Bloggerheads

Do excuse me… busy day today. Have some links:

Guardian – MPs seek independent inquiry into Iraq war

Press Gazette – MPs put heat on Meyer to quit

(UPDATE – Ooooh, look what else just went live there… Rupert Murdoch tells all to Press Gazette – excusive interview. And here’s a rundown in the Guardian via Nosemonkey.)

A belated plug for HearFromYourMP.com

I won’t be plugging 2005 Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere until I’ve read it in full. At my leisure. So there.

Bush’s approval ratings – The New Map

BBSpot – Which Nigerian Spammer Are You?

Identity Theft Secrets – Phishers of men show Christmas spirit (relevant bit starts at 5:10, but you may want to watch the whole thing)

CNN – ‘Ugly dog’ Sam dies at 14

DailyKos – Pentagon has called White Phosphorus a “chemical weapon”

Right-wing bloggers are in an uproar over Cheney being X’ed by CNN. Reuters report is here, a good round-up of links is here (warning: contains opinion), but the very, very best part is this comment I found at DailyPundit’s ‘we called CNN and some guy in the call centre said they did it deliberately’ post: Kevin Finn said, “The Vice-President is a symbol of the United States, much like the American flag. For CNN to desecrate the image of the Vice President is the same as the Iranians burning the U.S. flag at a rally staged for the whole world via television. It is a slap in the face to all those who serve and have served in the armed forces”.

(UPDATE – FFS, even Michelle Malkin has managed to engage her brain and keep her foaming mouth under control… but this is sure to run for a while, regardless. The pack is hungry for blood.)

Rolling Stone – The Man Who Sold the War: By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. [Not that that’s ever stopped them – Tim] But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas — knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. A recent congressional report suggests that the Pentagon may be relying on “covert psychological operations affecting audiences within friendly nations.” In a “secret amendment” to Pentagon policy, the report warns, “psyops funds might be used to publish stories favorable to American policies, or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of administration policies.” The report also concludes that military planners are shifting away from the Cold War view that power comes from superior weapons systems. Instead, the Pentagon now believes that “combat power can be enhanced by communications networks and technologies that control access to, and directly manipulate, information. As a result, information itself is now both a tool and a target of warfare.”

National Journal – Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel: Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

Iraqis worried about wives: A veteran Middle East observer, Robert Fisk, says Iraqi civilians are worried about how to save their wives from becoming prostitutes. ‘Vast armies of the Mafioso are now operating in Iraq,’ said Fisk. ‘Women are being sold into prostitution into Syria and Yemen.’

Oh, and I tripped over this last night when checking initial search results for ‘leo blair’ (for the record, the blog entry launching The World According to Leo Blair is today 10th in Google, the video itself is 12th):

Scotsman – Hidden message in Leo picture (25 Nov 2003): Mr Chirac had taunted Mr Blair last year about whether he could look Leo in the face if the premier was responsible for starting a war – a spat which led to the postponement of the equivalent Anglo-French summit last year. The president said Leo was “a very appealing child that I love very much” but added: “I can’t pre-judge what the Prime Minister will say to his son when he wants to tell him these things, nor what his son will answer, but these situations are not easy.”

UPDATE (3:51pm) – Two extras from the Guardian….

From the letters page: “It is scandalous that students are using the internet to plagiarise their course work. We must keep up standards. Can you imagine what would happen if our prime minister presented as intelligence a dossier plagiarised from the internet. It is too dreadful to even contemplate.” – Ron Senchak (Manchester)

Simon Tisdall – Uzbekistan looks east for new friends: It looks like Craig Murray was right all along. To the US’s annoyance, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan publicly criticised human rights abuses by President Islam Karimov’s government. Mr Murray lost his job last year. But even the most hard-nosed US strategists could not turn a blind eye to the massacre in the town of Andijan in May. The ensuing confrontation, all the more explosive for being delayed, has come at a high price to Washington’s interests in central Asia.