The End

Courage.

The Eyes of Texas are Upon You ...

It is Buzz Windrip's dream come true, the wet dream of Tricky Dick Nixon, the paranoid fantasy of a thousand "libertarian" science fiction writers, right-wing columnists, lefty conspiracy theorists, and now it's come true: We ARE living in a Philip K. Dick novel.

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. to Expand Domestic Use Of Spy Satellites
By ROBERT BLOCK
August 15, 2007; Page A1

The U.S.'s top intelligence official has greatly expanded the range of federal and local authorities who can get access to information from the nation's vast network of spy satellites in the U.S.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study... [MORE]

But wait! (As they say) there's MORE!!

Plans to provide DHS with significantly expanded access have been on the drawing board for over two years. The idea was first talked about as a possibility by the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 as a way to help better secure the country. "It is an idea whose time has arrived," says Charles Allen, the DHS's chief intelligence officer, who will be in charge of the new program. DHS officials say the program has been granted a budget by Congress and has the approval of the relevant committees in both chambers.

Wiretap Legislation

Coming on the back of legislation that upgraded the administration's ability to wiretap terrorist suspects without warrants, the development is likely to heat up debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security.

Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October.

Debate? What fucking DEBATE?!!?! Civil liberties? What fucking CIVIL LIBERTIES??!?

I remember writing in 1986 or '87 (or trying to write, since nobody would publish my political stuff. SEX stuff, sure, but important political stuff? Naw.) when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that you had NO right to privacy in the airspace above your home, that they'd opened the door to spy satellite surveillance on U.S. Citizens. This was, naturally, considered the wildest form of Leftie Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Wackiness.

Well, kiddies, here you are.

In a related story, the White House will be authoring the "surge" report in September. They're not even TRYING to hide the lying, the enabling acts, the arrogation of power, the illegal wiretaps, warrantless searches, gag orders, etc. etc. etc.

In such a climate, it is insane and dangerous for me to write about politics, or to put my neck on the line for the likes of you. Because, frankly, I don't love you that much.

So, to paraphrase Chief Joseph at the end of the Nez Percé War:

Hear me, my readers, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will blog no more forever.

I'm ready for the boat to Leavenworth now, General Miles.

disCourage.

Crazy From The Heat, or It’s Only Logickal

Welcome to the dog days of August. Originally having something or other to do with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, the Nile floods and the UFOs moving the Pyramids, they now seem to just be dog days.

Today they released a Wikipedia "scanner" that allows people to see WHO has been editing the popular on-line community-written encyclopedia. Little did anyone realize what mad hounds of paranoia would be unleashed in the increasingly fabulist world of the Rightie Blogosmear ...

Little Green Footballs:

NYT Bias Graphically Illustrated
Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 11:31:44 am PST

Someone at the New York Times contributed the following edit to the Wikipedia page for George W. Bush: Wikipedia scanner results.

[NOTE: someone has added the word "Jerk" to Bush's Wikipedia profile. A mild descriptive, compared to how those whose children are dead in this war feel about him. -- HW]

UPDATE at 8/14/07 11:50:54 am:

Just to verify, here’s a WHOIS lookup on the IP: 199.181.174.146.

UPDATE at 8/14/07 2:44:37 pm:

Auspundits has another gem of an edit, also by someone at the New York Times, in which they changed a description of Tom Delay from “a prominent member of the Republican Party” to “a Grand Dragon of the Republican Party.”

UPDATE at 8/14/07 2:47:27 pm:

Someone at the New York Times has also been editing the Wall Street Journal’s Wikipedia page: Riehl World View: New York Times Editing WSJ’s Wiki?

UPDATE at 8/14/07 2:53:03 pm:

Allahpundit discovered a Democratic Party IP that was apparently used to vandalize a page about Rush Limbaugh.

Gee. Somebody who works at the New York Times (perhaps in the mail room) added "jerk" to George W. Bush's page on Wikipedia. Ahh. THEREFORE, the TIMES is BLATANTLY BIASED!!!! (All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore: All men are Socrates. Logick is so much more funner than drinking used ter be.)

Oh, and Democrats might have said bad things about Rush Limbaugh. YA THINK?

(I must admit that calling Tom Delay "a Grand Dragon of the Republican Party" seems to me more like a sincere attempt to increase the accuracy of the entry in question than anything necessarily negative. But then, having been personally smeared on his website, I may be a tad biased.)

Hmmm, what other EARTH-SHAKING revelations have come to the dazed dogs?

Over at NewsBusters -- "Combating and Exposing Liberal Media Bias" -- this one seems right up their alley (as it were). Under an unintentionally ironic (as in, how he can write this with a straight face is beyond me) title, "Tool For Propaganda?" Matthew Shepherd (who works for Brent Bozell's "Media Research Center," of which NewsBusters is a wholly-owned, and just-turned-two-years-old subsidiary) writes:

This type of cybersquatting is quite widespread but up until now, difficult to track. That's changed however, with the creation of Wikiscanner, a search engine that allows you to see what organizations have been editing Wikipedia. You can, for instance, look up to see what Wikipedia users from different political groups, business, churches, and any other organization have been up to on the site. Early results are showing that many employees seem to have a habit of editing the entries of their own company/organization. You can also see that at least one person at the New York Times deliberately defaced Wikipedia's entry for George W. Bush with the words* "jerk" inserted into the page repeatedly.

[* The last time I checked, "jerk" was one word. "Repeatedly" would mean that one word was used several times.]

I guess I stand in slack-jawed awe at someone who can take an organization the size of the New York Times, and, based on the actions of one employee in putting "jerk" into the Wikipedia entry for George W. Bush, divine that the ENTIRE organization, including Arthur Sulzberger himself, were squeezed into that basement cubicle, beside the xerox machine, egging that bored employee on to put digital graffiti into the Wikipedia description of Bush. Ahahahahahah!!!! (Mad Scientist cackle goes HERE.)

You see, that "traditional value" that the Righties pride themselves on, classical Logic, has been quietly supplanted by classical Logick, which is what allows the Inquisitor to logically prove you to be a witch. Therefore, you are in league with the Devil. Therefore ... (well, you get the idea.)

If the defacer of The Decider had been an employee of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Inc. we could, therefore logickally divine that every smiling stylized picture of long-dead figurehead Col. Sanders is actually oozing contempt and liberal bias right into the drumsticks.

Or, perhaps, had it been an employee of the State of Texas, we could logickally divine that the government of Texas had turned against the Commander Guy, and safety precautions would have to be taken on a massive scale, up to and including the invading and subduing major areas of discontent, such as Austin, Fort Worth, and Luckenbach.

Going mad with the heat, the blog at Hot Air -- an enterprise entitled with the opacity of the obvious and the obliviousness of the truly opaque -- Allahpundit unleashes the dogs in the garden to root for gophers ...

Awesome: Wikipedia edit tracker shows who’s editing which pages
posted at 1:34 pm on August 14, 2007 by Allahpundit

They’re getting slammed with such immense traffic that it’s actually crippled their search function for the moment. But I’m going to link anyway, first and foremost so that you can bookmark it for use later when the wave subsides and second because the “Editor’s Picks” search terms in the sidebar do work — and some of them are tasty indeed. For example, select “Democratic Party” and it’ll bring up all the edits made to all Wikipedia pages from the range of IPs (allegedly) assigned to Democratic Party computers. Scroll down to the one for Rush Limbaugh and click the number in the “diff” column and you’ll see this. The pre-edit version is in the red text in the yellow box at the top and the post-edit is in the red text in the green box. Needless to say. Click to enlarge:

[photo]


That should start you off. I’ll leave you to find the other easter eggs for yourself; I’ve already found a few myself. Feel free to report back in the comments below. Thanks to L[ittle G[reen] F[ootballs] for the heads up.

Er ... yes. Easter eggs. That's Logickal, if you're an Inquisitor doggie. Which makes perfect sense if you feel as though you've fallen down a rabbit hole.

And look! A doggie named Wizbang has dug one up. Turns out someone from the (GASP) New York Times has CHANGED the Condoleeza Rice entry to alter "pianist" to "penis," thus resulting in the hilarious sentence "At age 15, Rice began classes with the goal of becoming a concert penis."

Juvenalia, right? The kind of stuff you remember from grade school. But NOT to the Logickal attack dogs. No, with dogged determination, they will hunt down their prey. They must track and tree the infamous PENIS Writer, the Pianist Enhancer at the NYTimes. Wizbang writes:

Interestingly there are several edits from that address for specific New York Times employees. By frequency the most updated entry is the one for Nick Bilton, who was hired at the Times via Jeff Koyen. Koyen had a nasty departure from the Times in 2005 and edits from inside the Times building after he left suggest that Bilton may have been the author editing Wikipedia from the 199.181.174.146 address.

Only The New York Times knows for sure if that's the case. We've sent an inquiry to the Times and will report their response...

As the attack dogs of the Rightie Blogosmear go mad in the August heat.

Courage.

Now, for a completely hilarious posting -- and don't be drinking liquids when you read it -- please go directly to Sadly, No! Read the short post AND the comments. Do not pass "GO." Do not collect $200. (Well, OK, collect the $200.) Good luck.

The Carolina Fabulist

[OUR STORY SO FAR: This refers to the ongoing New Republic/Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp "controversy" that has raged in the Rightie blogosmear since the Rupert Murdoch-owned, William Kristol-edited Weekly Standard's BLOG, run by Michael Goldfarb, called for, on July 18, "Fact or Fiction? A mission for milbloggers:" and then used the blog as a central clearing house for the top Rightie blogs -- Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Captain's Quarters, etc. -- to pile on to a series of "Baghdad Diaries" written by an anonymous soldier. First, they disputed whether the 'soldier' even existed. Then, when the soldier revealed himself, dug up every old blog posting they could find on the internet. They found that he had been for Howard Dean at the University of Missouri in 2004. They "found" that his wife worked at the magazine. They catalyzed an Army investigation of the soldier, who is currently either being held incommunicado -- if you believe the magazine that his wife works for -- or else is incommunicado by choice, if you believe the chief PR officer in theater, Col. Boylan, whose confirming letter that, supposedly, Beauchamp had recanted all was received by Bob Owens, the Confederate Yankee, trumpeted by Michael Goldfarb, and was the basis for both the New York Times and the Washington Post stories on this sordid mess last week. Now, the story continues ...]

Well, they tried. Really they did. Yesterday, amidst the complete slam that the Rove resignation put on the blogosphere, The Weekly Standard's blog (Michael Goldfarb) and The Confederate Yankee, Bob Owens, tried to buttress their increasingly shaky declaration of victory.

Five days shy of their first month of hyper-parsing and ultra-critical textual reading of The New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" Private Beauchamp, the Yanker thought he'd caught a BIG LIE in a prior article According to The Weekly Standard's blog:

(Updated) Another Beauchamp Story Debunked

Bob Owens, the Confederate Yankee, had debunked another claim made by Private Beauchamp in his columns for the New Republic. This is from Beauchamp's second dispatch, titled "Dead of Night":

As we slowly started moving back toward the Humvee, we could hear the dogs filling in the space behind us. I turned around and saw their green eyes flashing in the deep shadow where we'd left the body. Part of me thought we should have shot the dogs or done something to keep them from eating the body, but what good would it have done? We only would have been exposing ourselves to danger longer than we needed to.

Back in the Humvee, Hernandez started talking to me without looking in my direction. "Man, I've never seen anything like that before," he said.

"What? A guy killed by a cop?" I asked.

"No, man, zombie dogs. That shit was wild," he said, laughing.

Something inside of me fought for expression and then died. He was right. What else was there to do now but laugh?

"I took his driver's license," I said.

"You did?" questioned Hernandez.

"Yeah. It said he was an organ donor."

We chuckled in the dark for a moment, and then looked out the window into the night. We didn't talk again until we were back at our base.

Owens sent a couple of quick emails and was able to discover that the Iraqi DMV does not, in fact, provide driver's with the option of donating their organs. Owens quotes from an exchange with Hassan Elsaadaoui, a CPATT liaison with the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad:

I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license. Also our medical system and doctors are not ready for this type procedure, because of the situation. They do not have the equipment and many of the very good doctors are now outside the country.

Owens has other experts saying the same thing...organ donation is not common in Iraq, and there is certainly no indication of organ donation status on the Iraqi driver's license. Go read the whole thing. Was Beauchamp's buddy just joking? Was the whole story a joke?

Update: Owens now wonders if the whole thing isn't a joke...I read it that way, too. But I think his update pretty much captures my sense of the thing:

I think in the Iraqi or Muslim tradition they don't accept this practice of donating organs. Maybe in the future, it will be possible. There is no indication now on the back side of Iraqi driver's license.

[Gee, you suppose that Owens could debunk THIS? Here I'll start it out: These three soldiers stop at an Iraqi farmhouse. The farmer says, you can spend the night, but you'll have to sleep with my daughter. Now, the first soldier .... ]

All right, there is serious intent here. Bob Owens is now the "point man" for the debunking squad, the fellow who Petraeus' top PR officer, Col. Boylan sent the "confirming" email that led to the declaration of victory last week that the blogosmearers seem to feel increasingly needs buttressing like, oh, debunking jokes. (It WAS a joke, for those of you, like Goldfarb and Owens, who are paranoid and utterly lacking any sense of humor, or the gallows humor that characterizes extremely stressful situations ... like combat, for instance.)

And Owens himself must be held the the standard that he holds up so proudly. Let's see how he scores.

In late 2005 Crooks and Liars named Bob Owens, The Confederate Yankee for the prestigious WORST POST OF THE YEAR* non-award for what can only be described as paranoid rightie fabulism. (* tip o' the hat to Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money)

Bob Owens' winning post? "Google Mocks Christ on Christmas Eve." (12-24-05)

Again, there is serious intent here. Remember, Owens is now the "Woodward & Bernstein" of Goldfarb's vendetta, and the vendetta is about "fabulism." Let's see how he stacks up as a fabulist. Putting two and two together, Owens comes up with five:

While trying to find a nativity image for my last post before Christmas, I did an (sic) search for "baby jesus" on Google.

This is the result. (Screen capture).

Notice that the top search result is for a sex toy that mocks Jesus. [NB: "Baby Jesus Butt Plug" -- HW]

Other results on this search results page have more link traffic. A quick review of page's code shows no HTML meta information that should give it a favorable ranking. The page itself has a raw relevance ranking (search word divided by total words) of less than five percent. The only conclusion I can draw is that this page position ranking was done manually by a Google staffer.

Google's message to the Faithful seems obvious:

"Merry Christmas, assholes."

Google? Right. Like the search engine consciously intends to alienate a huge segment of its audience, lose money and market share, just to serve their master, Satan. This is rather insanely paranoid, but now that Bob's got the bad idea in his cranium, he can't seem to get it out, and becomes increasingly defensive and paranoid:

Update: Some folks have made the argument that this is the result of Googlebombing or other SEO tricks. Others say that it is merely the result of Google's search programs. They would absolve Google of all responsibility.

I do not.

Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These people ultimately decide if search results are relevant. I think it is fair to say that a butt plug is not a relevant search result for 99-percent of Google users searching for information on Jesus Christ as a baby.

So either Google has manipulative coders, or a fouled algorithm in their baseline technologies that suggests their massive capitalization is based upon a a house of cards. (sic) I'll leave individual readers and investors to make the call.

Yes, the 'baby Jesus butt plug' is the result of manipulative liberal algorithm coding. Er ... really? (I admit that the techno-mumbo is hard to follow. But the braiding in of paranoia and preconceived conclusion is present as well.) OK. Crooks and Liars points out the inherent absurdity of this fabulism. Bob's response?

Update 2: Crooks and Liars calls this post 2005's Worst Post of the Year. Coming from such a den of delusion and paranoia (not to mention abject political failure), I consider it a compliment.

Also, I guess he didn't see this, though technically it isn't a blog post, just the worst idea of the year.

I'll save you the click. Some group named Louis Farrakhan their 2005 "man of the year." This, to racist and/or religious bigot Bob, is so incredibly, laughably absurd (since Farrakhan is both Black AND Muslim) that he offers it as an absolute DEFENSE of his insane post. Which is, in itself, a rather stunning self-indictment of Bob's objectivity, his powers of analysis, his deep paranoia, and steadfast refusal to admit that -- no matter how absurd his proposition -- he CANNOT be wrong.

And he's accusing Beauchamp of ... what? Fabulism?

But it gets worse. Bob is also DOGGEDLY wrong. He can't let this go, and finishes this masterpiece of paranoid misinterpretation with this, evidently from the following spring (and HE QUOTES HIMSELF):

Good Friday Update: As I said previously:

Google's algorithms are man-made, coded by human programmers, as are any exclusionary protocols. These people ultimately decide if search results are relevant.

A current Google search reveals that Google has changed their search algorithm to exclude the sex toy site from at least their top 50 results in a unfiltered search. (sic) I was right, liberals were wrong.

Not that this comes as a shock to anyone...

"I was right, liberals were wrong."

Which is exactly what Owens is trying to maintain today, vis-à-vis his attacks on Beauchamp. But there's enough blame to go around. Goldfarb, the primary source and svengali of all the media hoohaw thus far, NOW uncritically quotes the Confederate Yanker's latest absurdity, even adding Owens' increasingly paranoid and weird formulations, 'analysis,' and justifications -- even though they now ADMIT IT WAS A JOKE. It is an almost pathological need to be 'right' -- even after the premise of the attack is proven false, somehow, the attack is still justified, and WE CONTACTED THE IRAQ DMV, you GOT THAT?!!??!

Oh.

So who are the REAL fabulists here? And, can they stand the sort of rigorous critical scrutiny that they demand from The New Republic and Private Beauchamp?

Don't make me laugh.

Courage.

UPDATE: 10:10 AM PDT: Old Bob's at it again. If it weren't enough that he's a "Newsbusters" media "critic" today's posting screams about lies, and why The New Republic owes an apology or a firing, or execution at dawn by a firing squad. Increasingly, the shrill tone of these posts belie any belief in the so-called "repudiation" theory allegedly advanced by the Army. I thought they said they'd "won." Hmmm.

Never Let Your Right Wing Know What Your Other Right Wing Is Doing

Funny. After yowling like coyotes on a full moon, the literary micro-parsing has continued in the blogosmear. The New Republic and Private Beauchamp continue to be the favored whipping boy of the fake media, as the attempt to port the 'controversy' into the mainstream media continues, with Rush Limbaugh vacation fill-in host and ex-Canadian arts critic Mark Steyn writing in his syndicated colummn (From the Orange County Register):

Warm-mongers and cheeseburger imperialists
by Mark Steyn

... According to the Weekly Standard-, army investigators say Pvt. Beauchamp has now signed a statement recanting his lurid anecdotes.

Gee. The Rupert Murdoch-owned, William Kristol-edited Weekly Standard, whose blogger Michael Goldfarb's anonymous confirmations and Army PR Officers' emails seem to have provided the basis for both the Washington Post and the New York Times pieces? THAT Weekly Standard?

Well, suddenly and for the first time, Saturday, A DIFFERENT staffer posted a letter from Col. Stephen Boylan, General Petraeus' InfoWar officer (the one responsible for making sure the right stories get in the right places, for "embedding" journalists, etc.)

Funny that the Weekly Standard continues to be the central clearinghouse for this story, after literally CALLING for the blogosmear to rip the THR/Beauchamp story to shreds. But I guess that they want to diffuse the personal vendetta against Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic, whose head is specifically being called for as the specter of a scandal is raised that took place NINE years ago, BEFORE Foer ever had anything to do with the magazine? (The Stephen Glass scandal.) Er, how is he responsible, or culpable for a scandal that occurred before he began working for the The New Republic? Why they even got the story onto NPR (NationalPublic Radio) Thursday. Complete with reference to the Glass scandal. Hmmm.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the first time, ever,S OMEBODY else posted this excerpt from a letter to HIM from Colonel Boylan. Gee, the Times and the Post could only get Maj. Lamb, Boylan's deputy to talk to THEM. And the AP could only get a sergeant that one of their reporters knew from Kansas. But The Weekly Standard's BLOG and private "Laz-Y-Boy" blogger Bob Owens get the Commanding General's P.R. Deputy making semi-official statements on the case. What's wrong with this picture?
Here's from Saturday:

Posted by Bill Roggio

The Army Responds

I recently emailed Col. Steve Boylan asking for whatever information he could provide regarding the status of the investigation of Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Here is his response:

His command's investigation is complete. At this time, there is no formal what we call Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) actions being taken. However ... (sic)

Hmmm. The gist of it -- aside from Boylan's appalling use of syntax -- is that Col. Boylan specifically denies The New Republic's statement of Friday that the Army wasn't allowing Pvt. Beauchamp to speak with them. And, for the first time, SOMEONE else posted, perhaps to cover the tracks of a very personal-seeming vendetta. After all, the media shell game of quoting either the reviewer's name or the reviewer's newspaper is well known to all critics. The Weekly Standard sounds so much more authoritative than "Michael Goldfarb." Or, now, his amanuensis du jour, Bill Roggio.

One, naturally wonders what "recently" means, since "recently" as in "I emailed Gen. Petreaus' PR Officer as soon as TNR's latest statement came out on Friday" would mean one thing. And if "recently" means "I received this reply but have been waiting for the propitious time to publish it," I suppose that would mean something else.

And, Saturday, naturally, the piling on talking-point of the Rightie blogosmear was now about how the "liar" Pvt. Beauchamp was in the final phases of the kind of lying scandal the way that the Stephen Glass scandal had been played out and was refusing to answer his phone, the lying weasel. (The serpent bites its tail.)

(Oh, and that other talking point: Beauchamp will now get a book deal and a best-seller, which, by implication, had been his nefarious scheme, or, as has been noted before, the awesome spectacle of Republican ideologues being against capitalism, the free market, and the profit motive. If, as when Justice John Roberts used the same argument to prove two opposite conclusions in two cases at the end of the last Supreme Court term, surely "capitalists against capitalism" isn't that much more of a stretch. Sort of like the anti-global warming "scientists against science." In this case it's that old Roman army tactic of killing the inhabitants, poisoning the wells and salting the earth so that no one could live there again. The campaign to destroy Private Beauchamp is now personal. Jules Crittendon deserves censure by all professional journalists for his most egregious attempt at this practice.)

No focused talking points. No specific targeting of Franklin Foer by the Weekly Standard's blog. Certainly no test run of a disinformation machine prior to a presidential campaign. That's for damn sure.

But, as I said, having declared victory they will have to move on. The other half of Mr. Steyn's column today is the gleeful and uncritical acceptance of the refutation of global warming last week. (Others have dealt at length with the "refutation"). This, naturally belies last week's Newsweek cover story on the denial campaign.*

[* Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth ... MORE]

Which, in turn, has nothing to do with the Weekly Standard's campaign against The New Republic, Michael Goldfarb's stealth vendetta against Franklin Foer or the Army's campaign (OK, General Petraeus' campign) against Private Beauchamp.

Which remains a secret, according to their latest press release.

Denying Friday's TNR statement that the Army was holding Beauchamp incommunicado.

Etcetera.

Meanwhile, Beauchamp, who the Army's TOP Information/Disinformation Officer in Iraq said could be reached for comment couldn't be reached for comment.

Those are the facts, as nearly as I can recount them. Happily, if I made ANY errors, I'm sure to hear about them.

Courage.

UPDATE: The National Review Online -- which has been happy to go along with The Weekly Standard in this -- has Col. Boylan's letter excerpted today in their blog. The author? Mark Steyn.