From TruthDig
By Scott Ritter

It has become a mantra of sorts among the faltering Republican candidates: Victory is at hand in Iraq. Mitt Romney, in particular, has taken to so openly embracing the “success” of the U.S. troop “surge” that it has become the centerpiece of his litany of attacks on the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

“Think of what’s happened this year,” Romney recently implored a crowd in Iowa. “General [David] Petraeus came in to report to Congress and Hillary Clinton said she couldn’t believe him. She said she just couldn’t believe General Petraeus. Now think about that. He’s been proven to be right. He should be on the cover, by the way, of Time magazine, and not Putin.”

Clinton, for her part, has stood her ground. Addressing a crowd of voters in Iowa, she took a swipe back at Romney: “We all know the Republican candidates are just plain wrong when they declare mission accomplished about the troop surge.” She went on to note that U.S. casualty figures in Iraq for 2007 were at an all-time high, and that for all of the positive reports concerning the surge, Iraq remains a nation on the verge of a civil war, no closer today to a political solution than it was before the escalation. She promised that, if nominated, “I will not hesitate to go toe to toe with Republicans in the debates to end the war as quickly and responsibly as possible.”

Therein lies the catch. How does Clinton explain her commitment to quick and responsible withdrawal in the context of the short-term reduction of violence in Iraq achieved by the surge? How does she propose to rectify the admitted internal shortcomings inside Iraq, which she likens to near-civil war conditions, with her pledge for a “responsible” withdrawal?

Read more Five Iraqs

From The Pgh Post Gazette
By Stephen E. Wright

One of the hardest things a parent can do is to send a child off to war. The second hardest thing is sending him back.

My son is an Army cavalry scout who is part of President Bush’s surge in Iraq. After nine months on the front lines, he got 18 days of home leave this month. We squeezed Thanksgiving, Christmas and his wedding into those few, precious days. Last week, after waiting for a delayed plane, his mother, new wife and I exchanged tearful hugs with him as he headed back for six more months of war.

Although my wife and I do not support this war, we have been outspoken in support of our son and the other soldiers who risk their lives daily. Some parents of soldiers think opposition to the war demeans the efforts of the 150,000 soldiers there and fortifies “the enemy.” But others believe the best way to support these brave young people is to work to get them out of there. It is a war we never should have started.

Before our son was sent to Iraq, the war was somewhat abstract for my wife and me. For many Americans it still is. Through letters, phone calls and e-mail from our son, along with conversations at home earlier this month, it has become very real.

During his time home, our son made the war more personal for others, too. He met for an hour with reporters and editors at the San Jose Mercury News, where I work. Everyone appreciated his candid answers to their pointed questions. He was natural, mature and authoritative. It was pretty emotional for Mom and Dad. We were very proud of him.

Read more Son at War

From The Washington Post
By Jackson Diehl

For five years Washington-based officials and pundits have repeatedly made the mistake of predicting that the next six or 12 months in Iraq would be decisive. Under the hardheaded leadership of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker such talk has been banned: “Nobody says anything about turning a corner, seeing lights at the end of tunnels, any of those phrases,” Petraeus recently declared.

Yet, for once, saying that the next six to 12 months will win or lose the war just might be right.

That’s not because Iraqis have suddenly developed the capacity to meet the unrealistic timelines drawn up in Washington ever since 2003 — when the Pentagon planned to reduce U.S. troops to a skeleton force of 30,000 within six months of the capture of Baghdad. On the contrary, Petraeus and Crocker have spent the past year attempting to drive home the point that the U.S. goal of a stable, democratizing Iraq, if it can be achieved at all, will require an American commitment well beyond any of the timetables discussed in Washington — despite the remarkable success of this year’s military surge.

So the next six to 12 months are not crucial because of what will happen in Iraq — where, at best, violence will continue to decline incrementally, while Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds make painful and partial progress toward political settlements. The test will come in the United States — where first the Pentagon and the White House, and then the country, will decide whether to invest enough resources in Iraq to keep the hope of eventual success alive.

Read more Make-or-Break

From Global Research
By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation.

The process of US sponsored “regime change”, which normally consists in the re-formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power. But at the same time, the fake elections supported by the “international community” scheduled for January 2008, even if they were to be carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse.

There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:

“It has been known for months that the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the “war on terrorism” across the region.

Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts, proposed the toppling of Pakistan’s military…

The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)

Political Impasse

“Regime change” with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington’s foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.

Read more Pakistan

From The Seattle PI
By Joel Connelly

If you have ever worked as a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, John Edwards does not want you to think of even applying for a job in his White House.

The 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate has embraced a hard, confrontational populism being sold in rural towns across Iowa as his ticket in the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, by contrast, is running as a conciliator who will heal the nation’s political wounds.

And New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is saying she is the person to make change work, thanks to eight years experience at the White House in the 1990s.

The three are locked in a tight-as-a-tick caucus race. Two different polls Sunday showed two different front-runners.

Edwards has the most at stake. The caucuses will either propel him into the center of the race lately dominated by two more glamorous rivals or provide him with a ticket to political palookaville.

A very small number of Americans will decide the issue Thursday night. The top Democratic turnout in the history of Iowa caucuses has been 122,000 voters.

Read more Edwards

From The NY Times
By Paul Krugman

Yesterday The Times published a highly informative chart laying out the positions of the presidential candidates on major issues. It was, I’d argue, a useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation.

For what the chart made clear was the extent to which Democrats and Republicans live in separate moral and intellectual universes.

On one side, the Democrats are all promising to get out of Iraq and offering strongly progressive policies on taxes, health care and the environment. That’s understandable: the public hates the war, and public opinion seems to be running in a progressive direction.

What seems harder to understand is what’s happening on the other side — the degree to which almost all the Republicans have chosen to align themselves closely with the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. And I’m not just talking about their continuing enthusiasm for the Iraq war. The G.O.P. candidates are equally supportive of Bush economic policies.

Why would politicians support Bushonomics? After all, the public is very unhappy with the state of the economy, for good reason. The “Bush boom,” such as it was, bypassed most Americans — median family income, adjusted for inflation, has stagnated in the Bush years, and so have the real earnings of the typical worker. Meanwhile, insecurity has increased, with a declining fraction of Americans receiving health insurance from their employers.

Read more Great Divide

From The Washington Post
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

In the state that will kick off the presidential election this week, it’s not a good time to be part of the moneyed elite — even in the Republican Party.

The crowd at a community center here this weekend is neatly but not flashily dressed, friendly and unaccustomed to hearing a Republican with a message like Mike Huckabee’s. His rise has goaded Mitt Romney, who once held a clear lead in the battle for Iowa’s caucuses, into a spasm of heavy spending on negative ads and mailings.

You can see why the affable Huckabee has turned himself into the moment’s most interesting political phenomenon. “I’m not exactly the pick of some of the East Coast establishment Republicans,” the former governor of Arkansas said in a nice bit of heartland understatement. “I think they don’t understand a lot of us who don’t live in their world.”

“If you ask a hedge fund manager what’s he worried about, he’s going to give you a very different answer than a guy who just lost his job in a factory in Orange City,” Huckabee continues in a quiet voice, referring to a town in the western part of the state. And then he speaks up for “the guy in Orange City” who is alarmed by the price of gasoline, the rising costs of college and health care, the inexorable increases in “deductibles” and “co-pays.”

Read more Thunder

From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

Following along in David Broder’s excited footsteps, Sam Roberts in The New York Times reports that Michael Bloomberg “is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.” And a handful of retired, mediocre politicians with no following are issuing self-absorbed, thug-like demands, complete with deadlines:

Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, “I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent.”

Is it even theoretically possible for Democrats to “cooperate” more with Republicans than they’ve been doing since taking over control of Congress?

The NYT article quotes actor Sam Waterston of the painfully silly, substance-free Unity ‘08 group describing the promise of Bloomberg’s candidacy as promoting “Unity08’s principal goals of a bipartisan, nonpartisan, postpartisan ticket.” The website Unite for Mike — a grass-roots movement that now has 500 supporters! — says that Bloomberg “has the vision, experience and passion of a true and demonstrated leader” and that Bloomberg can solve this problem: “Our international leadership has become confused and directionless. We are no longer the shining beacon of freedom and justice to our fellow nations.”

Here’s Bloomberg’s record of Independence, Judgment, Competence, and Trans-partisan Wisdom. Consider how sterling his judgment is and how able he would be to make the world respect us again:

Read more Trans-Partisan Savior

From AlterNet
By David Smith

Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t shoot. This is traumatizing.” Huckabee the hunter had demonstrated himself a “regular guy,” hoping to consolidate his lead in the Republican polls before Thursday’s Iowa caucus, the first step to gaining the party’s nomination for President.

His nearest rival, Mitt Romney, had shot himself in the foot by claiming to be an avid hunter, only to then confess he targeted mostly “small varmints.” No such question marks over Huckabee, who said he not only hunted ducks, deer and antelopes but could eat varmint too. “I figured out you could put grease in a popcorn popper and heat that thing up and you could cook anything,” he said of his student days. “So we fried squirrel.”

There is growing unease among Republican organizers that the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan could meet the same fate as Huckabee’s squirrel. The presidential campaign has failed to produce a champion to take on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or whoever wins the Democratic nomination. Instead the struggle for the party’s soul has exposed fissures in policy, disarray over what it now stands for and distractions both banal and bizarre, “redneck stew” included.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who does “not necessarily buy into traditional Darwinian theory,” and is celebrated for losing more than 100lb in weight, appeals to Christian evangelicals but not fiscal conservatives. Romney, a Mormon forced to backtrack over a claim that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King, appeals to social, economic and foreign policy conservatives, but not those who regard his religion as a cult.

Read more Iowa Mess

From The Boston Globe
By Stephen McCauley

One of the many things I dislike about Mike Huckabee is that he occasionally says something I agree with.

In mid-December, in an article published in Foreign Affairs, he chided the Bush administration for its foreign policy decisions and accused them of having a go-it-alone “arrogant bunker mentality.” That, unfortunately, sounded good to me.

Being a realist, I’m happy to accept that a candidate I do support is never going to go along with all of my positions. On the question of marriage, for example. Since at least 50 percent of all marriages between a man and a woman end in divorce in this country, my belief is that the best way to preserve the institution is to have a constitutional amendment banning heterosexuals from marrying. However, I don’t expect any of the current crop of presidential hopefuls to stand up for it, and I’m OK with that. (I have a suspicion Hillary Clinton might privately agree with me, but that doesn’t count.)

But when a candidate I basically distrust (Huckabee, to name one) starts sounding reasonable on some issues, I find it confusing.

The day after Huckabee released his statement, Mitt Romney popped up on the Sunday morning news shows and accused his rival of being out of line. “That’s an insult to the president,” he said in response to Huckabee’s statement, “and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president.” I was hoping Huckabee would apologize to Bush, a sign that he was backing away from a postion I agreed with, and making it easier for me to dimiss him entirely. Unfortunately, he didn’t.

I see no alternative, therefore, but to take matters into my hands, and issue a few apologies of my own to the president for some things I’ve thought and done in the past year.

Read more Apologies