Conclusion

So there you have them all - all from the period of July to September 18th, that is, with an extra few tacked on for Biden just so he wouldn’t feel lonely.

Now it’s time for a little honesty on your behalf - some self-evaluation. Looking over the perfidy, distortion, fluffing and fumbling listed here, do you see comparison?

Do you feel degrees? Does the involvement of some subject matter surpass your standards of decency?

Ask yourself whether you would be comfortable making those statements about someone. Ask yourself how you would feel if they were put into the public record about you.

And above all, ask yourself whether you want to help put them into what is arguably the highest office of the greatest country in the world.

* * *

My thanks to Factcheck.org for their thorough review of the distortions in this campaign. I strongly suggest everyone who wants to be in the know go there and review their bipartisan work.

I also recommend ontheissues.org for diligent reviews of candidates’ positions.

Joe Biden reminds me why I support him on ‘Meet the Press’:

Iraq - Giving due credit to the Awakening and due scrutiny to Maliki:

Abortion:

Then Thomas Friedman reminds me why I support Obama, by coming out with a book that I thought of about a year ago - the argument that when it comes to either dooming American power or allowing it to flourish for a century as the leader of the world, the choice is now, the choice is clear and the choice is over energy technology:

Here we are, twenty minutes into the McCain speech.  Not much said so far that wasn’t biography.

Yet now, he mentions that he’ll introduce Palin to Washington.  Well, given that she sent Abramoff’s lobbyists there to win a record $27 million in earmarks when she was mayor of a town of about 7,000, I’d say they know her well.

This is not to mention the astonishing amounts of earmarks she’s won as Governor - a number of projects that pre-Campaign McCain denounced.

He then says that he fought to get “million dollar checks out of our elections.” This is laughable, considering the majority of his donations come from corporations - big business allowing him to raise a staggering amount that’s almost eclipsed Obama’s remarkable, entirely small-donor financed coffers.

Almost.

Petraeus is mentioned.  I am glad McCain stood for the troop increase, but he opposes the other key component of Petraeus’ plan - a political solution involving working with the Iraqi government to withdraw, withdraw on a time-table and withdraw soon.

McCain goes on awhile about “the party of Lincoln.”  No doubt the godfather of our Union is sighing about his party’s civil rights stances - I say this only given that Lincoln’s Republicans were very socially progressive.

Then he says Obama will raise people’s taxes.  Again, this isn’t true.  In fact, it’s such an important deception that I will blog on it tomorrow, providing you with a fact sheet with which to decide who benefits most from whose plans.

For now, he’s talking about everyone keeping their money.  I’ll let it sit for now.

Retraining is mentioned.  This is intriguing, and I’ll look into it now, but for some peculiar reason he notes that the jobs he provides with retraining will be lower in pay.

Education is next up - he wants to “empower parents with choice.”  Meritocracy among teachers is a good idea; Obama’s idea, that McCain is now explaining.  It seems like he’s just saying a voucher program is his concept.  Nevertheless, this too, like retraining, bears looking into.

He accuses Obama of wanting schools to “answer to entrenched unions and bureaucrats.” Patently untrue.  Obama is very, very upset about the unions - they weren’t so happy with Obama on this - and believes in both competitive pay and firings.

Declaration of drilling drives the crowd while, tragically.  With a maximum of 3% share of the world’s oil, drilling will do nothing but increase oil company profits - the tiny shift in the price of gas will be non-existent.  Think about how much a shift in the price of lemonade there would be if 0.5% more lemons were produced eight years from now.  I doubt it would be much.  But McCain would sell out our environment by overturning the Bush I-era ban on offshore drilling.

He then talks about security.  It sounds tough, but is absent of any specifics.

Then he says we have to “catch up to the future.”  This is a good thing.  No specifics, though, beyond that he’ll reach out his hand to anyone.

He says Obama doesn’t have the record of bi-partisanship he does.  This is wrong.  In Obama’s time in the Senate, he has become very close with many Republicans and initiated many bills with them.

McCain promises “transparency and accountability.”  His vicious attacks against the media and his stonewalling suggests that, if anything, he’ll be more averse to those qualities than Bush II has been.  This is a terrifying thought considering what’s happened on W’s watch - torture, domestic spying, secret meetings with oil companies, ruining political enemies and tailoring intelligence.

More POW talk.  I think this is number three or four.  He begins to talk graphically about his experienced in captivity, noting that it’s when his selfishness ended.

However, he notes that torture broke him.  I’m glad he says this, and not only because it punctures the tragic narrative of superhumanity that his campaign and surrogates have been spinning.  Not just because of the humanity of it.  It took courage.

He then ties it into how it made him become a servant of his country, and this, considering his record, I am not so sure about.  That he then turns it into a jab against Obama, I don’t much appreciate.

Then he has some good, “Stand up! Stand up and fight!” lines that wake the crowd up.

The End.

The Obama campaign has stuck by some hard calls: Ground troops in Pakistan. Moderation on guns and abortion. Not mandating health care.

They call it like it is. And, as if inspired by my article, they called McCain for what he is.

Obama campaign chief of staff Jim Messina slams McCain in a meeting with Iowa Democrats.

Speaking of McCain’s home state of Arizona, says:

“If Senator McCain continues to be the schmuck he’s being, we’re going to play there, you know, and go tell some truth.”

They best stand by it.

In many ways, Romney is McCain’s best choice on a very short list for VP. He’s erudite, practiced in all manner of political and financial enterprises, and can deliver both youth and policy achievement. He can offer change and claim actual experience in it.

He would also doom the McCain candidacy with that crucial right-wing bloc - Evangelicals.

They say Mr. Romney lacks trust on issues such as outlawing abortion and opposing same-sex marriage and because he is a Mormon.

This is another case of the snarl that right-wing politics has become, post-Rove. Bush’s electoral strength came from wielding wedge issues to get social reactionaries to vote against their pocket books - it blended big government corporate welfare and military belligerence with God, Guns and Gays into a witches brew as unpalatable as it was potent.

Now, without a born-again standard bearer, the GOP finds its ranks turning on itself. Economic conservatives snort derisively at social conservative issues as insipid or intolerant. Social conservatives feel increasingly uncomfortable with big business raiding the tax larder and playing fast and loose with the law. And the Evangelical community, galvanized by politically active preachers to “put a man of faith in the White House,” now finds itself fragmented into the spectrum of political ideas included in its congregation.

So the fact that Romney can present brass tacks plans to counter Obama come fall, all while keeping his conservative cred strong, gives little benefit to McCain. If the Arizona Senator was still going full bore with his maverick image, dismissing the megachurch crowd as “agents of intolerance” as he once did, that would be one thing.

Instead, McCain is driving toward the far right in fifth gear on social issues. He has condemned gay adoption, vowed to overturn Roe v. Wade and stood staunch by the Defense of Marriage Amendment - a platform that would make a libertarian right-winger cringe, but that’s candy for the religious right. Romney would be a lodestone in this scheme, not a foundation of good credentials.

I find that tragic, and not because it cuts Romney off the list. He may still get the nod, though it’s unlikely for the reasons above, because the other two on the list are feebs. One is Charlie Crist, whose formerly rising star is plummeting fast in his Governorship, Florida. The other is Bobby Jindal, a flip-flopping dingbat whose embrace of Creationism as science might win some born-agains, but not enough to offset a pathetic record.

It’s tragic because it underscores how badly the GOP needs a housecleaning. They have gone from the straight-shooting party of Barry Goldwater to a factious coalition of intolerants and greedheads, held together by a thinning party loyalty alone.

We see it in the dialogue of the Presidential campaign most of all, where the GOP candidate won’t talk about issues because, when the chips are down in any economic assessment of his plans, they show him coming up ethically and intellectually short.

McCain has hitched his wagon to this sad, sputtering train: A platform of massive benefits to the economic elite at the expense of services to all, of spiteful and fearful control over people’s moral decisions, of lies rather than legacy. His party needs to wise up to the future and get back to its small government roots.

Until then, talent like Romney is going to be tossed out as a sop to intolerance.

Out in theaters today is an appropriately raw-knuckle biopic on one of the few, true heroes of 20th century America - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Enjoy the preview.

Maliki wants a rematch, so he’s preparing to roll on the Red City by the Tigris - Al-Amarah, the Sadr militia stronghold in Iraq’s Deep South. The Second Battle of Amarah is about to begin.

But will the candidly named “Operation Imposing Law” be an actual battle? After all, Sadr City has been as docile as a Cesar-trained puppy after Maliki and the US clamped down, Dog Whisperer style, for a month-plus-long siege. Granted, Maliki hasn’t stirred the pot in Sadr City since it settled down and was occupied, but peace is peace.

Amarah is a little less than peaceful.

On Friday, American jets fired on militants who were trying to launch rockets at Iraqi security forces and coalition troops in Amarah, said Lt. Col. Chris Charleville, a U.S. military spokesman in Basra.

Located in the relatively boring former-British zone of control, Amarah showed itself to be of massive strategic importance back in the winter of ‘06. It was the poster-child for what kind of disaster a Coalition withdrawal could inspire, as the handover of control from the British to the Iraqi government resulted in a militia insurrection: The First Battle of Amarah.

Fighting began on October 19, when 800 masked members of the Mahdi army stormed three police stations in Amarah … By the end of the day the Mahdi Army had full control of Amarah.

Not that much of a battle, all in all: More like one side bulldozing the other by way of an organized riot. A truce brokered by the big winner, Moqtada al-Sadr, had the official Iraqi police back in charge soon after, but the government had got the message: This was Moqtada’s turf.

Which is why, after Maliki has undermined and occupied two of Sadr’s enclaves - Basra and Baghdad’s Sadr City - many of Moqtada’s main muckety-mucks have high-tailed it there.

One has to wonder whether that was part of the strategy all along: To bounce Sadr’s leaderless by way of relatively bloodless sieges from the high-profile fortress cities until they crawl into an out of the way place where the press can’t watch you butcher them en masse. Then again, it could just be that Amarah’s low on the list for the reasons of being the runt in Sadr’s family of urban holdings.

Whatever the case, we have another showdown in store. Sadr’s rapidly run out of locations to move shop to, so this could see a fight. Or it could underscore a quality of this chase, Maliki after Moqtada, that’s becoming increasingly clear: Inevitability.

One thing’s certain. There will soon be smoke over the Red City again.

The network media and CNN simply can’t halt themselves from fawning over Hillary’s departure - an event so complete I have been since loath to even mention her name lest she appear like some summer camp demoness or antediluvian deity.

The drab, monotone dictation she gave on Saturday sounded like it was delivered by a cross between Ben Stein and Megatron, but you wouldn’t have known it to listen to the flapping jaws who infest most channels. It was declared everything from “dignified” to “crackerjack” - made into a dewy-eyed redemptive moment where, to quote Joe Klein of TIME, Hillary “found her soul.”

It was, in actuality, just her reading off a well-worded, sufficient script in her usual grating cadence; when, that is, she could choke the words out.

Of course, we are supposed to take the mainstream media’s interpretation of it as gospel, as though they were not the same scandal-addicted lemmings that kept her candidacy alive - her very political career alive - in the first place. One can hear in Candy Crowley of CNN’s insistence to Obama - voiced no less than five times - that she is the preferred VP candidate, a desperate call by the muckrakers, air-heads and tabloid hawkers to keep the source of the shock-driven, sensationalist tripe they pass off as news alive.

It is pathetic, toxic and constant.

Yet thanks to new media, there may be a counter - a balm, if not a cure. For as Hillary learned the hard way, and as John McCain may discover to his dismay, the old means of an established politician simply ringing up his contributors and tightening to corporate tackle around the talking heads is no longer sufficient to strange truth.

Voices like that of Camile Paglia on Salon can be heard, speaking accurately of the marrow of Hillary’s concession, rather than trying to mask it to cover the scabrous remains of the Clinton name’s soiled legacy:

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the ecstatic media lockstep praising Hillary’s so-called concession speech last weekend. This is the same herd of sheep who bleated to Bush’s beat and brought us the Iraq fiasco. I first heard the speech on the radio as I was driving back to Philadelphia from a family event in upstate New York. I was shocked and appalled at Hillary’s inflammatory demagoguery, which was obviously intended to keep her candidacy alive through the August convention and beyond. The echo in the museum’s marble entry hall gave the event an eerily retro quality, as if it were a 1930s fascist rally. Hillary’s turgid, preachy rhythms were condescending and manipulative, and her climaxes were ear-splittingly strident. It was pure Evita, a cult of personality masquerading as populism. When I later saw the speech on TV, I was disgusted by how Hillary undercut her insultingly brief endorsement of Obama with a flat expression and cold, dead eyes. The only thing that got her blood racing was the blatantly stoked hysteria of her screeching worshipers.

Obama, attuned to this new means of orchestrating political power and message, has sought to counter the jabs of the Web with counter jabs in kind. He has begun an official Web site to shred the veils of lies about him and his wife spread by shockjocks and smear blogs with a blizzard of e-mails.

Fight the Smears is the site’s name, and it serves as a tool for media figures, political consultants and concerned citizens alike to get the good word out when they’re faced with distortions about Obama. It is, in sum, a new media solution to new media troubles.

These developments may alarm some - the increasing dominance of a somewhat unregulated dialogue in our body politic; a new kind of game piece on the political playing field. The criticism is voiced that there is no way of checking the facts of what is said via the internet - no way to inhibit information on the basis of truth, depth of meaning or social responsibility.

Yet I would counter to that, “How much restraint did we see in the media beforehand?”

Did network producers exercise more austerity and skepticism than the common blogger when they hyped the march up to the Iraq war as though it was a horse race between the thoroughbred Bush administration and some limping, limp-wrist leftie nags? Do stations like FOX and CNN invite guests like Michelle Malkin or Randy Rhodes, Al Sharpton or Ollie North on for any reason other than the possibility that they might say something inaccurate and scandalous? Do trust media outlets wholly owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch, Jane Fonda’s husband Ted Turner and defense-industry-Imperial-power General Electric to be without bias? Should we even expect that?

What new media brings to the table is an alternative to that monolith of voices. The networks still rein supreme, but they are impelled by the sheer momentum of the mob to speak of what’s spinning around the net. And as we have seen in this last primary campaign, it is truth - if will organized - that usually wins out.

More people viewed Obama’s speech on Race in Pennsylvania than they did the Jeremiah Wright videos online. Hillary’s Bosnia lie, her e-mails featuring Obama in foreign garb, her lies about his being a Muslim sleeper agent distributed through e-mail chains, were all exposed initially by new media - internet - sources. And when distortions like the out-of-context quotes by the Obamas bubble up from right-wing attack blogs, new media institutions like this blog, hundreds of others, and Fight the Smear.com react to counter it. Take for instance the smear against Mickey Kantor, which was shut down as rapidly and viciously as it hit the scene.

So when the Clinton camp laments the assault of new media, Drudge Report in particular, on their candidate as “unfair,” we hear the moaning of the unhorsed monarch, caged by their cumbersome armor and floundering the mud, as the pikeman marches inexorably over them to take the field: It’s the sound of entitlement unseated by the mob and by the truth of a new form of message supremacy, no inherently worse than its predecessor, and perhaps better given it’s more effective.

It’s free market media, emerging still but already strong. And the cry of “unfair” actually means that it is, at last, fair - no matter how much money and blackmail the Clintons had in their fist, they couldn’t keep things like their twisting NAFTA, farcical gas tax plan, assaults on Obama’s character from being exposed as the lies they were.

And the old media - the Gibsons, Crowleys and Courics - cry out like a chorus, grieving over the cracks in the court of scandal. The fools weep for their sovereign of sleaze, whose lunatic view of Primary metrics and populism-on-command couldn’t stop reality from casting her down. And considering the good they would have done us if she had succeeded, I am glad to hear they are becoming less relevant by the mouse-click.

The queen is dead. Long live King Mob.

Tragedy swept through villages in Kenya today, as a mob burned 15 women for withcraft and torched 50 houses.

Not that people don’t have the ability to invent all manner of justifications for violence, but it strikes me as particularly deranged that we still have “witches” being burned. 

Dissheveled men stood on decrepit street corners, but though they were handing out copies of the Koran to oncoming soldiers rather than wearing sandwich boards, the message is the same in Sadr City - “The End Is Nigh.” In this case, the end referred to is the end phase of the Sadr City siege - the part where Maliki decides to light the tinderbox fuse and hope the powder’s gone wet with age.

Yes, today the seven week siege of the 2.5 million strong suburb of Baghdad shifted into assault mode as Iraqi government forces rolled into the enclave. They were met by militia men loyal to rival cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and reluctant to fight.

The Iraqi soldiers and police passed burned-out shops and buildings pockmarked with bullet holes, signs of years of clashes. But many stores were open, and some residents came out to greet them. Some Mahdi Army fighters passed out copies of the Quran to the soldiers as a sign of good will.

The mood is high because Maliki has been taking a stiff hand with the Sadrites recently, leading to over a thousand dead, mostly women and children. During the siege, skirmishes were frequent and bloody affairs, as militiamen tested the cordon and found it firm, and Iraqi and US forces poked at the hornet nest.

Now the militias seem to have accepted their situation. However, Maliki’s show of force today was just that - a show. His inauguration of the siege’s new phase was little more than a joyride through Indian country. That Muqtada decided not to shoot up his “Sunday stroll en force” shows only that he is, as before, waiting for Maliki to up the ante.

This is a good sign for Americans and Iraqis in many ways. Muqtada knows he’s short on chips these days, and so he’s not taking big risks or bluffing loudly like usual. With him being reactive rather than proactive, this is an opportunity for Iraq’s governing body to make big gains the Mahdi Army would have otherwise denied them.

Here’s the bad news: All Maliki really wants is to eliminate his chief rival for the title of Iran’s BFF. He wants to disarm the militias; nothing more - not restore sanitation services to the Sadrites, not look for moderates among their local political fold, and certainly not distance himself from Iran.

Muqtada knows it, and so he - bitter fellow that he is - is going to cling to his guns and his religion. Without his arms, his image is neutered politically and he loses his means of doing a violent end run on the government if he doesn’t like them. Without religious support, he’s adrift without any allies outside his insular nationalist party.

So, if Maliki pushes Muqtada, Muqtada may as well go all in. Unless promised some cushy desk job where he might lick his wounds while Maliki’s Dawah party rules unopposed among Shia, his best bet is to stop Maliki from taking his guns and religion. He is, to draw another parallel with the ‘08 Democratic Primary, best served by a Tonya Harding Offensive - rip into a fellow Shia as hard as possible until the country realizes Maliki’s too damaged, politically and in real monetary and military terms.

Then, he hopes, a miracle will come in the form of people like Ayatollah al-Sistani, the grayest beard among the Shia graybeards, who will try to broker a power-sharing agreement between Muq and Mal.

But one way or another, the fuse is lit. Maliki’s guns are in Muqtada’s streets, and it’s just a matter of time before he begins knocking on doors to try to take Muqtada’s men and materiel away from him. If Muqtada calls his bluff, Sadr City is going to explode.

If not, we’re looking at the first major Iraqi strategic victory.

In an article entitled “Petraeus promotion ensures future for Bush war plan,” the customarily clever Julian Barnes asserted just that. But if one looks beyond the MoveOn ads and public babble, to the deeds on the field, another view comes clear: The opposite is true.

Barnes has it right in only one regard:

Petraeus has been the prime advocate of Bush’s policy of a large troop presence in Iraq. By naming Petraeus to a job that lasts into the next administration, Bush ensures that the new president will confront the military’s strongest voice for maintaining a big force in Iraq.

This is, however, not because Petraeus is a Bush shill. It is because he is smart. The lesson from the beginning about the Iraq war has been that a massive troop presence has been and will be necessary. If one was to go at all - and it was such a stupid idea that even a victory there would be tantamount to a defeat - one had to go large.

Critics of Bush should be the first to acknowledge this. Bush is known for bottomless defense contract projects to private military companies. He is famed for not having enough troops to protect Iraqis, their natural treasures or their infrastructure, beside the oil ministry. His lack of troops left weapon caches unguarded, neighborhoods vulnerable to ethnic cleansing and our forces outstripped.

That Petraeus knows that he has to correct the basic inadequacy Bush inflicted on our threadbare military presence speaks to his intelligence. Now that we are in that strategic disaster, we need to have at least the minimum of troops necessary to accomplish our limited mission there.

But beyond this accidental similarity, Bush and Petraeus are fiercely divergent. Petraeus is a more devious and determined opponent to Bush’s policies than Moktada al-Sadr. A glance at the past shows this.

Remember how we support the Maliki government? As soon as Petraeus got in, he began raiding the militias that Maliki’s people were using to suck in arms from Iran. Maliki denounced him.

And remember how we don’t talk to terrorists, and are just fighting rogue elements? Petraeus’ arrival saw him cut a deal with Moktada al-Sadr via his Intelligence personnel, in defiance of Maliki and Bush both.

And remember all those contractors? Petraeus’ tenure has seen a shift away from the robber baron corporate handling of Iraq, with more local talent and Armed Forces’ elbow grease. It’s hardly an end to the defense industry bonanza, but he does what he can, and he does it in defiance of the “Bush war plan.”

It’s uncertain how this will pan out, regionally. Petraeus is almost certain to keep his focus on the clearest target America has: Al-Qaeda. That means a shift to Afghanistan. Even Barnes admits Petraeus’ control of “The Other War” means a change from the “Hold on for dear life” strategy we have now:

…as Centcom commander, Petraeus will have plenty of opportunities to inject new ideas into the Afghanistan fight. Petraeus knows how to work with allied commanders, and his reputation will ensure that people listen to his ideas, Crane said.

“This job will give Gen. Petraeus more of a chance to influence what is going on in Afghanistan,” said Crane, a retired Army colonel who helped Petraeus write the Army’s 2006 counterinsurgency field manual.

“If you were someone who thought Afghanistan was in need of a fresh approach, you should be excited about Gen. Petraeus’ appointment.”

Along with Afghanistan’s warring tribes and opium-dependent economy, Petraeus will inherit the problems of al-Qaeda’s actual core, Pakistan, and its brain and bloodstream, Saudi Arabia.

He will also be given power over the realm of the pirates off the enormous Horn of Africa, who this week struck twice again to seize hostages for ransom.

And, lastly and yet most significantly for the strategic direction of the US in the region, he will be given watch over the two nuclear aspirants in the Middle East - Syria and Iran. Balancing belligerence to counter actual belligerence from both nations, in Lebanon and Iraq respectively, will be a delicate act. It will surely win him little favor with the anti-war set, as Petraeus will not permit Iranian meddling in Iraq. But so long as there are opportunities for peace, as well as war, to exploit, Petraeus has shown himself canny to detect and seize on them. Syria’s proposal of a lasting peace agreement with Israel, centered around an exchange of control over the Golan Heights, could be such a promise.

Syria has said it will wait for a new administration to take power in the USA before actual talks with Israel begin. Just like with the missions in the various nations Petraeus takes over, so much depends on a new commander-in-chief in Washington.

Yet this much is certan: To look at Petraeus’ actual record is not to see a commander dedicated to a failed war policy. It is a portait of someone, like many Americans, who has simply been doing his level best to clean up the messes of the administration. It is not the promise of a continuation, but of change we can believe in.

Last Saturday, I posted a video that was a melange of Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s more outrageous statements on The View - a video inspired by Barack Obama’s point that if someone laced together Hasselbeck’s more extreme statements, she would come off looking worse than she wholly is, much as Rev. Wright did.

Convinced that Hasselbeck was deserving of a few good laughs at her expense, I wholeheartedly agreed with the experiment. But given that I am, ultimately, of a sympathetic spirit with Obama in that I want to embrace various points of view and find the worth in all, I then looked into her tenure in the public eye.

Read the rest of the article »

Half a world away from the battles over the American future being fought in the polling stations, a substantial stage of victory for the American future in Iraq has been reached: Anbar province has been slated to return to Iraqi security control in March.

In many ways, this announcement substantially clarifies the character of the Iraq War for those who care to look closely.

First and foremost, it brings to light the most critical trend in the key strategic elements in Iraq - that our forces must begin to draw down their presence, even in vital regions of the conflict. It is a matter of practicality that the astonishing endurance of our troops and materiel overseas has to be renewed by circulation back to home bases. Yet on this practical inevitability hinges the fate of the country’s security; the US remains a strong player in the situation, and the reduction of its role will surely have an effect. Whether it is a slight bump or an opportunity for al-Qaeda or Iran to blow the door wide open again remains to be seen.

Second, it takes some of the air out of the obnoxious argument that “timetables” are a sure course to defeat. They are not; they are the reality of war - Soviet Russia understood it had a ‘timetable’ as far as the winter stall of the German offensive in 1941 was concerned; our forces in the first Gulf War had a set window in which to build up and then to draw down. Timetables are the sinews of military planning, not the recipe for retreat some politicians would have us believe. The announcement some months in advance - as is customary - that we will be turning Anbar province over the Iraqis shows that those politicians who claim both military wisdom and contempt for timetables are fools or liars. The reality on the ground dictates a set time for the transfer, and we will see it through.

Through to where? That’s point number three: The character of the Iraq war is increasingly evident as dependent on Iraqis providing their own security. This was actually always the case. The ratio of land the Iraqis occupy, the forces they have, have not changed appreciably - their loyalties, however, are another matter. This underscores what a debacle disbanding the Iraqi Army in 2003 was: We spent some three years fighting the people who should have been - and now are - doing our security work for us. They were busy that entire time struggling for their nation’s security; the problem was they were doing it against us. Now we have proficient, organized and essentially entrenched militias cohering into provincial governments, and working alongside us. This hand over of Anbar is mostly just ceremony to the close observer: The militias there had previously denied the province to us; now they’re denying it to al-Qaeda.

Lastly, the significance is in how this transfer is going about. The article frames this salient aspect in a passage of criticism here:

Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.

The italic emphasis in this passage is mine - the slow progress is what’s important. However, it’s not important because of its negative value, but its positive: Namely, that the Iraqi police and army have been undergoing some thorough, painstaking changes to weed out sectarian and militia influence. They are falling short of their expected development because the US and the head of the Iraqi police are prioritizing political reliability over quick production of units.

All this amounts to many practical factors that benefit our aims for a stable Iraq. They do not, however, amount to a “success of the surge.” For good or ill, the surge’s stated objectives included political reconciliation legislation and development of a government infrastructure extending from the parliament - revenue sharing, provincial elections and constitutional reform. None of these things have been advanced by Prime Minister al-Maliki’s government. None. All the advances I listed - from provincial stability to improvements in the police and army - have been done behind al-Maliki’s back, often against him. The tribal leaders in Anbar may hold real power, but it is illegal power.

The Administration is doing nothing different to change the situation. While Petraeus achieves what had been considered impossible by some, and is in opposition to Baghdad by any measure, the White House plays the same tape we’ve heard for years:

Gates also said he was encouraged by security gains achieved in Anbar and Baghdad in the year since President Bush ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to those areas of Iraq in what became known as a “surge.” Gates said it has created new promise for long-delayed political reconciliation.

“We clearly are hoping that the reconciliation and improvement in the political environment that has taken place at the local and provincial level over the past number of months will now meet further progress coming at the national level,” Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

They’ve been “hoping” since 2004. To coin a phrase, “hope isn’t a strategy.” Then again, as far as this White House is concerned, it’s more than just a strategy. It’s seemingly a religion.

Fortunately, the re-energized and defiant command of Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs has kept things dynamic and moving in the right direction. A large offensive against al-Qaeda’s residual strongholds began last week and, with some considerable muscle behind it, has made significant tactical gains. This is fortunate for a country that is enjoying better levels of stability by the day - an objective positive.

But this announcement of stability in Anbar underscores that. The transfer of power underscores the promise of the factors that have composed it. But at face value, it is a reminder that fortune is emphemeral:

Because at face value, it is a story of how the military brilliance that has borne us thus far despite the politicians will not and should not be around for much longer.

The news is that I’m still alive, despite some extensive evidence to the contrary. This blog has been quiet not because I have been quiet, but because I’ve been devoting all my spare time to barking orders at movers, muttering to other harried co-workers and wheezing with manual labor. As that is not news that’s fit to print - and as I only just got cable restored - this blog has had to watch the world go by with nary a snide stitch of print to show for it.

I’m still not entirely capable of higher brain function, so I’m going to use this time and space to pound out a quick review of what news caught my eye in between dusty boxes of Miracleman comics and Foreign Affairs Quarterly. The rabid, razor-tusked elephant in the room is, of course, the controlled calamity in Pakistan. The mask is really starting to slip over there, showing the inhabitants of what was believed to be a free-wheeling, free-speaking first-world country is really the reactionary military junta everyone in the know said it was. That, however, is a whole other article. We have punchy headlines to sort through. On with the show - our week in review:

First and foremost to cause me joy, Hillary Clinton is finally getting notice for being the evasive, establishment, empty-suit corporate shill that she is. Naturally, all her press handlers and pals tried to turn this seachange into a pity party predicated on a supposed “dog pile” during the debates on the 30th, but there’s not much too that. The debate might’ve catalyzed the change, but it was really Russert who was concerned with putting the screws to her, and as for the other Democrats taking shots at her, that’s nothing new. They swing away at whoever’s a convenient target - as the top slot usually is. Check out my past articles on the debates for a review of that.

In any event, she’s becoming more vulnerable. Her decidedly half-baked solutions to urgent issues are getting more light cast on them - albeit light that begins as pinpricks on non-issues like driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, but spreads to matters like her shady Chinese money, her stance on gay marriage and gay rights, and her thuggish, bland posture on defense strategy in Iraq and Iran. Now there’s enough blood in the water that the media’s decided to spin a new story: After setting her up as a Superman in a tasteful pantsuit, they’re now going to tear her down. If there was any question it’s official, there’s a new, snazzy term - alliteration and all - doing the rounds on the political wires: The Clinton Collapse.

And by contrast, the only decent candidate with double-digit polls, Barack Obama, is getting due recognition again. He gave a bang-up speech at the Iowa caucus, according to the DesMoines Register, setting himself ahead of the herd while delivering a back-kick to Senator Clinton:

The passion he showed should help him close the gap on Hillary Clinton by tipping some undecided caucusgoers his way.

His oratory was moving, and he successfully contrasted himself with the others — especially Clinton — without being snide or nasty about it.

That was an important thing for him to do. Historically, the Iowa party’s “JJ” dinner is a landmark event in Democratic presidential caucus campaigns. All the key party activists, donors and players are present. This year, about 9,000 of them showed up.

Meanwhile, as the quaint forces of cause-and-effect continue to align, we can expect the pendulums to keep swinging: Barack Obama getting more gold stars next to his name, and Clinton more black marks. Already there’s news of Clinton repeatedly - despite promises not to - planting questioners in crowds to control Q&A sessions and taking yet more shady money. And as the weight of these nasty tales accumulates, and her grip slips, more attention’s going to be paid to one of the more critical and disturbing traits of the Clinton campaign: A ruthless, negative, scary media control that makes Bush’s campaigns look like an era of openess.

As my least favorite rag, The New Republic, reports:

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record–”They’re too smart,” one furtively confides. “They’ll figure out who I am”–privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary’s aides don’t hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters’ jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. “They’re frightening!” says one reporter who has covered Clinton. “They don’t see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game.”

That kind of attitude is extremely dangerous for an executive to have, as the past seven years of shiftless Presidency and a steel-bunker VP have shown. We don’t need someone to barge into the White House by way of being /worse/ behaved than their predecessors. And while I generally detest ad hominem coverage of candidates - focusing on their foibles rather than the faults in their policy - I have to say that this criticism of Clinton is due. As much as true blue lefties bearing Hillary’s banner might wish that the jabs at their Leading Lady are just the same as when Gore was sneered at for having claimed he “invented the internet”, it is not so.

Gore’s coverage did indeed make a whole lot of something out of nothing - the media leapt on missteps in his speeches, on minor inaccuracies in statements that had nothing to do with his presidency. In Hillary’s case, the attention is being paid to a dangerous, steady trend of awful behavior: Deciding that the best way to beat ‘the bad guys’ is by becoming worse. Thing is, her policies aren’t such that she’s much better than the outgoing ‘bad guys’ to begin with, and, frankly, we don’t need to do worse. Not when candidates like Obama prove we can do better.

Oh, and I almost forgot…

…the most important story of this week…

…Supermouse!

A GENETICALLY engineered “supermouse” has stunned scientists with its physical abilities.

The mouse can run up to six kilometres at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping, British newspaper The Independent reports…

The Iowa debates underscored two significant points about the Republican candidates to date: None seems close to a sure thing; most seem incapable of talking directly about what policy they’d significantly change if elected. The latter is a product of being incapable of criticizing a President from one’s own party, even when the electorate seems to expect little more bona fides from their representatives. The former’s cause will be evident below as we review the morass of platitudes, perfidy and madness that was the Sunday morning ABC GOP Debates in Iowa.

Rather than nail all the issues one by one, I’ll do this by candidate, giving you a re-cap of their performance and then pointing out highlights. We’ll start with my favorite would-be world leader:

TOMMY THOMPSON: Yes, that’s right. I’m a supporter of The Other Thompson, if made to choose from the GOP corral.

Thompson was given all of 47 seconds by George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos, the moderator, seemed incapable of instituting order beyond keeping that wild man, Thompson, in line. I’m not sure Thompson even had a chance to answer the closing question about what new quality he would bring to the Oval Office.

To the extent he did answer, Thompson was intelligent and articulate, though not “as ever”. He started slow, lost answering a question about the abortion issue with a response that was more an analysis of the importance of ideological loyalty in national polling of candidates.

However, he touched on actual plans for things - Iraq, with the emphasis he demands be placed on provincial elections and on oil revenue sharing - and so did a fair shake better than many who had ten times more time to speak.

ROMNEY: Romney’s green light must’ve been broken. Either that, or he purchased the network before the debate in order to be able to go on after his time elapsed. And he did go on, and on, and on.

His main problem wasn’t how much he said so much as what he was saying. Romney has taken a page from Hilary Clinton’s book; he evades talking publicly about his plans or proposals on issues, he piggybacks on the popular points of other candidates and expresses them with more conviction, he is relentlessly negative and on message and then laments that everyone else is so negative and robotic in their responses. He is, in essence, the worst of dirty tricksters in public.

That having been said, he differs significantly from Hilary in that both his website and his writings of late have presented substantial policy proposals. It is almost as if he’s acting on the premise that the majority of the public should and wants to be treated like a mob of sentimentalist morons - a notion Hilary’s national poll numbers seem to support - while giving anybody who cares enough about politics to look into his positions a real treat: articulate, innovative, realistic policies.

Damn cunning if that’s the case. That’s a quality that could go both ways with me. It will definitely beat Hilary at her own game if they both make the nationals - she’ll be the one without substantial proposals, without actual success at health care, and with a still-nervous electorate favoring a “daddy government” approach. Perhaps right wing media agenda-setters like Drudge and Limbaugh have already taken into account; they relentlessly assault Obama while keeping Hilary sneered at but not yet bitten badly.

MCCAIN: Speaking of bitten badly, John McCain seemed like he was suffering from a resurgence of malaria. He ambled through his usual line about being the most experienced and prepared candidate on the stage, and it came off sounding less like a support for his Presidency and more like an excuse for a nap.

Otherwise, he took stock Republican positions. Abortion was bad; he’d always been against it, really.

Just as an aside, I’m finding it bitterly amusing how an incumbent President’s positions on an issue defines the tone for the candidates of their own party. It means that textbook moderates like McCain and Giuliani have to deliver shining-eyed lamentations about the loss of the culture of life in America. McCain took that to a bit of an extreme, sounding like the inheritor of Jerry Falwell’s logic schemes when he declared that abortion was most definitely a national security matter. Saying that the rights of the unborn are a key element to defeating Islamic extremism did not lend credence to his other policy declarations.

GIULIANI: Rudy spent most of the debate talking about qualifications, but not about issues or plans. He deserves more print than he gets here, as he was calmer and more artful than ever before on the podium. But until he throws out a plan for victory in the War on Terror beyond “we should win it”, I feel both commentary and a vote are held back.

On the other hand, he did talk about how important providing the basic securities and amenities to failing and developing nations was in order to incubate democracy in them. Kudos on that.

BROWNBACK: Brownback seemed rather learned this go-around on matters of taxes and foreign affairs. He advanced a “three state solution”, which I’ve never embraced nor dismissed entirely but give credit to for at least being a plan, and talked about health care depending more on fair market forces than on simply creating vast entitlements.

However, in case this in any way sounds appealing, Brownback made his defining statement of assuming the Presidency an oath to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if this position appeals, bear in mind how realistic a candidate is the one who declares that his defining cause.

HUCKABEE: Huckabee seems a likeable populist with some good principles, but his proposed practices - such as linking Congress’ fate with every citizen’s in terms of health care - lack the applicability to match their folksy charm. Otherwise, he spent most of his scarce time merely being likeable.

HUNTER: Duncan Hunter spent most of his time being unlikeable - roaring out more sound and fury signifying nothing, like proposing we win the war by “we’ve got to win it”, and “elevate the family”, and other such angry Dad kind of lines. However, to those who are stirred by such fanfare, remember that as brave as angry Dad is, he still needs to know how to feed, house and protect you kids, not just be mad.

PAUL: Ron Paul spent most of his time being John Locke. He expressed numerous libertarian philosophical talking points. These, along with the usual tantrum of a position he has on Iraq withdrawal, played to the crowd well. But as much as isolationism has charm in many regards - moral objectivity, prioritizing the care of our people beyond the commitments to the world we’ve made - it comes with terrific cost. It would be a long and alarming road, and though I am sure some President will doubtless lead us down it in the future, Ron Paul is not to be that President.

TANCREDO: We save the best for last. Tom Tancredo is the best candidate out there - for the position of Warrior Pope. As a Presidential candidate, he is the iron-eyed avatar of all America’s angers and ills, and so utterly inappropriate in a world where reason, not raw fury, leads to victory.

I don’t mean to entirely snub Tancredo - his ambition is laudable, his conviction certainly beyond doubt and some of his deeds as a Congressman, especially during the Beslan school shootings, extraordinary in generosity and effort. That all being said, he comes off sounding like Conan on crank.

First he defended his comments that as a tactic in the war on terror, he would, as President, threaten to bomb the sites of Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina into annihilation. Now granted, he was talking about “ultimate” responses to an “ultimate” threat - a nuclear bomb set off in the US. Nevertheless, if ever there was a strategy designed to unite all Muslims of the world against us and truly cast the entire conflict in the dynamic of holy war that the extremists on either side view it as, that would be it.

Then Stephanopoulos commented to him that the State Department had criticized his comments as being inflammatory. Tancredo responded that, “when I’m criticized by the State Department, I know I’m doing something right”, or something to that effect.

Sure, Tom - it doesn’t get more granola than the leftie pinkos in the Bush White House’s State Department.

So, after going on about bombing holy sites and securing our borders and all manner of other quasi-hostile talking points, Tancredo delivered what would be the closing aria in this piece of political theatre:

He had been asked what his defining mistake was. Without missing a beat, the guy who made McCain look like a pacifist by comparison responded, “Not realizing sooner that Jesus Christ was my personal savior.”

And that, in a nutshell you might say, was the Iowa GOP Debate.