Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/28/05

A lawyer for Jose Padilla says he was told that "the government still asserts it has the power to hold his client ... regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against him," and a New York Times review of six prominent terrorism cases quotes a law professor as saying that "The position of the executive branch is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

"A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower," writes Seymour Hersh, who tells Wolf Blitzer that "We don't know how many bombs are dropped, where. Nobody reports publicly as they did ... in Vietnam."

As it's suggested that Vice President Cheney's "mind seems to have slipped its moorings and is drifting out into the sea of fantasy," Sidney Blumenthal illuminates 'Cheney's shadow play,' noting that "The origin of Cheney's alliance with the neo-conservatives goes back to his instrumental support for Team B."

A Washington Post report that 'Some veterans feel lives enlarged by wartime suffering,' prompts War In Context to ask: "Where is a culture heading when it idealizes the experience of the dismembered warrior and starts to suggest that the trauma of war can become a rite of passage?"