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I'm coming a bit late to this because of server problems, but it's something that's been bugging me about the whole Reid-Pace "competence" imbroglio.

The question nagging at me is not who called whom incompetent or whether Reid was wrong or right to do so. I mean, Pace had just been fired, so Reid's not that far off calling the former chair of the joint chief's abilities into question.

No, what I wonder is why Reid's comments didn't get picked up by the bloggers in the conference call.

Why did the almost all of the liberal bloggers deny he said that Pace was incompetent when from the transcript posted on Talking Points Memo, he did, and it appears pretty clear he's talking about Pace? Did they screw up or are they trying to cover Reid's ass, since he's "on their team," so to speak?

Now, I say this as a blogger with both indy cred -- you're reading it -- and strong ties to the so-called MSM. But if bloggers are supposed to be an alternative/side dish or even an antidote to the excesses and failings of the mainstream press, why did they miss this? It's a genuinely Big Deal, so was it a miss or a willful omission?

If it was a willful omission, it's a horrible one. And it would prove that most liberal blogs -- or conservative ones -- shouldn't be considered credible alternatives to anything if they can't step up to their responsibility and report on newsworthy items even if it might get "their guy" in hot water. The right-wing blogosphere has had this problem for years now. Has it infected the left side as well?

On the other hand, if it's a mistake, it's a doozy. Any reporter who missed that would be tarred and feathered by editors. (And it's significant that mainstream reporters in were the ones who broke this story, even though bloggers had every opportunity to break it.) So, why are the bloggers given a free pass on this lapse?

Indeed, it was Talking Points Memo itself that in 2002 was instrumental in bringing down another Senate majority leader. The mainstream press was heckled and criticized for missing Lott's noxious comments. (And rightly so, in my opinion.)

But shouldn't bloggers -- in a friggin' conference call with the current Senate majority Leader, for crissakes -- need to be held to the same standards of accountability and, dare I say it, competence, that they hold the MSM to? Why the double standard?

BEIRUT -- U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi came under fierce criticism from the White House for her proposed trip to Syria tomorrow, but, oddly, a Republican congressional delegation yesterday to Syria was given a free pass by the same White House.

As Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman, said:

I do think that, as a general rule - and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this apparent trip that she is going to be taking - that we don't think it's a good idea. We think that someone should take a step back and think about the message that it sends, and the message that it sends to our allies. I'm not sure what the hopes are to - what she's hoping to accomplish there. I know that Assad probably really wants people to come and have a photo opportunity and have tea with him, and have discussions about where they're coming from, but we do think that's a really bad idea.

Fair enough. But Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Joe Pitts, R-Penn., met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.

The Republicans released a statement that said, "We came because we believe there is an opportunity for dialogue ... We are following in the lead of Ronald Reagan, who reached out to the Soviets during the Cold War."

Quelle horreur! Dialogue? Crickets were the only response from the White House.

Again in fairness, I spoke with a source at a Western embassy in Beirut about this, and the source said the Republicans had been discouraged from going, just as Pelosi and her delegation had been. But, the source said, if a Congressional delegation is determined to go to Damascus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut would help them out. (He asked for anonymity because he's not authorized to talk to the press -- he also committed the unpardonable sin of calling Congress a "co-equal branch of government.")

Pelosi is the highest U.S. official to visit Syria since President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s.

Former U.N. envoy John Bolton is making the rounds of the talk shows -- including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart -- making deeply dishonest statements that include the whopper that President Bush never made the case that Iraq was an imminent threat. He's also out charging that regime change is necessary in Iran and boasting that the U.S. delayed the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah last year because it hoped the Jewish state would defeat the Shi'ite militant group.

Who let this guy out of his cave?

He must have a book to sell, because I thought he had slunk off into ignoble obscurity after his term at the U.N. expired and it was made clear to Bush that his re-appointment would not be approved. Apparently not.

His first statement, today, on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, was the one that Bush never made the case that Iraq was an "imminent threat." This is an old one, and one easily disproved, for while Bush may not have uttered the words, "imminent," "threat" and "Iraq" in the same sentence, the first result on Google reveals a _Los Angeles Times" story after his 2003 State of the Union Address headlined, "Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat."

The Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, has assembled a collection of quotes from administration officials who affirmed that Iraq was, indeed, an "imminent threat."

For example:

"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."

-- President Bush, 11/23/02

"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."

-- President Bush, 10/16/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."

-- President Bush, 10/2/02

There are others, from such Bush administration luminaries such as Donald Rumsfeld -- "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent ... I would not be so certain" (9/18/02) -- and official spokesman, Scott McClellan -- "This is about imminent threat" (2/10/03).

So, once again, Bolton is just wrong: deeply, profoundly wrong. And so was I. From my perch outside the United States -- I've been away for several years now -- I had the impression that the neo-cons were diminished or on the run, that the right-wing noise machine was winding down and that American television journalism had developed a least a modicum of skepticism toward the Bush administration. (Thankfully Jon Stewart's interview with Bolton -- while gracious -- was at least more hard hitting.)

"I think there are a lot of Iranians that are unsatisfied with the regime, I think that there is more unrest there than what people believe, I think that the government is constrained because of the fall of oil prices and there is mismanagement of the oil sector of Iran's economy, they've got fewer resources to spread around to keep the populous happy.
"There's a large Iranian diaspora that know what the situation is. So, I think that there are a lot of possibilities. It won't necessarily be easy or quick, but that's not to say we shouldn't be pursuing it.

"In think it's very close to the point where Iran will have completely indigenous mastery over the fuel sites, that is to say the point in which stopping the things from the outside will not be sufficient, so I don't think we have much time. That's why all these negotiations with the Europeans have played to Iran's advantage, because time is on their side, time is not on our side."

How can the Iranian regime be toppled?

"Well, I wish we had started four years ago, but I think through internal dissent and outside pressure, those in general terms are what we have to do." (Emphasis added)

Are people in Washington still talking about changing the regime change in Iran? I mean, honestly? And listening to the Iranian diaspora? That worked so well with the Iraqi diaspora, as led by Ahmad Chalabi.

And finally, Bolton admits to what everyone in Lebanon already knew: That the U.S. dragged its feet in calling for a cease-fire -- allowing Lebanese civilians to be slaughtered -- so that Israel might have some more time to finish off Hezbollah.
As reported by the BBC, an early cease-fire, he said, would be "dangerous and misguided."

It was only when it was obvious that the Shi'ite group would be a tougher enemy to beat that initially thought did America sign on to a cessation of hostilities.

Thank goodness his time is up.

BEIRUT -- Well, this is just great. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said that reconciliation with Hezbollah was "impossible" because the Shi'ite militant group wants to replace the current pluralist state and society of Lebanon.

This is bunk. I have my criticisms of Hezbollah, but they don't want to take over the whole country. For one, they don't want the responsibility. They want to be a resistance movement fighting the Israelis; they don't want to be in charge of filling potholes in Tariq el-Jdeide. They want enough power within the current system to guarantee the south remains theirs, so they can move freely in and out of it and keep their weapons, which is the real base of their power. Does anyone think Iran and Syria would continue to finance them if they weren't such an effective tool against Israel? If Hezbollah had no weapons, then they have no money. If they have no money, they have no ability to support their social services, which are a strong draw to Lebanon's poorer Shi'ite population. Without that loyalty, they're nothing -- and Hezbollah knows it. As Hezbollah sees it, they have to protect their weapons if they want to remain politically viable.

But back to Jumblatt (or "Jumbo" as he's affectionately know to local journalists). He's long had a reputation as a dial-a-quote politician/warlord, but he represents one of the smallest communities in Lebanon. (Druze make up maybe 5 percent of the population.)

What's dangerous about his comments, however, is that he's listened to by the rank and file of March 14, and his comments can harden attitudes to any kind of compromise -- which is sorely needed these days. Hezbollah ain't going away, and it has to be integrated into the Lebanese political system somehow -- fully and nonviolently. Jumblatt's comments make that more difficult.

At any rate, his comments came in the wake of the disturbing discovery of two caches of explosives and detonation fuses scattered around Beirut and the rest of the country. Perhaps someone was just trying to dump them, but it's set the place on edge. Careless comments from political leaders are not the best way to calm the situation.

BEIRUT -- A response is in order to the Jeruasalem Post's story today, in which Michael Totten is interviewed and my name comes up in the article.

The Post says, "Chris Allbritton, who sometimes works for Time Magazine, briefly mentioned on his blog during the war that several journalists he knows were threatened by Hizbullah because of what they were writing."

Let's look at what I actually wrote:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one.

The beginning of my response was this:

Let's set aside that the Lebanese Internal Security also has photocopies of our passports. The reason for the hassling and the threat was that a reporter had filmed or described either a launching site or Hezbollah positions. (I'm not sure which.) To the best of my knowledge, that's been the extent of the hassling. I'm going to get in trouble for this, but I think it's a reasonable restriction. This is the exact same restrictions placed on journalists by the Israeli army and by the Americans in Iraq. I don't think threatening journalists is cool at all, and it certainly doesn't endear me to them, but that has been the extent of Hezbollah's interference in our coverage.

You can read the rest of it, and I hope you do, here.

TIME Magazine is running what it calls a "full-throated" critique of the Iraq war by Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold (Ret.) He's one of two generals who opposed the plans before the war, calling the Iraq war "unnecessary" and a distraction from Afghanistan. As he says, "I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

So opposed was he that he resigned his position as director of operations for the Join Chiefs four months before the war ... and then kept his mouth shut until now.

I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

Well, gee, forgive me if I don't think he should be given a lot of credit. If he was so opposed to the war, why did he stay silent? Why did he sit by for three years while others "paid in blood" for what he feels is a flawed policy? It's easy to be opposed to the war now. Why come out now? A clue is here:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

It's a valiant sentiment to support the men and women fighting the war, and his critiques of Condi's statement and Rumsfeld's micromanaging is dead on. But we've heard all this before. Anyone following the war can see it's being run poorly from the big office at the Pentagon and that the civilian leadership has done everything to push blame elsewhere. Again, why now? Why didn't you say something earlier, Lt. Gen. Newbold, once you were retired and could without fear of retaliation? You blame others for timidity or thick-headedness. "A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent."

And, incredibly, you go on to blame Congress and the the media.

Members of Congress -- from both parties -- defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.

Nice, cheap shots. Republicans controlled Congress and were in lockstep with the Bushies. The Dems, as minorities, have almost no power to exercise oversight. A high-profile resignation of -- oh, I don't know -- maybe the Joint Chiefs' director of operations might have provided them some political cover to get something done. And, gee, maybe it might have gotten some attention from the media, who then might have given Zinni and others' more weight. And now you say we downplay the heroic and the constructive. Is this the kind of heroism you mean?

Don't lecture us about heroism and constructive roles to play, Lt. Gen. Newbold (Ret.) You could have done something then, and you didn't. You could have been a powerful symbol, even if you would have taken a lot of flak from your old bosses. You say officers swore an oath to the Constitution, not the men appointed above them, yet you betrayed it with your three-year silence. It's been said that for evil to triumph, all it takes is for good men to do nothing. Well, you did nothing. You don't get to be considered good now.

I honestly wonder where these people misplaced their souls.

If I'm ever kidnapped, I guess I should expect no mercy from either my kidnappers -- or my fellow Americans.

BAGHDAD -- Regular readers know I think we've been in a low- to medium-grade civil war for some time, with the Feb. 22 Askariya bombing a huge step toward open conflict. Well, read this by Nir Rosen, who used to write for TIME before he went on to bigger and better things. Nir's a smart guy. Here's an early, key point he makes:

...Sunnis were killing Shia civilians, and Shia, often under official cover, were retaliating. I asked Haidar if the rumors I’d heard were true -- that the Ministry of Interior had been infiltrated and dominated by the Badr Organization Militia, the military forces of the radical Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, or SCIRI. Yes, he said, and added that Ministry of Interior members affiliated with Badr were assassinating Sunnis throughout Iraq. Sunni officers were being removed and replaced by unknown Shias.

This jives with my own reporting on this, which will be published tomorrow on TIME.com.

BAGHDAD -- And no, I'm not talking about WMDs or anything like that. More in my quixotic feud with noted fiction writer Ralph Peters, who came here for a little while and declared All is Well, and "the media" are aiming to undermine the heroic mission here in Iraq with all that bad news. Why, he himself saw Iraqis cheering his patrol as he rumbled through Baghdad atop an up-armored humvee.

Let's conduct a little thought experiment. "The media" here are fiercely competitive. Everyone of us is looking for any angle -- any! -- that will break news, make our stories stand out or otherwise distinguish ourselves. That's what journalists do, and the corps here comes from the entire ideological spectrum, from the conservative to the socialist. But weirdly, this herd of cats -- which is what we could be best be compared to -- have all come to the same conclusion: Iraq is a mess.

I would argue that this prevailing view is the aggregate of a lot of professional reporting, mine but a small bit. If it gravitates toward a single viewpoint, well, that's the way it is. Sorry, truth hurts. But a guy who writes exclusively for publications that supported the war before it went down comes here and says things are fine, and somehow I'm supposed to suddenly doubt my own observations and experience? Pardon me if I believe my lyin' eyes instead of him.

But more unforgivably, Peters also continues his libel against Iraqi stringers/journalists by saying the "The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims." (emphasis added.)

Mr. Peters, you should be ashamed of yourself. Three Iraqi journalists have been killed this week alone trying to report the news, and the stringer who work for us are no less the journalists than the guys at the Iraqi networks. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Muhsin Khudhair, editor of the news magazine Alef Ba, was killed by unidentified gunmen near his home in Baghdad Monday night, becoming the third journalist killed in Iraq in the last week, Reuters and Agence France-Presse reported. The shooting took place just hours after Khudair attended a meeting of the Iraqi Journalists Union, which discussed the targeting of local journalists in Iraq, Reuters said.

The killing punctuated a deadly week for the press. Amjad Hameed, head of programming for Iraq’s national television channel Al-Iraqiya, and driver Anwar Turki were killed on Saturday by gunmen apparently affiliated with al-Qaeda. Munsuf Abdallah al-Khaldi, a presenter for Baghdad TV, was killed by unidentified gunmen last Tuesday as he was driving from Baghdad to the northern city of Mosul.

At least 67 journalists and 24 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, making it the deadliest conflict for the media in recent history. The killings continue two trends in Iraq: the vast majority of victims have been Iraqi citizens; and most cases have been targeted assassinations rather than crossfire. CPJ research shows that Iraqis constitute nearly 80 percent of journalists and support staffers killed for their work in Iraq. Overall, sixty percent of journalist deaths were murders.

Maybe Mr. Peters would like a nice chat with "Salih" from the Washington Post, who reported a story about the looting of Saddam's palaces in Tikrit after the U.S. military turned it over to the Iraqi security forces. His reward? A $50,000 bounty put on his head by the head of security in Tikrit, Jassam Jabara.

Perhaps he'd like to talk to the family of Allan Enwiyah, the translator for the Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll. He was killed when Jill was kidnapped Jan. 7, unprotected by American firepower. She is still captive, by the way.

Or perhaps he'd like to discuss "blood money" with the widow of Yasser Salihee, a careful and conscientious reporter for Knight-Ridder who was killed by American soldiers at a checkpoint when the car in front of him blocked his view of the troops, who opened fire and killed him. Did I know him? Yes, but not well. I found out about his death when Hannah Allam, then bureau chief for Knight-Ridder called me in hysterics.

You want to know what the Iraqis -- who frankly do a better job that we do -- feel and think? Read this. Highlight:

"To get a story you have to risk your life," [said Salima] matter-of-factly. "Sometimes I wonder if the people in the U.S. really understand how much we go through in order to write the story." To underscore that, she told of being pushed from behind by an Iraqi man while covering a story with a Western reporter, of being caught in a firefight in Sadr City, Baghdad's sprawling and violent slum, and of being threatened by a group of insurgents while out reporting. Yet in a country with few opportunities, journalism is a way to make a living, and to stay involved. "We never know when something could happen to us," she said. "But then at the same time, I cannot stop living."

How dare you, Ralph. How dare you question these men and women's intentions and honesty. I've worked with our staff in the TIME house for two years and I've never seen a more dedicated, careful group of journalists. They're not in this for the money. We pay them well, yes, but they could make more money doing other work. Lord knows they'd be safer, and their families would be, too. But they come in to work every day and do their level best to get us every scrap of information and to get it right. Anyone of them is a better journalist than Ralph Peters, who feels his view from the back of humvee is the only valid one. It's a viewpoint, yes, but hardly the whole story. You come talk with me, Ralph, we'll go walk the streets of Karradah, drive without armor, feel the copper in your mouth when the fear and adrenaline comes to you in wave after wave and you realize the L-T from the 320th hasn't got your six for you, man. You come talk to me then.

Finally, I'll let a former Army guy have the last word. This from a buddy of mine who was a Public Affairs Officer just a few short months ago:

Oh my god, dude. [Peters] is completely full of sh*t. That's all I can say. Apparently that f**k hasn't spent enough time down in the trenches here to understad the little bastards will run out and wave at any patrol for one reason -- begging for choclate or soccer balls. They don't care the Grunts are valiently coming to save the day. ... He's not aware of how f**king dangerous it is for gringos to roam the streets here.

BAGHDAD -- So this is what all the booms were today (From a U.S. military press release):

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2006 – In a joint effort, Coalition Forces conducted a precision air strike, using four U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles, against a known terrorist facility at approximately 4:30 p.m. Feb. 15 in southern Baghdad.

Terrorists were using a former Iraqi regime munitions storage bunker, located in a large, uninhabited weapons-storage complex in the Babil province, to acquire and transport bomb-making munitions to be used in attacks against the Iraqi people and Coalition Forces.

Coalition Forces participating in the mission took all available precautions to ensure no civilians were present during the strike. The aircraft conducted a clearing pass while Multi-National Division – Baghdad helicopters scanned for any civilians in the area in a deliberate effort to ensure no collateral damage.

The sorties made multiple passes to ensure the complete and methodical destruction of the bunker.

The area they're talking about is probably al-Saha, on the other side of the neighborhood of Dora, where a major refinery is located.

I'm not sure, but I don't recall air strikes in or near Iraq's capital city for a long time. In fact, I can't remember any since I got here in May 2004, although these things tend to blend together after a while. But if the war's going so well, and the Iraqis are taking the fight to the terrorists, blah blah, why are the Americans resorting to air strikes here? That's, like, so 2003.

BAGHDAD -- Ehlen w'sehlehn, as they say here. ("Welcome.") To which I should probably reply, "Thanks... I think." I'm back in Iraq's capital after two and a half months away, and in that time I faced upheavals in my personal life, and three weeks in Beirut. The two are more or less unrelated. But Baghdad is almost exactly the same as when I left, despite the fact that there's been a monumental election here -- the full import of which has yet to be felt.

Well, it's not exactly the same. I've been back a day and I've already received an earful on the high price of petrol: 250 dinars for a liter as opposed to 20 dinars it was in the summer of 2003 and the 30 dinar or so it was when I left in mid-November. Fuel subsidies are being lifted and people are feeling the squeeze.

If only there were fuel for the city's power stations. Electricity is down to about two hours a day in Baghdad, doled out in fits and spurts of 15 mins or so at a time. Sometimes, gloriously, we get a solid hour, but it's rare. Generators pick up the slack, and since you have rising fuel costs, you start to see the double squeeze that poor Iraqis are feeling.

Add on to that incessant guerilla attacks on the country's oil infrastructure that has left exports below pre-war levels and there's no money coming into the government. Insurgents have hit upon pipeline sabotage as a means to cut off Baghdad's funding, so no matter what the composition of the government -- when it's finally done -- it won't be able to do much. So the new government, which is still being negotiated, will probably be viewed with the same resentment as the current Jaafari government does, except we'll be stuck with these guys for four years now.

Speaking of the government, word is that the United Iraqi Alliance list, dominated by Shi'ite religious parties and thought to have the blessings of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is deadlocked over who will be their candidate for the prime minister's office. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Da'wa Party, wants to keep the job, but current vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi (of the rival SCIRI party) is favored by others in the coalition. The Kurds are willing to support whoever will legalize their hold on Kirkuk.

The question is what will the Sunni groups do. Ally with the UIA in a national unity government? Cleave to Iyad Allawi's rump bloc in the hopes of creating a viable opposition? We'll see.

The mood here among reporters, I think, is grim. Jill Carroll's kidnapping is still unresolved, despite hopeful rumors of her release soon. Those, so far, have gone unrealized.

I arrived yesterday and today did little other than get my bearings and plan some stories with the other reporters. Tomorrow will be taken up with more logistics and media credentialling business. Wednesday, I sit down in the Saddam Circus, or should I say, "Trial."

On the way in from the airport yesterday, I counted more marriage convoys than I had in months (three.) Why? Because tomorrow is the start of the Islamic new year and the beginning of Muharram ul Haram, the month in which religious Shi'ites refrain from marriage or other celebrations. (It must suck to have your birthday this month.) So, everyone was trying to get their last-minute wedding plans in. In 10 days, we'll be faced with Ashurah, the marking of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. Iraq's Shi'ites in Najaf and, especially, Karbala, mark it with bloody parades in which they beat, cut and flagellate themselves in a sign of grief for the death of Hussein. It's going to be a tense month, for while fighting is generally frowned upon during this month, Salafist/Wahabi Muslims consider the Umayyed Caliph Yazid, who sent the army that killed Hussein and his followers, a righteous figure while Shi'ites naturally detest him. In other words, the potential for violence is high.

Yes, Baghdad is the same as always. As the tagline to "Jarhead" goes, "Welcome to the Suck."

UPDATE 12/21/05 5:58:33 AM: Upon further thought on this matter, I'm going to publicly reverse myself and rescind my call for the list to be public. It was a poorly thought out decision on my part and I was wrong. People on the list should have access to it through FOIA or some other method, but they should have the right and the opportunity to do what they want with that information in private. I understand why people would want the list published, but I think now those reasons -- embarrassing the Bush administration, among them -- are outweighed by the right of people on the list to maintain some privacy. Lord knows they've had that violated enough already. Anyway, I will keep the original post available for archival purposes.

NEW YORK -- I fully agree with Steve's idea that the list of names of people who have been monitored under the NSA's program to spy on people in the United States should be made public.

If there are specific individuals or numbers that a judge wishes to give ex post facto protection, I can accept that.

But this invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts. What Bush did is engage in an extra-legal act against the citizens he is paid to represent -- and this is criminal.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent -- and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

Perhaps I'm indulging in paranoia, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable. I'm a reporter. In Baghdad. I have dealth with sources in the insurgency and the Mahdi Army. This administration and its agents in the embassy in Baghdad have long been hostile to the press and our work in Baghdad, especially when we try to tell the whole story of the insurgency -- by talking with insurgents. And TIME has long had an aggressive approach to covering the insurgency.

Now, I don't want to pump up my sourcing more than it is. My bureau chief, Michael Ware, deserves far more credit for his work on insurgents than I ever do. But because of my association with the magazine, I can only assume that my brother, mother, friends and others have been potentially monitored because of my activities. And based on my traffic logs, I know military and CIA people read this blog. Thus, anyone who has sent me email in the past two years is potentially on President Bush's list. So pardon me if I take this a little personally.

Make the list public. Let my loved ones and friends see if they're on it, and let them then be able to make the decision of what to do then. Because I can tell you truthfully that my brother et al. are not national security risks, and invading their privacy is doing nothing to make America safer.

UPDATE 12/18/05 11:32:58 AM: A good friend of mine, who's very smart, makes the following, dissenting points:

Sorry, dude, not with you on this one. If I'm on that list, I want to be informed of the fact and the reason -- and then to have the list utterly destroyed without the public ever seeing it. I have no interest in bearing a scarlet T for Terrorist, thank you very much.

Seriously, can you imagine the impact on some midwest Muslim if the White House put out a list saying that they had monitored his e-mail for possible terrorist activity? No official assurance of innocence would ever take away the smear. Indeed, I would expect some people on that list to end up dead.

Notify the people on the list, yes. Then, if they want to make the fact public, or to sue in open court, their call.

Points to think about. Discuss below...

BEIRUT -- I've always been a fan of free speech. I rarely moderate comments, except for spam, and I've banned very few people. Only once was I raised to rage when a commenter made my mother cry by calling for my death at the hands of Marines because I was allegedly too friendly to the insurgents. He also, weirdly, thought I was a Sunni Arab who was born in Iraq and had immigrated to the U.S. for the purposes of ... well, I'm not sure. He was mad. I banned him, mainly on the basis that my embrace of personal expression stops when you make my mom cry.

So I have a lot of patience for rollicking debate. But that's not what has happened here. Recent comments have been vile, vengeful and more than a little disturbing -- and all of them have come from people who allegedly want peace and are antiwar. Che_Guerilla has called for me to be beheaded on the Internet; da_ali_truth_show says: "I’ll fight you. Please come back to the States I’ll fucking smash that smug 'objective' bullshit through your stupid face. Bring friends you pussy. Your Time Warner corporate Blackwater mercenaries won’t be protecting you from me, dickhead." (We've never employed Blackwater mercenaries, for the record. Our security staff is made up of Iraqis who have proven themselves truly loyal and good friends in the face of terrible risk to themselves.)

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that you will no longer be allowed to comment unless you've registered with TypeKey. I tried this once before and it really cut down on the people leaving comments. I didn't like it. But I feel the barrage of threats of death and violence against me and my family is too much. No one should have to put up with that. I've had friends die and be kidnapped; I've been shot at by all sides in this conflict. I frankly don't need juvenile ranting cluttering my site and intruding on my thoughts. You folks who do this are finished. (Which is what khaalas means: "enough, finished, ended, done.") It should also cut down on comment spam which is still a scourge that is difficult to combat.

So, to my regular readers and commenters, such as Trish and Niall, who have left thoughtful notes through the years, I'm sorry for this step and grateful to you all. I hope you stick around. You guys are always welcome. For the che_guerillas of the world, go to hell. You care for nothing more than scoring cheap points off dead bodies of Iraqis and Americans. You're just as bad as the National Review crowd who say "2,000 deaths is nothing when you look at how many died in World War II." You deserve nothing but contempt and you undermine the very antiwar cause you claim to support.

BEIRUT -- Wow, I'm just catching hell from all sides today. Fresh off the the howls for my disembowlment, the PAO for the Marines in Fallujah now says my story wasn't balanced:

Christopher,

Thanks for the link. I ran across it the other day by accident and had other things to do so I did not read the entire story.

I find that reporters who come here have two choices, well three actually. They can choose the glass is half-empty story, the glass is half-full story or they can write a little of both. Yours is very much a half-empty story as you chose to focus on the negative aspects of the situation.

You could have mentioned the fact that Fallujah accounted for 90 percent of the voting in Al Anbar province. You could have mentioned that this took place because the local sheiks and imans saw the need to participate in the political process, which they did not do last January.

You could have mentioned that the voters went to the polls and the security situation was deemed safe enough by the city residents that 100,000 of them did so and voted, despite the insurgents' threats. There were several small incidents of violence, but not enough to deter anyone from voting.

All of those things may have balance out the bad news you chose to deliver. We don't expect every story to be a "happy-happy" piece but we do appreciate some balance.

v/r
Capt. Walton

So let me get this right: The anti-war left is mad at me because I don't document stuff I didn't see, and I'm supposed to take an Italian documentary's word that "chemical weapons" were used... (By the way, white phosphorus is as much a chemical weapon as, say, gunpowder is a chemical weapon. That's not to say it's not horrible, but can you folks stop trying to score rhetorical points over which wounds are more gruesome?) The Marines -- well, a Marine -- is mad at me because I didn't toe the party line and talk up all the cool new democracy busting out.

I think that's about the highest praise a reporter can get. As an old mentor told me, "If they're all shooting at you, you must be doing something right." In short, I'm going to sleep well knowing that I didn't follow anyone's agenda but my own -- which is to tell the best story I can. It's too bad in some ways, though. I guess I won't be invited to any organic juice parties in Berkeley or the new school repainting in Ramadi.

Finally, you'll notice the dateline. I'm now in Beirut and will start working on other, non-Iraq projects through the end of the year. I may or may not update this blog, but if I don't, don't worry -- or get your hopes up. I'm alive and kicking and I'll be back online later.