The Dish

Jeb Koogler puts his finger on a real worry:

Musharraf’s government has gone farther than just to turn a blind eye to the actions of militant groups; indeed, Grare believes that the Pakistani military has deliberately not taken down key Taliban leaders. According to one analyst quoted in the [Carnegie] report, "the current [military] operation is only directed against Taliban foot soldiers of local origin, led by insignificant leaders, whereas places like Shawal [where key Taliban leaders operate]…remain calm and quiet."

The full Carnegie report on Pakistan is here.

"Putting on my Clausewitz hat, I’ve been thinking about how this strategy could be employed by the American military. Should the United States army set up gay platoons, where camaraderie is based not on team loyalty and male friendship but rather on sexual partnering among veteran soldiers and new recruits? I mentioned this to a friend in the armed forces and he could only forsee one benefit. He noted that if the American military gets soundly whipped in a future engagement, we could always laugh off the defeat and say, ‘Well, yeah, but you only beat a bunch of gays,’" – Dinesh D’Souza, equating all gay men with sexual abusers or harassers.

Even Patrick Ruffini is impressed:

Ron Paul will place second at Ames.  You heard it here first. He leads the second tier in cash-on-hand. He was able to get 1,200 people out to the Hy-Vee (has any candidate done something that big on their own, not at an RPI event?). His home base in Texas isn’t that far of a drive, and his people are motivated enough to come in from out of state for him. And he’s making a big push on his Web site, which for all intents and purposes, is his campaign.

But is it really necessary to equate Ron Paul with Lyndon Larouche? Why the obloquy from the establishment? What are they so afraid of?

A reader offers another:

Q: How many neocons does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. The socket welcomes the light bulb with candy and flowers.

I prefer my own. But it appears we have a neocon joke thread. Three words: Bring ‘Em On.

"I think more war crimes have been committed in the detention and interrogation and fake trials of people in Guantánamo than people in Guantánamo have committed. And I don’t think the question is whether they’ve tortured people," – Major Tom Fleener, United States Army Reserve, and a military lawyer assigned to one of the Gitmo detainees.

Read the whole thing if you still believe the lies your government is telling you about its detention and rendition policies.

What happened to David Vitter’s endorsement of Giuliani on Giuliani’s website?

Bart Simpson joins the throng.

Here’s a useful reality-check:

Let us assume that everything that we are getting from the official sources are true. The official statistics are saying that the ‘dramatic’ improvement in Anbar Province in reducing attacks per day in the single province to 26 is more than the number of attacks per day needed in June 2003 across the entire country to force the fragmentation of primary group loyalties and destroy the ability of a modern state to function. Remember there are eighteen provinces, and going back to the DOD report, there are at least five provinces with the same or greater number of attacks per day on average per province greater than the nation wide number of attacks per day in June, 2003.

Reducing the level of violence by 10% nationwide is a positive step in reducing suffering, but it does nothing to further anything that vaguely resembles a US strategic goal. Reducing the level of violence by 25% is a positive step in reducing suffering, but it does nothing to further anything that vaguely resembles a US strategic goal. Reducing the level of violence by 50% nationwide is a positive step in reducing suffering, but it does nothing to further anything that vaguely resembles a US strategic goal.

To have a chance in hell of accomplishing any US strategic goals, the level of violence in Iraq has to decrease by 80 to 90% to return to the June, 2003 levels. Everything else is, unfortunately, statistical noise within a very negative trend line.

"Pull Out Proposal Lacking a Plan B". Gawker makes the appropriate joke. Here’s mine: why do you never want to date a neocon? Because they always say they’re going to pull out and they never do.

James Poulos argues that a leading Republican candidate needs to run aggressively, proudly and angrily against president Bush and his legacy. Money quote:

The American people are ready for prominent Republicans to cop to the truth. Dick Lugar will not be thrown out of office anytime soon. He knows what plenty of us already know: when September comes, and we make public the judgments that Condi Rice has plead with us to pickle until then, the verdict on the surge will be in and will change nothing. Our armed forces are competent and diligent enough to do even better at waging war when their numbers are swelled. But observers from the White House on down have admitted time and again that ‘success’ in Iraq, as a matter of fact, cannot be achieved militarily. There is nothing that the US can do to change the political reality in Iraq. This is not a great failure of nerve or a failure of war. And when we cease to maintain the heady and wild expectations of March 2003, we will recover the sense necessary to remove the thorn of Iraq from the paw of the Republican party.

Such a move will not make an Iraq of the GOP. This is about more than neoconservatism versus paleoconservatism. Even a neocon can recognize a mess when he sees one. Even a paleocon can recognize there is more to choose from than either the isolation of America or the nuking of Iran. The hawk need not be reckless or bloodthirsty; the dove need not be a coward; and we need least of all the false dichotomy of polar caricatures. Prudence — the careful calibration of policy to circumstance — cannot take place caught between binary ideologies. Conservatives ought to know this by now, and ought to have remembered it, too. We still have time, but precious little.

Ross is underwhelmed. So is Larison:

The reality for the majority of conservative activists and voters: even the mildest dissent on the war is treachery. The candidates are prisoners to this.