The Dish

Another reader has had enough:

You ruffle many feathers (and feathered boas) from your blog position on high.  You‚Äôve attacked everything from Christianists to Chomsky. But when you attack Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’, you’ve gone too far. Whether it’s the song or the video, ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ is untouchable. At long last, you‚Äôve crossed the Rubicon.

You obviously view the world from Pet Shop Boys-colored glasses, through which the true genius of Def Leppard is obscured. That you see talent in Bronski Beat, yet pretend to be blind to the Sugar, only serves to shine an even brighter light on your bias.

I pray for your musical soul.

Remember the p.r. push to declare that the coalition forces and Maliki were poised to take back Baghdad from the militias this fall? It was hoisted by all the usual Bush apologists during the election campaign, and my suspicion is that it was entirely about the election campaign rather than a genuine desire to seize control of Baghdad, something Rumsfeld refused to do from the day the U.S. forces got there. Now we have some evidence for how empty the gesture really was:

A four-star general who declined to be identified discussing a confidential conversation told of this encounter with Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who was in charge of day-to-day ground operations. "Do you have enough forces? Enough to clear an area and stay there to secure it 24/7?" Chiarelli replied, "Of course not." The four-star recalls replying, "It’s going to fail, it’s absolutely going to fail." The Americans never had enough forces to sweep even half the city, much less secure it.

Just worth knowing the details of the vast chasm between the White House and reality. Now put yourself in the position of an American soldier ordered to do something he doesn’t have the back-up for, in order to provide window-dressing for a re-election campaign. The troops are heroes not just for doing their work, but for doing it under one of the most clueless commanders-in-chief in recent history.

Pekin, Illinois, 2 pm.

A nice little swipe from the senator from Illinois:

"One good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me? And increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s all just exactly what I would expect."

A reader writes:

Re: Santorum at the UN. I guess it’s true what I’ve heard – crack doesn’t smoke itself.

Even JPod agrees. But the crack goes on …

The Democrats won over a lot of disgruntled freedom-loving Republicans last month. Markos Moulitsas has flirted with liberal libertarianism. My own positions on medical marijuana, marriage equality, end-of-life issues, and habeas corpus have made the Republicans almost impossible to support in their current authoritarian, big government, Christianist guise. But can the Democrats really find a place for lovers of liberty? Brink Lindsey writes:

If Democrats hope to continue appealing to libertarian-leaning voters, they are going to have to up their game. They need to ask themselves: Are we content with being a brief rebound fling for jilted libertarians, or do we want to form a lasting relationship? Let me make a case for the second option.

Enjoy.

In some ways, it was the arrival of the Islamist government in Tehran in 1979. And the picture that best summed up the nightmare of religious totalitarianism won the Pulitzer Prize. The Wall Street Journal finally tracked down the photographer, who remained anonymous at the time. His name is Jahangir Razmi. Here’s a fascinating story of how the man responsible came to be discovered. He’s still around. And unafraid. And has more photographs that the WSJ has unearthed.

A sane analysis from the DLC.

A reader complains we haven’t had enough big hair metal bands. ‘Tis true. So here’s Def Leppard’s "Pour Some Sugar on Me". My reader explains why it is culturally significant:

This one has it all: Hair and lots of it. (The better for head banging.) Skinny legs. (Sir Mick may have started that one but these guys carry on the tradition proudly.) Torn jeans. Tank tops and/or no tops. A one-armed drummer. Ridiculous lyrics. Silly-shaped guitars. Zero cost to produce as it’s simply concert footage spliced together (badly I might add since many times the lead singer’s lips don’t match the song).

In other words: sublime.

Click here to see the other entries…

The Fifth Division shows the extraordinary difficulty of constructing an allegedly national army in the middle of a sectarian civil war. They are actually being trained by the U.S. and proceed to fight Sunnis. And, according to this article, they stand

accused of arresting hundreds of Sunni men on little or no evidence, threatening to rape a suspect’s wife to coerce a confession, and intimidating its commander’s critics, according to interviews with Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Currently, the U.S. military is in control and doing what it can to monitor and restrain sectarian abuses. But what happens when command is transferred? Money quote:

"I understand there were operations done previously by General Shakir, before I got here," that angered the Sunni population, Sutherland said. He added that U.S. forces have helped the general introduce better training for 5th Division troops, conduct intelligence-driven operations and start a recruiting program to enlist more Sunni troops.

The 5th Division "is not necessarily representative of the population of Baquba, but it is something General Shakir is working on," Sutherland said. Diyala’s police and military were in such disarray earlier this year that the previous U.S. command delayed plans to transfer full control to the Iraqi military in October. The new handover date is just months away.

"Right now, the Iraqi Army is expected to transfer to Iraqi ground force command in early February," Sutherland said. "There’s nothing I’ve seen to indicate that won’t happen."