Alexander Cockburn corresponds with now-certified demon Noam Chomsky (after all, Noam's been given the Al Qaeda stamp of approval...well, at least the bin Laden imprimatur) on the possibility of a desperation strike by Team Bush on Iran...personally, I'm skeptical; however, I tend towards rational behavior...there's no accounting for actions undertaken by loons.
As a side dish, Cockburn also reveals his father's 'secret' for getting a scoop, although I suspect the elder Cockburn never actually had to resort to such a thing:
One morning, as we at length relaxed at breakfast by a brazier on the terrace of the Café du Dôme, he [Robert Dell, the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian] said to me: "Do you want to get what used to be called a 'scoop' for your horrid little paper every day?" (The "horrid little paper" was, of course, the Daily Worker, whose diplomatic correspondent I then was.)
"That would be nice."
"Well then, all you have to do is to read all the continental papers available every morning, take lunch with one or more of Europe's leading politicians or diplomats, make up your mind what is the vilest action that, in the circumstances, the French, British, Italian or German government could undertake, and then, in the leisure of the afternoon, sit down at your typewriter and write a dispatch announcing that that is just what they are going to do. You can't miss. Your news will be denied two hours after it is published and confirmed after twenty four."
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