Much I can agree with

I often find Alexander Cockburn too strident. I know that seems laughable, considering some of the things I write here, but consistency is the hobgoblin of small, hey kitties!

In any case, Cockburn is definitely closer to me ideologically than his arch-nemesis Hitchens. And face it, you have to take Cockburn in a fight, if for no other reason than it is hard to fight with one no hands (Hitchens has one hand permanently holding something on the rocks and the other down his pants).

There are certain things Cockburn writes in this essay that I think are probably pretty close what will happen in the future. In criticizing last month's NY Times editorial praising the latest round of "the Iraqi election that will turn the corner" he writes:

The election was notice of Iraq's funeral, and the triumph of Shia-style Islam. An astute editorial writer could have asked, in conclusion, How long will it be before the US is pumping arms and other supplies into the Sunni resistance as a counter-weight to the Shia? But that, though germane, would be cynical, and editorialists despise cynicism because it goes piggyback upon reality, and hence is an unfit companion for their stately excursions.

That is the future -- by the time the Bush Administration is discovered to be secretly funding the Sunni rebels in 2007 or 2008, you will not be allowed to remember the world as it exists now, so you might want to start cutting and pasting articles like you are Guy Pearce in "Momento".