Three Big Ifs...

If you have broadband (or a some time to spare) click here to listen to Jon Stewart's hilarious (coz it's true) take on blogs and recent journalistic scandals including Gannon/Guckert and Eason. (Thanks to the good folks at onegoodmove.org for the link).

If you have a brain that still functions after more than 4 years of Bush lies and misdemeanors, click here to read Naomi Klein's latest column. Here's an appetiser:

January 30, we are told, was not about what Iraqis were voting for--it was about the fact of their voting and, more important, how their plucky courage made Americans feel about their war. Apparently, the elections' true purpose was to prove to Americans that, as George Bush put it, "the Iraqi people value their own liberty." Stunningly, this appears to come as news. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown said the vote was "the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people." On The Daily Show, CNN's Anderson Cooper described it as "the first time we've sort of had a gauge of whether or not they're willing to sort of step forward and do stuff."

And if you can analyze complex data without recourse to a GOP-sponsored squawk box, click here to read more from the invaluable Juan Cole. For example:

As I predicted, the United Iraqi Alliance not only has 51 percent of seats on its own, but has already made a coalition [Arabic link] with some smaller parties. The three representatives of the Cadres and Chosen Party that is close to Muqtada al-Sadr will join the large coalition, as will the 3 deputies of the Turkmen National Front and a few independents. Only twelve lists were seated in parliament in the end, and most of them have joined the Shiite fundamentalist coalition. If the UIA can come to an agreement with the Kurds, it can easily form a government and then rule parliament.

In a startling development to which the Western press is paying little attention, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has won the provincial governments in 8 of the 18 provinces in the country, including Baghdad...