I Deny Your Reality and Substitute My Own

Glenn Greenwald on a phenomenon I've noticed since college: the ability of certain groups (primarily on the Right, but also some on the Left) to completely deny any fact that doesn't fit their preconceived reality or to assume the existence of any fact that does support it. For example, the apparently sincere belief in some Neo-Conservative circles that Iraq is really a success story, if only the perfidious liberal media would tell the "good news." Or the cottage industry of Clinton Conspiracy Theories that flourished in the 1990's, with all sorts of half-baked claims of drug-running and serial murder accepted as gospel despite the lack of any supporting evidence at all. Greenwald discuss the prevailing "conventional wisdom" (which is neither conventional, nor wise) that the "mainstream" is conservative and that Democrats are always out of it.

What Might Have Been, Part II

In Newsweek, Jonathan Alter explores an alternate history where Bush ignores the neo-cons in his response to 9/11. It's not very realistic, of course; Bush is a neo-con, not their prisoner or their puppet, but it shows how the world might've been a much better place, even without Al Gore in the White House.

Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

Thank to The Memory Hole. In October, 2001, the State Department's Future of Iraq Project gathered Iraqi exiles and international experts to plan a post-Saddam future for that nation. They completed their work in March/April of 2003 and their findings were promptly classified and then ignored by the Administration. Among other things, the Project foresaw widespread looting immediately after the invasion and warned of the dangers of disbanding the Iraqi Army. Yet more proof of this Administration's pig-headedness and willful ignorance.