donald luskin. donald luskin's mom. an outhouse. yeah baby yeah.
and guess what. my claim is totally legal with respect to a figure as public as luskin--this according to the dirtiest supreme court ruling ever, falwell v. hustler. if you haven't heard, luskin, by way of a very very VERY stupid lawyer, is threatening uberleftyblogger atrios with a libel action. as i said yesterday, ha ha ha ha ha....

in other news, why the [expl] isn't this in any of the major american media? the link is to a story in the guardian (by way of the right christians) on some extremely damning assessments of ariel sharon's policies (the wall. the curfews. the everything.) by none other than israeli army chief moshe ya'alon.

the story bears eerie parallels to the situation of americans in iraq: people who have actually been there, actually seen it, actually had to deal with the effects of some ideologically motivated "strategy" -- these people aren't nearly as gung ho as the sharons and bushes who send them into danger. even the pentagon-funded stars and stripes newspaper has run an increasingly negative series of stories about troop morale in iraq. the conclusion? it's not so good.

in israel the story is less about the danger to, or morale problems of, the troops themselves, and more about the impossibility of truly winning a campaign that seeks to contain and demoralize not only the enemy but the entire society from which that enemy springs. ya'alon, much to sharon's dismay, was forthright about the fact that destroying palestinian lives and livelihoods can only encourage terrorism and place israelis in danger.

i don't expect that they will, but i wish ya'alon's comments, and dwinding US troop morale, would serve as a wakeup call to hard-liners of all sorts.