The Dish

Byron York says "the base" wanted a full pardon of Libby and a political denunciation of the entire probe into the leaking of a CIA agent’s identity:

"We specifically don’t want an executive to re-try a case and decide he knows better than the judge or jury," says Vin Weber, a sometime White House adviser. "We want the executive to take a broader national interest into account — something that needs to be taken into account that a judge or jury couldn’t properly take into account."

In other words, if Bush had pardoned Libby because the CIA leak probe never should have happened, fine. But don’t play judge, Mr. President – that’s not your branch.

But Bush urged the investigation himself, didn’t he? And famously said he’d fire the leakers. How could he now denounce it? As for the base, by the way, I’m not convinced that most grass-roots Republicans are eager for a full pardon of a perjurer. Only the Republican beltway establishment wants that. Because he’s their friend. And their friends are not the kind of people who do time.

"Germans?" "Forget it. He’s rolling."

Who knows what he could do next? My take in the Sunday Times. Money quote:

The only thing Washington loves less than a lame-duck president is a completely unpredictable lame-duck president. They are scared that he could do anything, without real consultation. The Libby decision was made just like the decision to authorise torture: it was done outside the normal channels of government, blindsiding key aides, and shocking the establishment. If he did this once – and he has done it many times – he could do it again. And so, for all his failure and polling dive, he retains the capacity for surprise. Which is the capacity for relevance.

This is all he’s got left. The mighty power of the presidency, a predilection for sudden action, and absolutely nothing to lose. This lame duck, in other words, could quack or fly without warning. And Washington, for all its increasingly open contempt for him, is rattled by the possibility. They don’t know what’s coming; but they know they’ll have to adjust.

In this, perhaps for the first time, even Republicans are having a familiar experience. They now know what it’s like to be a European with this president. And they are longing for it to be over.

(Photo: Stephen Chernin/Getty.)

Mr Simpson, Of Course. Money quote from a new profile in the Times of London:

Homer is good because, above all, he is capable of great love. When the chips are down, he always does the right thing by his children – rejecting an offer of $1m from Mr Burns for a teddy bear of Maggie’s – and by Marge – he is never unfaithful in spite of several opportunities. And it’s not because he fears being found out; it’s because he can’t. What Marge understands and what her sisters don’t is that having all of Homer is far, far better than having half of any ordinary man.

This capacity for love dwarfs his failings. Even God sees this. Homer can’t stand his fundamentalist Christian neighbour, Flanders, and is bored to death by the sermons of the weary Reverend Lovejoy. He also has little time for the Bible – “If the Bible has taught us nothing else,” he tells Lisa, "and it hasn’t, it’s that girls should stick to girls’ sports." But when God drops in for a chat, he discovers in Homer a surprisingly convincing theology. Basically, this is that life is tough and humans are hopeless but, without making a fuss about it, God is always there as the last safety net. And, when He’s not around, there’s love.

"It is Homer," writes Mark Pinsky in his book The Gospel According to The Simpsons, "who has the most personal relationship with God."

Clarkston, Michigan, 7.35 pm.

For a newly updated, global gallery of Dish readers’ window views, click here.

This I didn’t know as such:

The former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2 and a half hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.

"I tried to avoid this war," Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. "I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers."

Powell has become increasingly outspoken about the level of violence in Iraq, which he believes is in a state of civil war. "The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms," he said. "It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now."

He added: "It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States." All the military could do, Powell suggested, was put "a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew".

Ross was swooning over Powell at Aspen. With caveats, of course. James Bennet: not so much.

As one might expect, John Burns has a subtle, smart take on the success in Anbar of pitting Sunni tribes against al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. On the one hand, it’s a major turning point – and the specter of Muslims fighting al Qaeda is in itself a gain in the public relations war. On the other, it depends on a homogeneous entity in which Sunnis do not really have to confront Shia or Kurds in running their own province. That makes a tactical regional success non-replicable on a national model – because the civil war dynamic kicks in:

Two factors that have led to the astonishing success in Anbar — the Sunnis’ dominance of the province and the nature of their foe here — could have the opposite effect elsewhere, especially in Baghdad. There the population is an explosive mix of sects, rather than largely Sunni. And the Sunnis’ fight — explicitly so, in the case of many of the new volunteers — is not just against Al Qaeda-linked extremists, but ultimately against the American presence here, and beyond the Americans, the new power of the majority Shiites.

The Anbar strategy, in other words, can only really work alongside a political strategy of soft-partition. Which leads to a thought about next spring’s redeployment. Perhaps a post-surge plan for withdrawing troops from contested areas like Baghdad could add troops to those homogeneous Sunni or Shia areas where local militias and tribes are keen to keep al Qaeda at bay. Our forces could perhaps be designated primarily as an anti-al-Qaeda force, stationed at the invitation of local leaders. And then they could do what they do best – instead of trying to hold together a country that no longer effectively exists.

(Photo: Anbar sheikhs by Patrick Baz/Getty.)

Madonna turns La Isla Bonita into a Roman Gypsy festival at Live Earth. She’s almost 50, for Pete’s sake, and still experimenting. As for Live Earth, I’m allergic to self-righteous pop-stars. But it’s still surely a great thing that two years to the day after Islamists terrorized London, a vast, global musical concert can celebrate the freedom to sing and dance in that city, two freedoms Islamists hate and want to destroy.

BBC journalist Alan Johnston’s kidnappers are aggrieved that he didn’t thank them enough for their hospitality.

It’s one of the mysteries of the Bush administration. While they have reaped many of the disadvantages of talking tough, they have often balked when it comes to difficult decisions to actually go after al Qaeda, despite some risks of collateral damage. And so they let Zarqawi go before the war because of worries about allies. Now we know they may well have let Zawahiri go for similar reasons two years later. Musharraf seems to be an exception to the rule of "are you with us or with the terrorists." Money quote:

"The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest levels," said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.

Do we want to get al Qaeda’s leadership or don’t we?