If you've heard about this, you've very likely been blogging

I found it in the Daily Star (Lebanon) for August 12.

Washington (Agence France Press) - The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorize $500 million for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas" - and warned Muslim clerics against providing "ideological sanctuary" to radicals.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces - not just armies - to counter terrorism and insurgencies." ...

No specific beneficiaries of the program were identified, but US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about vast tracts of land along the Afghan-Pakistani border, in Iraq, the Caucasus, Horn of Africa and various islands in the Philippines where radical Islamic fighters could set up shop.

More bluntly put, the Wolfman wants to establish armies of US-funded and directed guerrillas across the world to extend our power into places where the use of our own troops would be ineffective or inadvisable.

In an editorial the next day, the Star said that

[w]e appreciate that strange things happen during an American presidential campaign, but the weirdness meter is bursting through the roof in Washington this week - to judge by the Pentagon's proposal to Congress to provide $500 million to build a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas." ... (Never mind for the moment if Wolfowitz's list of remote, ungovernable regions that offer sanctuary and planning venues for terrorists include places like the suburbs of Newark, New Jersey and Buffalo, New York, or Madrid, Spain; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; or Hamburg, Germany, all of which generated serious terrorist activity).

Of course, just proposing to set up what amounts to a network of mercenaries wasn't enough of a sweeping vision for W-man.

In his testimony, Wolfowitz also suggested expanding the scope of the war on terror by including into the list of its possible targets radical Islamic clerics, who, in his words, provide "ideological sanctuary" to terrorism.

In addition, Wolfowitz called for tightening control over international communication networks, including the internet. ...

"There should be no room in this world for governments that support terrorism, no ungoverned areas where terrorist can operate with impunity, no easy opportunities for terrorists to abuse the freedom of democratic societies, no ideological sanctuary, and no free pass to exploit the technologies of communications to serve terrorist ends," Wolfowitz insisted.

Wolfowitz did not say what additional measures could be taken to prevent terrorists from exploiting freedoms in the US, but pointed out it would involve "difficult decisions."

Actually, I can think of an easy decision: Get him the professional help he so desperately needs.

And if you were wondering what I meant by the headline on this post, it's that unless you were busily checking out some weblogs (and ones beyond Atrios and Daily Kos, too), you were probably unaware of the story.

AP covered the hearings but did not mention Wolfowitz's proposal. Ditto for the Washington Post, Reuters, and the Voice of America. The New York Times articles for that date are now in a for-pay archive, but the headlines and summaries give no hint of a mention.

By comparison, in the course of looking I found coverage of the Wolf's proposal in papers in Pakistan, Malaysia, and Lebanon, most of them relying on the AFP wire story, and while Yahoo! news' regular site had no link to any story, it's Singapore gateway did. In addition, Radio Australia had an interview with an opposition MP in Pakistan partly in response to Wolfotwit's proposal.

Interestingly, those are all south Asia and the Pacific.

But in the US media, as far as I found, bupkis. Apparently it was not considered worth noting.