Category: The Dish

A good point, I’d say:

I honor and respect his service to the country.  I respect anyone who spends their adult life in the military as he has, but I respectfully have to say, General Sanchez, why didn’t when I was in Baghdad, meeting with you and Jerry Bremer five years ago — well, four years ago — and I said, "You don’t have enough troops here.  You’re going to fail.  Looting is going on, Al-Qaeda is coming in, you’re going to have these problems.  Why aren’t you settling the de-Ba’athification issue, etc etc."  And he defended the present policy [at that time], he said it was succeeding, and he testified before the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member, the same way.

When we confirm a senior officer to a position in the military, there’s always a standard question that is asked, and that they always say Yes to, and that is "When asked, will you give your candid and personal opinion in answer to a question by a member of the committee?"  They always say Yes.  He said Yes.  He was asked in several hearings about the strategy, and he not only didn’t complain about it — in all due respect again — but he supported it.  And I wish he had done that back when he was on active duty.

There has been good news from Iraq lately, especially from Sunni areas, with respect to the small but deadly part of the civil war that pays allegiance to the al Qaeda brand. But this passage from the WaPo really struck me:

As the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved.

So we have to keep success against AQI on the downlow because it might interfere the simplistic rationale for continuing the occupation indefinitely. When will the president be honest and tell us that he thinks we should indeed police the Iraqi civil war indefinitely, if only because there might be some local rapprochements between Sunnis and Shiites along the lines we are seeing? Wouldn’t that be a more honest and more persuasive rationale for indefinite occupation than the al Qaeda canard?

The next generation literally cannot understand the arguments against marriage equality.

Who’s nuttier? Kos says Malkin, because she actually takes herself seriously.

She was on The View today. For all her positioning, her public statement is quite close to Bush’s who also inveighs against torture, while authorizing it as policy. Clinton won’t call the techniques in question torture; and she won’t explicitly rule out specific techniques. I remain skeptical of her bona fides on the matter. She is characterologically unable to take a clear stand. And yet she wants to enjoy the global benefits of a clear stand. She can’t have it both ways. If you want to end torture as an instrument of American policy, I don’t believe Hillary Clinton is your candidate.

They may have killed the Washington Post reporter, Saif Aldin. Just when you think you have a solution in Iraq, it tends to become a problem.

Congrats on getting married. Extra points for not reading a single blog for 16 days.

Flesherton, Ontario, Canada, 3 pm.

I know, reading the MSM, that Hillary Clinton is already the president-elect, but on the ground, things are less certain:

It’s abundantly clear that, less than four months before the onslaught of decisive primaries and caucuses, many Democratic voters have just not made up their minds. "Of those that would speak to us, almost all were undecided," reports correspondent Phoebe Love who followed the Obama canvass through Ballard, Washington. She is echoed by contributor Ethan Hova in Studio City, a middle-class Democratic suburban stronghold in Los Angeles: "The vast majority of voters were very much undecided and expressed reluctance to engage in debate without conducting research on their own." Daniel Macht, following the Obama campaign in Brooklyn, New York noted the same hesitation: "They were all undecided, save one Edwards supporter." Perhaps most importantly, correspondent Beverly Davis reports from Des Moines, "Smith [ an Obama volunteer] knocks on Dan Arply’s door and launches into his opening rap but Arply soon interrupts by saying, ‘Thanks for stopping by, but I haven’t decided on supporting anyone yet.’ Arply is a typical Iowan."

She can be stopped.

Like pulling teeth … your own.