Gideon Samet warns in today’s Ha’aretz that the Israeli people are “in bad hands“:

…Operation Rainbow turned into one of the Israel Defense Forces’ most embarrassing campaigns yet. The troops may have moved slowly, but failure came fast. And over it fluttered a black flag of violating international law. We are looking at the classic case of an army with unreasonable objectives marching into a predictable ambush. The IDF was sent in to restore the momentum and reputation it had damaged so badly last week. It will be returning from Rafah very soon with these two components of military might sadly diminished. Shaul Mofaz and Moshe Ya’alon have shown such poor judgment that if they were running a corporation, they’d be out on the doorstep: The stocks have hit rock bottom; the goals are unachievable and the world market has responded with a thumbs down. The board of directors would send them packing with a golden parachute. The trouble is that the army’s board of directors is the government, which is guilty of strange behavior itself and headed by a leader who is losing altitude.

This combination of a government that has no path and an army that has lost its way because of it, has been harming national interests for years. It’s not only war, as they say, that is too serious to be left to the generals. The same holds true for civilian government. The understanding that exists between the top brass in the army and the government is what contributes to the lack of clear “civilian” thinking and critical awareness. How can any creative policy emerge from a line-up that consists of Sharon, Mofaz and Ya’alon, with ministers like Benny Elon, whose latest idea is to send the Palestinians to Australia, screaming on the sidelines?

Get background on the Communication Workers’ strike against SBC here. Pledge your support for the campaign here.

Cleansing the audience:

May 7, George W. Bush came to Dubuque to speak at the convention center. It was billed as a public event, but it was anything but. Only self-proclaimed Bush supporters could get in. Republican organizers excluded even a World War II vet and the former commander of the local American Legion chapter. This story of exclusion, broken by the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, is in keeping with other acts of suppression along the Bush campaign trail…

More on our man in Baghdad:

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources. “Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein,” said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

As Atrios asks,

Who knew we attacked one member of the Axis of Evil at the behest of another?

Well, as Saddam could attest, it is an American tradition.

However bad it looks, just remember that George Bush has nothing to hide. I mean, he told us so himself. Maybe he can also explain this:

The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the administration’s refusal to answer questions on the sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting with a group of Democratic senators, according to several Democratic sources.

Democrats suspect President Bush, who met privately with the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001, may have personally authorized the controversial flights, several of which took place when all other U.S. commercial air travel had been halted. The White House communications office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manmohan Singh is sworn in as India’s first non-Hindu Prime Minister and the first from the Indian National Congress since Indira Gandhi:

Singh, a notable economist, was designated prime minister after Sonia Gandhi — who led the Congress Party in recent elections — said she did not want the job. That decision created political chaos. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of her house earlier this week, chanting for her to take up the country’s top political post. Congress Party leaders failed Wednesday to persuade Gandhi to reconsider her decision, party sources told CNN. Top members of Congress had resigned their party posts to put pressure on Gandhi to change her mind. But the Italian-born Gandhi stood by her decision, citing personal attacks on her heritage and Roman Catholic faith. Unable to change Gandhi’s mind, the Congress Party unanimously elected Singh to be its leader.

On Thursday, during his first address to the media as prime minister-designate, Singh called for humane economic reforms in India. “Reforms are needed, I’ve always said that, but economic reforms with a human face that give India’s common man a real hope,” said Singh. He also urged “most friendly relations with our neighbors, more so with Pakistan than with any other country…We must find ways and means to resolve all outstanding problems that have been a source of friction,” he said.

Ashcroft’s campaign to shut down Greenpeace using an obscure 19th century law against “ship-mongering” has thankfully been rejected by a more clear-headed federal judge:

U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan acquitted the group at the end of the prosecution’s case Wednesday, the third day of the jury trial, for protesting against a ship that carried 70 tons of illegally cut mahogany. He said the prosecution, which based the action on an obscure 1872 law, had failed to provide enough evidence for the case to go to the jury. “America’s tradition of free speech won a victory today,” said John Passacantando, Greenpeace executive director, “but our liberties are still not safe. The Bush administration and its allies seem bent on stifling our tradition of civil protest, a tradition that has made our country stronger throughout our history.”

The editor of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch admits to having posted a critique of the documentary “Super Size Me,” a critical look at the fast food industry, without letting readers know that the author of the critique manages the TechCentralStation website, funded by McDonalds:

Some additional checking on our part also would have led us to the lavish spinoff Web site that TechCentralStation.com has devoted solely to discrediting “Super Size Me.” It also would have revealed information about the company listed as “publisher” of TechCentralStation.com: DCI Group, a high-powered Washington lobbying and public relations firm. Philosophically speaking, whether there is such a thing as a truly independent view – and whether Glassman’s qualifies as one – is an interesting question. Practically speaking, our responsibility is to provide the provenance of the opinions we publish and let readers come to their own conclusions.

Jack Ryan has unveiled a new strategy for his failing campaign against LWB-idol (a rarely-granted title if ever there was one) Barack Obama: dispatching a staffer to stalk him:

It means Justin Warfel, armed with a handheld Panasonic digital camcorder, follows Obama to the bathroom door and waits outside. It means Warfel follows Obama as he moves from meeting to meeting in the Capitol. And it means Warfel tails Obama when he drives to his campaign office. “It’s standard procedure to record public speeches and things like that,” Obama told reporters as the bald, 20-something operative filmed away. “But to have someone who’s literally following you a foot and a half away, everywhere you go, going into the restrooms, standing outside my office, sitting outside of my office asking my secretary where I am, seems to be getting a little carried away.”

My advice to the Obama campaign: View this as an organizing opportunity. Maybe there’s hope that Warfel will waver yet.

June 19th, health care voters from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge will stand together for a National Day of Action to bridge the gap in health care coverage. As Andy Stern writes:

Our health care system is in crisis. And as the nation’s largest health care union, SEIU has a special responsibility to lead the fight for quality, affordable health care. Before you finish reading this blog post, five more people will have lost their health care coverage. Nationwide, 44 million people have no health insurance, and 80 percent of those without coverage come from working families. Under President Bush, 4 million more Americans lost their coverage, average health care costs have gone up nearly 50 percent, and premiums have gone up more than three times faster than average wages.

For many, these statistics are appalling, but not surprising, because we have seen our friends and family struggle with too little health care. We understand their fear of losing it altogether. Or we ourselves have fought for better coverage at the bargaining table, or have had to walk the picket line for it. But the bottom line is nobody should have to choose between paying the bills and getting prescription drugs. And nobody should have to forgo treatment because they won’t be able to put food on the table. It’s a national problem. We need a national solution. It’s going to take a national action to help achieve it.

Find out more, and find an event near you, at the website here

The Yale Daily News manages to write an entire story on visa reform for international students without talking to any international students – let alone to anyone from the union through which they’ve been organizing a national campaign on the issue.

When the column starts…

If liberals won’t move on from the prison abuse photos calculated to incite hatred toward the very troops liberals loudly claim to “support,” I’m not moving on from the fact that the editor of the Los Angeles Times, John Carroll, is instructing journalists on ethics.

…you know it’s Ann Coulter. Point of clarification: Who exactly was it that calculated those photos to incite hatred towards troops? The Americans that took them? The Iraqis who were being brutally tortured? There’s no hint in the rest of the column, which is about Coulter’s nostalgia for the days when the LA Times printed breathless, credulous accounts of pseduo-journalistic fabricated scandals conceived by then-hired gun David Brock.