As an addendum to this week of discussion of my new book, So Wrong for So Long, I thought I would provide some “bonus coverage,” in the form of an excerpt from the foreword to my book by one of our participants, the great Joe Galloway. He titled it “The First Casualty.” Please comment.
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The First Casualty
By Joseph L. Galloway

In war truth is too often the first casualty, and it is not just a president or a secretary of defense or assorted official spokesmen who do the killing. Our brothers and sisters in the media also participate in the execution. Greg Mitchell has taken that as his lesson in So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq and in so doing has done a service to future generations in our business, and I believe, for readers of the news.

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Paul Krugman has been a Clinton Restorationist-- a big Hillary supporter and Obama's fiercest critic in the progressive punditocracy. So today he writes a very good piece laying out the regulatory disasters that led to our current economic crisis. He tells a tale of how after the Great Depression, Democrats worked to protect the banking system from runs, by enacting a split of Investment Banks and Commercial Banks. But, Krugman points out.

Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a “shadow banking system” that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.

But never once in the whole article does he point out who yielded to the enticements of Wall Street--who was responsible for destroying the Glass-Steagall separation of Banks and Investment Banks--Bill Clinton.

In a desperate effort to keep the collapsing housing bubble from sinking the economy, or at least the country’s leading financial institutions, Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke has broadened access to the Fed’s discount window beyond the commercial banks who it directly regulates. Bernanke has decided to allow 20 major securities dealers to also take advantage of this special low-rate government loan program.

It remains to be seen how much good this will do for the economy, but with the Fed desperately trying to make up for its failure to contain the housing bubble, anything is probably worth a try. Even if this new lending route turns out not to help the economy much, it is certainly a good deal for these financial firms. They can now borrow tens of billions of dollars from the government at just a 2.5 percent interest rate.

Why shouldn’t the taxpayers get something in return?

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Wearing blue is sometimes just not enough.

I hug a lot of Republicans -- particularly today's "dissident Republicans in foreign and economic policy", and there are some Dems I won't go near -- and the flip is true. I hug a lot of Democrats, and there are a lot of Republicans I won't go near. That's part of the reason why I am a registered Independent today and won't unconditionally support either party.

But Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-20), a Co-Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Red to Blue Program, has many up in arms because of the Republican-hugging she is doing in South Florida to the detriment of her own party and her own stature as a significant force in Democratic politics.

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The elders of the Democratic Party should get off their duff and urge Barack Obama to offer Hillary the post of the Secretary of State in his administration. She would thus add strength where he is said to be least experienced. It would offer her an important post, indeed one of global significance, especially given what is on the plate for the next president. It would serve to unify the party.

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To steal from the headline over at the main page, have reports of Hillary Clinton's demise been greatly underexaggerated? Or, to put it more directly: is the media accurately reporting Senator Clinton's relatively small chance of becoming the Democratic nominee?

"They took down a country the size of California in three weeks," says the Washington Post's Rick Atkinson, quoted in So Wrong for So Long, "but there was not much thought devoted to the question of what happens next. It's astonishing how little thought was given."

I would like to ask Greg Mitchell if he heard that sense of astonishment from other journalists who knew the territory as well as Atkinson did.

It's astonishing how little thought was given. It's astonishing how incompetent they were.

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This has been a great week of discussion here at TPM Café. I wish the conversation in the mainstream media had been as robust as this one.

For my final post of the exchange, I want to shift away from the media a bit, and focus on the human side of this war. This is an area of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Greg Mitchel has been especially diligent about covering. He has consistently documented the alarming number of suicides that have occurred involving military personnel--both on and off active duty. Each suicide is a canary in the coalmine. The mental health toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be tremendous.

The story of Keri Christensen (featured here on CNN.com) should upset all Americans. She is a patriot. She is also one of an estimated 180,000 women who have courageously served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.

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Well it's the end of the week, and so it appears that this will be the end of our group-blogging on the topic of Greg Mitchell's book, So Wrong For So Long. But in the course of some of the back-and-forth on the comments pages it occurred to me that I might have one more useful thing to offer whilst wearing my historian's hat. So, without more ado, here is a brief annotated bibliography of some other books you might be interested in after you finish Greg's book.

Leading the pack, sadly, is the book which many J-Schools seem to consider the gold standard insofar as a history of the military and the media relationship goes. The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Mythmaker from the Crimea to Kosovo by Phillip Knightley, has been around for quite some time. Though as the Kosovo reference makes clear, the book has been updated, the main text remains the same. It is not a bad book, per se, but Knightley is a journalist, not a historian. While some journalists are magnificent historians (Rick Atkinson, for example) not all are so scrupulous.

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It's no secret to any of my readers that I despise Charles Krauthammer. I never liked his writing. He is a neocon. He's vicious (he ridiculed Christopher Reeve for giving seriously disabled people "false hope). And his views of the Israeli-Palestinian question are repulsive. He hates the Palestinians and would fight to the last Israeli to defeat them.

And then there was that experience with him in my synagogue in 2001. It was Yom Kippur. The rabbi was giving his sermon only to be interrupted by a bellowing obnoxious Krauthammer who was shouting him down for expressing a hope for peace between Israelis and Arabs.

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Doug Bandow has a hard-hitting critique of John McCain over at AntiWar.com. McCain opponents will find it one of the best compilations of tightly wound reasons to agitate against John McCain getting the keys to the White House and the codes to the "football."

But in the piece, Bandow also notes that McCain used to be a "reluctant warrior." This is absolutely true. I have known John McCain for years -- ever since he served on the Advisory Board of the Nixon Center of which I was the founding executive director. John McCain was not timid when it came to appropriate applications of force, but he also demonstrated a facility for strategic calculation which meant that there were usually never yes-no, bomb-don't bomb, binary decisions but gray zone and nuanced realities to any decision.

McCain used to be the kind of leader I thought would be Nixonian in his core -- and frankly, I'd feel better about Obama or Hillary Clinton if either demonstrated more of the foreign policy skill sets that a Richard Nixon had. But McCain seems to have rejected Nixonian approaches to enlightened American self-interest in the world and has become a crusader for a new phase of neoconservative-inspired interventionism.

Or alternatively, perhaps McCain's acts of belligerency are all an act?

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The talk of the town this week is obviously Barack Obama's big speech from Tuesday, so to start off, here are some our readers' takes:

Reader Diamond Sutra argues that the speech was about far more than race alone, namely, class, nation, and covenant.

FlyOnTheWall puts Obama's remarks in the broader context of some of the prevalent contemporary discourses on race in America.

And The Zaftig Redhead says the speech finally pushed her off the "'I-miss-John-Edwards' fence."

More after the jump. . .

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It is now widely recognized that the press failed to adequately analyze the Bush administration’s evidence for going to war in Iraq. After all the agonizing post-mortems that have been conducted on this subject, one would prefer to think the problem has largely been solved.

Not so, unfortunately. A best-selling book by a top New York Times reporter that recently won the 2007 National Book Award for Non-Fiction -- and is a candidate for an upcoming Pulitzer Prize -- contains a number of gross distortions of documentary historical evidence. It also passes over relevant facts that would make for a more sophisticated argument. Surprisingly, Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA has received rave reviews and blurbs from some of America's best-known investigative reporters. But it has also drawn Bronx cheers from prominent scholars of the Agency. Among the latter are: Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive, Richard Betts of Columbia University, Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University, Loch Johnson of the University of Georgia, and myself. A column on the subject by Jeff Stein, National Security Editor of Congressional Quarterly, is the most read and e-mailed story on CQ.com this week.

For some, I am one of the last people they would expect to have any criticism of a book blasting the CIA. As a scholar and former Staff Director of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, I have challenged CIA covert actions in Africa and elsewhere, and called on Congress to insist on better intelligence and better oversight of clandestine operations. I am sympathetic with Weiner’s critical perspective, but was shocked by the way he mishandles and slights evidence.

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Just as we receive word that Arkansas has finally pushed payday lenders out the door, bad news arrives from Ohio: the number of payday lenders in that state have risen fourteen fold in 12 years. According to the report, Ohio customers of these shops take out an average of eight loans a year. That is a lot of business.

Looking to the absolute numbers, a strong correlation appears between Ohio's urban areas--already hit by high foreclosure rates, as this article's graphics demonstrate--and the largest clusters of payday stores (see page 8 of the report). But remarkably, the highest concentrations (on a per person basis) of payday lenders exist in rural areas rather than in urban areas. This is shocking and troublesome. As the urban foreclosures and credit crisis hit the whole economy, these rural areas are now more vulnerable to financial trouble.

Thanks to Greg for his book and his work, and to TPM for making this forum a possibility.

I've read Spencer and my old roomie Bob Bateman's posts with interest. Considering that the military is the largest institution in our nation it is amazing how few in the reporting business know anything about it. That was true and obvious during the Gulf War and ever since.

In the post-Gulf War period Gen.Gordon Sullivan became Army chief of staff. He honestly wanted to do something about educating a new class of military correspondents and called a couple of us in to discuss it. He offered to sponsor an ongoing program to educate and familiarize reporters/camera folk nominated by their editors. It would take about a week a month or a week every six weeks as the correspondents were flown to spend time visiting everything from basic training to the War College and being briefed and taught. And mixing with and talking to soldiers from private to 4 stars. We took the offer back to our editors and spread the word. There wasn't a single taker, and newspapers were a good deal healthier at that time. The general attitude by those in authority was they did not have the manpower or time to invest in such a venture when the payoff might be years coming.

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Spencer makes a point about the evolution of consensus which, while I had not thought about it in the past, makes perfect sense. It is one of those observations which in hindsight seem so obvious that one slaps oneself on the forehead and says, “yea, well duh…” (and then, “why didn’t I think of that?”)

There's one last element at play here. The press, being a generally brainless horde (except for me! and my friends!), tends to establish a certain pecking order for taking its cues. Generalists follow respected beat reporters at respected places. So when, say, a junior CNN producer is trying to figure out how the on-camera talent should treat a statement made by Petraeus in January 2007, when he's relatively unknown, she pulls up some clips from ace defense reporters like Tom Ricks of the Post or Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal and sees that Petraeus gets a passing grade. Then the other generalists, when they see CNN or NBC or another such TV network treating Petraeus kindly, follow that cue. Pretty soon you've got coverage of a demigod, not a man.

So playing off that point, and looking towards Greg’s questions and observations about the punditry and reporting early on in the way, how did these factors interrelate, and what can we do to mitigate against them in the future?

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Greg Mitchell asks us:

After the war started, and then for years, and years, afterward, the editorial pages and most pundits backed the war and continually argued against a real change in direction... So what does everyone think about the reasons for this reticence going back years ago-- especially given that public opinion backed some kind of withdrawal early on?

I have an answer for him. It involves two kinds of people.

First I want to join Spencer Ackerman in commending to you the Bateman explanation for why General David Patraeus gets such good press. In a word, he's unafraid of the media. Spencer writes, "Petraeus is willing to entertain points of view that don't correspond to his own." Which means, "You can talk to Petraeus like a human being. For a lot of reporters used to getting canned answers, evasions or outright silence, that's irresistible."

Sounds right to me.

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How long a shot was it that we could finally have an election that didn't turn intto a referendum on the Sixties? Very long.

And so, just as the Democrats seem to be launched toward the inevitable, here come the fusillades from the Swift Boaters, fully equipped with Rev. Wrong videos that arrived in the nick of time to confound Democrats, leave Obama chastened (or so he appeared in Fayetteville today as he addressed the Iraq catastrophe) and not least, to lift the hearts of Republicans. Politico reports how thrilled they are at the prospect of running against Obama's blathering father-surrogate, his flagless lapel, his wife's belated discovery of American pride, and assorted attendant baggage. The slash-and-burn commercials write themselves:

“It’s harder for people to say it’s taken out of context because these are Wright’s own words,” noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry that employed the use of their target’s own language when he returned from Vietnam and returned his medals. “You let people draw their own conclusions.”

“You don’t have to say that he’s unpatriotic; you don’t question his patriotism,” he added. “Because I guaran-damn-tee you that, with that footage, you don’t have to say it.”

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There is understandably continued frustration about some of the technical problems we're having w/ the community tools. I've been holding off on reporting back to you all because we've spent much of the last few weeks trying to get a handle on how and how quickly we can fix things. Believe me when I tell you we share your frustrations and then some. It is obviously not in our interest to have a site that's frustrating you, and we're doing everything possible to fix it. It hasn't been as quick as we'd like, but we're doing absolutely everything we can.

Let me give you a quick update on the details.

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My office is at Brandeis University. Today as, I walked down the curving path that carries everyone through campus, I noticed that, lining the path, at very short intervals, were small American flags. A sign explained that there was one for every 10 American soldiers who had died in Iraq.

It's a long path. There were hundreds of flags.

By the time I made it across campus, tears were running down my face. It's not the Vietnam Memorial, but I found it profoundly moving nevertheless. I send my admiration to the students who organized it.

Yes, I know that it's just as grievous to think of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died. My friend Huda Ahmed, an Iraqi journalist, has personally lost more people than I can bear to consider, and reminds Americans periodically that Iraqi dead are just as important as American dead. And the truth is, Iraqis are the ones I think about most often when I am wrenched by the thought of the war.

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Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs:

Thursday, February 14, 2008
10 am
2247 Rayburn House Office Building

I am grateful for the opportunity to testify on this important subject. As someone who served as a commander in the Israeli army, and lived in the Middle East for 21 years, I have some first-hand knowledge of our subject, in addition to having studied it for forty years beginning with a book Winning Without War published in 1964.

Dealing with homeland security we are advancing on 3 fronts: (a) Hardening the targets; (b) neutralizing the terrorists before they can get us; and (c) preventing the worst attacks—nuclear ones. We are spending too much on the first front, which is a bottomless pit; we cannot succeed on the second front because fighting terrorists overseas generates more terrorists. We do the least where we should do most: preventing the truly catastrophic attacks, massive terrorism, turning one of our cities into a radioactive desert.

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LTC Bob offers a great explanation for the sometimes breathless coverage of Petraeus. It rings very true in my experience. I'd amplify one point and add a few others. He writes:

So imagine that you are a reporter in Iraq. Embedded or unembedded, either way you are dealing with my peers. The battalion commander is leery of you, the brigade commander is distant and borderline hostile, the division commander might not even deign to talk to you at all, and there is a Public Affairs Officer who you feel is constantly trying to “spin” everything you see. (That would be your perception anyway.) So there you are, lonely and alone. A journalist peer of yours sends you an e-mail saying, “Hey, write to General P, he’ll answer.” You doubt this could be true, but you give it a shot. About 30 minutes later you get an e-mail from Petraeus himself, with his aide on the cc line, setting up an interview.

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I'd like to weigh in supporting my TPMCafe colleagues, Daniel Levy and M.J. Rosenberg, regarding the proper role for America and Israel. For those of us as American Jews, many of us approach U.S. foreign policy in the region with great affection and concern for Israel, but we also (yes we do and by the way, yes we can) temper it with concern for the role of America and how any policy will play out for America in the world. Indeed, for those of us on the peace side of the equation it's our belief that a final resolution of a two state solution with an Israel and a Palestine will be good for Israel, for the Palestinian people and for America....and not necessarily in that order.

That's why the debate among surrogates of the various campaigns is so distressing.

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M.J. Rosenberg pointed out in his latest post the remarkable (in the dumb way) nature of a statement made by Hillary Clinton’s chosen surrogate Ann Lewis, at a conference of the United Jewish Communities young leadership, yesterday in Washington D.C. To recap, here is the quote: “The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel.“ MJ suggests that perhaps the role of the President of the United States is to implement the decisions made by the American people. I’m going to briefly address the event at which Lewis spoke, as reported (poorly according to sources I have spoken to) by Dana Milbank in the WP in a moment, before the bulk of this post actually looks at the political choices currently faced by Israelis—but lost given other news here, a scandal involving Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Following a spirited debate on the war, Bob Bateman suggested that everyone get back to my book and the focus on media coverage of that war. So here goes.

My first post raised questions mainly about news coverage, concerning the surge results, Gen. Petraeus, and the recent falloff in the amount of coverage. Now let me turned to the other half of the media treatment: opinion mongering.

As I have noted previously, there was (contrary to what many may believe today) considerable editorial skepticism about the invasion five years ago. Most newspapers and columnists believed Saddam had WMD and were not opposed to an attack on Iraq at some time, but many came out against the rush to war.

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I am thrilled and honored to part of this forum. Thanks for having me.

I’ll tackle Greg’s second question, regarding the coverage of the war.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, but you wouldn’t know it from what you see on TV.

With all the scandal-mongering coverage of the Democratic primary, the media’s been too busy to spend much time talking about the two wars we’re still fighting. In fact, just 3% of the news in February was dedicated to the war. That’s down from 15% of news coverage last July. For the men and women risking their lives overseas, that’s a slap in the face.

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A quick rundown.

Jo-Ann Mort took the chance to look back at New York's difficult political struggles with race and ethnicity.

Similarly, Jim Sleeper told the story of a black leader of New York's past similar to Reverend Wrightand says that Obama has put some pundits on the spot.

Nathan Newman offered a brilliant dissection of the way Obama argues that racial division marks class privilege and protects the power of plutocrats.

Todd Gitlin worries that the country may not be ready for the profound challenge Obama offers.

And Ed Kilgore takes a deeper look at what Obama's speech, ostensibly about race, argues about religion.

What did you think? Use this thread to link to your post or offer your thoughts.

Update: Workerbee reminds me below that I missed MJ's reaction. MJ thought it was Obama's best yet, and that Obama transcended even himself.

The debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., has dominated the reader blogs this week, to the point of eclipsing just about all other topics. That said, I'd like to start with a few posts that are not about "Obama's pastor problem." After the jump you'll find enough on Obama and Wright to hold you over until this storm passes.

First off, reader FlyOnTheWall not only takes the candidates to task for their willful negligence of the current economic crisis, but also lays out what a comprehensive speech on the economy might look like, if anyone had the nerve to make it. (Reader clearthinker's response, which emphasizes energy over finance, is also well worth a read.)

Next, The Zaftig Redhead explains why we shouldn't let the overwhelmingly good odds for Dems in upcoming congressional elections shade our expectations for the presidential race.

Reader Alex Sherman looks to historian Richard Hofstadter for help interpreting Obama's "vague" call for change.

Rick Spilman takes down the New York Times's less than thoughtful commemorative op-ed page on the Iraq War's fifth anniversary.

More after the jump. . .

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In dealing with the firestorm of criticism over the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama had a choice of approaches. He was probably smart to focus on race; the subject has hung over his campaign in positive and negative ways from the beginning, and he's now made it clear that the legacy of racism--not just Democratic and Republican gridlock or the narcissistic baby boomer conflicts of the 1990s--is part and parcel of the "past" he is promising to help transcend through acts of reconciliation.

But the Wright controversy also touches on religion, and in a few brief references in his speech, Obama hinted at an alternative approach he probably considered, and might even return to in the future.

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Earlier this afternoon, I wrote a quick reaction to Obama's amazing speech for The New Republic online. I haven't changed my mind that it was a grand political moment and a grand national one, a sober, serious, cool and bracing challenge to the country, the likes of which I've never heard in a presidential campaign.

I haven't been near the tube since, so can only fear that the media maul squad is nibbling the talk to death. (I did hear Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, in the course of what some people thought was a respectful statement, manage to drag Farrakhan in.) I'm glad Hillary Clinton had the presence of mind to applaud him for giving it.

You don't have to agree that the speech was as exalted as I think it was to wonder whether the country is ready to excavate its ruins and take its future in its hands and...overcome.

Obama's speech was possibly the greatest speech on race and class in modern politics, highlighting the inextricable link between the two in America where each has shaped the other in our history. Instead of simplistic "can't we all get along" messages or [Bill] Clintoneseque statements about "strength through diversity", Obama took head on the festering anger fueling racism and racial resentment, brilliantly juxtaposing black anger and white anger and the way the privileged corporate class has exploited that racial division. The key paragraphs in Obama speech were these:

Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends...white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many...

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.  This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

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"The Speech of a Lifetime," Charles Kaiser is calling Barack Obama's address on race this morning over at RadarOnline, and I'm inclined to agree. But here's why:

As a demonstration of grace under immense pressure, his performance in Philadelphia will be a classic study for orators. As an act of moral witness and prophecy for a trans-racial America, the speech was straightforward yet profound in an inimitably American idiom that few partisans and pundits, soused in stale pieties and rancid evasions, comprehend.

He's gambling that most Americans will comprehend him anyway. Here's hoping. Let me explain what I think Obama accomplished with a story I'm sure he'd appreciate, an experience I had 15 years ago with Brooklyn's equivalent of Obama's pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright.

In the fall of 1993, as Rudolph Giuliani was challenging New York City’s first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, Al Sharpton’s long-time pastor and mentor, the Rev. William Jones, was reported to have denounced the Giuliani campaign as “fascist.” What happened next anticipated much of what Obama is responding to now, and it shows how well he has responded.

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All of a sudden, the national conversation has returned to race. Barack Obama delivered a smart and strong speech this morning in Philadelphia, a city itself not immune to the racial divide that exists in our nation. If politicians' lives encapsulate the narrative they weave on the campaign trail, then Obama reminded us of his amazing story, how within his own family and his genes he embodies Black and White, and challenged many of us to join with the young people who are flocking to his candidacy, young voters who don't have memories of the racial divisions that framed so many earlier political fights on the streets and in the voting booths.

This speech will probably go down as the most important of his campaign; if he wins the primary and the general election it will be on the heels of this speech, and on what the promise of his campaign remains: a photograph of where we are as a nation today and where we want to be.

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We should, perhaps, first put forward a few things about me in the interest of “full disclosure.” Even in this Age of Google my somewhat unique background in coming to this discussion obtains. People might get pissed, or ascribe ulterior motives and conspiracies, if they do not know who I am up front and only discover this later. We should avoid that. Those who want to rant personally to me are welcome to use my personal e-mail at the end of this tag.

I am a professional Army officer. You have to know that first. I have all the requisite Boy Scout badges for an infantry officer. I served in Iraq. I now work in the Pentagon, though not in public affairs. That’s the disclaimer. My day job also has little to do with why I am here. Oh, and in complete-complete disclosure, I am also 7th Cavalryman, and fellow-panelist Joe Galloway used to be my housemate.

OK, so let us move on, shall we?

Two serious questions rest before us. I will address each separately to the best of my ability as a historian, a strategist, and a media commentator/ethicist, within the word limit they gave me. (Hey, I’m also a professor, I could talk for hours on this stuff…) The first is actually in two parts, so I will dissect. Greg asks, “How do you judge coverage of the “surge” results in the past year?”

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In a surprise move aimed at stimulating moribund financial markets and the larger economy, the Federal Reserve surprised markets with an unprecedented 50 point rate cut, taking their target rate down to -47%.

The statement accompanying the surprise cut was also unusual, employing bolder language than is typically the case. For example, the phrase “the committee judges inflationary and growth risks to be roughly balanced” was changed to read, “Screw it! We’re going nuts over here! You got a financial problem? Need some fast cash? We’ll pay you—that’s right, you heard us—to borrow money from our bank.”

Government officials commenting on the Fed’s unprecedented move were surprised but supportive. Treasury Sec’y Paulson said, “While we do not typically comment on Fed policy, I will say that I myself just borrowed a million bucks and made a very tidy profit on the trade.”

Wall St, however, was critical, continuing to press the Fed to go further.

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Four points of depature from Greg Mitchell's welcome post, and thanks to him, Andrew and TPM readers for doing this with us.

1. I feel very indebted to all the reporters who have gone to cover this war-- and bloggers too. Whenever people are willing to sacrifice their lives and risk getting blown apart to get the story out to the rest of the world, reporting itself is re-anchored in a moral universe. This is especially so because they know they are going to fail. Most of the war will elude them.

2. I believe one of the failures in covering this war has been a dearth of imagination earlier in the process than articles, columns, editorials and "coverage" happen.

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Two weeks ago, in The Budget: What to Expect This Year , I speculated that the congressional budget resolution this year would include instructions that mandate a fully paid-for Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch. I was half right about that. What I didn't anticipate is that the House and Senate would part company on the issue and that it would come to represent the biggest sticking point in Congress's efforts to agree on a budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2009.

What does this all mean and what are the implications for the budget resolution this year?

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I had the privilege of getting a chance to hear Geoffrey Canada speak last week. Canada runs the Harlem Children's Zone. He broke it down in term that anyone can understand and it is well worth a listen.

For those of you who don’t - the bottom line is that helping children is expensive. Canada’s reaction to critics that say his comprehensive approach to helping children is just too expensive – “Would you stop parenting your kids for four years?”

How long ago was it that I first wrote about the anti-Obama campaign in the Jewish community? Man, did I get skewered, even accused of making the whole thing up.

But now it's an established fact of the 2008 campaign. Obama's opponents are trying to scare the Jewish community by simply lying about his background. He's a Muslim. No, he's an Afro-centric Christian. He doesn't like the Likud party so he won't be able to work with Netanyahu if, God forbid, Netanyahu becomes Prime Minister of Israel (the God forbid is me, not Obama's critics).

Anyway, here is the terrific Ari Berman's take on all this. First his article in the Nation magazine, then an extended version on line.

Racism sure dies hard in this country, if it dies at all.

PS AIPAC is promoting its gigantic Washington DC conference with this video I just received. It starts with Obama, Funny, AIPAC's own video proclaims it as the influential Israel lobby while anytime anyone in the media indicates that there is such a thing, the AIPAC crowd says "what lobby," "what influence," "who us?"

Before I get in to Greg's questions, I'd like to make an observation from something I've just covered. (Much like the media in general when it comes to Iraq, I came here with some preconceived notions, and I'm not going to be diverted from them.)

On Friday I attended the Winter Soldier conference. Winter Soldier is a veterans-led investigation into what its organizers call the systemic brutality of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. (It's modeled on the Vietnam-era one that introduced the world to a brave young sailor named John Kerry.) The very powerful and emotional testimony by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on display painted a horrifying picture that has gotten absolutely no coverage. Soldiers and Marines said that they routinely carried "drop weapons" to plant on the bodies of dead Iraqi civilians to cover up accidental deaths. They said that their chains of command encouraged brutality and falsified casualty statistics. They showed video from 2006 showing off-camera Marines firing for a solid minute on the minaret of an Anbar Province mosque, which is, if unprovoked (as the Marine who provided the footage said), a war crime. They talked about how used they felt as bodyguards for unaccountable contractors who used the war to line their pockets.

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So I might be changing my mind about one thing: whether or not Spitzer was targeted by the Republicans. I just read Greg Palast's blast about the reasons, in his view, that Eliot Spitzer has been taken down. The subtitle gives you the gist: "The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked." In brief, he believes that Spitzer was targeted.

It's worth clicking over and reading the entire thing: Palast's point of view on the development of, and racial bias in, the subprime market alone is extremely interesting.

I am not expert enough in these areas to analyze his analysis, so I'm posting it here to get the brilliant feedback of TPM contributors, including Josh & the muckrakers. Thoughts, anyone?

Hello to all, and I am grateful, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for the participation of our outside commentators – Joe Galloway, Jay Rosen, Paul Rieckhoff, Spencer Ackerman and Bob Bateman -- and any feedback from readers. Given the quality of the guest experts, I will just sketch out the issues we may cover this week and then get out the way until we start hearing from them, and from you.

My book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits – and the President – Failed on Iraq, is probably the first to explore the history of the war for a five-year period, month to month, from the “run up” to the debate over the “surge” last autumn. It’s all there: from Wolfowitz to Petraeus, from Coulter to Colbert.

But the scandal, and tragedy, surrounding the misreporting of Iraqi WMDs has been covered so often and so well, in articles, blog posts and many books, that we will focus on the media coverage following the attack on Iraq and the nearly five years of war (or if you prefer, occupation) since.

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To mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we're hosting a discussion on the media's coverage of the war since its initial failings.  The discussion will be led by Greg Mitchell and focused on his new book So Wrong For So Long. Mitchell is the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine.

Joining him will be military historian Robert Bateman, McClatchy military columnist Joe Galloway, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Paul Rieckhoff, Washington Independent reporter and TPM alum Spencer Ackerman, and media critic and NYU professor Jay Rosen.

Mitchell's first post will be up later today.

The story of what’s happening on Wall St. is really pretty straightforward. It’s a classic bank run, this time on the investment bank formerly know as Bear Sterns, which we’ll just call by the apt acronym BS.

Over the past few months, folks who’d lent money to BS started to get worried that BS had made some bad bets with that money, and might not be able to pay them back. So they started calling in their IOUs.

When it started to look like those folks might be right—BS might not be able to meet the “margin calls”—the Feds got nervous that the firm could fail, and helped to orchestrate a bail out. Meanwhile, the firm went from being worth billions to being almost worthless in a matter of weeks.

There are many good articles out on this if you want to read up it. Go here, here, and in case you had a little residual love for BS in your heart, go here to get it expunged.

As for my contribution, I offer this primer.

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The news that J.P. Morgan bought investment house giant Bear Stearns for just $236 million, or $2 a share, sent tremors through financial markets around the world today. This is company whose stock was worth almost one hundred times as much a year ago. Its building alone is valued at close to $1 billion, which suggests that all the other assets of this 85 year-old investment bank had a negative value – Bear Stearns liabilities exceed its assets.

Further confirming this view is the fact that the Fed apparently had to make guarantees to J.P. Morgan of $30 billion in order to get the bank to take Bear Stearns even at this price. That suggests the bank had a lot of real garbage on its books. The markets are right to be worried. Of course with the $8 trillion housing bubble in full meltdown, there will undoubtedly be much more bad news for the banks in the months ahead.

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