Look at this Yahoo headline of a Reuters story:

Bomb kills 15, Bush critic Pelosi visits Baghdad

"Bush critic"? That's the best descriptive Yahoo can think of to give Pelosi?

Not "Speaker of the House" Pelosi? Not "Third in Line for the Presidency" Pelosi?

Not even "California Congresswoman" Pelosi?

But, yes, all you lurking Freepers, keep crying that the media is liberal.

Tell you what, when Yahoo News refers to Bush as "Constitution Ignorer" George W. Bush or "Human Rights Violator" George W. Bush, you might just have a point.

AP:

Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms burst into Red Crescent offices on Sunday and kidnapped more than two dozen people at the humanitarian organization in the latest sign of the country's growing lawlessness.

and

A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded one north of Baghdad on Saturday, the U.S. military said on Sunday in a statement.

and

Iraqi police said they had found around 53 bodies in Baghdad in the last 24 hours, 9 of them apparently killed execution-style,

Juan Cole has more...

Heard this on the Rachel Maddow Show on my local AAR station.

LA Times: (reg req.):

The Energy Department said Tuesday that it was investigating a series of alleged safety problems at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas, including complaints by employees that they were being required to work up to 84 hours a week to meet decommissioning schedules for nuclear weapons.

[..]The Pantex plant, which has 3,500 employees, handles the servicing of nuclear weapons and the decommissioning of excess weapons under arms control treaties. During the Cold War, it was the sole assembly site for nuclear bombs.

Employees characterized conditions at the Pantex complex, which sits on 25 square miles and began nuclear work in the early 1950s, as "degraded" and in disrepair in many areas. The letter also said engineers were being required to work up to 84 hours in a seven-day week and production technicians 72 hours in a six-day week.

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This didn't even make the front page of the local paper. What War on Terror are we fighting? Um...Mainsteam media? Is it only important to cover if the terrorist in question has a "foreign" name?

Orcinus: (h/t Gregory)

Imagine, for a moment, what would have happened if a Muslim extremist with an apparent hatred of the American government had been apprehended in, say, Tennessee, and charged with plotting to blow up Congress with a briefcase bomb.

Do you suppose that the case would then be relegated to the back pages of the local papers? Do you suppose it would go unmentioned by the 101st Keyboard Kommandos in their ever-vigilant search for proof that the War on Terror is right here in our midst?

Of course not. You can be certain Fox News would have splashed the case across its broadcasts, and Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs would have been all over it.

Now consider the case of Demetrius "Van" Crocker, who just happens to be a white right-wing extremist:

Demetrius "Van" Crocker of McKenzie, convicted in April of attempting to obtain a chemical weapon and possession of stolen explosives, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Todd in Jackson.

Crocker, who told undercover FBI agents of his desire to explode a briefcase bomb while Congress was in session, was found guilty by a jury in about 90 minutes in April.

The 40-year-old farmhand and father of two was convicted of accepting what he thought were ingredients to make Sarin nerve gas and a block of C-4 explosive from undercover agents in October 2004.

Read on...

skippy the bush kangaroo: even Kansas isn't Kansas anymore

The Left Coaster: Will Dems win dozens of seats?

Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: This should finish Hastert off...

The Osterly Times: Did Bush deliberately bomb al-Jazeera? The British government is going to extraordinary lengths to prevent us from finding out.

TRex: "I'm so bummed! Bill O'Reilly's on to us! He knows about The Big Plan to Cancel Christmas!"

Reuters:

The United States thanked Syria on Tuesday for going after gunmen who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Damascus but ruled out any immediate improvement in the frigid ties between the two nations.

Four men shouting Islamic slogans tried to blow up the embassy in Damascus, but their car bomb failed to go off. Syrian security guards killed three in a shootout and captured the fourth. The state news agency SANA said a Syrian guard was also killed.

"The U.S. government is grateful for the assistance the Syrians provided in going after the attackers," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "We are hoping they will become an ally and make the choice of fighting against terrorists."

But a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of his comments, said relations between the two countries were unlikely to change much in the near future.

He said the Syrian response "was their duty. The alternative would have been bad for U.S.-Syrian relations." Read on...

Winning hearts and minds in the Middle East every day...

Of course, the Malkin crowd gleefully enjoys the torture aspect to the story, but Sullivan makes some sense:

These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court. I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

Duncan:

It's increasingly likely that the whole British plot wasn't much more of a big deal than the idiotic nonsense in Florida awhile back. Certainly as of yet there's nothing to indicate that FULL PANIC MODE AT THE AIRPORTS and cable news' return to 24 hour OH MY GOD THEY'RE GOING TO BOMB THE SHOPPING MALLS mode had any justification whatsoever....read on

Bush's neocon philosophy is putting us on the brink of destruction. The Iraq war has been a catastrophe and has ushered in more anti-American sentiment around the world. David Gregory asked Bush why his foreign policy plan is a failure. Arthur writes: Which Country Should we Bomb first.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (I'm making a longer version later)

Gregory: I’d like to ask you about the big picture that you’re discussing. Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel. Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they’re sharply critical of Israel. And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.

So what has happened to America’s clout in this region that you’ve committed yourself to transform?

BUSH: David, It’s an interesting period because, ummm--instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability. For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm — manage calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

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NY Times:

Up to 48 Iraqis were killed and 60 wounded in a brazen bomb and grenade attack in a town south of Baghdad this morning, Iraqi officials said. It was one of the highest death tolls from a single attack in months on victims believed to be mostly Shiites, and it prompted a walkout in Parliament today of members in the legislative bloc of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Yesterday, I posted: Where’s the Outrage Over the Daily News Bomb Tunnel Story?
Greenwald:

John Amato astutely asks an excellent question: why are all of the Bush supporters celebrating the unauthorized leak to the Daily News of the FBI's arrests of alleged terrorists who were talking in Internet chat rooms about blowing up the Holland Tunnel (later news reports indicated that the plot was really aimed at the PATH commuter train)?--Their celebratory reaction to this leak is particularly noteworthy given that the Daily News article itself acknowledged that its source told it that the leaked law enforcement investigation "is an ongoing operation." And the FBI claims that this leak has jeopardized foreign intelligence sources...read on

Update: Larisa says: Sources say no serious plot for NYC, just hate chatter