Over There Over Here

This guy I know has another whip-smart piece in the New York Observer this week; this one is about the Orwellian fake debate the Rs tried to gin up last week over Ds decision to use a more specific phrase than "the global war on terrorism" in appropriations language:

Fox News producers got in on the act, as only they can, tossing out a headline that read “House Democrats Offer Plan to Ban Use of ‘Global War on Terrorism,” elevating a style memo devoted largely to subject-heading fonts and punctuation usage into something like an Intelligence Directorate white paper.

But all this sound and fury isn't drowning out the larger, dismal story of America's engagement with the terrorist foe.

...

The old Bush administration line on the Iraq War as a means of fighting the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here has turned quite squarely in on itself: We are fighting them there because we invited them there.

Standard disclaimers about being blinded by the fact that I'm married to the man apply.