MR. VICE PRESIDENT? It's worth clicking through the ad to get to this Salon transcript of an interview with Max Cleland. A moderate, former Senator from Georgia, Cleland currently sits on the independent panel investigating the September 11 attacks; he's also a parapalegic veteran. And he's not afraid to admit that he was hornswaggled by the Bush administration.

MAKING THREATS MEMRI has posted translated interview with a man identified as Abu Salma Al-Hijazi of al Qaeda. In the interview, he makes some significant and disturbing threats. How credible they are is another story.

In regard to rumors about a large-scale attack against the U.S. during the month of Ramadan, Al-Hijazi said that "a huge and very courageous strike" will take place and that the number of infidels expected to be killed in this attack, according to primary estimates, exceeds 100,000. He added that he "anticipates, but will not swear, that the attack will happen during Ramadan." He further stated that the attack will be carried out in a way that will "amaze the world and turn Al-Qai'da into [an organization that] horrifies the world until the law of Allah is implemented, actually implemented, and not just in words, on His land... You wait and see that the balance of power between Al-Qai'da and its rivals will change, all of a sudden, Allah willing."

TAKING CHENEY'S PULSE No, this isn't a link to an article wondering if Vice-President Cheney is even alive. But it does provide some fascinating insights into how a man once perceived as a moderate foreign policy realist (hard to believe, huh?) transmogified into a neocon hardliner. The transition wasn't hard for Cheney, who has been an outrider on global strategic issues since the 1980s.

COMIC COMMENTARY Mark Fiore cracks me up.

CHOOSING SIDES The New Republic takes pause on the campaign trail to examine just how much of an impact Howard Dean's apparent dominance in the polls is having on the Democratic Party. Not much. Or not much positive. The Democratic powerbrokers -- largely Clinton loyalists -- don't want Howard Dean to get the nomination, for several reasons. First, a successful Dean candidacy diminishes the power and authority of the Clintons as the voices of the party. Second, Dean might be successful at returning the party to some of its root issues (for better or worse). The battle for the Democratic Party heats up...

TRACKING TRAGEDY Voices of September 11 is an advocacy group primarily comprised of family members of the Wolrd Trade Center victims. Its website does an admirable job of keeping current with investigations and activities related to the September 11 attacks.

GAUGE YOUR INNER GEEK This Newsweek quiz looks at your knowledge of technology, as well as how you use it in your daily life, to assess your geek factor. Mine's frightenly high.

MEAT IS MURDER The Meatrix is a Flash spoof of "The Matrix" that is at once hilarious and illuminating. Using the edgy film as a framework, the spoof sends up a message about factory farms that might make you want to lose your lunch.

FAS AND FURIOUS If Riverbend is at all indicative of moderate Iraqis, the country is teetering in the wrong direction. She is furious at the current approach of coalition forces in her country, and wonders how the U.S. military thinks it is either engendering good will or suppressing dissent.

I'm so tired. These last few days have been a strain on every single nerve in my body. The electricity has been out for the last three days and while the weather is pleasant, it really is depressing.

No one knows why the electricity is out- there are murmurings of storms and damage to generators and sabotage and punishment… no one knows exactly what's going on. There are explosions everywhere. Yesterday it was especially heavy. Today there was a huge explosion that felt like it was nearby but we can't really tell. How do you define a war? This sure as hell feels like war to me… no electricity, water at a trickle, planes, helicopters and explosions.

We didn't send the kids to school today. My cousin's wife spent last night talking about horrible premonitions and it didn't take much to convince my cousin that they would be better off at home.

It's hard for adults without electricity, but it's a torment for the kids. They refuse to leave the little pool of light provided by the kerosene lamps. We watch them nervously as they flit from candlelight to lamplight, trying to avoid the dark as much as possible. I have flashes of the children knocking down a candle, hot, burning wax, flames… I asked the 7-year-old the other night if she was afraid of 'monsters' when she shied away from a dark room. She looked at me like I was crazy- monsters are for losers who don't need to fear war, abductions and explosions.

KEEPING TRACK OF IRAQ This weblog is short, simple and updated frequently. It tracks a host of daily events in Iraq, from attacks on military forces to success stories, proving links to articles for more details.

BAGHDAD UPDATE The New Yorker presents a surprisingly balanced audio/slideshow from writer George Packer, recapping his observations from his recent stint in Baghdad.

MEMORY AND DESIGN Architectural critic Benjamin Forgey spends time with the final designs for a memorial at the World Trade Center site, finding several that appeal to him in strong, almost instinctive ways.

A QUESTION OF GRIEF This Post article about the national grief displayed by Italy as coffins carrying the bodies of 19 Italians killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq paints a picture starkly in contrast with the ways in which the United States has avoided grieving the more than 400 soldiers killed and 2,000 seriously injured in Iraq. Philip Kennicott suggests that there is something not quite right about the American approach, which discourages the idea of shared, collective grief -- and is bolstered by government policies and the media's personalization of tragedy.

Nothing quite like the images of 19 coffins, carried through the streets of Rome Tuesday, has been seen in the United States since the war against Iraq began eight months ago. The caskets, containing Italian soldiers, policemen and civilians, killed by a massive truck bomb more than a week ago, were seen against a profusion of red, white and green, the colors of the Italian flag, with some of the country's most revered and iconic architectural monuments, including the Roman Colosseum, forming a backdrop. They were connected, by these honors, to a long tradition of public mourning. The state and the people of Italy took possession of a grief felt to be national in scope.

There is a certain efficiency to this imagery of the fallen mourned together. An Associated Press photograph by Gregorio Borgia showed four caskets, carried by military police at St. Paul's Outside the Walls basilica. If it were just one casket, perhaps a morbid curiosity would kick in. Who is in there? How old was he? What did he look like? What does he look like now?

But four coffins -- or 19 -- short-circuits this curiosity. Anyone could be in there. What registers more powerfully is the work of mourning. The carrying of boxes, the standing in lines, the control of emotion. It is collective work, and it is oddly festive, colorful and, despite the ceremonial pomp, anarchic and volatile.

Photographs emphasized that volatility, showing crowds, huge crowds of tens of thousands of people, and the effect was to suggest that Italians, who had just suffered their worst loss in war since World War II, have come close to grief in a way that Americans have yet to. Sometimes the Italian mourners were arranged in neat and orderly rows, confronting neat and orderly rows of flag-draped coffins as spectators in a theater confront a tragic drama. And sometimes they were close in a more organic, almost biological way, crowds seeming to press in on the caskets as they were carried in procession. Death has created a fissure, a space in the midst of the people, through which the dead must pass.

MUSICAL MAYHEM Chris Bopst goes all out this week in his column-cum-commercial at Richmond.com, which is what I expect from a musical savant like this undercelebrated DJ. Bopst reminds readers of this weekend's Cigarbox Planetarium performance (and buffet) at Millie's before decrying his status as a revolutionary, explaining the nuances of pirate radio, and then gently easing into a closing homage of AM1450's Mystery Man's soul show. Bopst's own show airs in Richmond on AM1450 on Thursday and Friday evenings.

DANCING AT THE ORANGE DOOR The Field is a concept that choreographer Julie Mayo brought to Richmond last year: a handful of artists spend 10 weeks working together, refining their art, and then present it at a public performance. A handful of Field dancers will be debuting their work at the Orange Door this weekend.

IT'S THE END OF AN ERA "To Be and To Have," a French documentary that follows a teacher at a rural, one-room school in Auvergne as his school prepares to close and he prepares for retirement. The Post's Desson Howe says " 'To Be and to Have' amounts to a rare gift and an opportunity to appreciate the end of an era and celebrate one of the screen's most subtly etched heroes: the soft-spoken Monsieur Georges Lopez."

Lopez's avocation is more than a step up. It's the music of his heart. And you can see and hear that music in action, as the middle-aged teacher patiently ushers the children of a one-room schoolhouse into the dawn of maturity. Lopez teaches his students -- about a dozen boys and girls who range between kindergarten and sixth grade -- with a patience that borders on deific. He is in charge of everything, from grammar (the title refers to the rote conjugating of verbs, rather than some poetic conceit) to conflict resolution. He teaches his pupils mathematics, dictation and the feminine form of "friend." He takes them sledding. He teaches them to cook. And he comforts the teary-eyed in the classroom or schoolyard.

He is teacher, Daddy, Mommy, their best friend and, in a certain sense, the gentle voice of God.

THE HOUSE THAT IAN BUILT Minor Threat helped to create a new playing field for hardcore and punk musicians in the early 1980s -- through music, message and approach. Dischord Records, which has been releasing some of the best D.C. alternative music over 20 years, has just released a new DVD of the band's 1983 show at Club 9:30. The Dischord label continues to flourish, for good reason.

WHAT'S MISSING Thomas Friedman echoes an on-target assessment of what is really getting President Bush tangled up -- he has a vision, and is unable to lead people toward it. To some people -- who truly want the U.S. to be humiliated -- this is a good thing. To those of us who would like to see the U.S. do the right thing -- meet its own national security needs without breaking the global furniture -- it points to a real need for a change in leadership.

Tom Malinowski, from Human Rights Watch, perfectly described Mr. Bush's core problem: When you look at the muted reaction to the president's important speech on the need for democracy in the Arab world, you see that "President Bush has moral clarity, but no moral authority." He has a vision — without influence among the partners needed to get it moving. His is a beautifully carved table — with only one leg.

STILL ROLLING One of the penultimate bands to have emerged from Richmond's understated music scene is Honor Role, which played throughout the 80s to audiences who loved their albums but were sometimes consternated by their music. I pulled out their 2000 CD (collecting "The Pretty Song" and "Rictus" albums and two 7" releases) this week and have been listening non-stop in the car, amazed at how well the music has survived the test of time. I just stumbled across this 1999 interview with former frontman Bob Schick, who discusses the CD and what the band members did with their time in the 90s. Here's how he describes what might have been, had Honor Role released a third recording.

You’ve got the Breadwinner singles so you know what he [guitarist Pen Rollings] was going to do, and if you heard the Coral thing, you know what I was going to do... Chip and Steve played in this band called the Johnson Family and they were able to do more of what they wanted to do. And the Johnson Family evolved into that band Sparklehorse that put out a record a few years ago that was really good. Somebody asked me what I thought that third record would sound like, and I told them that if you played the Breadwinner record, the Coral record and the Johnson Family record all at the same time... you’d hear, for the most part, a horrible noise, but somewhere in there you’d here pieces of what Honor Role was supposed to sound like.

AFRICAN WEBLOGS All Africa, the comprehensive site for African news coverage, has started a list of weblogs that directly concern themselves with life on the continent.

IF HE ONLY PRACTICED WHAT HE PREACHED I can say this much -- if I had no experience with the works of George Bush and heard the speech he delivered today in London, I'd probably applaud. As it is, I wonder why a Democrat didn't deliver it.

WHERE THE LINES ARE NY's Michael Wolff, the media smart-guy of the year, sees a schism emerging in the Democratic core in the form of righteous virtue (whose hero is Howard Dean) versus self-righteous yuppies (whose hero is Bill Clinton). I think Wolff is right when he points out the very real divide that exists between the patrician Democrats who are unable to supress their sense of entitlement and those who have either discarded or veiled their patrician roots, but there are several other issues that may well lead the Democrats to a moment of reckoning in 2004.

The first is the economy, as Wolff notes. By positioning themselves against Bush on the economic issues -- primarily unemployment, rising deficits, the impact of tax cuts, slow growth, loss of manufacturing jobs -- the Democrats are managing to do two clumsy things rather gracefully. The appearance Democrats are giving on the economy is that they want it to tank even more, and that if it takes another million lost jobs or another bleak year of no-growth to oust Bush it will all be worth it. That perspective is reinforced by an inability (either a lack of vision or a lack of leadership) to field a strong, inspirational message on the economy. People want leadership, not carping. Bush -- for all of his many faults -- gives many voters a sense that he is leading. Even if it's over a cliff. If the Dems can't paint an encouraging picture of our economic future under new leadership, the White House will deservedly be lost for four more years. And more and more voters will see the Republican Party as the party of economic opportunity. Even if it's just for the rich.

The second issue is Iraq and the fight against terrorism. Again, the Democratic field is shooting from the hip, its eye still toward the past. The positions being championed are about whether we should have gone to war, and whether we've done the right things to prevent another al Qaeda attack, and how soon we can pull troops out of Iraq. Outside the ranks of the impassioned anti-war cluster, the impression is that the Democrats want the United States to continue to fail, stumble and bleed in the Middle East. Rather than craft a strong policy statement about the role of the U.S. in the world, or outline ideas for the successful restoration of stability in Iraq, or drawing a line in the sand showing where civil rights trumps the Justice Department's passion for hunting terrorists, the Democrats are waving the blame card. The only time that's effective is before you've fallen out of the boat. If the Democrats can't rebalance world affairs in a way that harkens back to the relative stability of 1989 or 1997, more and more voters will reluctantly embrace the noveau Dark Age of the neocon worldview.

Finally, the Culture Wars. We set them aside during our decade of prosperity because we didn't have time to worry about gay rights or civil rights or poverty. There was money to be made and vacation homes to remodel. If you want to know the swing issue for more than a handful of key states in the 2004 election, take your choice of the following: abortion rights, gay marriage or Wall Street (which was home for the Everyman during the 90s, but is quickly returning to its rightful status as home for Fat Cat Crooks). Us versus them. That's not only going to be the split between Democrats and Republicans on the campaign trail next year, but it is likely to be the split within the Democratic Party, as Michael Wolff suggests. The opportunists will push a moderate position -- on the war, on the economy, on abortion, on gay rights, on punishing criminal behavior in financial circles -- and they will be met head-on by a passionate grassroots, led by an angry Howard Dean.

When Howard Dean began saying that he represented the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, not many people realized that he was launching a war. Cast adrift from the Southern states, stumbling free from the shackles of the New Deal, the Democrats are searching for identity. If they don't find it before next summer, there will be four more years to find the soul of a once-passionate party.

TWO YEARS WITH NO ANSWERS The Family Steering Committee of the 9/11 Independent Commission lays out a comprehensive list of unanswered questions about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It's disconcerting that there are so many questions that haven't been publicly addressed -- either because no one has an answer, or because the answers make some people so uncomfortable.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN It's useful to remember that continued instability in Iraq only feels like a major political issue confined to Washington. To the people of Iraq, politics is far down a long list of concerns, but as Riverbend notes in her weblog, it is politics that is eating away at the reconstruction. Unfortunately, the source of the deconstruction appears to be coming from the same Iraqis the U.S. looks to for leadership. Which tends to be the problem with relying on opportunists.

I think it's safe to say that when you put a bunch of power-hungry people together on a single council (some who have been at war with each other), they're going to try to promote their own interests...

"Bremer noted that at least half the council is out of the country at any given time and that at some meetings, only four or five members showed up."

Of course they're outside of the country- many of them don't have ties in it. They have to visit their families and businesses in Europe and North America. For some of them, it sometimes seems like the "Governing Council" is something of an interesting hobby- a nice little diversion in the monthly routine: golf on Saturdays, a movie with the family in London on Fridays, a massage at the spa on Tuesdays, and, oh yes- nation-building for 5 minutes with Bremer on the Xth of each month.

People here never see them. Most live in guarded compounds and one never knows what country they are currently in...

People have been expecting this for some time now. There's a complete and total lack of communication between the Council members and the people- they are as inaccessible as Bremer or Bush. Their speeches are often in English and hardly ever to the Iraqi public. We hear about new decisions and political and economical maneuverings through the voice-overs of translators while the Council members are simpering at some meeting thousands of miles away.

We need *real* Iraqis- and while many may argue that the Council members are actually real Iraqis, it is important to keep in mind that fine, old adage: not everyone born in a stable is a horse. We need people who aren't just tied to Iraq by some hazy, political ambition. We need people who have histories inside of the country that the population can relate to. People who don't have to be hidden behind cement barriers, barbed wire and an army.

PLAN -- DON'T HOPE -- FOR SUCCESS Columnist David Ignatius observes something about the Bush administration's revised Iraq strategy that seems to reflect a pattern to me. On the face of it, the policy makes sense -- give authority back to the Iraqi people. But beneath the logical veneer there are a dozen unanswered questions and potential roadblocks.

The Neocons argue that picking their plans -- or lack of planning -- apart is akin to planning for defeat. I'd argue that their rationale is akin to a football team going to the Super Bowl without a strategy, and hoping that every player does the right thing on the field when the quarterback starts winging it. Ignatius seems to share that view, and lays out a series of potential problems that loom large: the effectiveness of the newly trained Iraqi police and military; the tribal, religious and social conflicts certain to arise as a result of the selection of local councils; the current deployment of U.S. forces (large, slow moving targets versus small, nimble groups).

KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM If the Bush administration is serious about stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan, it would be well served to survey the landscape. Two years after the fall of the Taliban has done little to provide most Afghans with stability and security -- the opium production is back at record levels, outside of Kabul warlords control the social politics, and there has been more open conflict between U.S. troops and Taliban (and al Qaeda) forces than at any time since the fall of Kabul. As winter settles upon the country, it's unfortunate that the United Nations and other aid agencies are being forced to pull back.

On Monday, the UNHCR banned its staff from traveling by road in Afghanistan, and the United Nations ordered all workers to remain in their offices during a security review.

Several international aid organizations operating in the south also held an emergency meeting to discuss "options which may include the withdrawal from the southern region of Afghanistan," according to ACBAR, an umbrella group of 86 aid agencies working in Afghanistan.

The group quoted Anne Wood, a senior coordinator for Portland, Oregon-based Mercy Corps, as saying: "The situation continues to deteriorate. We do not believe that measures taken so far ... will effectively address the deepening crisis. In the south, we are now at a critical juncture."

Grandi appealed to the international community to do more to improve security in Afghanistan. A NATO-led peacekeeping force operates in the capital, Kabul, but has not yet been expanded throughout the country, where warlords hold sway and Taliban and al-Qaida militants launch frequent attacks.

"If reconstruction of the country is to continue, governments must consider more seriously helping Afghanistan achieve security and stability," Grandi said.

Some 2.5 million Afghan refugees have returned to the country, in addition to 500,000 internally displaced people, since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, mostly from Pakistan and Iran. UNHCR said its Afghan staff would remain to help keep aid and support flowing to more than 220,000 Afghan returnees affected by the decision.