"I've actually gotten to the point where I hope Dick Cheney is embroiled in a Clancyesque conspiracy to benefit Halliburton. Because if it's not a conspiracy, it's naivete and ideology. And that means our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk."
-Maureen Dowd
MUST-READS:
* Maureen Dowd, on the lesson of hubris inherent in the Iraq campaign.
* Thomas Friedman on Jewish tattoos, and the way out of the Israeli-Palestinian cycle of killing.
* The manifest destiny of a secular, economic globalization, with an eye toward history. No, seriously. Weighty stuff.
OTHER NEWS:
* Administration using emotions to avoid pesky concerns about civil liberties. Bush also wants more police powers to use against terrorism.
* Foreign views of the US have really gone downhill in the past two years.
* Howard Kurtz on race and the campaign trail.
* WashingtonPost.com has a section, compiling their Two Years Later articles.
* Three people still coping with the 9/11 tragedy, and how it has shaped their lives.