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I have a strict quota on links to Flash animations. This year, the coveted slot goes to The Elements, by Tom Lehrer. (Via Rick Jones.)

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Because I know I’m going to want to refer to this later.

• The Weekly Standard story on the DoD memo about Al Qaeda/Iraq connections
• The DoD press release explaining that the “memo” was a list of reports, some of which hadn’t been vetted, and that the memo is meaningless
• Glenn Reynolds being an idiot

Let’s be clear on this. The reports discussed in the memo are simply the reports Doug Feith used to make the case for an imminent threat from Iraq. Doug Feith is guilty of politicizing intelligence in the worst way. He has been, in the past, cozened by Ahmed Chalabi. He was in charge of post-war planning — the same planning that has been faulty to the degree that Bush is adopting the French plan.

Feith spent his time picking and choosing the intelligence reports he wanted in order to prove his thesis, ignoring those reports which didn’t support him. Is it any surprise that a list of raw intelligence reports he compiled would “prove” him right?

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For quite some time, England has lived with the reality of IRA terrorists who would like to see various important Brits dead. London knows a lot more about living under that sort of threat than we do. That’s a simple statement of fact; 9/11 was of much larger magnitude, but England’s been dealing with this sort of thing for decades.

In all those years, they have somehow managed to keep the Prime Minister and the Queen safe without shutting down the London Underground. One wonders what sort of a cowboy is afraid of risks the Queen of England takes on a regular basis.

(Via Charlie Stross.)

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There’ve been a lot of DoD press releases about deaths recently. They’re fairly abstracted, which I think is appropriate. This one reports the death of Robert A. Wise of Florida.

His friend Trueman, who is currently recuperating in a hospital in Germany, gives us his account of the attack which killed Specialist Wise.