THIS MODERN WORLD

Yahoo runs a story from the official newsletter of the Republican party, the Washington Times, which in turn quotes an unnamed official who tells us that al Qaeda plans to disrupt the election because “the view of Al-Qaeda is ‘anybody but Bush.'”

Interesting choice of words, isn’t it — given that the view of the Democrats this campaign season is often described, rightly or wrongly, as “anybody but Bush.”

It’s a not so subtle way of suggesting that a vote for Kerry is a vote for al Qaeda. Which is what the Republicans would like us to believe. They sure don’t have much else to run on.

And of course, for whatever it may be worth, al Qaeda has reportedly said exactly the opposite.

Look, I have no doubt that al Qaeda wants to hurt us again. But as I’ve tried to point out before, trying to figure out what al Qaeda wants or doesn’t want us to do is really a fool’s game.

Matt Welch has a nice little summary of what it was like to be a blogger at the Democratic convention. Me, I only took part in one interview, with the New York Times, and that was only to set the record straight on this site’s often-overlooked but rather crucial role in Trent Lott’s downfall.

Other than that, I tried to stay pretty low key. On my first or second day in Boston, I read a feature story in the Boston Globe about some kids who had been credentialed to cover the convention for the Weekly Reader, and it suddenly hit me — that’s what the bloggers were. A novelty act, like the kids from the Weekly Reader. If there had been a talking dog at the convention (outside of last week’s TMW, I mean), or maybe a horse that could do arithmetic, we would have all been lumped into the same category.

As for New York…as it turns out, I’ve got some fairly non-negotiable obligations which are going to make it extremely difficult for me to get away from home that week. So chances are, I’ll be watching the convention on television — which, as I noted in a previous post, has its own advantages. What I’m mostly going to miss out on, I think, is the action outside the convention center — so I’m putting out an open invitation to those of you who will be on the ground. Send in your updates, your eyewitness reports, and I’ll try to post them here. I’d like to post your photos as well, but I’m bumping up against my server’s bandwidth limits lately, so I’m not sure about that. (If anyone has some extra server space to donate for image hosting, shoot me an email.)

Just want to say thanks to Bob Harris for his continuing contributions to this site. As most of you know, I moved to a new city last month, and then three weeks later took a week off to go to Boston. So I’m still working out a lot of the basic details of my new life, which hasn’t left me a lot of time for blogging.

If you go to Drudgereport.com and scroll down, there’s a “news tips” box — anonymity guaranteed.

You kids know how to copy and paste a link, right?

https://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2004_07_25.html#001662

Looks like Hersh had it right once again:

The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib — including detailed reports that U.S. troops and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files — 106 “annexes” that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba report last spring — include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling weapons to prisoners inside.

As Jon Stewart once asked, why do the facts hate America?

You can read the rest here.