Well, that's no way to start a News Conference So here I am, watching IMUS (who like a Vampire sucks the life out of me day by day) on MSNBC -- because someone has to. So Colin Powell makes a surprised, "staged" visit to Baghdad and is standing there with Paul Bremer at a News Conference -- and standing and standing and standing. Meanwhile the translator for someone ostensibly from the "Arab" media is reading off what constitutes a harangue against the United States Occupation and death of two Arab journalists, "at the hands of the Americans". This speech goes on another two or three minutes and finally about a third of the journalists (referred to as the Arab Journalists) march out saying they are boycotting the newsconference. A few thoughts come to mind... 1. Powell will certainly not be bringing up foreigner's preference for Kerry again; 2. Maybe that Al Queda endorsement for Bush wasn't a fraud; 3. Winning hearts and minds...Your Bush Administration Foreign Policy Team! 4. Colin Powell at least let's a harangue occur, and true, that kind of statement would not have been possible a year ago. But, um, that's kind of both a happy and a sad statement about Bush's Iraqi invasion isn't it? 5. Powell, while he has gone down substantially in my eyes, just allowed a protest within a mile of him, something the President cannot bear to have happen in his royal presence. 6. Arab journalists, when not going on diatribes, at least ask challenging questions compared to their American counterparts who frankly continue, by and large, act as if they are covering a flood in Louisiana as opposed to an occupation with frightening possibilities to our long-term future.