Two blogs that puts the blogosphere on the couch: Sigmund, Carl and Alfred and Shrinkwrapped. (Shrinkwrapped's review of An Army of Davids is terrific.)

Can these good doctor help Fraters? Peeps is now in denial over his petition to get the Carpenters into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and in nearly the same posting breath slams the Redhawks of Miami University, almost certain to be the new NCAA Hockey Champs, though the final against Harvard will be close.

Peeps does not blog alone, but his "colleagues" are indifferent to his increasingly obvious cries for help. Brian...do something. If James Frey could pull out of his tailspin, so can Peeps.

Read Michelle Malkin's fine column, and then call your local paper and ask for a story of Rahman.

CBS News has the latest on the case, and it appears that Afghanistan is looking for a way out. Additional U.S. press coverage could save this man's life.

Anderson Cooper runs a fair show, and even though I was booked against two MSMers from Baghdad, including Time's Michael Ware, I didn't hesitate to accept because Cooper recognizes panel imbalance and corrects it with time allocation. (Michael Yon points out that it was three Time Warner employees and me on the panel. True enough.)

My major point was that a large portion of the American public doesn't trust MSM coverage of Iraq because MSM coverage of Iraq almost always punts on context.

I began the segment by reminding the audience of CNN's Eason Jordan's confession of CNN self-censorship on the awful brutality of Saddam's regime --published in the New York Times in April of 2003-- and of MSM predictions of quagmire that began with the dust storm that interrupted the march to Baghdad, and which discounted all three of the elections that led to the current government.

You can't trust a MSM that has been wrong from the start.

I pointed out the many new media voices, like Michael Totten, Michael Yon, Laura Ingraham, Bill Roggio, Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Kaplan, have reported from Iraq and most have blasted MSM coverage as inadequate.

I concluded by asserting that some of the contempt for American media which is widely felt in the USA is rooted in the belief, widely shared, that MSM is invested in the failure of the Iraq invasion and in the idea that President Bush's policy is a catastrophe.

MSM seems to be rooting for Iraq to turn out badly, and this does not sit well with the average American.

At one point, Time's Ware got rather emotional and attempted to argue that Iraqis are worse off than they were four years ago, though he didn't quite allow himself to say as much. I'll play the audio on the program tomorrow.

Ware's argument is the equivalent of arguing Poland was worse off in 1992 than in 1988 because the transition to real democracy was so difficult. Stalinist dictatorships are pretty awful things, and Iraq under Saddam was a Stalinist dictatorship. Ware doesn't seem to get this crucial point, or to be concerned with the mass graves that keep turning up.

The vanity of western media is that if they didn't see it, it didn't happen. That Iraq under Saddam wasn't so bad because MSM Baghdad bureaus didn't exist, and those that did (CNN's) censored the news.

The takeaway: MSM wants Bush to fail, and as a result MSM's coverage of Iraq tilts to the IEDs and the terrorist successes and never, ever provides the context that the president did in the press conference today. The MSM thus allows itself to be used by the terrorists, and thus to hamper victory. MSM doesn't believe in "victory," in fact, or in Saddam's unique evil. It believes, mostly, in the necessity of humbling Bush.

But a majority of America voted for Bush. Which is why the collapse of MSM is ongoing. The opinion polling has once again seduced the opinion elite into believing that it knows better than the voters what America thinks.

If the GOP has the courage to keep the focus on the war and the threat, it will again triumph in November, 2006. The MSM is powerless to stop the voters from registering their real opinion.

The WeeklyStandard's Stephen Hayes is mining the Iraqi docs and finding huge stories. Hayes is also keeping track of others' efforts, including an important piece from Foreign Affairs about which hayes writes:

A new and highly illuminating article in Foreign Affairs draws on hundreds of Iraqi documents to provide a look at the Iraq war from the Iraqi perspective. The picture that emerges is that of an Iraqi regime built on a foundation of paranoia and lies and eager to attack its perceived enemies, internal and external. This paragraph is notable:

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.

Think about that last sentence.

The documents are painting an undeniable picture of a regime evil beyond comprehension. As Robert Kaplan has explained on my show, the Stalinist horror built by Saddam would never have "evolved," would never have moderated, would eventually have attacked us, and perhaps sooner than any of us imagined.

Keep checking back to the Weekly Standard's website.

doesn't that make it our job to stay and prevent it?

Here is the article with the quote from former Prime Minister Allawi that is making the rounds of the antiwar voices today:

"We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," he said. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

It was civil war in the former Yugolsavia that prompted American intervention because the slaughter was unacceptable. It was a civil war in Rwanda in which the U.S. did not intervene that causes shame to this day. Civil war in Sudan --and continuing ethnic violence in Darfur-- are among the world's current shames.

If "civil war" is to mean anything, it must not be attached to a country in which all major parties are currently negotiating the formation of a government after three successful elections, and in which the deeply suspicious groups have agreed on a the formation of a national security council.

The insurgents are clearly hoping that America pulls out before the Iraqi army and security focrces are equipped to deal with them. How any politician in America can advocate for the chaos that would follow a premature withdrawal from Iraq is astonishing.

Need cheering up? Then spend some time with MyDD's Chris Bower's assessment of the demise of the Right Wing Blogopshere.

The inability of the left to deal with reality is the inherent weakness of the left. Exhibit A in the case proving this wilfull ignorance is Bowers'assertion that "[t]he right-wing is not building new institutions online anymore."

Soxblog, you must now stop blogging. Ed Morrissey, cease. ConfirmThem, RedState, the blog row at NationalReview.com --shutter the windows and lock the door behind you. You too, RealUglyAmerican,KennedyvMachine, Kelly, Yon, and Roggio. Chris says it is over. Everybody, go on home.

Not you, T.F. Boggs. Keep fighting the war, but Mr. Bowers prefers you not blog about it anymore.

In fact the blogging movement remains vibrant and far more productive on the right than on the left, where the leading blogs continue to spread venom and habits of expression and thought that are ruinous to the short-, medium- and long-term interests of the Democratic Party. Not only is the center-right blogopshere stronger and deeper than it was even a year ago, its counterpart is falling deeper and deeper into an abyss wherein very little in the way of logic or fact penetrate.

Mark Steyn, writing at National Review's The Corner:

[Blair] got the one big question of our time right - and that's one more than the British Conservative Party got right. The old heavyweights from the Thatcher-Major cabinets have been mostly opposed to the war on terror and the younger guys have been pathetically opportunist - sometimes for it, sometimes against it, sometimes for it but against the grounds on which Blair went into it, etc, etc, nuancing themselves into the special circle of hell reserved for John Kerry self-twisting pretzels. I have no idea of what David Cameron, the latest Tory leader, really believes about the war, and I don't suppose he does either. He had a meeting in London with Condi and co that was supposed to put the Tories back on the right side of the Bush Administration and, from what I hear, the big ninny flunked the test.

Four human cases of H5N1 in Egypt.

Eleven patients under observation in Azerbaijan and awaiting test results.

How's your local government doing on preparedness?

From OpinionJournal.com:

In Iraq we have made some good friends and some very, very bad enemies. (How can anyone, looking down the gun-barrel into the stone face of Zarqawi, say that fighting him is a "distraction" from fighting al Qaeda?) Over the medium term, if our apparent domestic demoralization continues, the options could come down to two. First, we might use our latent power and threaten to withdraw, implicitly asking Iraqis and their neighbors if that is really what they want, and concentrating their minds. This still runs the risk of allowing the diseased spokesmen of al Qaeda to claim victory.

Second, we can demand to know, of the wider international community, if it could afford to view an imploded Iraq as a spectator. Three years ago, the smug answer to that, from most U.N. members, was "yes." This is not an irresponsibility that we can afford, either morally or practically, and even if our intervention was much too little and way too late, it has kindled in many Arab and Kurdish minds an idea of a different future. There is a war within the war, as there always is when a serious struggle is under way, but justice and necessity still combine to say that the task cannot be given up.

Stop the presses! E.J. Dionne is saddened by the retirement of a "GOP moderate":

I'll miss [Sherwood] Boehlert and his optimistic moderation. Our politics worked better when a sufficiently large band of Republican moderates and liberals could take the edge off polarization and orient government toward problem-solving. But the liberal Republicans are gone. We have to deal with the GOP we have, not the GOP we wish still existed.

The irony of E.J. suggesting that we need to "take the edge off polarization" is thick.

And who is the "we" he refers to? The permanent D.C. elite? The Washington Post guardians of America? The decidely not-a-majority Democrats?

To denounce polarization, and then cast the country in "we" versus "the GOP" terms is a remarkable bit of unintentional disclosure.

Which is why I love Dionne and will continue to request his appearance on my program --a request which has always been declined.

He is the pure extract of partisanship, so completely in the tank for the Democrats that he is apparently unaware of his partisanship.

I am a believer in partisanship. Parties govern, not individuals or ideas.

But I also believe in transparency and acknowledgement of partisanship, and do not trust any pundit who refuses to declare what is so obvious to all.

E.J., you hardly know ye.

Powerline's Scott Johnson directs our attention to this essay on the "Israel lobby," published in the London Review of Books and authored by University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard Kennedy School of Government Dean Stephen Walt. (Johnson's first post is here, his second here.)

The piece begins:

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?

Any essay with such a dishonest beginning --and which ignores 9/11 and the growth of the Islamist threat-- is certain to be a print carnival of distortion and lies, and it does not disappoint.

Nine paragraphs into the pice we find that Israel is a burden in the GWOT:

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

The authors blame Israel for 9/11:

[T]he US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around.

Given the burden that Israel is on the U.S., why the closeness of the U.S.-Israel alliance:

So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.

The authors --in an astonishing aside-- concede that supporters of Israel are not acting as anti-Semites have portrayed them as acting for generations:

There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Johnson rightly notes this defamatory assertion:

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress....

The invasion of Iraq, you may be surprised to learn, was also in large part the work of...the Jews:

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical....

Given the neo-conservatives’ devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn’t surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests.

Harvard's Kennedy School has got a Dean who can only be described as a nutter, a conspiracy theorist of the first order, indulging in the worst sort of anti-Semitic slanders --American Jews are foreign agents!-- and giving open encouragement to and endorsement of the extremist views of American foreign policy circulating in the camps of America's enemies.

Today the Los Angeles Times runs a front page story on ties between Iran and al Qaeda. Professor Mearsheimer and Dean Walt will no doubt see the hand of the Israel Lobby at work in the story, and in the larger effort to contain the Iranian regime which believes that Israel ought not to exist and that the Holocaust didn't happen.

Read the whole piece, and if you are a Kennedy School alum, consider what has happened to your alma mater.

The Wall Street Journal examines the push by the Industrial Workers of the World to unionize Starbucks. (Subscription required.)

The union has fallen on hard times since Mother Jones founded it in 1905:

The IWW has only about 2,500 active members, but its rank-and-file activism is attracting a small but growing number of young members.

The moment the Wobblies bring the baristas on board, the center-right coffee sippers start finding other places to fill their cups.

Or go BocaJava?

Yesterday the speculation was that Tony Blair was on the ropes.

Today Blair is beginning a series of speeches on Iraq with an aim, perhaps, of rallying his supporters.

"I'm not planning to be a candidate again. I haven't reached a stage in my life where I'm willing to say I will never consider something like this," he said. "But I'm not saying that to be coy; I'm just saying that to be honest — that I haven't reached that point."

If Gore does not run in 2008, he's finished.

But 2008 is very much a possibility for Gore, as '68 was for RN.

Gore was born on March 31, 1948, which makes him only 64 in 2012, and 68 in 2016.

By contrast, John McCain is on the hustings at 69, having been born on August 29, 1936.

But McCain is more than a phantasm, while Gore grows less then that every day.

If Gore is serious about the presidency --in this age of new media-- he has to declare as much and fight for the right to be heard every day.

You can't win the nomination in 2008 playing by 2000 rules.

You'd think the founder of CurrentTV would know that.

Cash on hand for the national parties, as of 2/28/06 (including the Senate, Congressional and National Committees):

Democrats: $52,654,329

Republicans: $76,222,682

These numbers only mean that the GOP has a significant dollar advantage, which doesn't mean a message advantage.

The message advantage:

Win the war.
Confirm the judges.
Cut the taxes.
Control the spending.

Warning to the GOP: A message advantage beats a money advantage every time.

UPDATE: I have added in the Senate committees' numbers this morning, which narrow but do not close the Democrats' cash-on-hand gap. The $13 million dollar advantage the Dems have opened on the Senate side reflects an unwillingness of the GOP base to send money to any fund that supports Lincoln Chafee.