THIS MODERN WORLD

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in “The Canterbury Tales” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” and Dost wrote some wicked lampoons in the 1990s, accusing Afghan mullahs of growing rich while preaching and organizing jihad. So in 2002, when the U.S. military shackled the writers and flew them to Guantanamo among prisoners whom Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared “the worst of the worst” violent terrorists, the brothers found life imitating farce.

For months, grim interrogators grilled them over a satirical article Dost had written in 1998, when the Clinton administration offered a $5-million reward for Osama bin Laden. Dost responded that Afghans put up 5 million Afghanis — equivalent to $113 — for the arrest of President Bill Clinton.

“It was a lampoon … of the poor Afghan economy” under the Taliban, Badr recalled. The article carefully instructed Afghans how to identify Clinton if they stumbled upon him. “It said he was clean-shaven, had light-colored eyes and he had been seen involved in a scandal with Monica Lewinsky,” Badr said.

The interrogators, some flown down from Washington, didn’t get the joke, he said. “Again and again, they were asking questions about this article. We had to explain that this was a satire.” He paused. “It was really pathetic.”

It took the brothers three years to convince the Americans that they posed no threat to Clinton or the United States, and to get released — a struggle that underscores the enormous odds weighing against innocent foreign Muslims caught in America’s military prisons.

In recent months, scores of Afghans interviewed by Newsday — including a dozen former U.S. prisoners, plus human rights officials and senior Afghan security officials — said the United States is detaining enough innocent Afghans in its war against the Taliban and al-Qaida that it is seriously undermining popular support for its presence in Afghanistan.

Story.

Stephen Colbert probably doesn’t have the balls to read it.

(Speaking of the Democratic convention…)

I’m calling you out, Stephen Colbert. Sure you were all smiles and palsy-walsy in Boston. But I’m on to you, pal. Your ingratiating bonhomie doesn’t placate me, not for one brief moment. I’m on to your phoney-baloney populism, your pretense of objectivity, your charade of lucidity. I see right through you.

And I know about the falafels. Oh yes, I do.

You see, I’ve got a new book coming out in a couple of months that I’ll be needing to publicize. And if you had the courage to bring me on your show, you can bet that — as soon I was done publicizing that book — I’d expose you as the hypocrite you are, for all of America to see.

But you don’t have the courage to invite me on, do you, Stephen Colbert?

Because you, sir, are a coward.

David Brooks has really been on a roll lately, if by “on a roll” one means “consistently regurgitating Republican talking points.” The other day, he explained that Libby indictment proves that the Plame scandal was much ado about nothing. And today, a wacky, wacky column about Harry Reid, tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorist! Because, you see, Harry Reid wants to know if the Bushies ginned up the evidence for war. As of course they did–at this point, the only way to believe otherwise is to ignore everything we’ve learned over the past few years. And as I believe Brooks himself noted recently, wishing for a thing does not make it so.

The thing is, Brooks likes to think of himself as a trendspotter. And in this case, the trend is bearing down on him like a freight train on a long open stretch of flat prairie land. There’s a deafening roar coming up fast, and Mr. McBobo thinks it’s the cheers of an adoring crowd whose support for the Republican party is unwavering. To put it another way, it’s 1972, and Brooks is assuring us that the Watergate break in was just a random burglary. And on some level, he must know. He’s not Sean Hannity or Michelle Malkin–give him that much. He must know that he’s going to look like such a pathetic apologist in a month, or five months, or a year–and certainly to posterity. And you just know he’s the sort of person who worries about things like that. My guess is, he has an angel on one shoulder, whispering comforting talking points and conventional wisdom softly into his ear, and a devil on the other muttering about his undeserved reputation for prescience. And he’s caught in the middle, wanting desperately to be ahead of the curve, but terrified of standing out there alone.

Then again, he may just be a tool.

I’m sorry, what was that you were talking about? Something about indictments?

Will a nasty political fight to make people forget that the White House is full of criminals? Stay tuned to find out. Same Bush-time, same Bush-channel.

EXTRA : Bonus comic book reference via my friend Tom Neely, President Superman shows the Bush Administration how to balance the budget :

Which reminds me, isn’t that Iraqi oil (black gold, Texas T, etc.) supposed to be paying for the war by now?