If the Department of Homeland Security ever gets around to issuing another terror alert bulletin (isn’t it curious how quiet they’ve been since Bush surged ahead at the GOP convention?), it might be to watch out for terrorists operating under a new disguise:

Iraqi security forces captured a suspected terrorist operating on Baghdad’s blood-soaked Haifa street — cornering him today in a cupboard as he was disguising himself with his wife’s underwear.
. . .
Acting on tips by local residents, Abdullah said Iraqi security troops backed by Us forces caught Kadhim al-Dafan as he hid out in his home. The suspected terrorist reportedly told Abdullah he was hurriedly trying to disguise himself with his wife�s underclothing.

Beware of suspicious-looking men wearing women’s underwear.

Last night I saw Bill Maher make a good point regarding the debate spin cycle: it’s funny how these candidates spend the entire year trying to convince voters that his opponent can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. But then as the debate approaches, the other guy suddenly becomes one of the great orators of our time.

The secret contents of another intelligence “guess” have been disclosed:

The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, according to government officials.
The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President George W. Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.
One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein’s government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.

What can we glean from this?
(1) Someone in the intelligence community isn’t a happy camper and keeps leaking details from these classified reports;
(2) The meltdown formerly known as Iraq shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the Bush administration;
(3) The administration’s failure to plan for or respond to the insurgency demonstrates just how incompetent it is;
(4) There’s a good chance we’re generating more terrorism than we’re preventing by occupying Iraq.
How long do we have to repeatedly see this kind of information before American voters start to understand that pounding “resolve” into a podium is no substitute for sound foreign policy.

We’ve got four days for the political TV talking heads to hype up this week’s presidential debate. But just what kind of debate will we see?

Still, officials of the debate commission said they were agreeing primarily to those things Mr. Bush’s aides had emphasized as especially important to them: a strict time limit on candidate responses, an electronic warning when candidates exceed their speaking time that can be seen and heard by viewers at home, and a prohibition against the candidates’ directly posing questions to each other.

I don’t think the cosmetic and procedural rules are a big deal. But the latter condition–that candidates can’t question each other–is huge. Unless the moderator is really on top of it–and I don’t have great confidence he will be–it means that this “debate” will likely be little more than a glorified forum for the candidates to recite their canned talking points. Don’t expect a very substantive argument on the issues this Thursday night.

In Iraq, the U.S. government is risking thousands of American lives and spending hundreds of billions of dollars, allegedly in part to give Iraqi citizens the right to vote.
But here in America the government is threatening to disenfranchise thousands of newly-registered voters if their registration isn’t printed on 80-pound stock paper.
What a bizarre world we live in.
UPDATE: It may be even worse. According to this commenter, the Ohio Secretary of State itself distributed forms that don’t comply with the 80-pound requirement it is now attempting to enforce.