Barebones facts about fairly crucial issues of accuracy and honesty in the Presidential candidates.

Debkafile:

Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel. These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.

It may actually be good journalism, I couldn't read past the second paragraph as the disgust it generated overcame my ability to sift through its propaganda. Without overtly doing so the author links the billions of dollars "spent" in Iraq with the refusal of the Iraqi gov't to "take responsibility". Anyone who can read that without using profanity is either too gullible to be allowed to vote or someone for whom profanity is morally taboo. Those billions spent on futile incomplete projects that have left Iraq without the most basic necessary infrastructure were spent, and received, by the same bastards who set the war up. Far from being a "straight forward story" it's a straight forward regurgitation of criminal propaganda.

Good journalism brings new info and this is a side of the HIV/immigration subject that the MSM are generally too timid to bring forward.

This is not good journalism because it presents a partial truth, in the midst of a suffocating absence of any truth at all, and by tacit assumption builds the illusion that Cheney has created America's present difficulties virtually singlehandedly. This sets the stage for the cathartic removal of Cheney and Bush, with the subsequent installation of the next groomed set of sock-puppets delivered to the American public to "save the day". Meanwhile the destruction of Iraq is a done deal. And the American economy's starting to look like Russia's just before the Soviet Union went under. Where are the shadowy Perle, Feith, Wurmser, Abrams, and Wolfowitz in Hertzberg's dark scenario? Non-existent? Inconsequential? Off-stage.

Balance isn't a question of preventing both sides, just as balance when walking isn't a question of moving in a perfectly straight upright way. The MSM have polarized and seemingly intentionally kept polarized a lot of their readership on this issue, and this story is a good corrective for that. Plus it's essentially good news and good news is in very short supply these days.

The face of Jesus on a tortilla, Mary in the bark of a tree, a voice from heaven in the middle of the night telling someone to paint messages on the windows of their house. The compass the Times has got hold of is inaccurate and doesn't point in all directions. More bigotry-feeding partial truths from the hands behind the curtain.

More chauvinist bigotry from people who've never done anything wrong or benefited from the wrong-doing that was done to feed their comfort levels. Naive children love bears, now that the bears are all but gone. It's a violent world and it always has been and everything you enjoy was bought and paid for by violent acts. Nothing, not territory not economic resources not even peace itself was gained through anything other than violence. But once it's done you can pretend it has no connection with where you're at. This article was written for the deranged, by the deranged.

It pretends that its audience have heard all sides to the question when they haven't. There has never been anything like "another side" of Darfur presented in US media. There may not be one, but considering the outright lies and deception perpetrated these last few years by the same media/political mouthpieces that want us to weep for Darfur....

As far as it goes it's good journalism. But it never even mentions oil except in the context of US-imposed sanctions. When someone like Dana ("...and Coke to the world") Milbank steps up to the microphone, you can bet there's more to the picture than meets the eye, and these days that usually means oil.

This is naked propaganda saturated with the cynical assumption that the people it's written for are too stupid and too uncaring to realize or care that everything they've ever heard about al-Sadr has come from the mouths of the same people who lied them into Iraq, who've been lying to them all along.