Daily Dunklin Democrat: Story : Column by Gene Lyons:
One Party Government, lap-dog press
"It appears to me that going to the United Nations was designed not to avert war, as Blair and Bush assured everybody, including Congress and the U.N. Security Council, but in the hope of provoking Saddam Hussein into rashness. Also during the summer of 2002, as Jeremy Scahill reported recently in The Nation, USAF and RAF bombers began a massive secret bombing campaign against Iraqi military and civilian targets. Months before the congressional vote and U.N. resolutions, the war had already begun.
Instead, Saddam capitulated. It's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that had Bush and Blair allowed U.N. inspectors to finish the job, they'd have established that Iraq had no forbidden stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. They invaded anyway.
Even so, during the 2004 campaign, Bush often repeated this brazen falsehood: 'We gave (Saddam) a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in.'
Yet the most damaging aspect of the Downing Street memos is what they reveal about the arrogant incompetence of the White House ideologue who thought occupying Iraq would be a 'cakewalk.'
From the start, Blair's advisers warned him that 'U.S. military plans are virtually silent' about the likelihood that conquering Iraq would lead to a post-war occupation and 'a protracted and costly nation-building exercise.' Straw, the British foreign secretary, wanted to know how 'there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy, so no one has this habit or experience.'
According to a transcript search claimed by Arianna Huffington, ABC and CBS news have scarcely mentioned the Downing Street memos while running 256 Michael Jackson stories. NBC has run six Downing Street pieces, 109 on Jackson; CNN, 30 vs. 633. The New York Times has pooh-poohed the evidence. Washington Post and Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Kinsley scolded readers excited by the British revelations as 'paranoid.'
'Fixing intelligence and facts to fit a desired policy is the Bush II governing style,' he added, as if there's no difference between his world-weary cynicism and government documents proving the point.
Post columnist Dana Milbank mocked Democratic congressmen holding an unofficial hearing on the subject as taking 'a trip to the land of make-believe.'
Your gutless liberal media at work."

The Charleston Gazette - Columns:

AUSTIN, Texas %u2014 The first thing I ever learned about politics was never to let anyone else define what you believe, or what you are for or against. I think for myself.

I am not %u201Cyou liberals%u201D or %u201Cyou people on the left who always ...%u201D My name is Molly Ivins, and I can speak for myself, thank you. I don%u2019t need Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove to tell me what I believe.

Setting up a straw man, calling it liberal and then knocking it down has become a favorite form of %u201Cargument%u201D for those on the right. Make some ridiculous claim about what %u201Cliberals%u201D think, and then demonstrate how silly it is. Limbaugh, Bill O%u2019Reilly and many other right-wing ravers never seem to get tired of this old game. If I had a nickel for every idiotic thing I%u2019ve ever heard those on the right claim %u201Cliberals%u201D believe, I%u2019d be richer than Bill Gates.

" June 30 (Bloomberg) -- It will soon be July Fourth again. Do you know where your flag is?
Why there it is, inside the Capitol, being waved around by
members delighted to solve a problem that doesn't exist while
ignoring ones that do. Last week, your House of Representatives
voted 286 to 130 to amend the Constitution to save the flag from
being burned. It now goes to the Senate to be waved.
You say you weren't worried about flag-burning? That's why
the folks in Congress make the big bucks and you don't. Ever since 1989, when the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected desecrating the flag, the Congress has been grandstanding about it with little danger of actually desecrating the Constitution with a frivolous amendment. It gives Republicans something other than the morning-after pill, gay marriage and lesbian puppets on public TV to rail against.
If lawmakers wanted to do something really patriotic this
July Fourth, they might do their jobs. How about asking hard
questions about the war, and beefing up the armor on those Humvees that keep getting blown apart? If the symbol of Old Glory is so important, why have so few Congressman traveled to Dover to see it serving the high purpose of draping the coffins of the 1700 soldiers who died for it?"

New York Times Op-Ed Contributor: John Kerry: "TONIGHT President Bush will discuss the situation in Iraq. It's long past time to get it right in Iraq. The Bush administration is courting disaster with its current course - a course with no realistic strategy for reducing the risks to our soldiers and increasing the odds for success.
The reality is that the Bush administration's choices have made Iraq into what it wasn't before the war - a breeding ground for jihadists. Today there are 16,000 to 20,000 jihadists and the number is growing. The administration has put itself - and, tragically, our troops, who pay the price every day - in a box of its own making. Getting out of this box won't be easy, but we owe it to our soldiers to make our best effort.Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning. A little humility would go a long way - coupled with a strategy to succeed.So what should the president say tonight? The first thing he should do is tell the truth to the American people. Happy talk about the insurgency being in 'the last throes' leads to frustrated expectations at home. It also encourages reluctant, sidelined nations that know better to turn their backs on their common interest in keeping Iraq from becoming a failed state."