretofore secret study of Iraqi government corruption.

Even though the Nation's David Corn already wrote about the study, I can't say it would be much of a surprise anyway: The investigating agency, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, knows a lot about corruption.

Anyway, the report notes:

Sounds like the White House. U.S. congressmen and various public-interest groups got nowhere when they tried to probe Dick Cheney's "energy task force" early in the Bush regime.

And the White House has continually tried to call a halt to the excellent investigative work by Stuart Bowen on corruption in Iraq.

It took a British NGO, Christian Aid, to break the news a few years ago that Jerry Bremer, the Barney Fife of Baghdad, couldn't explain why $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue was missing.

Besides that oil-for-slush scandal, we're still waiting to see those millions of White House e-mails the regime is withholding that relate to various scandals. Then there are the missing-weapons scandal and the various KBR scandals — you get the picture.

In any case, this new report on corruption inside Iraq's puppet government is still worth reading. It turns out that we really have planted a seed of our own form of democracy over there.

In Oceania, more rumbles about war with Iran.

Laugh if you want at the possibility of an attack on Iran by Israel or the U.S. or both, but even more American families may be crying in their biers.

The Guardian (U.K.) says this morning that Dick Cheney is winning an internal White House battle on whether to go to war with Iran. Under the headline "Cheney Pushes Bush to Act on Iran," Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger write:

The Vise President is of course the real power of the White House ("Cheney as Furor," June 25). And there have been other signs of such a mad move, as I noted July 13 ("A Different 'Gut Feeling': Israel Attacking Iran").

Martin Gensler, a former aide to the late, great Paul Wellstone, tried to restore my sanity by chiding me for mere speculation. Yes, there's more than a whiff of conspiracy theorizing and paranoia at work here, but others, including Seymour Hersh, have written about the possibility of our attacking oil-rich Iran.

Don't forget that Bush's pappy has deep ties with Saudi Arabia, the home of Sunni Muslims, and that Iran is ruled by the Sunnis' bitter enemies, the Shi'ite Muslims. We'll go far to protect such Sunni regimes as Saudi Arabia and the booming United Arab Emirates. And Cheney has a lot at stake personally. For most of the Bush regime, Cheney's been literally on the payroll of Halliburton, which is moving its headquarters to Dubai. You have to protect your investments.

In any case, haven't we always been at war with Iran? The winners supposedly get to write the history, and aren't we winning the war in Iraq?

Paul Craig Roberts, the Reagan-loving economist who's a stout critic of the Iraq war, examines that point this morning on antiwar.com in "A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?," with the help of Orwell, and also riffs on the creepy idea of a war with Iran:

Applying the principles of Ingsoc in a doubleplusgood way, the Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) try to make things clear, at least when it comes to the current war:

Actually, there are a couple of problems with that. We're at war with both of them. And we're more like Freedonia than Oceania.

Fifty-one years before 1984, Zeppo's big brother, Groucho, proudly proclaimed that Freedonia was "Land of the Spree and the Home of the Knave."

How about the entire city of New Orleans? Look at the Corps of the matter.

So Senator Dave Vitter screwed one person in New Orleans and won a million headlines. No one noticed when he, his fellow war supporters in Congress, and the White House repeatedly screwed the city's entire (former) population before and after Hurricane Katrina hit.

In early September 2005, Vitter entered the official White House photo album by pointing out flood damage in Louisiana to President George W. Bush. But as I pointed out at the time, Vitter was gesturing in the direction of Iraq, which was soaking up funds diverted before Katrina:

In June 2005, the Corps budget for New Orleans was slashed by $71.2 million, the heaviest cut the flood-prone city had ever experienced.

Two months later, Katrina hit, and water flooded into New Orleans. The Bush regime, with the support of Vitter, who was on the House Appropriations Committee before he became a senator in 2005 and was more ardent about big missiles than big levees, had been blowing its load of money on flood protection in Iraq. The Corps even established a "Gulf Region," but it was the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bush regime poured billions into building hospitals and health clinics in Iraq while letting New Orleans hospitals die.

What a drag. And that's what Rudy Giuliani's aides are thinking. As Time pointed out July 10, Vitter is the Southern campaign director for Giuliani's presidential bid. An outspoken social conservative closely tied to the Family Research Council, Bible-thumper James Dobson's D.C. arm, Vitter combined with Giuliani to make "strange bedfellows," as Gambit Weekly's Jeremy Alford noted this past April.

Until Vitter was exposed as a brothel client, he had been obsessed — except when it came to New Orleans — with preventing the release of precious bodily fluids.

Pushing hard for abstinence education, Vitter has been quite the missionary. In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee leaders just three weeks ago, Vitter pleaded for the re-authorization of $50 million to spread abstinence education to the nation's youth. Vitter wrote:

No doubt a person will pay a higher price for sexual conduct without such negotiations.

Vitter's letter added:

Or at least the rest of his term as a senator.

He co-wrote the letter with Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, the former Detroit Tigers pitcher. Quite a battery of pitcher and catcher.

Speaking of which, the moralists should say an extra prayer of thanks that Vitter was involved with the D.C. Madam instead of being just another AC/DC mister like so many other rigid right-wingers. Unlike evangelist Ted Haggard, Vitter is being criticized for screwing a woman.

To top it all, Vitter was escorted into Congress by someone else's peckerdillo, and Hustler's Larry Flynt was the key figure in that episode as well as in outing Vitter's hypocrisy. As Think Progress noted July 10:

Vitter wants to clean up such messes? Pass the Kleenex.

Grabbing onto the coattails of the Washington Post's brilliant series, "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," Democratic party activists and consultants are wailing that "Dick Cheney is a war criminal."

I guess that makes the whole host of Democrats who went along with the regime's march to war during the crucial Congressional votes of October 2002 "war schlemiels."

The Post series is indeed explosive. As this morning's dispatch, "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power," by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, shows, Cheney and other top officials personally brainstormed how to violate the Constitution and perfect the torture of Arabs captured during the War of Terror.

Basically, Cheney acts as if he were a sheikh, kind of a Dick of Arabia. No wonder Halliburton, which continues to take cues from ex-CEO Cheney and kept paying a salary to the vice president through at least the first six years of his reign at the White House, has fled to Dubai. The United Arab Emirates is one of the most repressive regimes on Earth. Our own State Department says:

Otherwise, Dubai, where the world's tallest building is being erected, is a great place. It's the dream of people like Cheney. Business and government are one and the same. Most of the workers are foreigners — only 5 percent of Emirati citizens work. Development has run amuck. An oligarchy controls everything.

Burdened by an intolerable climate (as hot as Phoenix and as humid as Houston), Dubai is bursting with outrageous resorts. It's a playpen for the rich — more like a sandbox.

D.C. isn't the greatest place, either, and it's also a playpen, as the Post series points out. From this morning's piece:

Hope there's a special section in the George W. Bush Presidential Libary on Cheney. Actually, that library should be only a wing to Dick Cheney's tome tomb.

Where were the Post and other U.S. media back in the spring of 2005 when the Times of London — one of Rupert Murdoch's papers — revealed what became known as the Downing Street Memo and other documents laying out the furtive plotting in 2002 behind the unjustified invasion of Iraq?

While disaster pimp Joe Allbaugh helps Halliburton make more money off the very agency he relentlessly privatized, an American citizen has been arrested in Australia for attending protests against Halliburton's war-profiteering.

Kinda makes sense, doesn't it?

Houston teacher and peace activist Scott Parkin, who traveled to Australia in June on a six-month visitor visa, was arrested by Australian authorities for attending anti-Halliburton protests, reports Australia's ABC News Online.

Word reached us via Halliburton Watch. ABC says Parkin is being held in a Melbourne jail and faces deportation as a "security threat." Here's more from the Aussie news service:

The Immigration Department has confirmed an American citizen is in custody, but has declined to comment on the case. Mr Parkin's legal adviser, Marika Dias, says he has attended a number of protests in Australia but has done nothing wrong.

"It's very important to note that this is not about character, this is a separate ground under the migration legislation," she said. "He was granted a visitor's visa [and] there were no security issues perceived at that stage.

"Scott has complied with that visa completely while he's been here. There's been no wrongdoing on his part."

Dan Cass, from Greenpeace, says Mr Parkin is Australia's first political prisoner. "The detention and expulsion of Scott Parkin is the thin edge of the wedge."

The arrest has caused a brouhaha down in Australia, which has numerous ties to Halliburton — and thus, numerous protesters, some of whom are even in the government:

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown wants to know who ordered Mr Parkin's deportation.

"I'd like to know whether the orders for his arrest came from the Pentagon," he said. "I doubt very much that they came from Australia's security services. After all, he was cleared for a visa for this country a few months ago."

Federal Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock says he is aware of the case.

"I understand it's a decision that's been taken by the Minister for Immigration, and that there may be legal proceedings surrounding it," he said. "I understand the decision was based upon a security assessment, and security assessments are not something about which I can comment in any detail."

Parkin was probably known by the U.S. government as a "security threat" before he even left for Australia. After all, he committed the grave offense of actually being quoted as saying something negative about the company that still pays Dick Cheney. As Halliburton Watch notes:

Australia's prime minister, John Howard, is a close ally of US President George W. Bush's war on terror, and Halliburton is widely criticized over its handling of military contracts.

"Halliburton is making a killing off the devastation in Iraq," Parkin told CounterPunch in April. "They are actually the 'poster child' for war profiteering," he said.

Meanwhile, Allbaugh, who helped cripple FEMA by privatizing many of its functions, designated his college roommate, Mike Brown, to succeed him. We all know that Brown has done a heck of a job.

I guess not everyone agrees with that assessment by Bush. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported a few days ago from New Orleans:

"For God's sake, are you blind?" a woman shouted at Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "You're patting each other on the back, while people here are dying."

The woman was not a victim of Hurricane Katrina. She was a reporter with US television network MSNBC who was so affected by the misery she had witnessed she could hold back no longer.

Hey, which Australian wrote that story? Sounds like a security threat to me. And that MSNBC reporter, too. Give me her file, while you're at it.