some items from the Times

Yesterday's Times had a VERY IMPORTANT article called "How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence." Not much that hasn't been published elsewhere, but the article brings a lot of info together. Read through and try to decipher WHY and HOW the White House was embracing this "disputed" intelligence.

Bob Herbert in today's Times, "Bush and Reality." This is worth excerpting:

But reality cannot be kept at bay indefinitely. Readers of The Washington Post got a disturbing dose of it yesterday from a front-page article about the strain being put on the overloaded systems of veterans' disability benefits and health care by the thousands of American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental health problems.

The article noted that "President Bush's budget for 2005 calls for cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefits claims."

A staff sergeant who was paralyzed in a mortar attack near Baghdad was quoted as saying: "I love the military; that was my life. But I don't believe they're taking care of me now."

The real world is President Bush's Achilles' heel. He can't keep his distance from it forever.

The article in the Washington Post he was referring to is here.

Today's Times' Op-Ed section has an interesting piece on Election advertising, "EDITORIAL OBSERVER: The Graduate Students Search for Signs of Intelligent Campaign Life"

Yesterday's Week in Review section had an article on the possibility of a DRAFT called "The Option Nobody's Pushing. Yet."

Finally, Tom Friedman returned to the Time's op-ed page yesterday. I will post later with a full exegesis of his column.