TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME It's that time again. I'm heading to Texas for a few days of hollerin' and then will be relocating to a new house. I might post here and there (or hither and yonder) while I'm out, but expect things to be quiet here until September 22. Don't let the President blow up the country while I'm gone.

SALAM IS IN THE HOUSE The promo for Salam Pax's new book, "The Baghdad Blog," is well worth sitting through. It starts slow, then catches up with its soundtrack, provided by Aphex Twin.

AIR SUPPLY There seems to be a vague, almost indistinct line, between outright lying and idiotic bumbling in the Bush administration, as evidenced by a recent report on air quality at the World Trade Center site immediately following the September 11 attacks. Unfortunately for the workers who spent thousands of hours working to initially rescue victims and ultimately clear the site, intentions are less important than consequences.

The burning ruins of the World Trade Center spewed toxic gases "like a chemical factory" for at least six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despite government assurances the air was safe, according to a study released on Wednesday.

FOR RENT: ONE ATTORNEY GENERAL Listening to Peter Jennings interview Attorney General John Ashcroft has convinced me that the President's cabinet needs to be selected through a series of tough job interviews based on qualifications, instead of the current process of naming fools and idiots to pay-off political favors. John Ashcroft is an ass and a fool, and a threat.

An excerpt: JENNINGS: Speaking of differences, I'd like to talk a little bit about Jose Padilla. He's an American citizen, born in the Bronx, picked up in Chicago, held in an American prison, and now he is neither charged, nor allowed to see a lawyer. Why not? It seems the most basic of American instincts.

ASHCROFT: Well, he's not a person detained under the article three judicial process of the country. He is detained as an enemy combatant. And at time of war, individuals have been subject to detention as enemy combatants in virtually every war in history. This is a rarely used situation, because this administration is so respectful of the liberties of Americans. But, in the second world war when there were American citizens who were captures on the battlefield, they were held as detained individuals, as enemy combatants, and we don't allow prisoners of war to have lawyers or otherwise. And when the circumstance of the, of the combat is over, then it's time to resolve those situations. But for persons who are part of a war against the United States, we don't treat them as we do individuals who are part of the criminal justice system in the United States, never have. Second World War when Americans were participants with the Germans who came into the United States to blow up some of our infrastructure, they were detained as enemy combatants, and literally they were then tried in tribunals, and were executed.

JENNINGS: They had lawyers.

ASHCROFT: They did.

SPEAKING WITH SALAM The Guardian has teamed up with Baghdadi weblogger Salam Pax to publish a book of his posts leading up to and through the American invasion of Iraq. Here, Salam Pax takes questions from Guardian readers on the war, his weblog and life in Iraq.

MANHATTAN TRANSFER The Guardian presents a simple, but informative, Flash diagram of the planned Libeskind designed reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in New York.

PIXIES TO REFORM? Before there was bad alternative rock, there was phenomenal alternnative rock. The Pixies arguably set the musical standards by which most 90s rock should be compared. Unfortunately, they broke up just as the rest of the musical world was catching up. But now they appear set to reform in 2004.

They were arguably the most exciting American rock band of the 1980s. Kurt Cobain freely admitted that Nirvana stole their style of hushed verses and loud, primal choruses. Now it appears as though indie guitar legends the Pixies are set to reform for a live tour and a possible album in 2004...

...Critical plaudits came with the arrival of the savage 1988 album Surfer Rosa, while its more polished follow-up, 1989's Doolittle, broke out of the indie ghetto to reach No 3 in the UK album charts. The band released a further two albums - Bossanova (1990) and Trompe le Monde (1991) - before an acrimonious split in 1992.

BEACHFRONT PROPERTY, SPACE AVAILABLE The prison at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is looking more and more like a permanent fixture. There are now 660 prisoners from 42 countries, some of whom have been detained since January of 2002, being held at the prison.

HIS BOY, ELMO Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe go together like peanut butter and chocolate, which means it will be interesting to see what role the former President plays next year as his young loyalist leads the Democratic National Committee through the candidate selection process for the 2004 President race.

BIN LADEN, UNSPUN Jihad Unspun has posted the translated transcript of Osama bin Laden and Amman al-Zawahiri's recent video release, "Getting Jiggy in Medina."

I HEAR THE TRAIN A'COMING Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, died today. It would be impossible to name a more respected icon in American music. This 1997 interview with Cash delves into many nuances of his life and music as he was in the midst of yet another resurgence. (MTV has three pages of Cash-related news and features here.)

SPECULATE THIS I'll be away for a few days, so enjoy the peace and quiet, would you? It's not as if there won't be a glut of news to follow -- Iraq, deficit spending, the Armed Services committee hearings, Israel and the Palestinians, the September 11 anniversary and a bevy of new TV shows kicking off.

I'll leave you with this bit of speculation: President Wesley Clark and Vice President Hillary Clinton. Just wait.

IT'S YOUR FAULT Josh Marshall looks at recent statements by gadfly Donald Rumsfeld and a column by Stanley Kurtz and discovers a trend. The war on terrorism, the struggle in Iraq -- all can be blamed on critics and dissenters here in the United States. The problem isn't in our strategies, or bad choices, or misguided efforts, and they certainly can't be blamed on the policymakers in Washington. The problem is the liberals. Marshall sums it up:

So here the whole sordid business comes full circle. The administration games the public into an endeavor by exaggerating the gains and minimizing the price. Then the gains are revealed as not quite so great. And the price is revealed as very much greater. And if all that weren't bad enough, the operation is bungled on several fronts. So the gamers and the scammers say it's the fault of the critics who tried to carve through the mumbo-jumbo in the first place. And when the public has a touch of buyers' remorse over a product that was peddled on false advertising, the answer lies in the public's own degeneracy and division.

It's everyone's fault but theirs. 'The terrorists', domestic enemies, cultural declension, the French, perhaps tomorrow the decline of reading, the end of corporal punishment in the schools, permissive parenting, bad posture, rock 'n roll, space aliens. The administration is choking on its own lies and evasions. And we have to bail them out because the ship of state is our ship.

BEDFELLOWS The arrest and detention of terrorist Abu Zubaydah last year was a windfall for folks trying to put a damper on al Qaeda. Maybe too much of a windfall. As Time reports, a new book reveals some startling facts about what Zubaydah has told his interrogators about his close ties with Saudi and Pakistani officials. There's nothing quite like having allies in the war on terror who have tea with the terrorists and ask you to foot the bill.

WHEN TO SAY YOU'RE RIGHT David Ignatius turns his attention to retired General Wesley Clark, who boasts several qualities that make him an attractive Democratic candidate for President -- he's handsome, intelligent, thoughtful. Oh, yeah, he's got that military background. Clark is expected to announce his intentions by September 19 after flirting with a run for almost a year, but Ignatius focuses on how Clark's position on Iraq might just make him a candidate who can steal Iraq and terrorism issues away from George W. Bush. Clark has a book coming out this month that puts his Iraq stance into a broader perspective, but the heart of it is:

"Everything I said about Iraq has turned out to be correct," the retired Army general averred in a telephone interview several days ago. He rattled off the concerns he voiced before the invasion: Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to the United States; it wasn't directly linked to the war on terrorism; an invasion might make the terrorism problem worse; there wasn't an international coalition supporting the war; America had other ways to contain Saddam Hussein.

"This has been a root canal," Clark says of the Iraq campaign. And he warns that the worst may lie ahead: "You could have a catastrophic unwinding of this at virtually any time."

PENGUIN LOVE This Sunday, if you live in one of the luckier cities in America, brace yourself. Berkeley Breathed is returning. His new weekly strip, "Opus," will be in color, in your face and in Sunday comic sections everywhere. Except in the Old Gray Lady. Life is better already.

BETTER KNOWN AS 'TOLD YOU SO' Why does it come as no surprise at all to learn that the Bush administration didn't read, didn't pay attention to or didn't understand the pre-war intelligence reports? The administration has proven itself to blind at every turn -- weapons of mass destruction, supposed links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Now it turns out that the Bush war planners knew that the post-war resistance was likely to be significant. Oops.

U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.

Although general in nature, the sources said, the intelligence agencies' concerns about the degree of resistance U.S. forces would encounter have proved broadly accurate in the months since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle.

Among the threats outlined in the intelligence agencies' reporting was that "Iraqis probably would resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the U.S. and the West," one senior congressional aide said. The general tenor of the reports, according to a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence, was that the postwar period would be more "problematic" than the war to overthrow Hussein.

THE MIDNIGHT RIDE Slate's smart legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick joins with Julia Turner in this four-part critique of the Patriot Act. Their goal -- to determine just how God-awful this rushed-through-Congress cluster of laws really is. Their verdict? Mixed bag. Some of the Patriot Act is borderline insane and invasive; other elements are as benign and innocent as Adam Rich once seemed.

EVERYONE'S GOT OPINIONS After Thomas White scampered out of Enron and was vanquished from the Defense Department, he decided to write a book about what is going wrong with reconstruction in Iraq, and how to make things go more right.

GET YOUR PJ'S ON P.J. O'Rourke is the conservative answer to really amusing, really smart political writing.

O: How did you deal with the challenge of writing about politics in the space once occupied by Hunter S. Thompson?

PO: Well, he and I are old friends, but what we do is so different. There are surface similarities that really have to do with us being frustrated poets. We like to pile language on language. Hunter was an influence on me, no doubt about it. I started reading him when I was in college. We also have a lot of the same influences—we both read a lot of the beatniks. And yet what we actually do is almost exactly the opposite. His political stuff is just wonderful, but basically nothing happens. It's all about his reaction to a situation. And my stuff is much more externally driven. He brings a lunatic genius to ordinary events, and I bring an ordinary sensibility to lunatic events. And as a result of that, and as a result of friendship, I don't think we've ever been competitive. I mean, there's probably a very good reason Hunter isn't jealous of me. [Laughs.]

O: You travel a lot, don't you?

PO: I do, yeah. I think I've been overseas four months out of the past seven. I was just in Iwo Jima. Someone was producing a pilot for The History Channel about great battles and called and asked me to narrate it. It's very hard for a civilian—very hard for anybody—to get to Iwo Jima, because it's a closed Japanese military installation. They run maybe four trips in there a year: one for the decreasing number of doddering veterans, and another two or three for young enlisted people who have shown themselves to be not too drunk and not inclined to rape anybody on Okinawa too often. Off they go on this sort of camping trip to Iwo Jima, where they're taken around and shown where all the battles took place. It's very moving. Disgusting little island, though. Still an active volcano. Stinks of sulfur. There are dead Japanese everywhere under that island. It's icky. But I knew I would never have another chance to go, so I took the job.

BUSH'S OTHER SPEECH And the funniest version of the speech Bush should have delivered last night goes to ...

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa pens a report on his visit to Baghdad with a degree of candor, objectivity and personality that is rare in the media these days.

THE OTHER CHRISTIANS With a tagline of "It's time for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians," you sort of hope a weblog would tweak Bush's nose for thumping the Bible every time he's in a pinch. And this one does.

DEATH'S SLOW MARCH Riverbend shares the story of a neighbor in Baghdad, who left for a relative's house in April and never returned. His body was finally recovered last week.

DEAN'S DREAMS Want one possible model for Howard Dean's campaign for President? Try George McGovern. New York Magazine's Michael Wolff sees interesting parallels between the two in terms of fundraising, and possibly self-destruction.Wolff sees Dean's supporters as the too-eager, too-involved type who will implode if their candidate -- who they see as inherently special -- tries to bridge the swing voters any Democrat will need to win the White House. Page 2 of his piece is where he makes his best points.

TAXI! John Farrell of Voices in the Wilderness spent some time riding through Baghdad with cab drivers, getting a feel for their perspectives on the post-war situation.

BAYWATCH The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court concerning detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

CCR’s four clients are among the approximately 700 other individuals detained by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay; nationals of some 42 nations, including children as young as 13 and men in their late 70’s. The vast majority of them live in solitary confinement, restricted to 6’ x 8’ cells for more than 23 hours a day. According to the Pentagon, there have been 32 attempted suicides since detentions began, with most taking place this year.  The Pentagon recently announced plans to expand the Camp.

CORPORATE WARRIORS When Vice President Cheney talks about government being smaller, he forgets to mention that the number of civilian contractors doing government work is more swollen than the Mississippi River after an upstream gully-washer.

Contractors are performing "the entire spectrum of military services," says Peter Singer, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington and author of the new book, "Corporate Warriors," about the growth of the privatized military. He says US civilians in conflicts around the world do everything from handling mail services and feeding troops to training foreign troops and devising war games. Most are retired military personnel or former special forces...

...Mr. Singer says nearly 10,000 private military contractors are currently working in Iraq, training a new Iraqi military, protecting the Baghdad and Basra airports, and feeding and housing US troops.

Several hundred contractors remain on the ground in Afghanistan as well, providing such services as security for President Hamid Karzai. In Liberia, the US recently hired Pacific Architects and Engineers to provide logistics for the Nigerian security force charged with keeping peace after the departure of President Charles Taylor.

Singer says the exponential growth in contractors during the 1990s - there have been nearly 10 times as many contractors used in the 2003 Iraq invasion as in the 1991 Persian Gulf War - is the result of several factors: the downsizing of the military, the fact that US troops are stretched thin because of their several global commitments, and a lack of planning by the Pentagon.

SHORT, SWEET The briefest synopsis of last night's Presidential Address that I've seen today.