…has posited another possible Oct. Surprise. He thinks there just might be a pre-election strike on Iran.

…it’s about time, no matter what happens on 11/2, for a “new confession of Christ” in the U.S. His proposed affirmations include:

“1. Christ knows no national boundaries nor national preferences. The body of Christ in an international one, and the allegiance of Christians to the church must always supercede their national identities. Christianity has always been uneasy with empire, and American empire is no exception.2. Christ pronounces, at least, a presumption against war. The words of Jesus stand as a virtual roadblock to any nation’s pretension to easily rationalize and religiously sanctify the preference for war. Jesus’ instruction to be ‘peacemakers’ leads either to nonviolent alternatives to war or, at least, a rigorous application of the church principles of ‘just war.’ The threat of terrorism does not overturn Christian ethics.

3. Christ commands us to not only see the splinter in our adversary’s eye but also the beams in our own. To name the face of evil in the brutality of terrorist attacks is good theology, but to say ‘they are evil and we are good’ is bad theology which can lead to dangerous foreign policy. Self-reflection should provide no excuses for terrorist violence, but it is crucial to defeating the terrorists’ agenda.

4. Christ instructs us to love our enemies, which does not mean a submission to their hostile agendas or domination, but does mean treating them as human beings also created in the image of God and respecting their human rights as adversaries and even as prisoners.

5. Christ calls us to confession and humility, which does not allow us to say that if persons and nations are not in support of all of our policies, they must be ‘with the evil-doers.’

The words of Jesus are either authoritative for us, or they are not. They are not set aside by the very real threats of terrorism. They do not easily lend themselves to the missions of nation states that would usurp the prerogatives of God.”

…in the LA Times (free registration required) against “Bush’s Empty Rhetoric on Democracy”:

“Bush and his supporters act as if anti-Americanism is simply the necessary and worthwhile price we pay for our principled advocacy of freedom everywhere. The truth is that anti-Americanism has prevented us from consistently advocating democracy throughout the world. And the inconstancy of our belief in democracy — which the citizens of pro-American dictatorships everywhere have noticed and exploited — makes anti-Americanism all the worse. There may be a way out of this dilemma, but preaching the universality of democracy and practicing otherwise is surely not it.”

Of course, this is hardly the first administration to play power-politics under the guise of “promoting democracy.” The story of the Cold War era is awash with the names of brutal despots and murderous regimes who invoked the sacred mantle of anti-Communism, and received oodles of US support in return.

It’s probably not “our freedom” that anti-American troublemakers loathe, but something else.

…Osama get away from Afghanistan anyway?

John Lehman, a 9/11 Commission member and Reagan’s former Navy secretary, claims the Pentagon knows just where Osama is.

…(free registration required) offers the most lucid parsing I’ve seen of the question, how’s that war-on-terror thang really goin’?

…it apparently doesn’t matter that Iraq had no WMDs and wasn’t tied to Al-Qaeda; they’ll still believe it did anyway.

…the short reminder that acting “tough” does not, by itself, win any wars.

…an airplane chat he’d had with the head of a company sending “corporate security” personnel to Iraq. Barlow also offers his own Iraq exit strategy, something neither Presidential candidate seems to have.

…sees links between the flu-shot shortage and Dick Cheney’s now-forgotten drive to make us afraid of Saddam’s supposed smallpox threat.

…a Kerry-related link in some time, so here’s a quite-long piece from the NY Times Sunday mag, describing him as someone who disdains big unifield-field theories of foreign policy but instead “carves the globe into a series of discrete problems with specific solutions.” Not as entertaining as the neocons’ simpler, more violent view, but more precise and more potentially effective.

…wrote a letter to the editor of his local suburban paper, with elequant verbiage about the continuing war:

“…But this president does not know what death is. He hasn’t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can’t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.He does not mourn. He doesn’t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.…”

…occurred Thursday night at Westlake Center. ‘Twas a quiet, somber affair, befitting the event it commemorated—the 1,000th US death in Iraq.

…almost-vaguely-sort-of, for some of its past pro-war cheerleading: “…We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.”

Elsewhere on the same shovelware site, our ol’ pal and Oly indie-pop legend Lois Maffeo defends the right of oldsters such as herself to keep going to rock shows, and the right of youngsters to make their own music even if the oldsters don’t approve. (Here’s the original essay to which Maffeo’s responding.)

…as you might expect, has a lot to say about the dichotomy between the Iraqi prison pictures and the words Administration officials have uttered about the pictures.