Daggers, Lies & Cloaking Devices

From Froomkin (read down) I got directed to a terrific post by Tom Engelhardt from yesterday, wrapping up DSM coverage to date (smartly) and including an exchange between Mark Danner and John Walcott of Knight Ridder papers that will be in the NYRB 6/20 issue. Go!!
Then, this evening (here in PDT), Hardball spent its second 30 minutes on the DSM, under not-bad sub-hosting by David Gregory, with Michael Smith of The Times (London), who broke the story, followed by David Kay and James Woolsey. Kay and Woolsey tried to shore up the fuckup - Woolsey tried to parse "fix" again - but sieving for small fry when they clearly knew the big fish had escaped. The entire UN gambit was a feint - on the UK side to provide legal justifications to what seemed inevitable US aggression, on the US side an accommodation to insure British participation (and staging areas) - with no hope that, despite dubious intelligence, Saddam (feinting in his own megalomaniac way) would be found to lack the pretext for invasion - no WMDs.

The Great Game, folks - watch it play out!