Do not mourn the defense secretary. Mourn his victims. There were nearly too many to tally, but his Pentagon refused to count anyway.

Maria interviews Rafael Shimunov, the man who made a video in which scenes of the consequences of the Iraq war are shown behind Ellen Degeneres’ apology for being friends with noted genocidal war criminal George Bush. "So basically I just got really upset… I’d thought her response would be an apology. And then it occurred to me that she was standing in front of her set, in blue, like, a single color. Like a natural green screen, but just blue. So I could put any image behind her, to make the point. "So then I had to go through all of the Iraq War images, and choose, kind of… I still can’t get a lot of those images out of my head, images I’ve never seen before, that I was searching through but didn’t select, because they would just have been flagged as graphic. There was a lot of imagery that I couldn’t use. I had to censor myself, ironically, because if I’d chosen those images, they wouldn’t have been seen: Modern images of the aftereffects, of children being born today, with fatal deformities and things like that, because of the war."

A Chris Hayes essay turned into a comic. *Very good.* How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.

A good interview, and explains Obama's long-game strategy explicitly. His indignation at progressives and Democrats complaining about the state of things when much has actually been accomplished is reasonable, but his final statement bothers me. "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that's what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we've got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." OK, but what does that mean? What's going to make a difference with ten-to-one odds and enormous corporations and special-interest groups lined up on the other side? Your base gave you a lot of money to help you get elected, but is that what you're asking them to do again, deep in a recession? They need direction, advice, some instruction or insight. What exactly do you want us to 'try harder' at?

"As the TSA feels you up and dresses you down, terrorists are tearing a hole in a new target: The U.S. economy."

"So why not look for constructive things to use the military for? Why not get some use out of our military resources—particularly if that use makes it less likely that we’ll need to use the military for more violent purposes?"

"If somebody you care about is bleeding profusely, it’s not loving to insist that she’s flawless and has nothing to worry about. The loving thing is to stop the bleeding then get her to a doctor. If a guy is clearly suffering from blood poisoning, ignoring the problem isn’t loving. Instead, say, 'Dude. You need to get that looked at immediately.' Or, better yet, go with him. Do what you can to make things better."

On the situation in Afghanistan and how, step-by-step and with troops we already have, we can start to fix it. "It's still winnable, but only just."

Scary lecture on torture techniques by Dr. Larry Forness of the American Military University in 2005. "I fill a syringe with the pig’s blood and threaten to inject him in the arm. The prisoner will talk -- and quickly."

America's latest "Hitler" is Ahmadinejad, Iraq is Bush's Vietnam, and the NYTimes "failed the First Amendment." "You'd think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again." But "there is no learning."

A documentary on the interminable and massive mess that is the Iraq War.