The current cost of the war in Iraq. An incrementing cost clock, like the National Debt Clock. Interesting comparisons and breakdowns.

The subtext of the current controversy over the Niger forgeries is so obvious that it needs to be spelled out with much greater frequency.

Bushies and their apologists are trying to spin this as a tempest in a teapot. The real story here — and it’s profoundly missed by most people reporting it (and many people reading it) — is that this is evidence, if not ironclad proof, that the Bush administration was hellbent for war and that they weren’t going to let a little thing like the truth stop them.

That, I think, is more important than the question of whether or not the Bush adminstration is willing to lie to us about their policies, data, or basic physical laws. It amazes me that this is even under dispute. We knew this already.

No, what’s really important is whether we as Americans can cling to our tattered self-image as reluctant warriors, only engaging in “good wars”, and then only when dragged in by the sheer Hitlerian evil of our enemies. We don’t go to war merely to flex our military might. We certainly don’t go to war for partisan advantage. And we surely don’t go to war in order to annex the natural resources of other nations, such as, say, oil.

This last bit has the Bushsymps especially ostrich-like, as they ignore all evidence that shows that, well, we just overthrew a nation at least partially for mercenary reasons. Remember that Energy Task Force headed by Dick Cheney that everyone thought was stonewalling on keeping its records private because of their nefarious dealings with Enron? Turns out that it might be all that and Iraq too.

But the real question is when and where we’ll start rolling out the tanks again. There are damn few people, even among those on the side of GWB, who are entirely copacetic with the idea of heading on to Damascus, Tehran, or Pyongyang. In fact, their support of the war on Baghdad seems oddly hinged on the idea that this war was a one-off. You’d think Kabul would be fresh in their minds, but that was so 2001. So therefore it goes to reason that if our administration actually is secretly planning to hit a few more beaches, we should see some antiwar sentiment start to come from the moderates and even a few conservatives.

Which is why I was so struck by the juxtaposition of two news articles I read over the weekend. The first concerned John Bolton — who, as I’m sure we all recall, was called the “Armageddon nominee” by the Boston Globe when he was named as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Seems he was supposed to testify before Congress, but his appearance was delayed. The brouhaha, according to Warren Strobel at the Miami Herald:

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve banged the war drums against Syria. Surely we’re not planning on invading anytime soon? For this, we turn to the reassuring words of Douglas Feith, undersecretary for defense policy — the #3 job at the Pentagon; and Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Don Rumsfeld, as quoted in the LA Times:

Italics and boldface added, just so you wouldn’t miss what these two are saying here.

I have to admit, the one guy I feel sorry for at the moment is Scott McClellan, the new Ari Fleischer. Here he is, watching the press corps acting like lap dogs for his boss over the past two years, getting away with lines like the one pictured here (excerpted from a cartoon by Carol Lay). And now he’s stepping into the role just as the press is waking up to this fact, and looking for a little blood to mix into their newsprint.

I’ve cut down the following excerpt for brevity’s sake, but for a fuller picture of a man flopping about like a gutted trout on a hot sidewalk, check out the Talking Points Memo from whence it came:

Amazing. I got quoted on the Vatican’s web site. If only they knew me….

Look up the tech work Paper Prototyping on Amazon, and apparently you’ll be referred to interesting alternate items.

While the Washington Post recently told us that most of the Iraqi museum artifacts were safe and sound, turns out that the worst damage happened elsewhere, according to the New Scientist and the Post. A weird new technology monitors ass-wiggling on planes, presumably to look for nervous terrorists.

Jesse Jordan, a college freshman, claims he created a search engine. RIAA claims he created a P2P network. Jordan says, “no, those files were all already there.” RIAA sues. Jordan hands over his life savings.

Catching up on my web radio, I caught the following from NPR’s On the Media: Adolf Hitler appearing on Larry King Live. Written and performed by Jon Stewart. Requires RealAudio.

Note to Damascus: you’ll be getting a few years’ reprieve. The Financial Times reports that Rummy is looking to Iran as the next target of invasion and occupation regime change. The irony, of course, is that on the issues of nuclear weapons development and connections to terrorism, Iran outranks Iraq as a threat, and always has.

Do you love the idea of having a GPS device, but hate having to carry something around with you all the time? Now you can have the best of both worlds. Star Trek double entendre intended.

John Battelle is generating some net.buzz with his suggestion that Apple should buy TiVo.

Now on sale through May 21, a Macintosh built entirely out of Legos and a dead PowerBook. I’m thinking about bidding on this myself.

One of these photos was published last week by a major metropolitan newspaper. The other was published months ago by a satirical web site, intending to be humorous by showing an image that was too ludicrous to ever occur in real life. Can you tell which is which?

Important note: in the real news photo, that arrow pointing to GWB’s head with the word “rescue”? Part of the original image.

John Gruber writes about the need for the Safari web browser to provide AppleScript access to open pages in tabs. Me, I just want to be able to rename the tabs so twelve windows to similarly-named web pages can be edited for easy reference.

How’s this for a grabber for an open faculty position? “Our students tend to be poorly prepared for college level work, intellectually passive, interested primarily in partying, and culturally provincial in the extreme.”

The Center for Cooperative Research has posted a fascinating — and comprehensively researched — timeline of Bush’s and others’ actions on September 11. Most interesting are some details that seem to have been extensively rewritten to make questionable decisions seem worthwhile, and cover up some incompetence. Seems a few lies were told at the time — notably the security threat that had Bush bouncing around Air Force bases all day long.

About 340 workers at an Omaha plastics factory will lose pay or have to work next Saturday to make up for time lost during a visit by President Bush on Monday to promote his “jobs and growth plan,” their boss said yesterday.

That story that’s circulating about Oregon wanting to hire someone fluent in Klingon? It’s too good to be true.

This only looks like a spoof. The Missile Defense Agency — those guys who are still trying to build a nuclear umbrella despite plenty of evidence it’s doomed to failure — are now going for the hearts and minds of your children. Yes, you too can color a picture of Ronald Reagan in the Missile Defense Agency Coloring Book.

The Register reports that T-Mobile is losing its shirt on wireless Internet access. Not much of a surprise in a new market. I’m posting it here because I was amused by the reference in the article that “the nascent Wi-Fi operators simply can’t muster enough Apple PowerBook-toting bloggers to make the whole business viable”. Guess where I am, what I’m using, and what I’m doing?

The red herring about secret messages being hidden in Internet traffic is being flogged again. As The Register says, in yet another article debunking the whole thing, “the likelihood of Islamic fundamentalists hiding messages in porn is roughly the same as their likelihood of hiding them in pig carcasses.”