Brought to You by George W. Bush

Funny--it seems as if the right-wing these days is doing as much as they can to hide the disaster that is the Bush policy: hundreds have been killed, thousands have been wounded, Weapons of Mass Destruction were nothing more than a wet dream fantasy of Bush, Ahmad Chalabi, and Judith Miller...while Iraq is about to fall apart. I'm sure most folks already know that Chalabi racked up a nest egg of roughly $400 million dollars in exchange for telling Washington what they wanted to hear. Here's what he's saying now:

Ahmad Chalabi is pretty much admitting that he lied about Iraq's WMD and that Iraqi "defectors" coached by his Iraq National Congress misled intelligence officials. But, he says, "What was said before is not important."

Meanwhile, Jimmy Breslin once again earns his paycheck. Check out his column at Newsday's website. Link courtesy of Today in Iraq--an absolute must read for anyone concerned with what's happening there.

Excerpt:

She didn't know his name. It was on a tag someplace and it had already been logged in. They did that the moment they brought the dead soldier off the plane from Iraq and into the morgue at Dover Air Force Base. The body had to pass through a metal detector in case there was some ordnance still there...

The left eye was there, wide open. The startled left eye.

"It was looking out as if to say, 'What happened?'" she was saying yesterday. "I don't think he believed that he was dead."

She stood and stared at that left eye and the left eye stared back at her. It was light-looking. Bluish green. The colors change in death. The amazement in this eye does not.

She began to dream of seeing that face as it was in his young life. A right eye, and a young firm face and cheek matching the left side.

He just started in life, she thought. He didn't even have a chance. Did he have a kid? Maybe he lost the chance to see his kid walk. Or to sit on the beach. Or if he didn't live near an ocean, maybe he could sit with his kid at a picnic. Watch the kid wave and stumble as he started walking on the green summer grass.

Look at him now, she thought. He'll never see that.

All that is left is that one shocked eye...

She looked at a newspaper and saw Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart. How could they dare put something like this in while there are dead soldiers coming in on planes? There were three dead women killed in Iraq and brought through Dover. They went unmentioned. This made her furious. She began to talk to herself. I am a professional. I have worked in disasters. I must stop this.

Then, on this Sunday in February, when she is home only days, she opens a newspaper and goes through it. On Page 18 there is a picture of her soldier.

"Sundered by War" the overline says. His two eyes are gleaming with happiness. There is that young, strong face she had imagined. Good-looking teeth brighten the smile. In the soldier's lap, looking out in wonderment, is his 6-month-old son.