Spurious rumor alert: Negroponte to State to replace Rice, who is tapped to replace ailing Cheney.

Update: As long as we're gossiping, did you hear what Laura said? Just between you, me, and the fence post, of course.

Another day in Iraq:

* 30 dead in central Baghdad clash between Iraqi Army and gunmen following reports that Sunnis had set up fake checkpoint where they were detaining Shiites, shooting them, and hanging their bodies from lampposts;

* 27 bodies were dumped behind a hospital in Baghdad;

* 72 bodies were recovered around Baghdad on Saturday, most showing signs of torture.

From the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times:

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

. . .

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.

. . .

Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets. Three possible routes have been mapped out, including one over Turkey.

Air force squadrons based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, have trained to use Israel’s tactical nuclear weapons on the mission. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli air force.

Sources close to the Pentagon said the United States was highly unlikely to give approval for tactical nuclear weapons to be used. One source said Israel would have to seek approval “after the event”, as it did when it crippled Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak with airstrikes in 1981.

Late update: As I hinted in the parenthetical, it's important to consider the source.

This is worrisome. It comes from a McClatchy report on the likely selection of Ryan Crocker as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, replacing Zalmay Khalilzad:

Crocker "must answer: Whose side are we on?" said a State Department official in Washington, who asked not to be identified because the official isn't authorized to speak to the news media. "It is going to be extremely difficult."

We keep hearing about a faction within the Administration that wants to choose sides (i.e., back the Shiite majority) in order, presumably, to bring the civil war to a quicker and more decisive end so that we can declare victory and withdraw. I say presumably because there are so many problems with this approach that trying to tease out its proponents' objectives almost misses the point.

But here's the thing. One might expect that faction to reside at the Pentagon or NSC--but the State Department? That can't be a good sign.

One of the nice things about weekend blogging is that I'm not quite as captive to the news cycle as during the week. So on a Saturday morning during flu season, let me put on my tinfoil hat and digress into one of my pet fascinations: the spread of the H5N1 influenza virus.

About this time last year, I read John Barry's The Great Influenza, about the 1918 pandemic. (A good read, though not in the same league as his seminal work on the Great Flood of 1927, Rising Tide. If you want to really understand Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath, start with Rising Tide.) Beyond the sheer number of deaths from what was dubbed the Spanish Flu is the speed with which the virus spread and the ferocity with which it attacked its victims. It simply overwhelmed the ability of political, social, and medical institutions (such as they were at the time) to respond in any meaningful or effective way. Advances in medical science would help mitigate the effects of a flu pandemic today in developed countries, although probably not to the extent we would like to think. It would make Katrina look like a gentle spring rain.

There have been other flu pandemics since 1918, though none so lethal, and the experts assure us that another pandemic is just a matter of time. It is the high mortality rate among human victims of the H5N1 virus that has public health experts particularly worried, combined with the fact, not surprising, that the virus has taken hold in bird populations in underdeveloped countries like China, Indonesia, and Vietnam where birds and humans live in close proximity and where monitoring and treatment is hampered by a lack of resources, among other things.

Still, and this is why I started out with the tinfoil hat reference, the total number of H5N1 human deaths worldwide since the virus first emerged is dwarfed by the annual number of deaths in the U.S. from regular old strains of influenza. So H5N1 may or may not be the next pandemic flu. There are good reasons to worry (more people died of H5N1 in 2006 than the previous three years combined), and good reasons not to panic (a swine flu showed signs of going pandemic in the 1970s but never did).

In the meantime, there's no better place from where to keep a watchful eye on the spread of H5N1 than the H5N1 blog.

Brave new world:

The rise of digital entertainment has upended whole industries, from Hollywood to the music business. Now it's striking at a touchstone of the American family: the allowance. Kids are pouring money into things that can't be bought with cash -- music downloads, cellphone ringtones and online videogames. JupiterResearch estimates teenagers spent $3 billion online last year alone. In many families, the upshot has been the demise of the weekly cash dole that parents have long used to teach kids financial responsibility and keep them from busting the budget.

Instead, "giving the kids their allowance" now often entails untangling a complex web of electronic transactions. It means figuring out which sibling blew $29.99 to download Season 4 of "South Park" on iTunes and getting someone to fess up for charging those Jay-Z ringtones to mom's cellphone bill. Some parents find themselves taking on the role of bill collector and dunning their kids for reimbursement, while others are throwing up their hands and giving up on spending limits altogether.

My kids are 5 and 3, so we're just on the cusp of having to deal with this problem. Aside from the issue of turning kids into consumers at an ever younger age, how are TPM parents handling the digital allowance?

TPM Reader DB reports in:

I would like to refer to the note about Saddam’s changing image in the Arab world. I have lived in the United Arab Emirates for 8 years. The other night I was taking a little run into Dubai for a bad burrito (for some strange reason the cooks in Dubai do appalling things to Mexican food) and a beer. My taxi driver, Amjed, a Pakistani who has been driving taxi in Sharjah and Dubai for 25 years, was unusually quiet on this trip. Finally, after we got going on the freeway, he asked me,

“So, Saddam gone, eh?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He is dead. He was a bad man. But it won’t change the troubles in Iraq.”

“He was bad man,” Amjed agreed. “You see?”

“No. I didn’t see it.”

“I see on television. He was brave.”

“I heard that.”

“He was bad man. In end, he was brave. He was not afraid. In end he was brave man. Was good.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. We drove on in silence. When we got to the bar, I thanked him, tipped him, walked in, and ordered a cold pint of Stella.

NYT:

In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

I would hate to let John Negroponte's departure as Director of National Intelligence go by without reminiscing about the job's long hours and positively dreary surroundings, as recounted last March by Jeff Stein at CQ:

On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library.

“He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they’ve seen the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from the White House, only “several” times a week.

. . .

But there seems to be a new, relaxed John Negroponte. And some close observers think they know why.

He’s figured out the job. Which is to say, he really doesn’t have much control over the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So why not hang at the University Club?

Negroponte spokesman Carl Kroft takes serious issue with that portrayal.

“He’s the hardest working person in U.S. intelligence,” Kroft said. “He’s hard at work from the early hours of the morning to late every night. The job never ends.”

Negroponte's new digs in Foggy Bottom will be much closer to the University Club than were DNI's temporary offices out at Bolling Air Force Base.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) turns the Golden Rule on its head: "What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated."

Given Boehner's perma-tan, maybe we can call this the Bronzed Rule.

The Bush administration doesn't want you to know who's been visiting the White House. So they've made sure you never find out.

Huh. I didn't see that coming. Gen. Casey is being kicked up stairs to become Army Chief of Staff, succeeding Rumsfeld's man, Gen. Schoomaker, whom if memory serves Rummy had to bring out of retirement because he couldn't find any other generals in active service who would go along with his plans.

Late Update: Okay, a friend who knows this stuff says Schoomaker was "not a Rummy toady by any stretch." So I want to add that to the mix.

Biden: "I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost. They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

This is a key quote out of Sen. McCain's remarks this afternoon at AEI.

Contrary to popular notions that U.S. troops are getting “caught in the cross-fire” between Sunni and Shia fighters, and are therefore ineffective in ceasing the smoldering civil war, the track record is that when U.S. troops stopping [sic] sectarian violence is excellent; where American soldiers have been deployed to areas in turmoil, including Baghdad neighborhoods, the violence has ceased almost immediately.

Similary, the Marines in Anbar province report very positive effects in reducing the non-sectarian Al Qaeda based violence that is the predominant cause of instability there.

Is that true? My recollection is that there was an earlier surge or crackdown in Baghdad. Violence did abate at first but then it rose again. The thinking, if I recall, was that the insurgents just adapted to the new tactics and then the fighting escalated again.

I doubt there's any real question that in a certain geographical area, with X number of soldiers and sufficiently permissive rules of engagement (two mammoth 'ifs') we could stop all the violence. The question is what X number is, whether we have X number of troops available, whether we're willing to make the area into a free fire zone and whether the whole effort really makes an eventual political settlement more possible.

So what exactly is McCain referring to? And are they examples which have any real bearing on the question at hand?

Another winger tall-tale bites dust...

Here's some new proof that the so-called "lonely Kerry" photo story, which allegedly proved that he was "snubbed" by the troops in Iraq, is completely bogus.

We've just obtained an advance copy of the soon-to-be-released letter to President Bush from Dem leaders coming out strongly against escalation in Iraq.

Key quote: "It is time to bring the war to a close."

Late Update: CNN now says the letter is coming soon as 'breaking news'. But you can read it here now.

TPM Reader JM on Applebaum ... "It would be a bit easier to take Applebaum seriously if she could make a good case as to why we should have launched a war of liberation to free the Soviet Union from Stalin. Obviously, since no one with a hint of sanity seriously argued for taking out Stalin at the time, there were many American policy makers who understood how evil he was yet did not think it was worth a pre-emptive war to remove him from power. Yet Applebaum, like most neocons, implies that the only people who possibly could have understood Saddam's evil are those who supported obliterating his regime by force. In their fantasy world, there are two types of foreign rulers - those who are stable and good, and those whom we must destroy. Perhaps history holds no lessons for them except that we've had too few wars, too few chances to demonstrate our moral rectitude."

Lieberman: Iraq War has the next relationship to the next war as the Spanish Civil War had to World War II.

Update: We've captured the moment here. Beware! Excessive historical analogizing may cause dizziness.

Guess who just came out against a troop "surge"... Ollie North!