Filling in

It's my co-blogger and fan-in-mourning Sim who is better known for early-morning Hitch-fests. Given that he's in mourning and abstaining from all things blog related, I figured I'd take a stab at it.

Hitchens appeared on Hugh's show yesterday, drawn into a discussion about Iraq; most specifically about ever-present comparisons to Vietnam. The most vivid and thought provoking moments came at the end, when pressed on the question of culpability should we leave and Iraq fall into chaos:

HH: Christopher Hitchens, when we went to break, I posed to you this question. How is it possible for anti-war activists, as you were during Vietnam, to not be culpable for the Cambodian holocaust, and at the same time that those arguing for cut and run today would in fact be culpable for the chaos and the slaughter that would follow in Iraq, if their advice to cut and run was in fact followed?

CH: Right. Well, deep breath, then. The American enterprise in Indochina was, I think, foredoomed by one thing, namely its direct inheritance from French colonialism in that region. The French empire should never have been restored after 1945. I think if President Roosevelt had not died, it wouldn’t have been. The United States should not have tried to come to its rescue, and shouldn’t have tried to succeed it. It’s not America’s role to succeed Western colonialism. It’s its role to help those colonies to become emancipated. And we missed that chance, and having missed it, engaged in a war where terrifying and illegal methods of warfare, like carpet bombing, the use of chemical defoliant, like Agent Orange, and other terrible war crimes were committed. And part of the reason why Cambodia went to year zero was that it had been half bombed back into the Stone Age already. And I’m sorry that should be on the conscience of anyone who supported the war, which I did not. But thought I don’t try and evade the responsibility for what the other side eventually did, not just in Cambodia, but also in Vietnam, but there was never any chance of keeping Vietnam partitioned, and it shouldn’t have been tried. Now furthermore, no American interest was really involved there. We were told we were fighting against the Chinese takeover, whereas the best insurance against Maoism in Indochina is always Vietam. That’s been proved many times since then. So none of this applies in the case of Iraq, where we went to overthrow a hideous dictatorship that was a local aggressor, a sponsor of international terrorism, had used weapons of mass destruction inside and outside its own borders, was hated by its people, and was in thoroughgoing breach of all important United Nations resolutions. None of this, by the way, was the case with the government of Vietnam. Where furthermore, let’s not be shy about it, we do have a crucial interest, first in keeping the Gulf open, and its oil available, not just for us, but for everybody else, getting it pumped again, particularly important to pump Iraqi oil, because we need to undercut the monopolies of Saudi Arabia and Iran in the area. That’s a vital interest. Second, I don’t think that a single Democrat who doesn’t agree that we are in fact in some kind of war, however defined, with Islamic extremism, and not just in the Middle East either, but in Indonesia, and on the streets of European capitol cities, and that it is completely out of the question to concede a country of the importance of Iraq to these people. We cannot allow them to take over, first for humanitarian reasons, the country would be destroyed, and the people would be put to the sword, and second, because, well, for the advertised reasons. It’s just too strategically and economically important a country to let that happen.
HH: Now that part I understand.

CH: We’ve entered Iraq far too late, Saddam Hussein could have, should have been taken out in 1991, shouldn’t even probably have been allowed to stay there that long, Jimmy Carter should never have been allowed to endorse his invasion of Iran, we’re paying for the price of two generations worth of mistakes that for once, we’re there for a good reason.

HH: But Mr. Hitchens, the key that I didn’t hear answered is, once foreseeability of massacre attaches, regardless of how we ended up there…
CH: Yes…

HH: …as it did in Vietnam in 1972, doesn’t moral culpability attach to those who are indifferent to those foreseeable slaughters? And doesn’t that apply to the Cambodian holocaust?

CH: Well, I will not make this my own argument, but I’ll simply say that argument that I could anticipate being made, which is people would say well, how much worse could it get? All the things you’re afraid of are already happening, and partly because of the bungling of the occupation, and the bad planning of it. And that’s not a completely unfair point. There could come a point where everything we fear happens while we’re still there. And that is my personal fear. That’s what I wake up and go to sleep worrying about.

HH: Last question, because we’re almost out of time. Do you wake up and go to sleep ever worrying about your opposition to the Vietnam war and the holocaust that happened in Cambodia?

CH: Not to the first, no, because if it had been up to me, the war, which is what led to the bloodletting and the starvation and all the rest of it, would never have occurred in the first place. So for me, the Vietnam war was definitively over in 1954, when the French Army surrendered in Dien Bien Phu, and it was at that point that the United States should have recognized…

HH: And to the second?

CH: …Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence.

HH: And to the second?

CH: And to the second, well, this is what I would say now, what I hope I don’t hear Democrats saying in the case of Iraq. If since we didn’t ask for the war in the first place, don’t blame me if it all ends very badly, which it did in Vietnam, as it was absolutely bound to do. It wasn’t a just war, it wasn’t a necessary war, and it was fought with atrocious means.

HH: No culpability?

CH: None of these three things apply in the case of Iraq. It was a just intervention, and a necessary and overdue one, and on the whole, our forces have behaved with exemplary humanitarianism.

***Sigh***

And without firing a shot. One lawyers' opinion:

Is there no principle subject to negotiation? Is there no course subject to reversal? For the Bush administration to argue for years that this program, as operated, was critical to our national security and fell within the president's Constitutional authority, to then turnaround and surrender presidential authority this way is disgraceful. The administration is repudiating all the arguments it has made in testimony, legal briefs, and public statements. This goes to the heart of the White House's credibility. How can it cast away such a fundamental position of principle and law like this?

It seems odd, given the President's attitude with regards to questions of Executive authority. I'm with Levin; I don't get it.

Update: Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a theory:

I'm not entirely sure I know what to make of Attorney General Gonzales's letter today about the NSA surveillance program, but I wonder if I'm quirky in reading it possibly to mean that DOJ found a judge who was willing to approve the entire TSP program under FISA.

...

The letter also says that as a result of this development, the President no longer needs to and will not reauthorize the Terrorist Surveillance Program.The letter also says that as a result of this development, the President no longer needs to and will not reauthorize the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

...

If this does involve a blanket order approving the entire program, it would seem to be a very clever move by DOJ. It would achieve four things, as I see it. First, it would make the TSP program very difficult to challenge. I gather no one would have standing to appeal the FISC order to the FISA Court of Review; even if the FISC order is unlawful, it's unclear as a procedural matter how it could be challenged. Second, it might moot the pending NSA litigation, or at least render any opinion in that case of very limited consequence. Third, it puts the Administration in the position of having obtained a court order, so that even if the order is unlawful it's "the judge's decision" rather than the Executive's. And fourth, it might help persuade the press to focus elsewhere; the press would be sure to present this as a concession to the Administration's critics (as the N.Y. Times did today), and the press is likely to be much less interested after they think the Administration has backed down.

Of course, whether this is true depends on whether the Administration obtained some kind of blanket order or plans to get orders on a case-by-case basis. And it's unclear when or if we'll know which occurred.

Another case of the Bush sucker-punch?: George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.

True then, maybe true now. Who knows?

Sunny SoCal

This morning the far reaches of North Santa Barbara County and most of San Luis Obispo County were under a severe weather watch. As I turned on the morning news with breakfast in-hand, the first thing I caught was a sentence ending in "black ice."

This is California, isn't it?

Meanwhile, later in the day it snowed on LA's west-side:

NBC4 forecaster Fritz Coleman said the mixture of precipitation in West Los Angeles at about 3 p.m. included a dusting of snow. Residents in West Los Angeles said the snow accumulated in parking lots, on cars and around palm trees near Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards and other areas.

Most of the snow fell south of Sunset Boulevard and just east of the 405 Freeway. Residents told NBC4 that several inches of snow fell in their yards.

The last snowfall recorded at Los Angeles International Airport was in January 1962, according to the National Weather Service. Trace amounts -- less than 0.5 inches -- were reported, according to the NWS.

Snow fell earlier Wednesday in Malibu and caused traffic problems on the area's winding and narrow roads. Sleet made driving treacherous on Kanan Dume Road, a steep route through the Santa Monica Mountains where it's more typical to see beach-bound cars loaded with surfboards than a snowplow.

In the 30-ought years I lived in and around Thousand Oaks, we saw light and quick-disappearing dustings of snow at least twice that I recall, occuring roughly about 15 years or so apart. Which makes this winter a prime candidate.

Don't let the Rose Parade fool you. We occasionally 'do weather' here in Sunny SoCal.

Already working

Heh.

"Run Away!!!!!"

But in all seriousness: The apparent evacuation of Baghdad by al Qaeda forces comes from direct orders issued by al-Masri, the former soldier who took control of the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda following the June 2006 bombing death of Zarqawi.

Initially, the intelligence officer informed Pajamas, the Baghdad-based AQ fighters did not want to leave. Al-Masri had to send unequivocal orders for their retreat, adding that one of the lessons from the Fallujah campaign was that Americans have learned how to prevail in house-to-house fighting. Masri said that remaining in Baghdad was a ‘no-win situation’ for the terrorists.

“In more than ten years of reading al Qaeda intercepts, I’ve never seen language like this,” the intelligence officer said. Usually, al Qaeda communications are full of bravado and false confidence, he added.

One stop shop

Tom Maguire is and always has been a one-stop shop for information on Plamegate. Now that the Libby trial has begun, he's even more of a must-read. Here are his thoughts on Day-one.

Bad analysis

On Sunday, the LA Times published a story detailing the 'historic' proportions of US spending on Iraq, Afghanistan and 'other fronts' in the WOT. The piece was picked up over the wire by other publications as well. More notable than it's widespread distribution is it's just plain bad analysis.

The Iraq war is far smaller and narrower than those conflicts, and it has not extended beyond the tenure of a single president. But its price tag is beginning to reach historic proportions, and the budgetary "burn rate" for Iraq may be greater than in some periods in past wars.

If U.S. involvement continues on the current scale, the funding for the Iraq war — combined with the conflict in Afghanistan and other foreign fronts in the war on terrorism — is projected to surpass this country's Vietnam spending next year.

Yes, it's all about Vietnam. Only it's not really. As you read the piece in it's entirety, author Joel Havemann makes valid points about funding for the global WOT. Sadly however, the graphs quoted here coupled with the headlines make it about Vietnam. But the comparison just doesn't work.

Point #1: Different times, different war. Havemann compares Iraq/Afghanistan and the rest of the current 'Shadow War' with the more conventional conflicts of the past:

By the time the Vietnam war ended in 1975, it had become America's longest war, shadowed the legacies of four presidents, killed 58,000 Americans along with many thousands more Vietnamese, and cost the U.S. more than $660 billion in today's dollars.

By the time the bill for World War II passed the $600-billion mark, in mid-1943, the United States had driven German forces out of North Africa, devastated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway, and launched the vast offensives that would liberate Europe and the South Pacific.

While there are similarities in some respects, the current conflict in Iraq is not a mirror-image of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. This is a point that many critics of the conflict often make in rebuttal to supporter's protestations to the contrary. The critics are right and Havemann's comparison of Iraq or the WOT to these more traditional conflicts don't work.

Point #2: The Time Value of Money. What is it? Why does it matter?

It's one of the prime concepts in Finance and tells us basically that money now is worth more than the same amount of money received in the future. In the context of this article, the key notion is that, because money is worth more now, buying the same level of goods or services in the future will cost more money.

So when Havemann talks about our spending in the course of roughly four years what it took the US to spend in more than a decade during Vietnam, it's supposed to be some sort of financial bombshell. Only it's not.

It's a simple expression of the fact that it cost's much more now than it did 40-years ago to do comparable things. In addition, the comparison doesn't take into account the bang we get for the bucks now relative to our purchases in Vietnam.

We currently field a far better trained force and far more sophisticated weapons systems now than we did in the 1960's and 70's. The price tag on weapons systems alone is not at all comparable.

It's just another surface analysis that doesn't account for pesky details. But hey, splashing Vietnam in headlines is always fun.

Not much of a surprise

It's not really surprising, now is it?

On the Strength of multiple Witnesses

This blurb from Reliable Sources touches on a subject discussed with WH Press Secretary Tony Snow last week and paints a picture of media-at-large starting (or at least trying) to play catch-up. From the CNN snippet:


KURTZ: Pam Hess, has the sending of 20,000 additional troops gotten a fair hearing in the media or has it gotten caught up in this wrenching, emotional debate about whether the war itself was a mistake?

PAM HESS: I think it's gotten caught up about it, and the debate about it is actually all wrong. What reporters know and what Martha says is that 20,000 really isn't that big -- isn't that big a jump. We're at 132,000 right now. It's going to put us even less that we had going in going across the line.

What we're not asking is actually the central question. We're getting distracted by the shiny political knife fight. What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose? And no one will answer that question. If we lose, how are we going to mitigate the consequences of this?

It's so much easier for us to cover this as a political horse race. It's on the cover of "The New York Times" today, what this means for the '08 election. But we're not asking the central national security question, because it seems that if as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you're carrying Bush's water. There are national security questions at stake, and we're ignoring them and the country is getting screwed.

Instapundit's comments are pure snark, but given the overall performance of Big Media on the issue, can you really blame him?

Meanwhile, last week in a radio interview Tony Snow touched on this as well:

HH: Have you seen even one MSM’er of stature walk a war opponent through the consequences in a prolonged and serious fashion?

TS: No, but I think we have seen a number of them starting to ask questions. And I think, you know, you begin with baby steps, Hugh, and the first thing is important to start laying this out for people, because everybody says well, we’ve got to succeed in Iraq, and it’s vital to succeed, it’s vital to our future, but nobody explains why. The President started that last night, you and I get opportunities to do it, but I think what we’re on the verge of here, I think, is a pretty interesting public debate where people are going to look thoughtfully at the President’s proposal, and they’re also going to ask opponents okay, if you don’t like it, what do you have that’s better? And that is also a critical question that maybe in the past would not have been pushed as aggressively, but a combination of new media, old media, and really interested Americans, I think are going to compel everybody to put their cards on the table.

Jules Crittenden had a great line about it in his post yesterday. Like Instapundit's, if you're squeamish around snark, beware: Pamela Hess of UPI just pointed out the[sic] the Imperial media is naked.

Credit where credit is due; I'm glad to see at least selected members of Big Media waking up and trying to get in the game but is anyone going to have the guts to ask them why they've waited to engage this thoroughly 'til now?

Well, in another say-it-here, it-happens-there moment, follow the links for more questions and few answers.

The Hump

Marty just can't get over it. Multiple opportunities to put the game away and his team couldn't get it done.

I'm sure the resident fan will share his thoughts on it all later, and I look forward to hearing them.

Lame 80's Political Commentary

Pushback

The President yesterday:

"We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical," Bush said in his radio address yesterday, adding: "Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible."

For the better part of 3 years, Democrats have derided the war effort, they've insulted and impuned the President's intelligence and judgment and insisted that his chosen strategies for fighting in Iraq were an abject failure. Through that entire time they've never once offered a plan aimed at fixing what didn't work and accomplishing the United States' stated goals for it's efforts in Iraq.

Contrary to what opponents and the Post might think, withdrawing troops is not a 'strategy':

Many Democrats, in fact, have proposed alternatives centered around pulling out troops, an idea Bush flatly rejects.

If it were, someone could and would I imagine argue how that makes the situation better. They don't. Instead we're treated to rehashed arguments about the failures of the President's policy.

Well--and our good friend and co-blogger argued for this (not here, but elsewhere)--now the Democrats have won back a seat at the table of power. It is time for stating solutions not regurgitating criticisms.

The President and members of his Administration are right to call them on all the preening and posturing. Bring something constructive to the table; help win the fight.

A Wrong Reading

The Times' editorial board published an editorial yesterday about the 'Surge'. As is their prerogative, they've in the last year become more and more critical of the President in general and the war specifically.

I would say that in this effort there are some serious mis-readings and misunderstandings. From the piece:

Which brings us to that second showdown, the one now on display in the nation's capital, as the Bush administration promotes its strategy of sending 21,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq, at the same time the Democrat majority in Congress - and more than a few members of Bush's own Republican Party - insist our government needs to begin pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, not sending more in.

The president's “surge” strategy is a capitulation to the administration's hawks, chief among them Vice President Cheney and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who was the first Cabinet member to go after Democrats swept the November elections.

That's just not correct. Rumsfeld, from day one, was a proponent of light-and-fast. As was revealed recently, his initial strategy for the invasion of Iraq called for the setting up of a Provisional Government and quick withdrawal of US troops. That view was trumped and eventually lost out to the Powell-Tenet view:

Few know that in early 2003 - a month or more before the Iraq invasion - President Bush was presented with two plans for post-war Iraq. The first, written by CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell, provided for a long occupation of Iraq and the nation-building that the president renounced in his 2000 campaign. The second, a Pentagon plan authored by Rumsfeld's team, provided for the establishment of a provisional government before the invasion and American withdrawal within months of Saddam's overthrow. The president, convinced by Powell that "if you break it, you own it", chose the Powell-Tenet plan and ordered Rumsfeld to carry it out.

Furthermore the strategy that now--in a true Through-the-Looking-Glass moment--finds Democrats all for it, has proven a failure. The very one that both Generals Abizaid and Casey continued to argue for right through the announcements that they would be replaced in Iraq:

His light-footprint theory—that U.S. troops foster the violence—is reasonable in theory, but isn't borne out on the ground. When our troops go into neighborhoods, they do tamp down the violence. It's when they leave that the violence flares up again.

And it was Rumsfeld's chosen approach.

Continuing on, the editorial takes umbrage, it seems, at the very idea of winning anything in this fight:

In reviewing the president's newest strategy, one administration official asked this question: “Is this a war or is it not a war? If it is, you have to be willing to sacrifice ... Americans are willing to do that, as long as we have a clear strategy that offers a chance of success.”

The premise of his question and answer is that adding troops is the only way to have a chance of winning.

Winning what? That's the question this administration has consistently failed to answer. If U.S. forces prevail, and the civil strife in that country is ended, what's in it for America? Oil? The ideal of a democracy in the heart of Islam? Freedom for the Iraqi people?Please, spare us the rhetoric the Bush administration has repeatedly used to define our purpose in this conflict. Whatever lines have been drawn have been hopelessly blurred by events over the past three-plus years.

In concluding, they say: Iraq has only been a country, in its present form, since the British attempted 90 years ago to consolidate various tribes in order to preserve and protect oil fields.

Yes, Americans are tough and resilient. We will make sacrifices in support of a just and valid cause. We've done that time after time, from the battlefields of Europe to the killing fields of Southeast Asia.

What we will not do, and should not do, is continue a formless, baseless war whose only outcome will be an even longer list of American casualties.

Putting more troops into Iraq may satisfy a war president's ego, but it serves no other useful purpose. Extreme pressure must be brought on Iraqi leaders to solve their own problems. One way to do that is to start bringing American soldiers home.

To claim that the only possible outcome is simply more casualties is a simple dismissal. More than just a casual reading of the President's plan reveals that it provides an opportunity to accomplish something we've been unwilling and therefore unable to accomplish to date--stopping the violence.

It's something that they've argued for on other occasions and I fail to see how or why they would object to something designed to accomplish the very thing they want.

Bitter. Really Bitter.

This is what is keeping me from flying to San Diego to attend what could be an epic playoff match between the Chargers and Patriots.

Are you freaking kidding me?

I can't even believe that there is less than an inch of ice/snow on the ground and flights have been cancelled for 2-3 days.

No justice, no peace.

Catch Up

Had the opportunity this morning--finally!--of listening to the podcast of the first of eight scheduled discussions of Thomas P.M. Barnett's The Pentagon's New Map.

Good stuff, Maynard!

The lack of Decorum

On Thursday, my Senator (Lord, but how I hate saying that) from the great state of California, Barbara Boxer, made a statement to Secretary of State Condi Rice that exemplifies something that has been ongoing in American politics for the better part of 20 years. From Thursday's hearing:

Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.

"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."

Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

On the surface it might appear unimportant and just a nifty way to score political points. However, it was a wholly unnecessary personal swipe at the Secretary, almost the Chickenhawk argument for Women.

The NY Post had much to say about it yesterday:

We scarcely know where to begin.

The junior senator from California apparently believes that an accomplished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.

It's hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)

...

It would take a truly hard heart not to be touched, deeply, by the sacrifices made by the young men and women now wearing their country's uniform.

And one can only imagine the pain felt by the families of those killed and cruelly wounded in service to America. Just as it was hard to imagine the agony of the loved ones left behind on 9/11.

But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.

It is perverse.

There was the usual chorus of criticisms on the Right and the usual indifference on the Left. The additional day between this post and the writings linked in it has cooled my opinion.

I'm not a fan of Barbara Boxer. I was not one when she was elected in 1992 and I have not become one at any point in her 14 years in the Senate. Quite frankly, I don't think she exhibits the intellectual firepower necessary to be successful there (in that she is not alone, unfortunately).

This incident simply confirms two things for me. As Robert George's post stated, Babs is not particularly politically savvy. Her seeming reluctance to apologize only underscores that point for me.

Moreso however, it points yet again to the ongoing bleed-out of civility and decorum in American politics that has been going on for years but accelerated in the past six. It's what allows sitting Senators and Congressmen to call a sitting President a liar in veiled and not-so-veiled terms. It's whats helped create the kind of partisan bottleknecking that leads to a 23% approval rating for Congress, a body that has become more interested in fighting with each other than accomplishing anything.

Boxer's comments were better suited for message-board grandstanding than the hallowed halls of the United States Senate. And that's just sad.

Lightening the mood

Jonah lets some of the air out with this bit of commentary on the Surge, er...Surge.

I'm with Dean

On the question of whether the President's announced increase of troops to Baghdad is a good idea, disaster or not enough to get the job done, Dean Barnett today responded in his as-usual, inimitable fashion:

The surge strength number comes from Dave Petraeus' estimate of what will be necessary to win Baghdad. Petraeus is breaking Baghdad into nine neighborhoods. Each neighborhood will get a contingent of 2500 Iraqi soldiers (probably ones trained by Petraeus) supported by 600 American troops. This number, the plan figures, will be sufficient to clear the neighborhoods and then hold them. In previous encounters, we would clear and retreat. This is a very significant difference. The total surge into Baghdad, counting Iraqi troops, will be well over 40,000.

Coupled with the changing Rules of Engagement (It's the militia's, stupid!), the increased number of troops provides an opportunity to address security in a way that we have not even begun to approach in the entire time the US has been in Iraq. How people are arguing against this, when it has been a constant criticism for more than 2 years, escapes me.

On the one hand, you've got Democrats arguing against themselves. Instapundit puts it nicely:

I have to say, though, that it's been amusing to see the same people who were recently demanding that Bush send more troops suddenly reverse and criticize him for . . . sending more troops. The question of troop numbers is one where reasonable people can and do differ, but that doesn't mean that lame political oppositionalism isn't recognizable as such.

Of course, it's hardly surprising (or at least shouldn't be) considering these are the same people who lambasted the President's "I'm listening to my General's" approach for two years now only to support the "stay the course" strategy that clearly hasn't worked under Abizaid and Casey. It's enough to make your head spin.

On the other hand meanwhile, I've not yet figured out the likes of Brownback and Hagel: President Bush's decision to deploy 21,500 additional troops to Iraq drew fierce opposition Thursday from congressional Democrats and some Republicans-- among them Sen. Chuck Hagel, who called it "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."

In what seemed a testy hearing at times, Secretary of State Rice before the Senate today defended the plan and stood her ground against the likes of Senators Hagel, Biden & Voinovich. Which is of course her job.

As I read the objections voiced in that hearing, I couldn't help but hear Dean's words echoing in the background:

On its face adding 20,000 troops to the 140,000 already there does admittedly seem to be, as my dear old Uncle Willie said this morning, a "band-aid." The problem is most of our congressmen don't look beyond the surface.

They're so convinced they're conclusions are right they can't conceive of a way to win this fight. Thankfully, it's the President who gets to wage war and not the Congress.

After the Speech

Some interesting headlines this morning following the President's speech last night. Keep it coming!:

US forces storm Iranian consulate--US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff.

The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.

The US military had no immediate comment on the raid, which comes amid high tension between Iran and the US.

The Bush administration accuses Iran of helping fuel violence in Iraq, as well as trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran strenuously denies both charges, countering that US military involvement in the Middle East endangers the whole region.

A local TV station said Kurdish security forces had taken over the building after the Americans had left.

Al-Maliki gives Mahdi Army blunt choice: disarm or face American onslaught--

Iraq's prime minister has told Mahdi Army militiamen they must surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, revealing a pledge Washington wanted to hear as American and Iraqi troops prepared a fresh operation to end the bloody sectarian war gripping Baghdad.

Initial Reaction

Here's some initial thoughts on the President's speech:

--Hugh liked it, but then he is generally of one-mind with the President on matters of war:

President Bush was at his best tonight: serious, detailed, and above all, resolute. He spoke to many audiences.

--Glenn Reynolds: A bit late, but perhaps not quite too late. That goes for most of the speech (we're doing something about Iran and Syria? About freaking time.) But why did he wait so long to do these things that lots of people -- bloggers, too -- have been calling for for years? "Compassionate warmaking?"

--Everybody's favorite lefties. That place always reads more like a message board than any kind of collection of coherent thought and discussion.

Myself...I'm amazed more isn't being made of the President's acknowledgement that the mistakes of the last 2 1/2 years lay at his desk. After the way Democrats and the left begged him to acknowledge mistakes in the '04 campaign, you'd think they'd be happy as kids at Christmas.

I'm encouraged by the rhetoric addressing Iran and Syria. Hugh is right; it's veiled just enough to be unobjectionable yet clear: we know what you're doing and we will stop it.

If the previews were correct in their description of the details of this strategy, I think we have a shot at turning this around. It will still require patience and endurance and a political will that hasn't been much on display of recent.

Good News

If the preview is accurate, this is very good news. Again, hopefully not too little, too late:


Tony Snow conferred by telephone with conservative bloggers this afternoon to preview what President Bush will say tonight. Essentially, the president plans to send an additional 20,000 troops or so troops to Baghdad and about 4,000 additional troops to Anbar province. Baghdad will be divided into nine districts. We will station one batallion (about 600 troops) in each district. The Iraqis will station one brigade (a larger unit) in each. We will have a presence in the neighborhoods on a 24/7 basis. This is a switch from the approach we've been using, under which we roll our folks into the neighborhoods in the morning and return them to their barracks at night.

The rules of engagement will allow us to go after everyone we need to go after. The Mahdi army, for example, will not be off limits. Snow pointed to statements from Iraq's president confirming that the Iraqi government is on board with this.

In Anbar, our additional forces will try to consolidate recent gains. According to Snow, tribal leaders there have turned strongly against al Qaeda, and want us to send in more forces with which to rout them. President Bush will oblige.

Revitalized Rules of Engagement will go a long way to helping out, additional troops aside. The gloves have needed to come off for some time. It's the only way to truly secure the city's troubled areas.

Wishful Thinking

It's a good idea...a very good idea. But I must assume, sadly, that it won't go down that way. Nowhere near that way:

My suggestion:

No Oval Office, no big desk. Have the president stand in the Map Room, the room on the ground floor of White House in which Franklin Roosevelt reviewed strategy with his generals.
(Over the mantel hangs the last map FDR ever saw. It is a monument to faulty intelligence: a map drawn in March 1945 of the final German positions of the war. It shows a "redoubt" of German divisions hunkered in south Germany. To defend against these divisions, the US Army paused in its drive eastward toward Berlin, allowing the Soviets to reach the city first. The "redoubt" later proved to be a total fiction, one the army accepted in part because it offered an excellent excuse to avoid the lethal street fighting that claimed the lives of perhaps as many as 25,000 Soviet troops.)

Hang a map of Baghdad on one wall. A map of Iraq on another. Have the president stand between them with a laser pointer. Let him show where the sectarian fighting in the city is occurring, let him detail where US troops are currently deployed. Then he can explain the new plan: Where the extra troops would go, what they would do, where the new checkpoints would be placed, how the city would be cleared, how it would be held.

No flowery language, no hazy generalities. Detail, detail, detail - to assure the American people that their commander-in-chief has thought this plan through and has reason to believe that it can and will work.

This President can't, it seems, get that far outside the box.

The Great American Time-Waster

Meetings. Nothing will suck the time away from a professional employee like meetings. Nothing else ensures that important primary and day-to-day functions go unfinished. The nature of the meeting has nothing to do with it's ability for keeping it's victims from work.

A standing meeting, a hastily-called follow-up, an unexpected problem-solver...it doesn't matter. Nothing will more gloriously disrupt the flow of work and keep one from their appointed rounds than another meeting.

Jonah Goldberg is a strong proponent of the office time-waster. My suggestion, if he truly is as dedicated to the notion of time-wasting as he lets on, is simply this: Encourage more meetings. Productivity will plummet and untold man-hours will be frittered away!

They all look alike

Or maybe they don't. Guy just can't buy a break...

Almost worth it.

Hey Bubba...where are you!?

US Air Strikes in Somalia

Here is a CBS report. Here is a quick analysis from Austin Bay.

New Answer to an old Question

What's more slippery than a football in Tommy Hutton's hands? Used to be nothing.

And back in the day, that was a refrain that would send daggers through the heart of an Eagles fan anywhere. However,--in a moment offered as proof that should you live long enough you're bound to see history repeating itself--after Saturday night the answer is new and different:

All Tony Romo had to do was put the ball down and let Martin Gramatica make an easy kick -- just 19 yards, even closer than an extra point.

That's where it all slipped away from the Dallas Cowboys. The Pro Bowl quarterback who saved their season ended it, too.

Romo's bobble on the field-goal try with 1:19 left led to a scramble that ended 2 yards shy of the end zone and a yard short of a first down, preserving a 21-20 victory for the Seattle Seahawks in the wildest of wild-card games Saturday night.

Just like Eagles' punter Tommy Hutton before him, Romo's botched hold cost his team the game and now leaves him the butt of more jokes than any will wish to count. Most importantly though for Eagles fans, his bad-hands moment marks an exact place in time where they've been freed from the shackles of Hutton's infamous mistake.

Free at last, Thank God almighty, free at last!

Trying to see what started it all

Over at the RCP Blog, they note the WSJ's editorial demanding the release of the CIA's criminal referral in the Plame case. You remember, the case that would stand as a shining beacon to any who would ever dare again use the power of the President for bullying bureaucrats. The same one that lost all it's hot-air (and boy did it have plenty) when we learned conclusively that the "leaker" was not an administration official, but none-other than the number two man at the State Department.

So in the meanwhile with this having fallen off the face of the earth since that revelation became public knowledge, it seems some still wonder how this ridiculous charade ever got started:

In the Libby case, the CIA sent the criminal referral to Justice and it was rejected at least once. Only after then-CIA Director Tenet called the Attorney General and insisted was the investigation launched.

The CIA criminal referral in the Libby case may be entirely truthful. Or it may be sprinkled with false assertions about Plame, her status, and what the damage to national security was when she was revealed as a CIA employee (there was no such damage.) If there is a crime in this case, it may be that the CIA's referral was false, which would be - at least - a false statement offense, a felony under Title 18 US Code Section 1001.

Now - before the Libby case comes to trial - the CIA referral should be declassified and released to the public in its entirety. We should know why this case began, and what crimes the CIA so fervently believed were committed that it went to the lengths it did to force the Justice Department into an investigation it apparently didn't believe needed to be done.

UPDATE: Finishing my morning bit of surfing and came across this:

A CIA panel has told former officer Valerie Plame she can't write about her undercover work for the agency, a position that may threaten a lucrative book project with her publisher.

Poor thing...I guess all the Vanity Fair pieces and other tragic tales of Joe & Val's suffering will have to suffice.

Getting the Point

Seems that the Maliki government has finally figured something out that you'd think has been apparent for some time. It's the militia's, stupid:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that Iraq's armed forces are set for an assault on Baghdad to take out militias and rogue security forces.

Aided by multinational troops, the Iraqi forces "will hunt down all outlaws regardless of their sectarian and political affiliations," al-Maliki said at an Iraqi Army Day parade.

"We will also severely punish those [security forces] who do not carry out orders or operate in a partisan or sectarian way," he said.

Forces will search out insurgents neighborhood-by-neighborhood, The Associated Press reported, and will start the assault this weekend.

Captain Ed, with an ironic bit of rhetoric, attributes the new strategy to a recent "come to Jesus" moment:

It probably was what a former boss of mine used to call "come to Jesus" meetings -- meaning that the purpose of the meeting was to convey an unvarnished and unpleasant reality, usually as a final warning before more drastic steps needed to be taken.

Bush needs Maliki to stop protecting Sadr's Mahdi Army and to take the steps necessary to break it and the rest of the militias, because without the participation of the Iraqis, the US cannot hope to clear and hold the necessary territory in Baghdad.

Whatever Bush said, it seems to have motivated Maliki. He now has the right idea, as long as he's willing to meet the rhetoric with the appropriate action. That means that he has to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr politically, a dangerous prospect for a prime minister who leveraged Sadr's political heft to rise to the top. If he expects to stay there, he needs to end the sectarian militia war in his own capital -- and I suspect that's exactly what Bush took two hours to say this morning.

Regardless the reason, the change is welcome though it begs many a question as to why it has taken so long getting to this point. Is he weak? Is he protecting Al-Sadr because he forms the base for Maliki's support?

Again, regardless the reason, this is the right move; hopefully not too-little, too-late.

Reverting to Form

At least Steny Hoyer tried to pretend:

Democrats now running Congress will not give President Bush a blank check to wage war in Iraq, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday, suggesting they could deny him the money should he call for additional troops.

Yet Pelosi’s second-in-command and a Senate leader on foreign affairs questioned the wisdom and legality of using the power of the purse to thwart the White House as Bush prepared to announce his revised war strategy this week — perhaps on Wednesday.

Hoyer was at least diplomatic in his exchanges with Brit Hume on the subject. Can't speak to Ms. Pelosi's demeanor as I did not see the appearance on Face the Nation, but somehow I'm not surprised.

The Future of Blogging?

Interesting idea. Not quite an MSNBC shout-fest, which is a positive.

Losing the PR War, Cont.

The disappointing but not surprising international backlash over the execution of Saddam Hussein continues and expands. In the former case, US lack of sway in Baghdad and the ham-handed handling of the trial and execution impinges on one of our more promising international partnerships and portends continued difficulties in the developing world:

There is even criticism, from both the right and the left, of the Indian government's muted response to the execution, New Delhi's stance dictated by the increasingly close relations with the U.S., exemplified by the controversial nuclear co-operation agreement.If India is a key barometer of the non-Western world, and it often is, Saddam's hanging will come to haunt George W. Bush.

In the latter, "a few drugged-up good timers" may be the only ones out protesting, but our good pals in "Old" Europe are making hay by turning the debacle into a referendum on the "barbarous" American practice of using the death penalty.

Rome lit up the arches of its ancient Colosseum at dusk on Saturday to protest against the death penalty after Saddam Hussein's hanging, with the mayor calling it the city's symbol to the world for human rights..."The Colosseum originally was a place of persecution and unspeakable violence," Mayor Walter Veltroni said. "But now it is a symbol of peace and reconciliation." The hanging of the former Iraqi dictator has touched a nerve in Italy, setting off a wave of appeals against the death penalty and prompting a hunger strike from Radical Party leader Marco Pannella, who thanked the mayor from his hospital bed for lighting up the Colosseum.

These developments say a great deal about the status of the American project in Iraq. Our political position is so weakend by this albatross that there is no choice but to leave. And day by day, the international bullseye on the US grows larger as a result of not acknowledging this fact. Bush's stubborness in facing the music assures us of being the punchline to ill-premised witticisms emanating from the morally bankrupt and largely ignorant peanut gallery. I never said we should leave because we are losing the battle on the ground or that our troops don't have good morale, strong capabilities or inflict more damage on the enemy than is inflicted upon them. What I said is that there is no longer the political will to win this war. These are two very different issues.

Congress, the media, our European and Middle Eastern allies, the Maliki government, our enemies and many others are hostile to our presence in Iraq and the president's policies because it is in their crass self-interest to be so. Global public opinion is largely swayed by these interests and in many cases doesn't know any better. In the face of this reality, the war is lost. As in Vietnam, we ceded not one acre of territory to the enemy in battle. But the PR war and the political battle have left this administration thoroughly trounced. It's over, and Bush and a few stragglers are the only ones who don't recognize it.

The longer this nation refuses to acknowledge this reality, the deeper the hole we dig in terms of our credibility and our ability to influence events elsewhere. As I suggested in my original post on this subject, our inability to shape events with regard to this project suggests that there is nothing to win, and consequently, no reason to stay. I still believe Iraq was a just war and that the policy of ousting Saddam and planting the seeds of democracy in that country was a noble endeavor. I do believe we had it within our grasp to succeed. But the bumbling of this administration in the aftermath of the invasion gave rise to the coalition of forces which ultimately have cleaned our clocks on the political front. Staying gains us nothing. Leaving at least has the advantage of removing our folks from harm's way and gives us the chance to change the subject. And changing the subject is critical to striking a reasonable balance between hard power (military) and soft power (economics, culture, international institutions and public diplomacy). That means winning the War on Terror, repairing damaged relationships and reclaiming our status as Madeleine Albright's "indispensible nation."

While urging withdrawal may seem weak and spineless to some, it is quite the opposite. It is bold in terms of facing up to a hard reality. It stings and it is in some respects, unfair. But it is; unfortunately, the truth.

Andy Rooney Moment

And what's the deal with the BCS National Championship game between Ohio State and Florida being a full week after New Year's Day???

I'm sorry, but this BCS thing is a farce and every year they put in a new wrinkle, a new spin. And it always seems to take a turn for the worse.

Now, about stadium naming rights...

LTMVP = SDSB

The best player in professional football finally received his due this week. San Diego's LaDainian Tomlinson (seen above applying a brutal stiff arm against the Redskins last year that resulted in the 'Skins player on his back and springing LT for a long TD run) won the NFL MVP and NFL Offensive Player of the Year awards by acclamation. In polling for both awards he easily outpaced the #2 in the voting, former Chargers' QB Drew Brees.

And that is as it should be.

Tomlinson's record breaking year has by now been well-chronicled, but let me point out three key stats that bring it home:

* Tomlinson tallied 186 points this season, eclipsing Paul Hornung's record. The Raiders as a team scored 168.

* In one ten week stretch, Tomlinson scored 28 touchdowns. That accounts for exactly 168 points. So to be clear, one player accomplished in ten games what it took an entire (albeit woeful) team to accomplish in sixteen.

* Tomlinson's record 31 rushing TD's were more than the number thrown by any quarterback in the league this season.

Amazing.

I watched Tomlinson play a lot at TCU and always knew he'd be good a good pro. But I never knew he'd be this good. Back then, he'd just hit the line and take off on a straight-line 70 yard touchdown. And he'd do that over and over. It's been different in the pros, but Tomlinson has even improved as he's aged. He picks his holes, shows patience, has become an excellent receiver out of the backfield, is a good blocker and is 5-6 in passing in his career....with 5 touchdown passes.

Special.

But not as special as the man. In this era of look-at-me athletes, LT is a humble megastar. No celebration dances. No antics. A true team player. Check out his comments upon winning the awards this week:

Tomlinson credits the close-knit nature of the Chargers for his outstanding year.

"Every day you go to work with these guys," he said. "They're a special group to me. I think this group I will always remember more than any other football team I've been on. We've got a unique situation that kind of reminds me of college days. That's something that you really don't get in the National Football League, because you really don't have the time to get to know guys and really spend time with them. "On this team it's different. It seems like every guy is like a brother." It's that brotherhood, that camaraderie and the respect for each other that LT cherishes more than any records. "It's more important to me to be a better person. At the end of the day that's what people remember," Tomlinson said. "Football is a game that I obviously love to play and a lot of guys enjoy playing the game. But that's not who I am. I'm not just a football player. I'm a human being, an individual, a person. I respect other human beings and that's what it's all about, giving respect to other human beings and just really trying to have an impact on people's lives that I come across because I am in a position to do that."

The work on the field speaks for itself and so does the breath of fresh air. Give former Chargers' GM John Butler a lot of credit. Before his passing due to lung cancer, he foresaw the greatness of LT and shrewdly maneuvered to draft him by passing on Michael Vick. At the time, Butler was ridiculed. But as this season has proven, Butler made the right call. While Vick was making obscene gestures, continuing his struggle with the quarterback position and ending the Atlanta career of yet another coach, LT was leading the Chargers to a 14-2 record and the top of the league. He did it all with dignity, class and the sense of place and purpose that is the hallmark of not only a great player, but a great person. LaDainian Tomlinson's drive and understanding that it is the guys around him who are just as responsible for his success as his physical talent, is a breed apart. And it is this unique combination which has the Chargers poised for post-season success.

I'll be in San Diego next weekend for the Chargers' opening playoff game. I'll be blogging *LIVE* from the site of the march to the Super Bowl. Stay tuned.

Defining Cynical

Bill Quick:

Bush was planning on skedaddling from Iraq before 2008 anyway, since it has long been obvious that Iraq cannot be pacified without taking on Iran and Syrian, and Bush, for whatever reason, has no intention of doing so.

Now come the Democrats bearing gifts on silver platters. I expect that Bush is pushing a surge because he knows it will inflame and harden Democratic opposition, and as a result the Democrats will force Bush (kicking and screaming, oh my) into withdrawing from Iraq. Bush will end up with what he wants - Iraq no longer hung around the Republican Party’s neck like a rotting albatross going into 2008 - but the disaster in Iraq that will follow withdrawal will instead be hung around the Democratic party’s neck.

Like a noose.

Which will all be well and good, except for the disastrous medium and long term consequences for the United States itself.

That's just beyond dark. Though he at least takes a stab at what keeps the President from dealing bluntly with Syria and Iran.

Paleocon of the week

Every week...Pat Buchanan verbally vomits all over the evil, rotten-to-the-core neocons. I still don't get it though.

It's as if media has forgotten how loathed a fellow Buchanan was 15-years ago. Given enough time, apparently, anybody can rehab their rep.

Leaving no Doubt

Jules Crittenden on war with Iran. A provocative thought for sure, but Iran's obvious complicity in the goings-on in Iraq is something too-long ignored at our own peril.

Feeling Queasy

Questions and Answers

Well, really just a lot of questions. Victor Davis Hanson keeps 'em coming at the Corner today:

Why, when we are bombarded with cries that our freedoms are being eroded by the Patriot Act or wiretaps, do few civil libertarians complain of two egregious examples of government overreach: the scandalous abuse of prosecutorial power by the Duke "rape" case District Attorney, or the Inspector Javert-like Special Prosecutor who still pursues Scooter Libby, when we know the identity of the real leaker, and Joe Wilson (of "frog marched" fame) is reluctant to testify in a case that grew out of his own lamentations?

Heh. The answer isn't that difficult to find. Call it whatever you like, but Bush is the problem. The only problem. At least in that warped little world...


Why, when we are giving billions of dollars in aid to autocratic Egypt, does that government allow Al-Qaeda affiliates to broadcast anti-American propaganda on its state-run satellite? This is apparently not the normal Muslim extremism, but overt jihadist cries to kill Americans. Surely can't the US at least smile—and put a hold of a few months on the next hand-out check, Abrams tank, or bushel of wheat?

Primarily because we do nothing about it. Besides writing next month's check that is...

Unlike many Western anti-war movements—the American anger over the Mexican War or the Philippines counter-insurgency, or the French furor over Algeria—the present anti-war movement (if it is that) is incoherent.

The latest evidence was Donald Trump's creepy claim that "When you're a president who has destroyed the lives of probably a million people, our soldiers and Iraqis who are maimed and killed - you see children going into school in Baghdad with no arms and legs..." His outburst comes in the climate of Saddam Hussein's end, who really did kill a million.

Disappointing. I've always thought the Donald was halfway intelligent. Not sure why he'd throw his lot in with the rest of the Hollywierd foreign-policy experts...

No need to comment on the "no arms and legs" in the context of the United States restoring schools and trying to provide Iraqis reformed education. We have gone from Hezbollah and Dr. Zawahiri referencing Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky to excurses on impeachment from deep thinkers like Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann to Halliburton plots to "no blood for oil" to "the world's greatest terrorist" to novels and movies dreaming of assassinating the President to George Soros's Nazi allusions and now to the ultimate trivialization of the anti-war crowd-that the war is a monumental uncool drag, a has-been distraction from more important things like fighting with Rosie or bucking up a naughty beauty queen or staged "you're fired" poses. Meanwhile somewhere out there tonight there are courageous Marines and Army soldiers who are fighting for a cause they deeply believe in and are assured they can win. They are not cutting off or blowing up anyone's "arms and legs", but have already ensured that Saddam Hussein will never again do such things and are trying to assure that his terrorist successors can't either much longer.

But he didn't have WMD's...

Days of Wine & Roses

Happy Days are here again, right?! After 12 years in the political wilderness, Democrats returned to Congress and assumed their positions of leadership in the House and Senate today.

No doubt that all the world's wrongs will be righted with the new planned minimum-wage hike, universal health-care and other overdue Gubmint programs that may be coming our way. But somehow, I couldn't help but think that today's rainy weather was an incredibly apt bit of providential foreshadowing.

Speaking of brutality

Yesterday, Mario Loyola wondered whether we have the determination necessary to fight a brutal enemy in the ME at anything like their own capacity for brutal behavior. Then last night, Dean Barnett noted this from Strategy Page, also from yesterday:

December 28, 2006: Without much fanfare, much less a press release, the government and Coalition troops have gone to war with Moqtada al Sadrs Mahhi Army militia. Leaders are being arrested or killed. The raids are being carried out with overwhelming speed and force, so that pro-Sadr gunmen have little chance to put up effective resistance. Some of the raids are in support of an effort to find five civilian security contractors (four Americans and an Austrian), who are held by a Shia militia for ransom, or political purposes. No one is sure, and that apparently includes the kidnappers. The five men were seized six weeks ago.

Some American commanders are urging that several additional brigades of U.S. combat troops be brought in for a few months, to back the Iraqi security forces, as the Shia militias are taken down. The most dangerous part of this plan is now, with the well armed and motivated militias still intact. But once the organizations are broken, and arms, records and leaders seized, the problem will be largely a police, not military one.

"Moqtada, Moqtada!, Moqtada!," indeed.

This needed to happen two years ago and the worst thing that could happen now is a premature end to such operations. So again we come back to the central question: Do we have the determination to finish this?

Singularly Unimpressed

Duke University yesterday invited back two of the Lacrosse players accused of rape last spring:

Duke University and its lacrosse team have offered to reinstate two players accused in an alleged sexual assault of a stripper at an off-campus team party -- but at least one of them, Collin Finnerty of Garden City, wants to first legally establish his innocence before re-enrolling, his father said.Soon after Duke President Richard Brodhead invited the accused players back Tuesday, lacrosse coach John Danowski talked with Finnerty and told him he was welcome to rejoin the nationally ranked team, his father, Kevin Finnerty, said.

"Collin's reaction was very mature," Kevin Finnerty said. "He said, 'Dad, I'd love to be there, playing with my friends for Coach Danowski. But I don't think I should be going back until this is successfully resolved.'"He's not going to go back until we get a successful resolution of these charges, and that means an innocent verdict or dropping of the other charges," Kevin Finnerty said.

The reinstatement offer came after Durham County, N.C. District Attorney Michael Nifong last month dropped rape charges against the Duke players, saying the accuser had changed her story.

Nifong left standing kidnapping and sex offense charges that could bring more than 30 years in prison for Finnerty, Reade Seligmann, of Essex Fells, N.J., and a third Duke player, David Evans, of Bethesda, Md., who graduated in May.

In a statement, Brodhead said, "We have decided that the right and fair thing to do is to welcome back Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty. ... The circumstances in this case have changed substantially."

In otherwords, "Please don't sue the pants off us!"

It passed

Unanimously. Avenue Flower Shop will be moving out and Good Samaritan will be moving in!

Comings and Goings

John Negroponte is stepping aside as National Intelligence Director to take the number two job at State. I'm not sure what this says about the NID position, how it will be filled and what that might mean for Iraq and our long-term objectives in restructuring our intelligence capabilities, but I'm pleased that Negroponte is staying on at State. Along with the man he will be replacing, Robert Zoellick, Negroponte has been one of the more underrated members of the Bush foreign policy team. Both are real stars. It was a shame to see Zoellick go, but it's nice that Negroponte is staying on and moving to a capacity which might allow him to live to fight another day. Don't be surprised to see him serve as a Secretary of State in a future Republican administration.

Why it went that way

Mario Loyola's post at the Corner today sheds a bit of light on the whole of Sadaam's trial and hanging that I tend to agree with. Could his final moments been better handled? I suppose so, but at the end of the day he got far better than he truly deserved. And that's the point:

Some have questioned why Saddam was executed on the basis of less than two hundred murders when he was responsible for hundreds of thousands losing their lives. The answer is not just that the particular crime in question was so easily traceable through documentary evidence to Saddam's personal agency, but also that it is important for people to see that even a crime this "small" justifies this punishment.

None of this has to do with the due process rights normally presumed for an individual criminal defendant in a state proceeding where there is a vital concern to protect individual rights from the power of the state. War criminals use the power of the state to commit their crimes. By abusing the powers of state, they opt out of the protections of state. The Allies would have been fully within their rights under customary international law to put the senior Nazi leaders in front of firing squads without any judicial process at all. Indeed, among the Allies, many senior leaders worried about the restraining precedent that would be set by the Nuremberg trials, which arguably went far beyond the sensible requirements of humanist and ethical restraint. The Nuremberg trials were show-trials in the best sense. Their purpose was not justice, but publicity, as Eisenhower appreciated.

The Iraqis who conducted the trial and execution of Saddam behaved with more restraint than I would have been inclined to show him. He was lucky that he was not tortured to death and buried in an unmarked grave, as many Iraqis would have liked to see. He was given more justice than a summary execution not to protect his dignity but to protect our own, and so that all could see real justice being served for real crimes.

What is most shocking to me about war critics who dismiss his execution is the ease with which they wave away the hundreds and thousands of hours of real torture—and I don't mean waterboarding, but rather sulfuric acid poured in the eyes, electric shock on the genitals, digits ripped from the hand with pliers, and worse—which Saddam inflicted on tens of thousands of innocents in Iraq. In today's Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby remembers more of Saddam's horror stories. You need a heart of stone not to be consumed with hatred for Saddam.

As Peretz suggests, Saddam has earned an eternity of torment. The debate over the decorum of his execution makes me wonder, as Christopher Hitchens has, whether we really understand the brutality of our enemies—and whether we ourselves are capable of the brutality which may be necessary to defeat them.

'S' is for Snide

Given the way critics of everything that George W. Bush has ever done think we ought to prosecute the greater war on terror, I couldn't help but think that this ought to be more than praiseworthy:

The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's execution on a cell phone camera was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said.

I mean, this is how it ought to be done, no? After the heinous act, we arrest and prosecute the culprit, right?

But apparently that's not quite right...nor good enough.

Body Counters

Don Surber makes a powerful observation about civilian deaths in Iraq:

With 16,273 deaths in 2006, is Iraq still at war? AP called fighting in the Sudan "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" after the U.N. estimated 200,000 people died violently since 2003 -- or twice the carnage of Iraq in the same time period.

Sudan's population is estimated at 6.5 million; Iraq's is four times that.

By the way, the 16,273 violent deaths in 2006 compares favorably to the 600,000 documented deaths under Saddam Hussein. Many more are likely.

Hussein's carnage averaged 70 to 125 civilian deaths every day for the 8,000 days he reigned. His 20,000 civilian deaths a year (on average) were considered "peace" while last year, under war, there were 14,298 civilians deaths.

The perils of the Sequel

I'm a firm believer that you don't do a sequel (especially a 4th or 5th) more than 10 years after the last film, and certainly not 20 years after the original. But what do I know.

Meanwhile, Sly has given us Rocky Balboa and is working on a Rambo V project and trailers for Die Hard IV have snuck into theatres already.

Limbo

If the City Council actually voted last night, the only people who know the outcome were there in the room. Neither the Record nor KSBY are reporting the decision that was expected from last night's meeting.

From what I can gather, there were a moment or two of high drama: Lompoc resident Alice Milligan, a lead opponent, opened her Tuesday statements by calling on Mayor Dick DeWees to step down from voting on the center. She said that DeWees, as a member of the Lompoc Recovery Task Force, was involved in selecting the 608 West Ocean location, currently home to the Avenue Flower Shop.

DeWees replied that he was not involved in the search for the location, and City Attorney Sharon Stuart stated that no impropriety existed with DeWees joining three other council members to vote as part of council on the issue. Council woman Ann Ruhge, who approved the project in November as a member of the planning commission, recused herself from the vote.

Later, in her comments, Good Samaritan Executive Director Sylvia Barnard addressed criticisms rather straight-on:

Plans for the center call for a modular building that would be near the existing flower shop building. Milligan said having a modular building next to Spanish architecture is poor planning, and would contribute to lowering the surrounding property values.

Good Samaritan Executive Director Sylvia Barnard responded to concerns over property values by presenting how existing detox centers in Santa Maria have failed to decrease property values in the areas of that city. She also responded to concerns from neighborhood residents near the proposed Lompoc location.

“Will we be good neighbors,” she said before citing a quote from the Institute for Public Health Strategies. “Those who live next to existing treatment programs consistently say program residents are great neighbors to have. It's only logical because those residents are the only people on the block who by regulation have to be good neighbors.”

Barnard also pointed to several modular buildings that exist in Ocean Avenue, despite opponents saying there were none, and used a map to cite the large number of bars and liquor shops that dot areas where students traverse to and from their school campuses each day.

Spot on but the question is not accuracy but rather persuasiveness. On that score, I guess we wait 'til later in the day.

Flagging Hopes

My blogmate fits well it would seem in the group so ably described by Michael Yon here:

This war is strange. I never hear soldiers worried about their own morale sagging. Contrary, the war-fighters here are more concerned to bolster the morale of the people at home. Here in Kuwait, where the dining facilities are bedecked in Christmas decorations, soldiers stream in from Iraq on convoys and stream back north along those bomb-laden roads. The service members here are not all rear-echelon people who never see fighting or blood. Yet their overall morale obviously is high. Few of them know I am a writer, and so they speak freely at the tables around me. In Qatar, from which I’d just departed, I spoke with troops taking four-day R&R passes, some having just returned from the most dangerous parts of Iraq, and others heading straight back, and their overall morale was also very high. The morale at war is higher than I have ever seen it at home; makes me wonder what they know that most Americans seem to be missing.

Strange indeed. I don't know that Yon is right, likewise I don't know that the sum of mainstream reporting is correct about Iraq and the War at-large. Yet I'm amazed having listened last week to interviews with a number of milbloggers at the disconnect between what many on the ground see and interpret and what the rest of us are getting.

Yon hits it on the head with that close. What exactly accounts for such a difference? The perception of many who are daily dealing with Iraqi's and the myriad number of challenges there are far different than that from those who report about it and those who consume the reporting and those who make policy decisions. Why?

Meanwhile, Michael Ledeen offered this observation of Sadaam's hanging today:

I agree with Rich that the Iraqis botched the execution of Saddam. It was not the American way, it was the traditional way. In the course of writing a book about Naples, I read scores of accounts of hangings, and there's a copious English-language literature on such things as well, from which it emerges that Saddam's treatment—the insults, the jibes, the jokes, all those things that offend us—have long been part of the ritual. Remember the final scene in "Braveheart"? When the torturer has the crowd laughing with him about the agonies to which Mel Gibson is about to be subjected?

Not the American way...

The Legacy of Saddam's Hanging

The weekend's news of Saddam's death was greeted by this observer with a mental toast to the victory of good over evil. There is no denying the cosmic justice of this outcome.

But as the news of the circumstances surrounding the tyrant's execution began to emerge along with cell phone video, etc. I began to develop an all-too-familiar, unsettling feeling about the whole thing. In reading Belgravia Dispatch today, these feelings began to congeal and I suddenly recognized why it all felt so eerily familiar: we've gone and done it again. We've botched the unbotchable. In carrying out a positive mission, we've managed to fumble away the political goodwill that rightfully should accrue to the United States.

Gregory Djerejian thoughtfully writes:

Adnan Pachachi, speaking of Saddam's execution: “Either it’s terrible incompetence or it’s an act of revenge--a vendetta." Well, no, it was both Mr. Pachachi. It was terrible incompetence by the American overseers (is anyone surprised, after all, this was a Bush 43 supervised event?). And, too, it gave more the appearance of an act of revenge/vendetta than application of deliberate justice (see the guards chanting praise to Moktada al Sadr moments before Saddam was hung). Put simply, another major setback to Iraqi national reconciliation, it would appear, not to mention the U.S. national interest. As I recently wrote, this trial should have taken place in The Hague, or the U.S. should have better strived to recreate a more South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission in tandem with the Iraqi authorities (yes, I know, this last easier said than done given the revanchist spirit among Iraq's Shi'a, especially post-Samarra mosque bombing, but that's yet another reason to have convened a properly constituted international tribunal where the proceedings wouldn't reek of victor's justice). Instead, as Glenn Greenwald aptly quips, "we can't even get a hanging right." Yes, this latest blunder frustrates immensely, with the grainy cell phone video footage of a vigilante-style execution in dark, dungeon-looking surroundings causing yet another body blow to America's repute in the (non-Kuwaiti) Arab world (can someone please dispense with the sad joke that is Karen Hughes' supposed stewardship of her public diplomacy outfit, for where is the damage control after Condi Rice's description of cluster munitions littering southern Lebanon as constituting the "birth pangs" of a New Middle East, or now, Hughes' silence after this latest fiasco?). But, in fairness, there is another grim reality here too, which is that spiraling events are overtaking us in Iraq at breakneck speed (while POTUS inexcusably dithers: "It's my job to listen to a lot of opinions and come up with a strategy that says we have a plan"). Much like the Iranian "diplomats" we handed back (apprehended at one of Mr. 80% Solution Abdul Aziz Hakim's complexes, reportedly specifically at Hadi al-Ameri's house, a leader of the Badr Organization, Hakim's militia!) because Maliki's government so insisted (though realistically we had little choice in the matter, all told), we were similarly barely able to exert control over the execution process, having apparently to fight to persuade Maliki's government to allow Saddam to be buried near his hometown, for instance, rather than in an unmarked grave.

It is this last point that I hope to elaborate upon in coming posts. Had I been an active blogger at the time the ISG Report came out, I would have passionately argued this very notion:

The Baker Commission was; for all intents and puposes, Tet.

No matter what this President now does or how he hopes to do it, Iraq is over for the United States. Rightly or wrongly. Bush no longer has the ability to meaningfully shape events on the ground. Surge the troops. Withdraw the troops. In the cities, or out. Take the offensive or hand things over to the Iraqis. None of it matters within the context of American objectives anymore because Bush no longer has the confidence of the American people, the support of a Democratic Congress, the international partners that could lend credibility to course corrections, the margin for error with the media and precious little control over the Maliki government. As the execution of Saddam underscores, we couldn't even influence the government to carry out this sentence in manner that would minimize sectarian passions, lend credibility to the act itself or serve as any sort of first step in healing the wounds which divide this country. The lesson and the advice from this corner is to find the cleanest, most responsible exit strategy, execute it flawlessly and hope for the best. We're done.

Unhappy New Year

Perhaps Paul would have avoided his sniffly start to the year had he joined his French brothers in arms in protesting the whole concept of 2007. Here is the text from their petition:

Deeply disturbed by the lack of a United Nations resolution certifying the coming year as legitimate and internationally sanctioned,

Noting with approval the current partial adoption of “Common Era” nomenclature to replace the religiously biased “Anno Domini” epoch system,

Observing the lack of uniformity in current major time units,

Recognizing the undue burden placed upon the developing nations of Tonga and Fiji by the current positioning of the International Date Line,

1. Demands that the United States of America halt the current progress of 2007 until the year can be officially sanctioned and endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly,

2. Calls for the international adoption of the “Common Era” and “Before Commen Era” nomenclature for historical epochs,

3. Condemns the use of the birth year of the Christian religious figure Jesus of Nazareth for the dividing point between the current and previous historical epochs,

4. Proposes the creation of a committee with representatives from all national, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups to propose and adopt an unbiased new epoch divider year,

5. Requests the international adoption of a metric based time system to replace the current, but antiquated, time unit system,

6. Encourages the movement of the International Date Line so as not to place an unwarranted time and date burden on developing nations.

Yep. Those nutty French. Although it is a pleasure to see them finally admitting that the United States does; in fact, have complete control over the time-space continuum (bold).

Starting the Year Right!

With a cold.

In 3 1/2 years in Arizona, I never once caught a cold or sinus infection---things I routinely fought with while living in California. This is our second winter back and my second cold.

I'm sensing a trend and I don't like it.

Along the Avenue

Lompoc residents living around the 600 block of West Ocean Avenue are organizing and preparing to make a stand at tomorrow night's city council meeting where the city's planning commission decision allowing Good Samaritan Shelter Inc. of Santa Maria to open a detox center and shelter at what has been the home of Avenue Flower Shop for for decades:

Residents who oppose placing a drug and alcohol detox center on West Ocean Avenue near downtown are circulating petitions and encouraging opponents to attend the Lompoc City Council meeting Tuesday night, when the Planning Commission's approval of the center will be reviewed.

The center, proposed by Good Samaritan Shelter Inc. of Santa Maria, would provide perinatal services to 16 women in recovery and include a separate co-ed detox building with six beds. The program would be residential and the residents would be monitored for substance abuse of any kind, including regular drug testing.

There is no such recovery center in Lompoc. Recovering drug users must go to the Good Samaritan center in Santa Maria.

Several hundred signatures already have been gathered and a large crowd is expected at the meeting, according to Alice Milligan, one of a group of residents that appealed a Planning Commission decision to allow the detox center to open at 608 West Ocean Ave., the current home of the Avenue Flower Shop.

Milligan said petitions are being left at stores and passed around in neighborhoods. They include the name and telephone numbers of each council member.

“There is a lot of support for the appeal,” said Milligan, a community volunteer who has been involved in the effort to revitalize downtown. “We want to show the City Council that there in concern in the community about the location.”

“We need a detox center, but not on our main drag,” she said.

As an interested party--for more than a few reasons--I have to call time-out here. First off, H street is now the main drag in Lompoc.

A quick trip down Ocean will make that clear when you take the time to drive it. It's 40 year old, in-some-places-empty-facades speak of the town that was, not the one that is. The city center that "is" runs along H street from College all the way to the Mervyn's center just south of the airport.

The current owner at Avenue knows it. I'm left to wonder why long-time residents don't recognize it.

Additionally, something that I haven't seen much commented on is this one little tidbit from the original plan proposed by Good Samaritan:

Sylvia Barnard says a staff will monitor the group 24 hours a day, and they cannot leave the facility without supervision. And arrangements are also being made to build a police substation inside the center.

"You're going to have a uniformed and non-uniformed presence continually on-site," says Lompoc Police Sergeant Chuck Strange. "So if there are any issues that crop up, we'll be able to handle them."

That it's being completely ignored in the criticisms (and I'm not saying that the critics have no legitimate concerns) leaves me wondering why. Is it that the provision is unknown to them? Is it known but ignored because it takes away a powerful talking point? Has it disappeared from the proposal altogether?

In looking forward to Tuesday's City Council meeting, will the question be addressed there? It would seem the perfect opportunity for answering this one lingering fear of the community about Good Samaritan's presence on Ocean Avenue just 1 1/2 blocks from Ryon Park and 1 1/2 blocks north of Lompoc Valley Middle School.

If a police sub-station is still in the mix, I'd urge the Council to carefully and clearly articulate that message to the community if it is truly interested in getting the townspeople's buy-in. Likewise, if it has been struck from the proposal, articulate how and why.

Either way, it's too important a situation to rubber-stamp anything; the city needs to engage it's citizens on a subject they obviously feel so strongly about.

Flying Beneath a Radar Near You

From WaPo:

There are moments that make you question your fundamental assumptions about the world. One of them took place a few days ago, when news emerged that Monica Lewinsky had just graduated from the London School of Economics. She did not!! Lewinsky, 33, is known more for her audacious coquetry than for her intellectual heft, and the notion of her earning a master of science degree in social psychology at the prestigious London university is jarring, akin to finding a rip in the time-space continuum, or discovering that Kim Jong Il is a natural blond. Even more staggering, the same bubbly gal who once described the act of flashing her thong at the president as a "small, subtle, flirtatious gesture" has now written a lofty-sounding thesis. Its title, according to Reuters: "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."

Whaaaa? *doubletake*

Well, good for her. It's nice to see that she has found a way to get beyond the miserable situation she was confronted with at such a young age by people who were entrusted with her care.

New Year's Resolutions

Well, I wanted to get 2007 off on the right foot by getting on here and fulfilling my commitment to myself from last night. Although it was hazy when I openly declared my intentions, one of my New Year's resolutions for 2007 was to blog more.

Paul, God bless him, has done a great job keeping My Dogs afloat for the last year. And he's done so with literally zero help from me. Following my move from NYC in November 2005 and starting a new job at roughly the same time, I really haven't had the time to blog with the regularity, much less the intensity I had previously. The combination of the new job replete with big projects and travel, enjoying being around family for the first time in a decade, a re-commitment to some interests that I had not pursued in some time, laziness and a new relationship have all contributed to my pitiful blogging performance. But kudos go to Paul for sticking it out and keeping the darn thing going.

What some of you non-bloggers might not recognize is what a commitment it is to post something every day. It requires even more commitment when you wonder if anyone is actually reading or not. One thing that lightens the load somewhat is to collaborate with a partner. You're motivated to keep things flowing if you have someone contributing at the same time. You also know that if for some reason you can't get something up, your partner will be out there making it happen in your absence. And that's the way it generally worked here for a long time. But in mid-2005 when Paul took a leave of absence to move to Cali, I took over much of the posting. I was glad to do it. I got into a regular routine and while it was sometimes challenging I managed to do pretty well with it.

When it came time for me to take some time away, we flipped roles and Paul became the de facto Dog at My Dogs. As the days stretched into months and the months into a year, poor Paul had to listen to my empty promises about "getting back into it" or "posting something on Monday." Sure, I had the best of intentions. But with all of the changes in my personal life and simply falling out of the habit, it's been really difficult to climb back on the bike and start pedaling. To his credit, Paul has shown remarkable commitment, consistency and patience with me during this interlude. And at times, I think we readers have sensed his frustration in wondering why he bothers. Well, Paul, on behalf of all of the readers let me say thank you. You consistently submit interesting, well-written posts and as you get linked by the big time bloggers, I think you have to feel good about that.

With that as background, let me say that it truly is my intention to write more in 2007. Writing is a great passion of mine and something I want to make greater use of in my career. Plus, my "fanbase" gives me lots of encouragement and compliments. They've often griped at me over the last year, asking "when are you going to post again?" Who knew they were such loyal readers? So, there you have it. Look for more from me in 2007.

Now, I'll start off by saying I might be a little slow getting started. I have to deliver a big project for a client in Monterey, CA on the 9th (and I'm way behind due to the holidays), then the next day fly to NYC for a meeting with another client, then on the 12th fly to San Diego to catch the Chargers first round playoff game. So blogging will surely be light over the next couple of weeks. But I'm going to try to get some stuff out at least every couple of days during this period. So be patient with me.

Here's hoping that all of our readers will stick with us in 2007, that new ones will join us and that all of us enjoy a safe, happy and prosperous new year.