Just asking.

While President Bush was in the Czech Republic today extolling the virtues of democracy and chiding Russian Premier Putin for not living up to the high standards of the United States of America, this appeared in The New York Times: The Bush administration’s attempt to create an alternative justice system for terrorism suspects, in the works for more than five years, has yet to complete a single trial. After an earlier version of the system was rejected by the Supreme Court last year, the...

We have the pharmaceutical industry to thank for an amazing array of drugs that alleviate suffering, help repair damaged bodies and minds and prolong life. I myself popped a Lisinopril and a Plavix, along with an aspirin, this morning, which has been a daily regimen since I suffered a mild stroke several years ago. I also take Methotrexate, which originally was a cancer drug, once a week to minimize the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. These drugs work marvelously, have no side effects of consequence...

A Sunni insurgent group today posted video of the military identification cards of the two U.S. soldiers missing since an ambush in Iraq’s Triangle of Death on May 12. There is no indication in the video that Specialist Alex Jimenez or Private Byron Fouty are still alive. The video is from the Islamic State of Iraq, an insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq. It included a still image of the photo IDs. Above the photos, written in Arabic, was the message, “Bush is the reason for...

It’s not enough to be merely the best at what you do in music. You have to be compared to other great musicians before you can be validated in the eyes of critics and many fans alike. So it is with Robert Randolph, who only five years ago was playing in a band in the House Church of God in West Orange, New Jersey, and today seems to be perpetually on tour while being heralded as the finest non-traditional pedal steel guitar player extant. Which of course begs comparisons with other great...

STILL MISSING: BYRON FOUTY (Top) AND ALEX JIMENEZ Three weeks ago today, the early morning calm at a small U.S. Army outpost in the village of Quarghouli hard by the Euphrates River southwest of Baghdad was shattered by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. A dozen or so insurgents, led by Al Qaeda regulars, overwhelmed the seven soldiers from the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, breaching the concertina wire ringing their two Humvees and setting the...

Last month I took a break from my usual monthly Iraq war casualty roundup nomenclature — Month X of the War By the Numbers — and headlined that post The Month of Lowered Expectations. Well, we’re more or less back to the usual naming convention this time around, although I did briefly consider something glib (if inappropriate) like Gravity Sucks. This headline certainly would be applicable because the laws of nature, let alone the laws of warfare, have not been repealed by George...

The mother of a San Marco soldier places his boots at amakeshift shrine May has been a tough month for the people of San Marcos, Texas. In the past week, they learned that a 22-year old local man had been killed in an ambush in Baghdad. Area National Guardsmen are preparing for a year-long deployment to Iraq. Then on Tuesday, it was learned that the mother and stepfather of Private Byron R. Fouty recently became residents of the community of 35,000 southwest of Austin. Please click here to read...

For those of you who watch every jot and tittle of a presidential campaign that has 18 looong months to go, the mere mention of the any-day-now entry of manly man Fred Thompson into the already crowded Republican field has been like a dose of extra-strength Viagra and a convenient excuse for overlooking the sordid state of American politics. Hope spring eternal and all that bushwah. I am not one of bloggers who endlessly obsess on the campaign and don’t for a moment get fooled by the flapdoodlery...

STILL SEARCHING The lonely vigils continue in four communities for the two missing soldiers seized in a May 12 ambush. Neighbors of Maria del Rosario Duran, the mother of Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, have tied yellow ribbons to fences, around trees and on doors on her home in the Corona neighborhood of Queens to show their support for the family. The scene is similar in the town of Lawence, Massachusetts, where Jimenez’s father, Ramon Jimenez, lives, and at Fort Drum, New York, where wife Yaderlin...

THEY’RE NOT BACK. THEY NEVER WENT AWAY. The right-wing punditocracy has blathered on ad nauseam that Valerie Plame could not have been outed because she was not a covert CIA employee, and therefore the Wilson-Plame leak scandal is nothing more than a mere drip. Never mind that dancing on the head of this particular pin did nothing to obscure the ferocity with which Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove and their handmaidens pushed back after Mr. Valerie Plame – aka former career diplomat...

A U.S. — NOT IRAQI — SOLDIER STANDS GUARD AFTER TUESDAY ATTACK One of the most insidious consequences of always putting politics ahead of policy in the Age of Bush has been the slow but inevitable unraveling of the administration’s “strategy” in Iraq. Or “strategies,” to be more accurate. Having determinedly misled the public about why it was taking the U.S. to war, it stands to reason that the White House never came clean about the sacrifices that would...

Another of the five U.S. soldiers killed as a result of an Al Qaeda-led ambush on May 12 has reached his final resting place. Corporal Christopher Edward Murphy was buried yesterday afternoon in Arlington National Cemetery after a memorial service in Gladys, Campbell County, Virginia. Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Write Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas in Newsweek: Appalled by the White House’s heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft’s...

Of all the lies that President Bush has told, none is larger nor has been told with greater frequency than Iraq had to be invaded because it was a hotbed of terrorism. Despite the exertions of the White House and its right-wing lapdogs in the media and blogosphere to prove that canard in the five years since it replaced nonexistent WMD as the primary justification for the invasion, there is of course no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a safe harbor for players in the global Islamic...

SERGEANT DORR’S SHRINE The trail for two U.S. soldiers still missing after a May 12 ambush appears to have gone cold. U.S. commanders say they are confident that they have in custody many of the people directly related to the attack in the Triangle of Death, but judging from reduced number of searchers three-plus weeks on, there are no fresh leads as to the whereabouts of Specialist Alex R. Jimenez and Private Byron W. Fouty. Meanwhile, back at the headquarters of Delta Company, 4th Battalion,...

It is Memorial Day today in the U.S. The holiday originally was called Decoration Day and was a day of remembrance for Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include soldiers who died in any war. As always, I’ve hung an American flag outside of Kiko’s House this Memorial Day. As always, I will keep the day simple. I’ll have a go on my mountain bike after I post this and probably watch some baseball later, but that will be about...

Sixteen days after they were kidnapped in an Al-Qaeda-led ambush, the search continues for Specialist Alex Jimenez, 25, and Private Byron Fouty, 19. Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House. Photograph by Michael Kamber for The New York Times

EXHAUSTED TROOPS TAKE A BREAK FROM SEARCH As the search for the two soldiers still missing after a May 12 ambush entered the third week, U.S. and Iraqi commanders said their troops have detained 16 people directly related to the attack. Three men disappeared after Al Qaeda-led insurgents attacked a U.S. military observation post in the Mahmoudiya area of the Triangle of Death. Four American soldiers and an Iraqi Army interpreter were found dead at the scene and three soldiers were kidnapped. The...

BYRON FOUTY AND FRIEND IN IRAQ It will be a somber Memorial Day weekend in Orion Township, Michigan with an adopted son still missing two weeks after being kidnapped in Iraq. Yellow ribbons adorn streetlights and an American Legion memorial. A banner with a photograph of 19-year-old Private Byron Fouty hangs from a wall in the memorial with the words “Our Troops Our Prayers Together We’ll Bring Them Home!” Gordy Dibler Jr. spoke about his stepson, one of three men abducted in the...