THE RETURN OF ARTS & LETTERS Gads, it's back. Arts & Letters Daily, consumed last month by a monsoon of red ink, has been brought back to life by The Chronicle for Higher Education. Go ye thither for your daily leavenings.

IN HIS OWN WORDS Paul Wellstone remembered through his own quotes, which seems appropriate for a fellow who had so much passion for saying what he thought. "St. Augustine said hope has two lovely daughters, anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and courage to see they can be better. There's got to be that belief we can be better."

KATE EULOGIZES Every single time I get ready to write Kate Sullivan off, she does something miraculous with her words. This time it happened while she was in Portland, and Paul Wellstone. And the last paragraph does it for me.

MY ENEMY, MY ALLY Peter Maass is back with a cogent article on how the judicial war on terrorism is primarily about turning a blind eye to the less process-focused ways of punishing your enemies. His case study, Pakistan, is the rule, not the exception, when it comes to eliminating people the state has decided are troublesome. But while it's mostly about torture and quick endings for terrorists (not to mention the morally staunch U.S. government quietly shipping suspects to countries where governments can break fingers without raising questions), Maass says there are some steps that can be taken to raise the judicial standards around the globe. But it requires less moral complacency from our government. "For the foreseeable future," Maass writes in his article for The New Republic, "the war on terror in foreign lands will be waged by the faulty criminal justice systems that do exist, rather than the ones Powell wishes us to believe exist. The United States needs to be more honest about what our allies are doing, and we must do more to ensure that the eliminations we have urged upon them do not backfire."

WHICH WAR TO FIGHT? Salman Rushdie makes a strong case for remembering that there truly is a reason for a war against Saddam Hussein, but in the same breath presents some clear arguments that the Bush administration has done a poor job of presenting a convincing case. In large part, because it is making the wrong case, and not squaring off honestly around some key questions. Rushie posits: "Nor does America's vagueness about its plans for a post-Hussein Iraq and its own "exit strategy" inspire much confidence. Yes, the administration is talking democracy, but does America really have the determination to (a) dismantle the Baathist one-party state and (b) avoid the military strongman solution that has been so attractive to American global scenarists in the past -- "our son of a bitch," as Roosevelt once described the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua? Does it (c) have the long-term stomach for keeping troops in Iraq, quite possibly in large, even Vietnam-size numbers, for what could easily be a generation, while democracy takes root in a country that has no experience of it whatever; a country, moreover, bedeviled by internal divisions and separatist tendencies? How will it (d) answer the accusations that any regime shored up by U.S. military power, even a democratic one, would just be an American puppet? And (e) if Iraq starts unraveling and comes apart on America's watch, is the administration prepared to take the rap for that?" If we look at a recent case study -- say, Afghanistan -- I'd be inclined to say no to most of the above.

REMEMBERING WELLSTONE Mary McGrory reminds me what it was about Paul Wellstone that I really admired.

TAROT NATION She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe gives us the skinny of the history of Tarot, and a glimpse at some of her favorite decks.

DISSENT DIVES DEEP David Ignatius surveys the mood for war and finds it waning. Ignatius' take is that some serious brakes are being applied by the Europeans (who are discovering that they do, in fact, have an ability to stymie the U.S.), by the rank-and-file at the State Department, by key military officials (who trust their hawkish leader Rumsfeld about as much as they trusted, say, Bill Clinton) and by the CIA, which is concerned that the administration will tinker with reality to link Baghdad and al Qaeda. Bush, Ignatius says, "may choose war, but if he does so today it will be despite widespread, if largely silent, dissent."

MEANWHILE, BACK IN GAZA A stinging assessment of the pace and path of the vision for peace between Israel and Palestine, courtesy of The Washington Post's editorial team. Arafat shuffles his cabinet to no real effect, as Sharon remains focused on policies destined to move the region away from peace, not towards it. Why? Because the view on the ground is that Washington's only policy concern at the moment is Iraq, which given the lack of attention the administration is paying to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a pretty accurate assessment.

THE CITY AS AN EQUALIZER U.S. troops going into Baghdad would face one of three scenarios,, and the military doesn't like the feel of two of them. Scenario One: the Iraqi army folds fast. Scenario Two: a long seige of Baghdad and other major cities whittles away at Saddam Hussein's regime. Scenario Three: a block-by-block street battle that hands the United States a 30-50% casualty rate. The Post does a grim job of looking at what the military might face.

LESSONS UNLEARNED Dot.mil's William Arkin remains one of the more reasoned, credible voices I track when it comes to military issues. In a conversation he had with another journalist, he realized that the writer, who is responsible for covering the pending Desert Storm II, was clueless about the causes and outcomes of the first war with Iraq more than a decade ago. Arkin polled his sources, and reports back here with a reading list -- but even if you don't take the time to check out some of the books Arkin lists, reading his take on them is illuminating in itself. His final analysis is as sad as it is telling: "Does any of this literature inform what is happening today? Is the Cheney-Wolfowitz-Powell team that fought in 1991 capable of learning any new lessons? The answer seems to be no. Official "lessons learned" volumes for the 1999 air war in Yugoslavia are a joke. The only credible study done, the Air Force's "Air War Over Serbia," is locked up in classified vaults at the direction of the Pentagon and Air Force leadership. As for Afghanistan, this is what a senior retired officer wrote about the very nature of official history: 'I am told that Tommy Franks ordered the How-Anaconda-Got-So-Screwed-Up-And-What-We-Should-Do-To-Preclude-It-From-Happening-Again report burned and scattered over the hinterlands. It must have been worth reading.'" The grim reality of what happens when job security outweighs national security.

JUDICIAL TENSIONS An oustanding glimpse into the week following the September 11 attacks from the perspectives of Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, the Center for Democracy and Technology's Jim Dempsey and Senator Patrick Leahy. This piece follows the efforts to create, modify and pass one of the most significant pieces of legislation to emerge from that crisis, and is a reminder that a single Senator can make a helluva a difference when it matters most.

UNDER THE SKIN As the Cairo Film Festival prepares to unveil its selections, Al-Ahram talks to a member of the jury -- Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, one of the first female directors from Iran to be internationally recognized. Bani-Etemad speaks here of the challenges of representation in a closed society, and of her latest work, Under the Skin of the City.

YOU CAN'T WIN THEM ALL Imprisoned Mexican drug lord, Benjamin Arellano Felix, speaks out from his prison cell in this interview. Outside of the generally interesting glimpse into the life of one of America's former "most wanted" men, the interview should serve as a reminder that there's another war the United States has been fighting for several decades, and that we continue to lose ground.

CARTOON YOU Joel Priddy's new graphic novel, "Pulpatoon PilgrimagE," is a slowly thoughtful, midly ironic, utterly stylistic stroll through the lives of a bull, a robot and a Delaware thistle. In other words, it's thoroughly Joel, who penned some similarly styled illustrations for me during my heady corporate communication days. The book won an Ignatz award this fall, and is available at your local comic store (or at Mongrel or Black Swan Books for you Richmond dwellers).

BOO I'll be back tomorrow. This rainy weather has almost convinced me to join a Navy Seal training team.