At last, an opportunity for the rabble to put a name to the anonymous officials so often quoted in the papers. Who are the people behind the blind quotes? To help news consumers decipher dispatches from the White House, The Washingtonian has compiled a Reader’s Guide to SAOs (Senior Administration Officials).

—White House: Senior . . . → Read More: The Washingtonian’s Guide to Senior Administration Officials

“Pentagon Considers Creating Postwar Peacekeeping Forces“

The Post has the story. The Pentagon has begun to look seriously at creating military forces that would be dedicated to peacekeeping and reconstruction after future conflicts, defense officials said.

The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of units of engineers, military police, . . . → Read More: And just in the nick of time,

From a Knight-Ridder article announcing the obvious—that the US is concerned about “asymetrical warfare”—and providing a bit of insight into how far off the mark the US raids and sweeps can be. The sweeps have a side effect, however: They generate fear and anger among Iraqi civilians.

At about 2 a.m. Friday, for . . . → Read More: We’re screwing up.

I wasn’t planning to mention this because it’s so obviously demented, but Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have an article entitled “An Administration of One” in a forthcoming edition of The Weekly Standard. The thesis is that Bush, alone among the upper reaches of his administration, has an attainable vision of a transformed Middle . . . → Read More: Bush: A Troglodyte Among Extremophiles

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, long recognized as the Paper of Record’s expert on chemical and biological warfare, has an article in today’s Arts section. The article is ostensibly a review of a new book disputing the pre-eminent role of intelligence in warfare but, for those familiar with Miller’s astonishing record of going . . . → Read More: Judith Miller, Mistress of Self Defense

Congress leapt into action. In September, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to conduct a thorough investigation into money that was supposed to be paid to Indians for oil, gas, timber and grazing activities on their land for more than a century. He said the accounting must be complete by 2007. . . . → Read More: Shocked to learn that the Injuns were winning,

El Pesidente Loco has declared Turkey a new front in the war on terror. By my calculation this means we’ll be invading the country within 18 months, followed, apparently, by the rest of the world. “Terrorists have decided to use Turkey as a front,” Bush, on a visit to Britain, told reporters. “Two major . . . → Read More: Let slip the dogs …

What is it with Republicans and weird sexual stuff? COLUMBUS | A staff attorney for the Ohio House Republican Caucus was arrested late Wednesday and police suspect he is the flasher known around Columbus as the “naked photographer.”

Columbus police arrested Steve Linnen in an alley behind a supermarket near where a woman reported . . . → Read More: Conservative Performance Art

Bill Moyers on the threat to democracy posed by the decline of independent media. In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and . . . → Read More: Gotta read it …

You may or may not recall that the administration undertook a massive smallpox vaccination program last year, with the goal of immunizing nearly a half-million health care workers in advance of a potential bio-warfare attack. If you don’t recall, don’t feel bad: the people who launched the program don’t remember it either. Almost a . . . → Read More: They forgot to vaccinate against lying.