Today, on Face the Nation, which I listened to on my highly useful satellite radio, not to be confused with my satellite blender, US colonial administrator in Iraq said in passing and without any questioning, that there are two views in Iraq: one view wants the Constitutional Assembly in Iraq to be elected, and the other view is that it should be appointed: and the host Bob Schiffer asked him: and the US is opposed to the election, right? and Brenner answered in the affirmative. But opposition to election notwithstanding, and brutal subjugation of a people notwithstanding, and the appointment of a crooks and charlatans as puppet council members nothwistanding, the Iraq war was a war of liberation. And by that logic, Tom Friedman is a witty writer and a deep thinker.

The New York Times today revealed its regular daily stupidity: on the day that Wolfowitz survived a missile attack on his hotel, the headquarters of US military commanders, it carried a story that some people saluted Wolfowitz, and that he was cheered: but it never mentions that when US officials go to Iraq, they unfailingly travel in the northern Kurdish areas under the rule of pro-US Kurdish militias, and that those dignitaries move in convoys of heavy military trucks and cars, making sure to instigate waves: I saw in South Lebanon how some people would wave to Israeli military vehicles (out of fear) while cursing them with a large repertoire of Arabic obscenities. But the New York Times is under constraints: they can only fit what can be printed in a government newspaper.