Relics from the Crusades

GQ (formerly known as Gentlemen's Quarterly) has just released some mind-boggling artefacts from the Cheney-Bush Era: the covers – like elementary school reports – of the daily intelligence briefings that the Department of Defense prepared for a few eyes only, and that were often personally delivered by Donald Rumsfeld to the Oval Office. (There's also a background article here.)

One of the lessons of Watergate and the investigative journalism of the 1970s was that the wildest stoner rumours of the 1960s turned out to be perfectly true (‘Whoa, dude, I heard the CIA tried to put some powder in Castro's shoes that would make his beard fall out . . .').

The story of Cheney-Bush has yet to be told – particularly the role of public relations firms, who were paid billions by the Pentagon to market the 'War on Terror'. This will come, but it's a sign of an enervated media that the revelations are more likely to appear in publications like GQ than in the New York Times – or, for that matter, the Nation.