Bollettino

Richard Reeves breathes a little hellfire in an editorial that seems to be exclusive to Yahoo News. He makes the brilliant point that the military coup d'etat, in dollar amounts, already happened in this country. 400 billion dollars is being spent by the defense department, and 25 billion is earmarked for the subversive State. Our parody of the fight between the Pentagon and the State as parallel to the fight between the US and Iraq is, actually, a real parallel in terms of amounts available to the entities sitting in the corners.

A lesser point -- and one that LI was unaware of -- the military paid for the embedded journalists. Iraq, in other words, was a big advertising junket for Bush Imperialism. The funny thing is that this was never mentioned on the radio, or in newspapers, that were very careful to point out that the Iraqi's censored newsbroadcasts from Baghdad.

Well, well. As the US News editor, Brian Duffy, says

"With embeds, you have no costs. They're traveling with military personnel, so there are no traveling costs, and they're eating MREs. We're going to be talking about embedding as a concept for a long time. The fact that costs were so much lower is probably an afterthought. But it's not unwelcome."

And as Reeve concludes: "Money talks. And what it is saying is that the military is now first among equals in the governing of both Iraq and the United States."