John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have attracted much attention on account of their essay, “The Israel Lobby,” in the current London Review of Books. The pair are being demonized by some supporters of Israeli policies and dismissed by others, and lionized by some critics of those policies and, in some instances, by professional Jew haters.

British foreign minister Jack Straw and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice delivered a stern message to Iraqi leaders today. Flying to Baghdad after tea in Blackburn, Lancastershire — thereby skewing calculations on how many ‘holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall — the pair told Iraq’s president and prime minister that the failure to form a central government was contributing to violence in Iraq and reflected a certain hurtful contempt toward Iraq’s liberators.

With some members of the UN security council apparently determined to resist creating a paper trail the US could use to justify attacking Iran for what may or may not be a clandestine nuclear weapons program, what we now know to call “chatter” regarding the possibility of such an attack outside the framework of UN resolutions is increasing.

Iraq’s oil exports hit another post-invasion low in December and January, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. How do they know? Good question: according to Reuters, production and exports have gone unmetered since the Coalition Provisional Authority took over the country following the 2003 invasion; until new meters are installed, everybody’s just guessing.

As most people are by now aware, Tom DeLay has decided not to run for reelection and will probably resign his seat in May, using an election law technicality to claim, through the state Republican party, the option of naming his replacement on the ballot. The reason? “This had become a referendum on me. So it’s better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what’s important for this district.”

David M. Barrett, the Independent Counsel now in his eleventh year of investigating charges against former Clinton HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, spent more in the last six months of fiscal year 2005 than did Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

When someone like Joseph Cirincione says he’s worried that the US may attack Iran, it’s time to pay attention.

Michael Wolff over at Vanity Fair performs what may well be—considering the rumors of Scott McClellan’s imminent sacking—a premortem on poor in-over-his-head Scottie. And the vivisection is vivid. Wolff, unlike the regular White House correspondents who have to deal with McClellan every day and thus feel compelled to play nice, doesn’t hold back…

The Agonist’s Sean-Paul Kelley has responded to concerns about a US attack on Iran expressed here and by Steve Clemons at The Washington Note. Sean-Paul says that the concerns are overblown and that the rhetorical escalation from both sides is simply posturing in service of staking out their respective negotiating positions.

Today Scott called on everyone else in the first four rows of the briefing room, some of them multiple times, but he didn’t call on me. I’m a little frustrated about not getting to ask my question (what it something I said? was my last post to cruel), but knowing that the White House hates me and/or is afraid of me is some compensation.

Nevertheless, it was a pretty interesting day. The place was jammed, and the first twenty questions dealt with Patrick Fitzgerald’s late Wednesday night bombshell revelation that, according to Lewis Libby, the president authorized Libby’s leak to Judy Miller of information from the top secret National Intelligence Estimate.

Has the president authorized a domestic warrantless wiretapping program? Judging from White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s answer to the question, probably so.

Yesterday, I suggested that a bombing campaign against Iran would satisfy the Bush administration need for vindication of their foreign policy delusions without requiring another messy ground war and occupation. Today, Agence France Presse reports that the April 17 issue of The New Yorker magazine carries a story on US plans for a massive bombing campaign against Iran, possibly including the use of nuclear weapons.

Yesterday, I suggested that a bombing campaign against Iran would satisfy the Bush administration need for vindication of their foreign policy delusions without requiring another messy ground war and occupation. Today, Agence France Presse reports that the April 17 issue of The New Yorker magazine carries a story on US plans for a massive bombing campaign against Iran, possibly including the use of nuclear weapons.

(Update corrects spelling of “Hersh”)

Juan Cole becomes the first Bush administration commentator to wonder if the president will revive the right of powerful men to deflower maidens. It’s a logical progression but perhaps a bit premature, as it were. However, it appears as if at least one member, as it were, of the executive branch may have been thinking along those lines.

Christopher Hitchens has a column in Slate asserting that Iraq was indeed shopping for Nigerien yellowcake uranium in 1999. The claim represents a retrenchment for Hitch: for the better part of three years, he’s been saying that the lack of any evidence that Iraq posed a threat to the US or anyone else was irrelevant: the liberation of the country and the consequent improvements in the lives of Iraqis were sufficient justification for the invasion.

On Sunday WaPo openly declared fealty to the Dark Side, including full-throated repetition of long-debunked Zombie Lies (no matter how many times you kill them, they just keep coming back), and assertions directly contradicted by WaPo’s own front-page reporting the same day.

We’re here to honor Dana Milbank at the Washington Post and Jacob Weisberg at Slate for their contributions to the ruin of the press; Milbank for a heroic bit of Caspar Weinberger revisionism, and Weisberg for planting a big, sloppy wet one on John McCain’s cheeks. And I don’t mean the ones on his face.

Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld is coming under increasing, if belated fire, from retired senior military officers. At least five retired Army generals — one of whom resigned in advance of the Iraq invasion to protest the Pentagon’s plans — and two retired Marine generals have either called outright for Rumsfeld’s resignation or have described an atmosphere of intense frustration among general officers in the two branches. The last time we saw the military make this much fuss about one of their civilian bosses was in John Frankenheimer’s classic 1964 film, “Seven Days in May.”

Although several of the retired US generals criticizing defense secretary Don Rumsfeld have been doing so for some time, a question arises with respect to the others: “Why now?”

The US state department dictionary defines public diplomacy as “government-sponsored programs intended to inform or influence public opinion in other countries; its chief instruments are publications, motion pictures, cultural exchanges, radio and television.” The effort is made considerably more difficult, and becomes correspondingly more important, when US foreign policy is as widely reviled as it is today.

Slate magazine was one of the first mainstream publications to solicit reader responses, via its bulletin boards, collectively known as The Fray. The boards offer more dross than gold by a wide margin, but it’s not especially unusual to find writing that exceeds the quality of that offered by the magazine’s regular columnists, especially of late, when the regulars seem determined to plumb the punditry depths. (Disclosure: I’ve participated on the boards for years, and as much as anything they’re to blame for this site.)

In March of 2005, BTC News succeeded in gaining access to the White House press room for Eric Brewer, who instantly became our senior White House correspondent. Since then, he has attended perhaps two dozen briefings and asked some of the best questions posed by anyone in the room, knocking White House press secretary Scott McClellan off balance and off message on a few occasions, and getting some actually revealing answers on a few others.

Newsweek reports today on Iraq’s Facility Protection Services, a large police group accountable to, apparently, no one.

In March of 2005, BTC News succeeded in gaining access to the White House press room for Eric Brewer, who instantly became our senior White House correspondent. Since then, he has attended perhaps two dozen briefings and asked some of the best questions posed by anyone in the room, knocking White House press secretary Scott McClellan off balance and off message on a few occasions, and getting some actually revealing answers on a few others.

Carl Bernstein isn’t mincing words. Writing in Vanity Fair, the upright half of Woodstein makes the case for a wholesale bipartisan investigation of the administration’s behavior on Iraq, on wiretapping and more. “The calculations of politicians about their electoral futures,” he says, “should pale in comparison to the urgency of examining perhaps the most disastrous [...]

Melvin Laird, the bullet-domed architect of Richard Nixon’s Vietnam, has come to Don Rumsfeld’s defense in the pages of the Washington Post.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation today, and Karl Rove is allegedly giving up some of his responsibility for policy development in order to focus on stealing the 2006 mid-term elections.

As occasionally happens, one of the stories we posted today briefly bubbled up to the top of the Google News pile. We’ve never actually seen that happen, but people have mentioned it to us and of course we get a burst of traffic from it.

The current staff moves of McClellan and Rove are a fig leaf for an increasingly concerned Republican majority facing re-election and a desperate attempt the change the subject away form Rumsfeld’s fate. It’s not sufficient to the task and the disorder won’t be sufficient to placate Americans or focus the attention off of the [...]

The Sierra Club is getting blasted by the Libosphere today. Kos started it (and Janeand Duncan chimed in) by linking to this article which, before it was altered, said: “The Sierra Club is endorsing Chafee even though the group gave the senator only a 20 percent rating in its environmental scorecard in 2004.”