A deputy editor for the major establishment newspaper, the Washington Post, has written a column that belatedly marks the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq while at the same time claiming he has learned a “lesson” that leads him to conclude there is a need for US intervention in Syria.

The acting head of the CIA’s clandestine service—the first woman to ever hold the position for any period of time—is being considered for the position. But, as reported, her professional history in the agency includes signing off on the destruction of torture tapes with former CIA Counterterrorism Center head, Jose Rodriguez.

The latest turn in the implosion of the Daily Caller‘s months-long effort to smear US Senator Robert Menendez has been the sudden self-injection of none other than Roger Stone into the public debate on this topic, via a series of somewhat desperate-sounding late-Sunday night tweets, all done in the space of an hour.

The establishment press is not enjoying the 10 year anniversary of the American the invasion of Iraq. First the former New York Times Executive Editor admits the paper failed to accurately report the news, even being co-conspirators with the Bush Administration. And now another well established institution of journalism, the Washington Post, has been caught spiking a story by Greg Mitchell on the media failures that helped lead to the Iraq War.

Actually, two Washington Post Op-Eds. Yet we can dispense with one as not worthy of attention: one columnist continues his self-contradictory campaign of earlier pieces to arm the “moderates” among the rebels in the particular case of Syria in order to keep that conflict from getting even worse. (The rest of the regular Tuesday lineup is filled out with making fun of the recent CPAC conference, and calling for legislation to forbid food stamp purchases of “junk foods.” Big issues, these.)

But let’s get serious. On March 19, 2003, U.S. troops invaded Iraq to inaugurate a conflict that would cost over 4000 American and untold numbers of Iraqi lives and at least a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayers’ money.

We get five statements this time that are actually believed by significant numbers of people, and that for the most part are actually false. There are still elephants in the room, which I’ll get to, but for the moment I’ll give DC’s paper of record its due.

Most Americans support the basic idea of a five percent across the board cut in federal spending, which is effectively what the sequester is. According to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, 61 percent support a 5 percent in overall federal spending while only 33 percent oppose the idea.

Not surprisingly after the leaders of both major parties spend years claiming that deficit reduction is super important the American people are willing to support the general idea of cuts.

After duly referencing Robert Redford Bob Woodward’s version of this charge offered the other day, M&O say it’s too simple. They claim that the idea emerged through 2011 negotiations between “the parties,” who proposed a super-committee to iron out a deficit-reduction plan, and a sequester as something “designed to be so potentially destructive that the supercommittee would surely reach a deal to avert it.” They say that O never envisaged the possibility that it would actually happen.

Last summer a scandal at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville jolted U. S. academia, as well as a good chunk of the general populace in the State and in neighboring Washington, DC. The governor-appointed Rector of the school’s “Board of Visitors,” the Tidewater-area businesswoman Helen Dragas, worked behind the back of the school’s President, Teresa Sullivan, to secure the support of a majority of the board for the latter’s ouster.

There has been a certain amount of rhetoric to the effect that Dragas and Sullivan have worked well together following the latter’s reinstatement, with no bad blood between them, but now there is a new flareup.

President Obama’s national campaign to blame the Republicans for the sequester cuts taking place has only partly succeeded so far. A new Washington Post poll finds 44 percent of voters would blame the Congressional Republicans more for failing to reach a deal.