I wrote last week about one passage from Judith Miller's memoir, THE STORY (2015). Here's another. Early on in her chapter 15, Miller, writing about being embedded with a team that was assigned to look for Saddam's supposedly hidden cache of weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq War in 2003, tells us: "Col. Richard R. McPhee, forty-seven, who commanded the eight-hundred-person XTF, had insisted I wear a uniform if I wanted to travel with his METs." Jargon translation there. The XTF was the "Exploration Task Force." It was made up of Mobile Exploration Teams (METs, but not a New York baseball franchise.) So, the Colonel in charge wanted her to wear a uniform. Why? "A reporter in civilian clothes was a natural target, he said He was not going to be the first commander in Iraq to get his embed killed." I'm curious why this is? An Iraqi sniper would aim for the civilian? Why? Or just because it would make her conspicuous? Well...
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A few words about Donald Trump. Yes, I despise him, and I think his advance toward the nomination has been a thoroughly depressing spectacle. But that's not what I'm going to say today. Instead, it is this: Trump has spoken thoughts that have long been unspeakable in Republican circles. For example, he has offered some kind words for the work of Planned Parenthood. How shocking! He very heavily qualifies those words as soon as they come out of his mouth, but he says them. Also, Trump has said that we as a nation were bamboozled into a war with Iraq by lies (or falsehoods when he's being polite) about weapons of mass destruction. Nobody else is saying that, in either party really. Yes, Sanders criticizes Mrs Clinton's hawkish votes as Senator, but he has left the WMD thing in the memory hole. I'm glad somebody has pulled it out of there. One more: Trump suggests that the US can and should play a mediator's/deal-makers role in the Israel/Palest...