The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh has set the cat amongst the pigeons (again) with his article Iran Plans. The Washington Post had a similar article on Sunday: U.S. studying military strike options on Iran.

Poor Dubya was beside himself.

In a speech Monday at Johns Hopkins University, he trotted out the "wild speculation" line -- although he wouldn't rule out the use of force against Iran, according to this AP story on CTV.ca.

However, the Beeb has an analysis piece explaining why a military strike on Iran, let alone one using any type of nuclear weapon (but primarily "bunker busters"), remains improbable.

That being said, what spooks the military types, according to the Beeb piece, is that the Bushies won't take anything off the table, including the use of nukes. An excerpt:

Hersh himself downplayed the prospect. In an interview with the BBC, he said the Pentagon had told the Bush administration initially that a nuclear attack was the only way of guaranteeing success:

Graphic: Conventional v nuclear bunker busters

"Nobody was advocating it, they were just saying a 100% guarantee. Where it becomes interesting, the joint chiefs, in one of its subsequent papers, wanted to withdraw that option because of course it's madness, a nuclear weapon in the Middle East to an Arab [sic] Muslim country, my God. And the White House won't withdraw.

"That's the issue, that the White House, some people there still wanted to have this option. That's what's causing the trauma, not that they're going to do it, but the White House won't take it off the table."

This BBC piece looks at the U.S.'s "Long War," and how U.S. military thinking is changing to fight it.

I don't watch much TV anymore (a possibly dangerous admission, given that I work for a TV network), but I'm still sad to hear the run of the West Wing ends this year. This early ...   more »

For The Sun Herald of Gulfport, Miss. and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, it's still all Katrina, all the time even though the national news agenda has moved on from the U.S.'s worst natural disaster of modern times.

Freelance gossip reporter Jared Paul Stern told AP that he was "set up" in the case that has him being accused of trying to extort money from a billionaire by promising to keep said billionaire out of Page Six, the notorious gossip column of the New York Post.

From the AP story on CTV.ca:

Stern told The Associated Press the businessman initiated discussions about payments about press coverage.

"He set it up through a middle man," Stern said in a telephone interview. "He initiated discussions in a potential investment in my clothing company. That's where the whole money issue originated."

Zerby posted on this. She makes the points that much of what passes for celebrity journalism is tainted in any event, and that the reason this story is getting so much play is because it's part of the whole New Yawk Noosepaper War thang.