corrente

Remember our old pal Baghdad Bob? You know, the Iraqi Information Minister? We used to make fun of him, for being a Little Detached from Reality and also Just Making Shit Up.

He's got competition, as Juan Cole points out in his elegantly understated style. Yeah, it's at Salon; sit through the damn ad, it won't kill you and at least it ain't registration. From P. 2:

As journalist Sarah Whalen pointed out in the Arab News, the increasingly effective guerrilla war has vindicated Baghdad Bob. "Baghdad Bob" (his real name was Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf) was the spokesman for the Iraqi regime who issued an endless stream of ludicrous pronouncements about how the mighty Iraq army was turning Baghdad into a mass grave for Americans, and so on. Today, many of his predictions, such as the one that the Iraqis would hurl "bullets and shoes" at the invading U.S. military, not bouquets of roses, have come true. But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Sahhaf has been honored on a higher plane. His rhetorical strategy, of simply denying reality, has now been taken over by his arch-nemesis, George W. Bush.

BTW, this would be a good weekend to remember the old line "Keep Watching the Skies!" You got the White Girl du Jour still missing in Aruba, Jacko's jury still out (with, I hear, 2200 reporters standing out in the heat to cover it), and a friggin' tropical storm getting ready to hit the Gulf and connected inland regions including me. Count on a Friday/Saturday Data Dump of massive proportions, although what could be a whole lot worse than the shit that's already out there is enough to inspire early drinking.