The Corner on National Review Online: “Best Sandwich Ever — On Film [Jonah Goldberg]

Appropos of nothing, I’ve decided to declare that the sandwich Adam Sandler makes in Spanglish (a really brilliant movie, by the way) is the single most appetizing sandwich ever captured in cinema. On this there can be no debate. But I would very much like to know what, exactly, was supposed to be in it.

Update: Huzzah! Thank You Al Gore for this internet which provides answers to such questions so quickly! Here’s how to make the Spanglish sandwich.
Update II: A reader does make a strong case for the Swedish meatball sub in ‘Back to School.’ This may be among the funniest sandwiches, but I’d rather eat the Spanglish sandwich, which I will probably do tonight. “

The New Journalism TPMCafe: “Chairman of Joint Chiefs Richard Myers, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at his side, said: ‘There is no way to militarily lose in Iraq. There is also no way to militarily win in Iraq.’ WSJ, 5/20/04”

Majikthise : Citizen soldiers, citizen media: The War Tapes: “The War Tapes, the true story of National Guardsmen who filmed their own tour of duty in Iraq.”

Needlenose: “Iraq’s prison system is overrun with Shiite Muslim militiamen who have freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni Arab inmates, the country’s deputy justice minister said in an interview this week.

‘We cannot control the prisons. It’s as simple as that,’ said the deputy minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. ‘Our jails are infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad.’

As a result, Yei has asked U.S. authorities to suspend plans to transfer prisons and detainees from American to Iraqi control. ‘Our ministry is unprepared at this time to take over the facilities, especially those in areas where Shiite militias exist,’ he said in a letter to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the official in charge of American detention facilities.

. . . Gardner said the eventual transfer of prisons to Iraqi control would proceed gradually, preceded by several weeks of training for Iraqi guards, conducted by U.S. corrections officers and military police. The Iraqis would then work under the supervision of American guards for at least six months. A U.S. transition team would then be left in place for an additional period before the prison was handed over.”

Torturers love loopholes Needlenose: “A secretive military Special Operations group in Iraq used several unauthorized interrogation tactics on detainees in early 2004 after it erroneously received an outdated policy from commanders in Baghdad, according to a high-level military investigative report released yesterday at the Pentagon.

. . . Army Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica found that members of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula used official guidance that had been developed in September 2003 to create its own set of rules for interrogations, unknowingly including the forbidden tactics.

. . . The September 2003 guidance — from the office of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq — was rescinded and reissued the following month, with fewer tactics allowed. But the September memo has been at the center of the debate about the U.S. interrogation policy in Iraq because its broad approval of controversial methods served as the baseline for interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.

. . . But Formica concluded that the soldiers using the tactics were not responsible for violating policy or the law from February to May 2004 because they believed what they were doing had been approved. . . . ‘I didn’t find cruel and malicious criminals that are out there looking for detainees to abuse,’ Formica said in an interview with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. He said it was ‘regrettable’ that the soldiers were given the wrong policy”

FRONTLINE: the dark side PBS
After 9/11, Vice President Richard Cheney seized the initiative. He pushed to expand executive power, transform America’s intelligence agencies and bring the war on terror to Iraq. But first he had to take on George Tenet’s CIA for control over intelligence.

CIA officials, analysts and operators … State Department and DoD … national security experts
Richard Cheney and ‘the dark side’ … George Tenet and the CIA … The flawed ’02 National Intelligence Estimate … Office politics … the war in Afghanistan

Crooks and Liars:: “Ava Lowery on CNN

Ava Lowery on CNN
The fifteen year old girl from Alabama that has received almost as many death threats as I have for making ‘this video’ was on CNN last night. (Here’s some information about Ava.)
Video-WMP Video-QT”

Crooks and Liars::Glenn Greenwald on Al Franken

Glenn Greenwald on Al Franken
Here’s Franken’s Home Page…
Audio-MP3
Glenn joined Al to talk about his new book, ‘How Would a Patriot Act?'”

Crooks and Liars#a8782: “A Cheney Reminder

A Cheney Reminder
Meet the Press: 03/16/03
Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.
I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.’

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Bush: Commanders say Iraq troop level OK – Yahoo! News