Morning copy 10.14.2005

Iraq

The Washington Post this morning: "[T]he Army has recently identified 331 other soldiers who have been hit with military debt after being wounded at war."

The tricky trial of Saddam Hussein in the Los Angeles Times:

"The whole event is going to be tricky," said a U.S. official who declined to be identified. "I'm just not sure they can balance the pressure to make the trial clean and procedurally correct with the desire to do it quickly and reap some of the political benefits they think they might get out of it."

Juan Cole puts his own two cents on the table about the apparent Zarqawi letter. He finds reasons to believe it is a fake.

The Lede and then my favorite graf(s) in this Washington Post story:

President Bush yesterday sought to rally U.S. troops behind his Iraq strategy -- and he and his aides left little to chance....

Nassir's comments came near the end of one of the stranger and most awkwardly staged publicity events of the Bush presidency. It started with Bush, in Washington standing at a lectern, talking to the soldiers via video on a large flat-screen. They sat shoulder to shoulder and stared dutifully at the camera.

The president's delivery was choppy, as he gazed frequently at his notes and seemed several times to be groping for the right words.

You've got to be kidding me.

Moving right along...

The CIA Leak investigation creates a jittery White House, New York Times:

The routines are the same. But everything, in the glare of the final stages of a criminal investigation that has reached to the highest levels of power in Washington, is different.

And in the Washington Post:

"The Rove thing has gotten to be enormously distracting," said one outside adviser to the White House. "Knowing the way the White House works, being under subpoena like this, your mind is not on your work, it's on that."

"It looks like a perfect storm," said Joseph E. diGenova, a Republican and former independent counsel, who noted that so many investigations can weigh on an administration. "People have no idea what happens when an investigation gets underway. It's debilitating. It's not just distracting. It's debilitating. It's like getting punched in the stomach."

The White House will not withdraw Miers' nomination, New York Times.

Oh but wait, this headline in the Los Angeles Times: "Window Into Miers' Legal Thinking in the 1990s Reflects a Glint of Liberalism"

Just rolls off the tongue, huh? Excerpt:

She called for increased funding for legal services for the poor and suggested that taxes might have to be raised to achieve the notion of "justice for all."

She praised the benefits of diversity, called for measures that would send more minority students to law schools, and said that just because a woman was the head of the state bar did not mean that "all unfair barriers for women have been eradicated."

She was upset that although poverty was rising in Texas, impoverished families received a disproportionately small share of welfare and Medicaid benefits.

And she was an unapologetic defender of her profession, even the oft-maligned "trial lawyer."

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Thanks Philadelphia Will Do. Ctrl-F "Edit Copy" to see what I mean. Yes, Ctrl-F is a verb I guess.