Straight Up | Jan Herman

Secret British government papers leaked to The Telegraph in London reveal that before the invasion of Iraq British officials believed “President George W. Bush merely wanted to complete his father’s ‘unfinished business’ in a ‘grudge match’ against Saddam,” the newspaper reported Saturday. The report said further that British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser, […]

The turning point of the presidential campaign? The blockbuster that changes minds? The clincher that tells the truth? It ought to be. Iraq is a disaster — at best unstable for years to come, at worst headed for civil war. As noted yesterday in DARK DAYS AHEAD, that’s what the Nincompoop in Chief was told […]

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, marked the beginning of 5765. But it also marked the end of Belle de Jour. “I’m afraid, darlings, the time has come for me to go,” she writes. The news is crushing. Her Diary of a London Call Girl was a favorite blog of mine.

My interview with Kitty Kelley in her Georgetown home, an ante-bellum Southern mansion, took place on a sun-baked afternoon back in the Stone Age (to be exact August of 1986). We sipped diet Coca-Cola, not mint juleps. She answered many questions, at one point “swiveling her body on the loveseat in her living room like a petite artillery […]

Headlines don’t say it all, but this subhead comes close: “Civil War Called Possible — Tone Differs From Public Statements.” It’s missing from the online edition of the story, which uses the main head only: “U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq’s Future.” Taken together, their meaning is this: Our Nincompoop in Chief and his minions have been lying […]

Now that Matt Lauer has done himself proud with his sanctimonious interview of Kitty Kelley — a holier-than-thou attempt to prove that a “Today” show co-host who shills for every piece of NBC Entertainment drek imaginable can be mistaken for a legitimate journalist — I’m going to post a profile I did of Kitty Kelly that never […]

If I don’t say it, nobody else will: It’s gratifying to see the editorial page of The New York Times taking advice from Straight Up. Yesterday’s lead editorial began like so: “It was good news when President Bush flip-flopped on intelligence reform and endorsed giving the proposed new post of national intelligence director some real […]

In a really important essay, Carlin Romano reviews a concept described this way: “It is worshiped like a god, and as little understood. It is the cause of untold strife and bloodshed. Genocide is perpetrated in its sacred name. It is at once a source of power and of power’s abuse, of order and of anarchy. […]

David Remnick describes, in this week’s New Yorker, “a paranoid President who refuses the burdens of democratic accountability and the need to reshape a policy that is good for little but more bloodshed.” Remnick’s subject is not our Maximum Leader. He’s talking about Vladimir Putin. But it’s eery. Consider the top story in the print […]

Thanks to MAD Magazine:

Apropos The stars according to Peter Bogdanovich, who cites John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda as stars able to make audiences “instantly suspend their disbelief” — which many of today’s stars can’t do — David Nuzum writes that he’d rather see unknowns. When he saw “Maria Full of Grace,” he says, he “totally forgot” the […]

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a story headlined “Bloggers hoping to become fabulously wealthy may have a long wait.” Hell, how about just plain wealthy? I posted this a month ago: “A pal of mine who writes for CounterPunch complains that the Web site doesn’t pay anything. Face it, pal, about a million other sites […]

Sy Hersh is getting the royal treatment from Rummy Boy & Co. Here, just for fun, is the official Department of Defense Statement on the Seymour Hersh Book. It’s not often an author gets such a send-off, even if the title of the book, “Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” […]

What’s weirder? Time’s poll last week, showing that the idiot in the White House continues to lead John Kerry by double digits among likely voters, or Time’s interview, showing that the double-digit leader has a double-digit ego telling him: “It’s all about me.” This is how the interview began: TIME: What’s the most important thing you’ve […]

Seymour Hersh hit the airwaves this morning on “Meet the Press” and is scheduled tonight on “Dateline NBC” to talk about (OK, promote) his new book “Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib,” which is being released Monday. I didn’t watch “Meet the Press” because it had Colin Powell about to do his […]

Yours truly has a review of “Who the Hell’s in It” in today’s Chicago Sun-Times. It begins: Peter Bogdanovich’s superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews — a sequel to “Who the Devil Made It,” his interviews of top film directors — begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us of just how […]