Riverbend in her blog, Baghdad Burning, has given those who read her an inside perspective of the war and woes of politics and daily life in Baghdad.  For reasons unknown to us, long months go by without a whisper and each time we fear that "things" have not gone well for our beloved reporter.  Riverbend has returned once more and while I doubt her lastest post will be her last, it is likely to be her final entry from Baghdad.  

Riverbend is leaving.

On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Jordan or Syria? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

 

In Glenn Greenwald's post today, he continues thwacking Republican owned and operated Politico.com. He also takes a paddle to a chummy group of star-gazing, star-grazing pundits who dined together after the Republican debate in California.  Oh-ho, life can't get any better for this bunch; Tom Selleck bought them a bottle of wine.

But that's not what this diary is about.  No.  I decided to do my own sleuthing over at Politico to find out how partisan they really are by counting the abundant GOP articles (a wide majority) and noting the dearth of those on the DOJ scandal (2)and Iraq (2).

That's not what this is about, either.  The gusty winds today in Los Angeles blew this diary in another direction to this article, Perfect storm brews in California.

   

I just love springtime: migrating birds returning, new flowers poking through the ground, aspens budding in clusters and liars spilling their guts in congressional hearings.  It’s a shame the bad boys in the White House won’t enjoy the weather.  They’ll be huddled all weekend trying to plot a course through the mess they’ve created.  We, of course, need only kick back in the sun and wait for the next email dump.

Wait!  I know I’m probably jumping the gun, but with Bushco in such rapid decline I thought it might be a good idea to help George get started on his memoir.  Who knows, the one-way ticket to Paraguay might already be stuffed in his front-coat pocket.  So anyway, I dug around the internet and came up with a list of past presidential memoirs to use as my guide.  

Click on down to read them and maybe add your own.

The pro-war cheerleaders must be tiring by now- their arm weighty and voices hoarse.

Fight! Fight! Fight!  

Convinced its halftime, they’ve taken to the field and formed a human pyramid.  Alternately grinning and snarling, the head cheerleader on top relies on his droopy, tottering squad below to keep him from falling from his lofty perch.

Fight! Fight! Fight!  

None of them have even noticed the players have limped off the field, the cheering spectators are gone and the lights are dimmed.  The game is over.  Only the water boys remain.

While driving home from taking my daughter to school, I happened to catch part of a NPR interview with Ivan Watson, NPR news correspondent stationed in Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq.  He apparently was discussing the scene recent US military raid that resulted in the detaining of 5 Iranian consulate employees. This is where I turned on the car radio:

I'm really not the best person (not by a long shot) to write up this diary, as I have zero legal training except being dragged through 4 years of a custody battle.  My only qualification is that I don't like John Yoo.  I don't like that he is a UC Berkeley law professor educating our country's future lawyers.  I don't like his lack of decency and integrity, and I really don't like his lies.  

So, as your talking-head let me present Yoo's 8/19/06 Los Angeles Times OpEd column:

   

With the focus temporarily shifted from the November elections and onto our dwindling rights, I'd like to tell you of my FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) experience.

In March 2006, I sent a FOIA request to the Department of Homeland Security, requesting information to an incident that happened to me in 2003.  Briefly, in my regular mail I received a U.S. first class letter that had a strip of green DHS tape across the envelope flap.  Lacking the imagination of suspecting nefarious government intrusion, I assumed it had something to do with the anthrax scare two years before.  Without a clue, I threw the tape and envelope away.  When the news broke of other citizens having their international mail opened by the DHS, and the wire tapping revelation, I became pretty enraged and decided to look into the matter.

More below the fold...

My 16-year-old daughter and a couple of her friends recently returned to Los Angeles from a week of college tours and interviews on the east coast.  It was only a few days later that the terrorist plot was exposed, sending the airline industry and our nation screaming into high alert.

Like most nutty moms, I tend to spend at least a few creative minutes before sleep getting my daily cardiovascular workout by blowing the perceived dangers of the day into epic proportion.  Oh yeah-sustained increase of heartbeat, sweating, deep breathing, and for that special occasion, arrhythmia.  Of course my kids are safely in bed, but please understand, this is what we do.  So it may surprise you that I never gave liquid bombs a single thought. Oh no, I had greater aviation threats to ponder:  poor maintenance & outsourcing.

I was moving through my adolescent years while the Vietnam War raged, and graduated high school in 1976, after it had ended.  During those years, my over-sized, blue collar family of eight had dinner together every night at 5:00 PM, then crammed into our small livingroom to watch television.  We'd fill every seat and every available foot of floor space, and laughed together while watching The Jackie Gleason Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Sonny and Cher.  Other times we would play Monopoly, Life or Pinocle, a family favorite.  But always, at the top of our itinerary, was the Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

More below the fold.

Carol J. Williams, the Caribbean bureau chief for the LA Times, was ordered out of Guantanamo on Wednesday following the suicide of 3 prisoners.  Perhaps it's the creepy, shadowy control of Gitmo reporters, reminiscent of Communist Russia by Rumsfeld's Pentagon, or her forced expulsion on a military plane toilet seat, but Ms. Williams wrote one hell of an OpEd.  

My only complaint is it should have been above the fold on page 1.

http://www.latimes.com/...