Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/26/05

A Financial Times article on the case quotes Frank Luntz as saying, "If [Fitzgerald] indicts, they [the White House] will have no choice but to attempt to demonize him. I think that is going to be really, really tough."

Laura Rozen reports on La Repubblica's series on the Niger forgeries, which confirmed that the head of Italy's military intelligence service met secretly with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in Washington on September 9, 2002. Plus: 'The Real Significance' of the La Repubblica stories.

In 'Background to Betrayal,' Justin Raimondo writes that "In short, SISMI knew the documents were fakes but pushed them to help the White House gin up a war. The question is: who else knew? ... Did Hadley know? Did Libby? Did Cheney?"

"The shocking thing about the trellis of revelations" concerning Vice President Cheney, writes Maureen Dowd, "is how unshocking it all is. It's exactly what we thought was going on, but we never thought we'd actually hear the lurid details."

A hunger-striking detainee's request to be allowed to die is said to have been made "out of desperation" over being held at Guantanamo Bay without charges since 2002.

With a think tank predicting that the U.S. is "likely to stay in Iraq after Bush," a Pentagon public affairs nominee disclosed his plans to "encourage more positive stories," and defended his article charging that "Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in Al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S."