Oooh, nuance!

General David Petraeus (if that IS his real name!) testifies today instead of September 11th, as was intended by Fear and Loathing, Inc. He will be giving the party line on the escalation, pretending that it is "working." And that will be the end of the much-ballyhooed excuse for Bush and the Republics to roadblock on withdrawing from Iraq.

Unless Iraq became a functioning democracy last night, and the civil war and the insurgency have both ended, I don't see how the Bush Administration can claim "success" in Iraq on any front. We don't even have the oil we came to steal yet! Of course, the non-doctored GAO report that was recently leaked to the media showed that the occupation has been a complete disaster, and that the escalation did not give the government time to build consensus and calm down the population. Quelle surprise.

We took a country that, while run by a dictator, was functioning and hostile to Islamic fundamentalism - supposedly the greatest enemy EVAH! - and have converted it into a seething cauldron of sectarian violence and terrorism. Heckuva job, Bush!

This is the letter I wrote to my Congresscritters today:

I would like to say that the American people are with you, not with Bush, Petraeus and the Republicans. We support YOU and we want you to end this occupation immediately. Please, please use your power of the purse and do not give Bush any more money for Iraq. It is wrong, politically and morally, for one more person to be killed for oil, ego and a failed neo-conservative dream of American world domination.

The Democrats want to end the war, but many are afraid to take drastic measures to do so - such as shutting down any funds to the government until Bush and the Republics agree to a withdrawal date, or begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney. We need to send our representatives our support, to give them the strength to go further than anyone should have to go to end this war.

Reasonable measures do not work with sociopaths. It's time to swing the big stick.

Being 40 is...hard work!

(Okay, so I've been partying for two days. Sue me.)

I'd just like to say, however, that I feel soooooooo privileged that yet another uninteresting, unprincipled and unqualified Republic candidate entered the 2008 field on my birthday.

And there was much rejoicing...from the 200 people who came to see him in Iowa.

Snicker.

No wonder Ron Paul won the Republic debate on Fox News. He may be a rather extreme libertarian, but at least he says some things that don't sound like they came out of KKKarl Rove's mouth.

Remember how the reason we got everything wrong in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was bad, naughty, nasty intelligence, and how George Tenet was the most incompetent "Medal of Freedom" winner ever?

Well, maybe it wasn't quite as black and white as all that.

Months before the Iraq invasion, President Bush apparently ignored a 2002 Oval Office briefing in which CIA director George Tenet provided the president with intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to former Clinton advisor and Salon columnist Sidney Blumenthal.

[snip]

Blumenthal also adds that the intelligence from that day was left out of the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which definitively stated that had WMD.

"The president had no interest in the intelligence," a CIA officer disclosed. "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

"No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq," Blumenthal writes. "The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD."

Blumenthal's sources confirm a 2006 interview with the CIA's chief of clandestine operations for Europe, Tyler Drumheller, who told CBS's 60 Minutes that the his agency had received intelligence from Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, indicating Iraq possessed no WMD.

"[The two former CIA officers] have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it," Blumenthal reports. "They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell."

Powell would later present US evidence justifying the preemptive invasion of Iraq to the United Nations--without knowledge of the Sabri information.

Congress didn't have the intelligence. Colin Powell didn't have the intelligence. All they saw was cherry-picked reportage that confirmed the war cheerleaders' propaganda.

Apparently, the 'lack of intelligence'...was Bush's.

And that, I'm sure, surprises no one.

One of the world's most beloved and gifted tenors has passed into Opera Heaven. (Opera Heaven is where all great singers go when they die, according to my personal mythology.)

Pavarotti's charismatic personna and ebullient showmanship — but most of all his creamy and powerful voice — made him the most beloved and celebrated tenor since the great Caruso and one of the few opera singers to win crossover fame as a popular superstar.

For serious fans, the unforced beauty and thrilling urgency of Pavarotti's voice made him the ideal interpreter of the Italian lyric repertory, especially in the 1960s and '70s when he first achieved stardom. For millions more, his thrilling performances of standards like "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Turandot" came to represent what opera is all about.

I had the incredible experience of seeing Pavarotti as Riccardo in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" at the Metropolitan Opera. To describe his voice is impossible for me - all I know is that compared to the other stars onstage, his voice was completely present, as if he was using a megaphone. The emotions his glorious vocalism provoked were direct and instantaneous. He was truly one of the greats.

Click here for a YouTube video of Signor Pavarotti's signature aria, "Nessun Dorma." Just try not to cry. I dare ya!

Farewell, Luciano. You will surely be one of the most beautiful and cherished voices in Opera Heaven.

Okay, I know that Arlen Specter said Senator Larry Craig should fight for...something.

Senator Arlen Specter said Idaho Republican Larry Craig should try to withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct in connection with an incident in an airport men's room and fight the case.

"I think he could be vindicated," Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the "Fox News Sunday" program.

Specter, of Pennsylvania, said that Craig "hasn't resigned" from the Senate, only that he "intends to resign" as of Sept. 30. That gives Craig a month to fight the case in court, Specter said. If the case went to trial, Specter said Craig "wouldn't be convicted of anything."

Look. When you are in an oppressed minority, as gay men of a certain age feel they are, and you're doing something at the very least sleazy, and in the case of Minnesota law, illegal, you develop little signals that clue in your partners in crime that you are one of them. You tap your foot, you stare into their stall for two minutes, you touch their foot in the stall, you run your hand under the stall divider.

The policeman who was responding to complaints of public sex in that restroom was looking for those particular signals. When Senator Craig gave enough of them, the law was broken, and the police officer presented his police badge. Done, finito, buh-bye, Senator.

What exactly does Senator Craig think he's winning by saying he's not ruling out pursuing the legal case?

In the best possible scenario, would Cher come to his trial and scream, "This man is not gay! I swear it! He doesn't own any of my records!" Would his Republic colleagues suddenly apologize for their relentless insistence on his guilt, admitting that they're not exactly paragons of sexual morality themselves? (Paging David Vitter!) Would the Washington Post print "LARRY CRAIG IS INNOCENT!!!" across their front page in 64-point type?

No. None of those things would happen. Instead, the trial would be more and more sordid as past scandals surfaced; his family that he professes to care about (his three children are adopted, by the way) would be subjected to more media scrutiny; and he certainly wouldn't be back in the Senate doing the job he claims to prize.

Is he crazy? Or is the Republic Senator from Idaho an egomaniacal, not-too-bright man who will protect his pseudo-heterosexuality at any cost?

Does it matter? Probably not. But it is fascinating to contemplate.

There may be an upside to Senator Craig's recent public disgrace and resignation - it shows that the outrage over his gayness is coming almost exclusively from the Republics and their followers.

Which means that most of the population DOESN'T CARE ABOUT TEH GAY.

The reaction to Democratic New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey's public coming-out was, as reported at the time, a collective shrug. Overwhelmingly, New Jersey residents felt his sexuality was his business - what they were upset about was the fact that he was using his power as Governor to reward his lover with a highly-paid job for which the lover was not qualified.

Of course, New Jersey is a liberal state, but national statistics on gay rights issues are encouraging. After all, we all know someone who's gay, and we all love someone who's gay, whether we know it or not.

It seems that Americans are starting to realize that ostracizing and punishing people for being themselves is NOT a moral value. And that might just be a silver lining.