Just a quick recap from Austin on the "War Pundits" panel this morning (more like this afternoon due to Al
Gore appearance, but that's okay).   Great group, including late addition Samantha Power, Mark Danner of The New Yorker and author of several important books, your own McJoan and emcee Ari Melber.

Danner spoke mainly about the runup to the war and media reaction -- and responsibilities -- since.  Power covered a lot of ground, but focused on how to exit Iraq in the most humanitarian way possible, remembering the millions who have been displaced or fled.  McJoan held her own, stressing, of course, Netroots concerns and contributions.  There was a lively Q & A.

Forgive me if someone else has posted this but: Speaking at an early afternoon panel at Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas, today, Paul Krugman predicted, with seeming confidence, an Obama victory in November --but added that "within three months of taking office, no, less than three months" the media would be out to get him, remniscent of the high point of anti-Bill Clinton bashing.

Krugman was responding to a questioner who had stated that the media was "in the pocket" of  the "government."  Krugman pointed out that this was hardly the case when Clinton was in the White House and would be proven again when Obama took over.   "Get  ready for it," he warned.

About to catch a plane for Austin, but:  About ten days ago I wrote about a  freelance war photographer who committed the sin of taking war photographs -- and not hiding the graphic ones --  and then lost  his embed status in Iraq and getting send packing to Baghdad.  Now I've learned that he is back in the U.S.A.  

Zoriah Miller,  32,  the U.S. photog who goes by the name "Zoriah," was kicked out of his embed after he published on his blog a photo of a dead U.S. Marine, among other strong images. The military says this violated embed rules. Miller says he took every step possible to guarantee that the Marine could not be identified in any way, and that left him within the rules.    The photo was placed with others from a suicide bombing that occurred June 26 in the town of Karmah, near Fallujah.

"I just feel this war has become so sanitized that it was important to show," said Zoriah then. (That angle is a big part of my new book.) He posted warnings on his online blog, Zoriah.net, about the graphic content of the photo.

As some may know, I am part of a panel at Netroots Nation this Saturday at 10:30 am.  The subject, as McJoan explained at length on Sunday, is "War Pundits," but I'm sure it will go beyond that.

Others on panel include McJoan, Ari Melber and Mark Danner.

I thought I'd have a little fun with it by offering the following poll-- and asking for written opinions.  I will announce results and perhaps read a few  posts at the panel.

"My shot made Joseph Dwyer famous. Did it also help lead to his death?"  So begins a new article in The Washington Post by Warren Zinn.

He is referring to a tragedy I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago:  A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war had died of an apparent overdose.  Joseph Patrick Dwyer died at a hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., after battling PTSD.  He was 31.

The photograph, taken by Zinn in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer a symbol of heroism.  But he tried to deflect praise back to his entire unit.

I don't know if, or how much, this has been covered here in the past few weeks, but I thought I would let you know that the hateful and quite viral "A man will come form the east" email is still circulating, though long repudiated by the alleged author.

A friend of mine received it just this week from a close (rightwing) relative.   It's cute that it cites Snopes as a source -- since Snopes mocks it.

I will reprint most of it here and then the denial from the "author"  and church (in Florida).

I've written often here about my friend Cheryl Harris, whose son Ryan Maseth was electrocuted and died in Iraq.  You remember: the military lied and told her he had carried an electrical appliance into the shower.  I helped her trace a total of at least a dozen other electrocutions and she had been instrumental in getting Congress, and the Pentagon, to probe the  issue -- and she finally testified before Democrats in Congress yesterday.

She is also suing KBR, the contractors in charge, and two former KBR people also blew the whistle yesterday.  Another mother, Larraine McGee, who lost a son in Iraq, accused KBR of "homicide" yesterday.

"It is about time we got some answers ... at long last," said Sen. Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa. He released a letter to Gen. David Petraeus asking why his command had only recently ordered "theaterwide" technical inspections of military facilities despite being alerted to widespread wiring problems in Iraq installations more than three and a half years ago in a report filed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers safety specialist.

Had some fun with Rachel Maddow last night, subbing for Olbermann, on Fox "going nuts" and airing that "below the belt" Jesse Jackson hit.   Why did they do it?  

Why did they hold it for O'Reilly instead of treating as hot news?  

Why, after much teasing, did O'Reilly not play any more of it last night? Did this deny much-needed context and just prove they have tried to make Jackson look even worse by insinuation?  

It all began with an April 24, 2008 column in The Washington Post by Dana Milbank.  It began, "Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn't want you to know that."

Today, more than two months later, Milbank returns to the story—with news that the public affairs director at Arlington seems to have agreed with that assessment, and has now been fired, quite possibly as punishment.

The scandal of not allowing images of returning coffins and many other images of war, as I have often written, has percolated since the beginning of the Iraq conflict.

When a major political figure or celebrity utters a newsmaking, off-color, remark it is always interesting to observe how different news outlets handle the offending word or words.  

We monitored this recently when former President Bill Clinton called Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum a bunch of names after the reporter had raked him over the coals in a major piece.  Everyone in the media quoted the "sleazy" part of the Clinton quote but most skipped the "scumbag" reference.

So how did the media handle the now-infamous Rev. Jesse Jackson off-mike reference to Barack Obama while awaiting an appearance on Fox and Friends?

The nearly-8,000 word cover story on radio talker Rush Limbaugh in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday drew surprised approval from many conservatives -- and, now, condemnation from many others. Eric Boehlert at Media Matters, for example, ripped the Times today for "duping" its readers by assigning a conservative "dittohead" staffer, Zev Chafets, to write the piece without informing its readers of this "alliance." He asked for Public Editor Clark Hoyt to look into it.

Chafets appeared with host Bob Garfield on the weekly NPR program "On the Media" last weekend, and the show has now posted the revealing transcript.

As some may know, I have followed here,  for months, the saga of my friend Cheryl Harris, whose son, Ryan Maseth, was electrocuted and died in Iraq several months ago.  You remember: She was first told by the military that it was his fault for taking an electric appliance into the shower room.  

That turned out to be a lie -- a faulty pump was the reason -- and she has gamely hung in there to lead the fight to probe more than a dozen other fatal electrocutions in Iraq, leading to a congressional and now Pentagon investigation.   Meanwhile, she is suing KBR, the contractor in charge of maintenance.

She is doing it to keep other soldiers out of electrical danger -- but now a new death has been added to the toll.

So much has been said and written about the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame -- and the cast of characters that swirled around it, from Judith Miller to Karl Rove -- that today, on the fifth anniversary of how it all began, it seems proper to quote the first lines of the fateful Joseph C. Wilson IV op-ed in the July 6, 2003 edition of The New York Times:

"Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?  Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Remember its title?  "What I Didn't Find in Africa."   People in high places paid attention: As we now know, Vice President Cheney marked up a copy of the op-ed from the paper, wondering if the trip to Africa was "ordinarily" done or "did his wife send him on a junket?"  

A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war has died of an apparent overdose, police say.  Joseph Patrick Dwyer died last week at a hospital in Pinehurst, N.C., after battling PTSD.  He was 31.

A diary here mentioned him a couple of days ago but more details have emerged since then, and here they are.

The photograph, taken in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer a symbol of heroism.  But he tried to deflect praise back to his entire unit.

Sean Webster was helping other severely wounded Iraq vets cope with their injuries but, in the end, could not save himself.  

For the past  year, Sgt. Sean Webster, 23,  had worked in  Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton, aiding sailors and Marines wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan get much-needed medical and psychological care.  

Just two weeks ago he was featured in a front-page story on this effort in the local North County Times newspaper.   "I'm a wounded Marine and I know what these guys are going through," he said.

As we all know now, that story about Obama refusing to "fist bump" with a kid in Ohio turned out to be not only trivial but quite false.  What you might not know is that one of those who helped spread it, Maureen Dowd, was slapped today with a prominent Correction box right on The New York Times' op-ed page.

It reads:  "In describing an encounter between Barack Obama and a schoolboy in Zanesville, Ohio, Maureen Dowd's column on Wednesday used a campaign pool report.  The report said tha Mr. Obama had declined to bump fists with the boy.  The campaign now says that the boy was trying to get Mr. Obama to autogrpah his hand, but the candidate declined, citing the possible reaction of the boy's mother."

Evangelical leader Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening and founder of Sojourners, which bills itself as the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States, today issued a statement in response to Obama's proposal on Tuesday to form a new President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships within the White House.

Wallis just last week blasted James Dobson's attacks on Obama. The Obama Faith plan has drawn support and criticism (for continuing to bridge the church/state divide, and for other reasons) in the past 24 hours.

Here is Wallis's full statement.

So some good will come from the death of Ryan Maseth after all. The Pentagon -- after Ryan's mother, and my friend, Cheryl Harris, brought his death by electrocution to national attention --  has just ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, the major military contractor.

Cheryl, as I have written here previously, has  researched other electrocutions and pressed a wrongful death lawsuit against KBR. You remember: the military lied to her in trying to blame it all on him.

The senator from Cheryl's state, Pennsylvania, Bob Casey made public on Monday afternoon a written statement by Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.  Petraeus informed Congress of the new inspections -- while also disclosing that at least 13 U.S. soldiers had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began, and many others had received electrical shocks. Until now, the Pentagon had said 12 had been electrocuted.