I recently obtained this piece of utter brilliance from a Friend of Kerr (FoKerr) after I “blogged about”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1497/iraq-memories-ohanlon-in-2003-aca Michael O’Hanlon’s recent piece (which he co-wrote with Ken Pollack) on alleged US progress in Iraq.

It says about as much as it needs to about Brookings’ occasional tendencies to present right-wing shit as wise, centrist foreign policy.

Anyway, behold The Mikey:

!/images/24.jpg!

I was dared to post it…and it is difficult for me to resist a dare.

Thomas Powers has a good review of Tenet’s book in the 19 July edition of the _NYRB_. Referencing a “speech”:http://www.armscontrol.org/events/20060125_transcript_panel.asp that Blix gave at the 2006 ACA annual meeting, Powers notes that, according to Blix, the UN weapons inspectors (given a bit more time) would have confirmed that Iraq had no WMD and, perhaps, prevented the U.S.-led invasion of that country.

For some reason, Powers didn’t include the part where Blix talked about his role in “Team America: World Police:”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/

bq. States are not terribly impressed by international secretariats I can tell you. You can run into resistance. What weapon does [an international organization] have? The weapon you have is that if you do not go along with this I will report to the board. That is what you have. I heard there was a [movie, Team America: World Police] here in the U.S. about Iraq and I feature as a character who tells [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il that if you do not behave I will report. (Laughter.) And thereafter Kim says, “Fu*k you, Hans Blix,” and chops off my head and it falls down into some poo-poo or other.” I mean this is the way that I get known around the world (laughter), but my reaction is rather to the substance of it.

Maybe it wasn’t sufficiently high-brow for _NYRB_ readers.

Jeffrey “posted the video”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/956/hans-brix a while back.

This morning, I got a phone call from a source who was helping me get some information. He’s a nice person and had earlier apologized to me several times for the fact that the process was taking so long.

Anyway, after informing me that he finally had the relevant material, this source suggested that, should I have any more questions, I ought to “direct them to God, who might get back to you faster.”

The sausage factory of journalism. Happy Friday.

People occasionally ask me about blogging, almost certainly because of the amount of cash I am raking in.

Therefore, I present “Tbogg’s summary”:http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2007/06/circle-of-life-politico-reports-on.html of how -part of- the right-wing blogosphere works:

Campaigns should bypass the EmEssEm and go straight to the alpha bloggers who will uncritically repackage the campaigns bullshit.

*Secondary bloggers, also known as lampreys, will link to the alpha bloggers in hopes of getting a reciprocating link boosting their hit counts which they will then use to convince their significant others/parents/imaginary girlfriends/cats that they are indeed “citizen journalists” and don’t need to get “a real job”, “out of the basement”, or “enlist”.*

*This swarming of bloggers, also known as a “circle jerk”, will be picked up by Matt Drudge who will link to the topic if there isn’t any news about the royal family (Lady Di/Prince Harry/Madonna) that day*

The Politico will link to Matt Drudge because he “rocks their world”.

Left wing blogs will mock the Politico

Joe Klein will think they are talking about him and blame Atrios

There will be calls for civility

Lather rinse repeat

Keep those in mind.

Full disclosure: I live in a basement, but it is not owned by my parents.

Check “this”:http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/07/nick/md5/index.html out. Minutes of entertainment.