Six years ago today, Matthew Rycroft, private secretary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote a secret memorandum to the U.K.’s ambassador to the U.S., David Manning. The memo contained the minutes of a meeting held that same morning between Blair and a few senior foreign policy advisers. It was exposed by the Sunday Times nearly three years later. Two paragraphs stood out.

Rycroft spoke about a trip that Sir Richard Dearlove had recently taken to Washington. Dearlove, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service or MI6, is referred to officially as "C":

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

And there was this:

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

Many people who were attentive to the White House’s public statements saw hints that a decision already had been made to invade Iraq well before that secret memo was sent to its select group of addressees. There was the 2002 State of Union in late January and the West Point graduation speech in June.

But concerns raised by these speeches were tempered somewhat by the idea that Congress wouldn’t go along, that public support was soft, that the media would yank on the reins, and that the British weren’t on board. This all spurred most observers to believe that an invasion might encounter too many obstacles to go forward. Unless, that is, some definitive evidence could be delivered showing that Saddam Hussein had massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction and was close to building nuclear bombs.

Providing such evidence was exactly what the neoconservative war hounds had been intent on doing, as we now know, ever since September 11 – using the terrible events of that day to achieve what former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill had told us in Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty and former counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke had written in Against All Enemies. That is, they proposed from their very first National Security Council meeting in February 2001 to invade Iraq, eight months before al Qaeda’s attacks. Even after September 11, however, getting the public and Congress to go along, as the Downing Street memo stated  in the summer of 2002, required that the facts be "fixed around the policy." Fixed, as in exaggerated and concocted.

On May 1, 2005, Michael Smith at the Sunday Times revealed Rycroft’s memorandum. It was still April 30 in the U.S. when the news appeared, and a Diarist named smintheus picked up on it at Daily Kos, where he garnered comments from five Kossacks. The follow-up Diary the next morning drew more than 300 comments. By May 5, John Conyers, then the ranking Democratic Congressman on the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, who had first read of the Downing Street memo at Daily Kos, sent a letter to the White House signed by 89 of his colleagues asking for answers.  

Soon, frustrated by the thin gruel of traditional media coverage, there was a blogswarm to Awaken the Media, formation of various Web sites, including After Downing Street, and the The Downing Street Memos, and a blogger grouping called the Big Brass Alliance.

For me and others who had for various reasons resisted calls for impeachment prior to 2005, the Downing Street Memo was a turning point. Here was the kind of evidence that we had hoped would someday come to light, evidence that - together with what Clarke and O’Neill had already provided, plus the Valerie Plame affair and the lack of WMDs in Iraq - directly called into question the administration’s claims that the decision to go to war was not made until February 2003. Here was strong evidence that the President had lied to Americans, broken his oath of office and violated national and international law. Not incontestable proof, but certainly grounds for inquiry.  

On June 16, 2005, spurred by the revelations in the secret memo, John Conyers held an unofficial hearing with 35 other Democrats, hearing testimony from, among others, former Ambassador Joe Wilson and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern. It was there that the prospect of a Resolution of Inquiry into impeachment was first raised.

That, of course, was 37 months ago. Much vitriolic talk about impeachment has gone down since then. But very little of it has taken place in the halls of Congress despite considerable new information. Additional memos, like the one David Manning wrote on January 31, 2003, have come to light. Plus, it was learned that a classified version of a National Intelligence Estimate stated that Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat. Just before the congressional vote on the authorization to use force in Iraq in October 2002, the Bush Administration released a declassified version for public consumption which conveniently deleted NIE's no-imminent-threat assessment.

This Friday, thanks to a long-term grassroots effort as well as the unwillingness to yield by a handful of Congressional Democrats, most notably Dennis Kucinich, impeachment will be on the table at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. This could and should have started in 2007. Only time will tell whether "better late than never" applies.

After months of trying to shame Obama into visiting Iraq, Obama is now on perhaps the most successful campaign week the entire campaign, and his trip was the hot media ticket. By contrast, the McCain press corps apparently numbers in the 20s.

Barack Obama has a newly chartered jumbo jet, loaded to the gills with reporters and network anchors accompanying him to the Middle East and Europe, while McCain's traveling press corps numbers only about 25, including camera crews. While CBS News anchor Katie Couric and ABC News anchor Charles Gibson are traveling with Obama, neither CBS News nor ABC News sent even a correspondent to cover McCain. (NBC News is covering both). And this is hardly unique to this week. Only the Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal among big newspapers are consistently covering McCain. NEWSWEEK almost always has a reporter on the plane, but Time and U.S. News do not.

Hmmm, who is missing from that list? It couldn't be Fox News, since we're told that Obama has been "reaching out" to them to appeal to "the middle" people pretend watch the RNC's official propaganda mouthpiece. Not that they didn't try to get a ticket on the hottest political act of the summer. Crooks and Liars has the admission via Stephen Colbert. (Really.)

video of FOX & Friends]
DOOCY: Why are you not on Barack Obama’s airplane heading to the Middle East right now?
WALLACE: Well, I called the Obama campaign several weeks ago and said that I’d like to go and my invitation has apparently been lost in the mail.
[end video]

Well played, Obama campaign.

Meanwhile, McCain left another rambling message about how none of his family will visit. No wonder Wallace is steering clear.

In this video (in Spanish) O2B candidate Joe Garcia essentially accuses the right-wing Cuban-American Frank Calzon of the Center for Free Cuba of essentially pilfering tax-payer funds. Later in the show, Calzon throws a hissy fit and storms out (and you don't need to know Spanish to be entertained by this clip):

A subsequent federal audit found $500,000 missing from Calzon's operation, lost into the pocket of the corrupt South Florida Cuban-American mafia. Just like Garcia had charged. Now, after finding more such discrepancies, Congress has frozen all funding for these corrupt groups.

Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.

In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.

In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba [...]

A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.

The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.

This is essentially a big chunk of the payoff the corrupt Cuban exile community gets for having its three South Florida Cuban American representatives (and Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, too). $45.7 million doled out in patronage fashion to all the co-conspirators, and that's not even including the millions wasted on Radio Marti in similar fashion. Democracy in Cuba? Pshaw! There are fancy dinners to be bought! The high life to be lived.

As you can see in the videos above (even if you don't speak Spanish) is that Joe Garcia has been fighting for accountability for those who receive US tax dollars, and isn't one to let ideology override the interests of the taxpayers.

On the web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

Hurricane Dolly is undergoing a round of intensification prior to landfall later today near the resort town of South Padre Island, Texas, and could possibly even reach Category 2 intensity in the next few hours. From Jeff Masters:

Hurricane Dolly is putting on a impressive burst of rapid intensification as it approaches landfall on the Texas coast near Brownsville. Reports from the Hurricane Hunters show that Dolly's pressure is dropping rapidly, down 9 mb in just four hours, to 967 mb (as of the 8:30 am EDT Hurricane Hunter eye report). Dolly's central pressure dropped 15 mb in the 18 hours previous to that, so this is an impressive sudden drop this morning. Radar imagery out of Brownsville, Texas shows an well-organized hurricane, with excellent spiral banding and a 20-mile diameter eye. Visible satellite loops show an impressive eye, excellent upper-level outflow, and good symmetry. It's a good thing Dolly does not have another 24 hours over water, or it would have become a major hurricane.

[Update 11:55AM EDT by DS] NOAA/NWS is now reporting Dolly is a Cat 2 hurricane with additional strengthening still possible:

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE INCREASED TO NEAR 100 MPH...160 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS.  DOLLY IS A CATEGORY TWO HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. STRONGER WINDS...ESPECIALLY IN GUSTS...ARE LIKELY ON HIGH RISE BUILDINGS. SOME ADDITIONAL STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE BEFORE LANDFALL.

Katie Couric in a speech before the National Press Club, September 2007:

Couric took Rather to task for his reporting. "There were things in there that were quite egregious in terms of how it was reported," she said. "And sloppy work is sloppy work...They did not dot their I’s and cross their T’s when it came to that story...And our job is to get [it] right."

It's hard to figure out whose credibility is sinking faster: John McCain, who's apparently as unaware of recent history as he is of geography, or CBS, who covers up his ignorance for him.

First, a short primer:

2006----> The Anbar Awakening, in which Sunni tribes unite to resist Al Qaida.

2007----> Bush's troop surge

Enter Katie Couric, interviewing John McCain yesterday:

Couric Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.

Well, it's just a matter of history if you live life in reverse, I guess. And yes, it's tough indeed to figure out how to respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened, Senator McCain. But CBS figured out how to do it: just cut the inconveniently false portion out, as Keith Olbermann caught CBS doing last night.

Here's some masterful evidence presented by masterp2323:

Remember this is the same Katie Couric who confessed in the 2007 speech to the National Press Club to feeling "uncomfortable," and that somebody--certainly not her, but somebody with ... oh ... say ... a national media platform--ought to do something about the inevitable march to war back in 2003:

And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring The Today Show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this? And is this being properly challenged by the right people?’

One thing's become crystal clear: Couric isn't one of the "right people." And sloppy work is sloppy work. And oh, yeah. Someone once said it's your job to get it right.

(Hat tips to Daily Kos diarist rogereaton and Think Progress for publicizing this story.)

USAToday reports:

Democrats in Congress hope to ignite a drive to reverse the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy Wednesday with the first hearing on the subject since 1993, when President Clinton said gays could serve in uniform if they kept quiet about their sexual orientation.

Without this hearing, said former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman John Shalikashvili, "you will never repeal the law. It's a great idea." He is among more than 50 retired generals and admirals who have said it is time to rethink the policy.

Solid thinking by General Shalikashvili. That seems to me to be exactly right. That is, that Democratic Members of Congress need to be thinking ahead now about exactly how they propose to manage drinking from the firehose of needed reforms and repairs coming after Liberation Day in January of next year.

But it's not just the Bush-bots who are to blame for the fact that there hasn't even been a hearing on the subject for 15 years:

Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee tried to have a hearing on the policy in April 2007, but opposition from conservatives in their party sank the idea.

More and better, people. More and better.

The conditions are right for revisiting this issue:

[T]he volunteer armed forces struggle to retain troops to fight two wars. Changing attitudes are seen in polls such as one by The Washington Post, published Saturday, showing that 75% favor allowing gays to serve openly, up from 44% in 1993.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, has said that if elected, he would work to repeal the bar on open service — and the "don't ask" compromise designed to work around it. His Republican rival, John McCain, wants no change.

"At a time when the military is relaxing every possible standard to attract new recruits, and at the same time is losing mission-critical specialists such as Arabic linguists, medical professionals and others, one would hope and expect that Defense Department leaders would be first in line to call on Congress to repeal the law," says Steve Ralls of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

They're not, of course. Because active duty military personnel generally feel restrained from challenging policy.

But the numbers tell the hidden part of the story:

The military has booted 12,500 servicemembers under "don't ask, don't tell." Annual discharges peaked at 1,273 in 2001. Discharges have declined sharply since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Pentagon discharged 627 servicemembers last year.

"Don't ask, don't tell" is just one of many legislative fixes needed, of course. Kudos to Military Personnel Subcommittee chair Susan Davis (D-CA) for holding the hearing, and to Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), who's been beaten up plenty around these parts before, for sponsoring the bill designed to enact the repeal.

Hopefully an early success -- meaning that it comes shortly after the current maniac is finally purged from the White House -- will embolden Democrats in the 111th Congress to move quickly on repeals promised more recently, such as that of the Military Commissions Act and the recent FISA disaster.

In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

FLOOR SCHEDULE FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2008

House meets at 10:00 a.m.: Legislative Business
Fifteen "One Minutes" Per Side

Last vote predicted: 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Suspensions (8 Bills):

1.     H.J.Res. 93 - Approving the renewal of import restrictions contained in the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 (Rep. Crowley – Ways and Means)

2.     H.R. 6532 - To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to restore the Highway Trust Fund balance (Rep. Rangel – Ways and Means)

3.     H.Res. 1360 - Honoring and commemorating the selfless acts of heroism displayed by the late Detective John Michael Gibson and Private First Class Jacob Joseph Chestnut of the United States Capitol Police on July 24, 1998 (Rep. Edwards (MD) – House Administration)

4.     H.Res. 645 - Expressing the gratitude and appreciation of the House of Representatives to the professionalism and dedication of the United States Capitol Police (Rep. Mario Diaz–Balart (FL) – House Administration)

5.     H.Res. 1286 - Recognizing and celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Black Arts Festival (Rep. Lewis (GA) - Education and Labor)

6.     H.Res. 1355 - Expressing support for designation of Disability Pride Day and recognizing that all people, including those living with disabilities, have the right, responsibility, and ability to be active, contributing members of our society and fully engaged as citizens.  (Rep. Davis (IL) – Education and Labor)

7.     H.Res. 655 – Honoring the life and accomplishments of Katherine Dunham (Rep. Rangel – Education and Labor)

8.     H.Res. 1296 – Supporting the designation of a National Child Awareness Month to promote awareness of children's charities and youth-serving organizations across the United States and recognizing their efforts on behalf of children and youth as a positive investment for the future of our Nation (Rep. Calvert - Education and Labor)

H.R. 3221 - American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 (Rep. Frank– Financial Services) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. 3999 - The National Highway Bridge Reconstruction and Inspection Act (Rep. Oberstar –Transportation and Infrastructure) (Subject to a Rule [That rule is contained in H. Res. 1344])

Postponed Suspension Bill (1)

1.     H.R. 6545 - National Energy Security Intelligence Act of 2008 (Rep. Cazayoux – Intelligence)

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 10:00am

Resume motion to proceed to S.3268, Energy Speculation, post cloture.

Time until 11:00am equally divided and controlled with the Republicans controlling the first half and the Majority controlling the next half. The time from 11:00 until 4:00 controlled in 30 minute alternating blocks with Republicans controlling first 30 minutes and the Majority controlling next 30 minutes.

Recall that post-cloture debate can go on no longer than 30 hours, with no Senator speaking for more than one hour during that time. (See Rule XXII). Cloture was invoked by a vote of 94-0 at 11:28 a.m. yesterday, and will wind up at 4:00 p.m. today, technically about an hour and a half short of 30 hours, but with the benefit of not having to stay up and in session all night to run the 30 hour clock. The Senators, by agreement, just gave themselves the 30 hours that Republicans could have forced them all to sit through, provided they had enough of them lined up to eat that clock up one hour at a time.

Considering that the cloture vote was 94-0, it might seem an unlikely prospect. But as a matter of courtesy, the 30 hours were preserved. Without that courtesy, it's possible that Republicans may well have found enough malcontents willing to inconvenience everyone, just to make the point that you shouldn't stick your finger in anyone's eye if you don't have to. I mean, if you can vote against your own filibuster -- which is exactly what they just did -- then anything's possible.

On the Radar:

• The "Coburn Omnibus" has been introduced and assigned a bill number: S. 3297.
• The House Judiciary Committee has Attorney General Michael Mukasey before them today, for a general DOJ oversight hearing. But look for some close questioning of the AG on topics including Karl Rove's claim of "absolute immunity" from subpoena, Mukasey's own refusal to turn over FBI reports of their interview with Dick Cheney regarding the Valerie Plame outing, and the enforcement of contempt of Congress charges against various officials, possibly to include Mukasey himself.

Off the Radar:

• Senate appropriators are likely giving up on moving their bills forward for the rest of the 110th Congress. Just as with their House counterparts, Republicans trying to shoehorn offshore drilling into every bill has frayed the Democrats' last nerve.
• A Senate "resolution of disapproval" aimed at blocking the Bush "administration's" heap of new rules making it harder for states to expand their SCHIP programs may now be doomed, a victim of poor clock management. The resolution, permitted under a procedure for negating executive rule-making established by the Congressional Review Act of 1996 (PDF), was submitted too late to qualify under the rules as privileged, which puts a motion to proceed to consideration of the motion at risk of a filibuster. Whose job was it to be watching the deadline? Why, none other than Health Subcommittee Chairman Jay Rockefeller. Where do you suppose his head has been, lately? Whoops! Sorry, kids! But at least we'll be able to tell when you're sick by monitoring your calls to the doctor. And maybe the phone companies will pick up your health care bills, now that they don't have to spend their money on lawyers.

Thomas Friedman: Ah! Another chance to give the candidates advice about Iraq, a topic I have been proven wrong about time and time again. Good, because I have not yet completed the transition to writing mostly about energy. Give me another six months.

Maureen Dowd: Look, we know Obama's more competent and a hell of a lot brighter than McCain. But it's not that we in the press want Obama to be obsequious. We just want him beholden. And he'd better not get ahead of himself. We made him and we can break him.

Rich Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru: Look, we all know McCain sucks as a candidate. He's awful. But if he attacks like Hillary did, he at least won't embarrass us. And at this point, since he doesn't really have a chance, it's all about us. Well, that's not true. We're conservatives. It's always about us. It sure as hell isn't about you.

Michael Gerson: Look, I know I can be a jerk at times. But this HIV/AIDS stuff is important, so forgive me for touting one of the very few things the President did right. I have been pushing for this for some time, and I am involved in the bipartisan ONE campaign, just like many of you are.

Okay, strike that. Let me be a jerk and make it about Cindy McCain so you don't make the mistake of actually getting the point of the work we do.

Ruth Marcus: Let me take a completely inappropriate historical analogy, apply it to Iraq, and learn the wrong lessons. This is, after all, the Washington Post. It's what we do.

Dick Morris: Speaking of always getting it wrong, let me lay out the case for why Mitt Romney will be McCain's VP. The reason I'm confident he will be? I think it would be a mistake.

Robert Samuelson: C'mon. We haven't been hit by a giant asteroid, and dinosaurs show no real evidence (yet) of making a comeback. Cheer up. It's only money. And more importantly to me, it's only your money.

Richard Holbrooke: Seriously, folks. The word gets thrown around too much, but Radovan Karadzic is evil. But as trite as it sounds, and even against evil, process and the Rule of Law work.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Pop Quiz: Political History

Question 1: In a piece of CBS interview footage left on the cutting room floor, John McCain erroneously said that it's "just a matter of history" that the surge created the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. In making the gaffe McCain emulated which U.S. president more than the others?

a) William Howard Taft
b) George W. Bush
c) Richard Nixon
d) Franklin Pierce

Question 2: Barack Obama flies several thousand miles to visit U.S. troops in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, where he is greeted with wild cheers. At the same time, John McCain is driven by former President George H.W. Bush several hundred feet in a golf cart to hobnob with rich Republicans in Kennebunkport, where he is greeted with polite applause. A senior strategist from which party greeted the contrasting photo ops with, "We're fucked"?

a) The Republican party
b) The Democratic party
c) The Libertarian party

Question 3: John McCain has gone on the record as being both for and against stem cell research. What is his actual position?

a) For stem cell research
b) Against stem cell research
c) All of the above

Question 4: In the sentence, "The McCain campaign called America a 'nation of whiners' and John McCain violated security rules by revealing when Barack Obama would be flying to Iraq and the Iraqi prime minister approved of Barack Obama's withdrawal plan for Iraq," what part of speech is the word "and"?

a) Noun
b) Verb
c) 9/11
d) Conjunction

Question 5: In terms of internet usage, when does John McCain say he'll master the process of "getting on myself"?

a) A week
b) A month
c) Fairly soon
d) Never

Question 6: For how long did John McCain pause in a confused panic before trying to answer a question about insurance coverage for Viagra versus insurance coverage for birth control?

a) Nine seconds
b) Three seconds
c) Five seconds
d) One second

Question 7: How many times has Senator Jack Reed or Senator Chuck Hagel had to whisper a correction in Barack Obama's ear because he embarrassed America by saying something ignorant and false?

a) One
b) Zero
c) Six

Question 8: Who horrified medical professionals when he made a pledge in a major televised speech to "deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies"?

a) Jack Kevorkian
b) Barack Obama
c) John McCain
d) Emeril Lagasse

Question 9: How many reporters greeted John McCain when he flew into Manchester, New Hampshire Monday night?

a) 1
b) 4
c) 10
d) 13

 Question 10: Who exercised sound judgment in October, 2002 with this remark: "I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

a) Trent Lott
b) Barack Obama
c) Joe Lieberman
d) John McCain

-

Answers: 1. b  2. a  3. c  4. d  5. c  6. a  7. b  8. c  9. a  10. b

Next week: fractions!

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Reflecting on the last 24 hours' worth of media coverage of the Obama World Tour, what seems clear is that there are two clashing world views that are competing for attention.

On the one hand, there are the McCain supporters, including many reporters like David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, who accept as gospel that the Surge Is Working®, that questioning of either the surge or General Petraeus is heresy, and that Obama's biggest sin is that he, as Commander in Chief, has the audacity to think he should be telling the Generals what to do and not the other way around. They are stunned that Obama doesn't agree, and offended at some core level whenever this narrative is challenged. A sputtering John McCain in NH:

He was wrong then, he's wrong now, and he still fails to acknowledge--he still fails to acknowledge that the surge succeeded. Remarkable.  Remarkable," McCain said.  "He's just received his first briefing ever from Gen. Petraeus.  And he declared his policy towards Iraq before he left, before he left."

On the other hand, there are the Obama supporters, including some reporters, who look at the drop in violence as being a combination of the surge, ethnic cleansing, the Sadr truce, bribes and enticements (aka Anbar awakening, which preceded the surge) and other complex interactions rather than a simplistic military result. They also recall that the surge's purpose was to stabilize Iraq to prepare for political reconciliation, not a military maneuver to reduce violence and 'win the war' whatever that's supposed to mean. They also have no trouble with the concept that the civilians tell the Generals "what", and the Generals advise the civilians on "how". Clearly to them, the 'what' is getting out of Iraq and the 'how' is to be negotiated. And the result? This trip is turning out to be far more than an elaborate photo-op for Obama, good as the images are.

McCain argues that the United States is succeeding in Iraq -- although the war is still not over -- because of last year's "surge" of U.S. troops, which Obama opposed. McCain's aides and surrogates continued that theme yesterday, accusing Obama of what Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) called "a complete inability to acknowledge that the surge worked."

But the Iraqi government's newly stated position on troop withdrawals has put the McCain campaign -- and many congressional Republicans who have been on record opposing timelines -- in a difficult position.

The difference between the black and white simplicity of McCain's position and the nuance in Obama's position is picked up by Harold Myerson, who has no trouble picking a winner here.

Military experience isn't an infallible guide to who might make the better commander. Jefferson Davis, after all, graduated from West Point, served with distinction (and with the rank of colonel) in the Mexican War and was secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration. Abraham Lincoln served roughly three months in a volunteer militia during the Black Hawk War and never saw action, and he was a vocal congressional opponent of the Mexican War. But Davis had no aptitude for national strategy during the Civil War, while Lincoln emerged as the North's master strategist. That's not to say that Obama is a budding Lincoln and McCain a second Jeff Davis. But by the Frederick the Great standard, Obama already looks to be the smarter commander.

But the reporters who prefer McCain seem to have a problem. Since they don't concede that the drop in violence isn't purely due to the surge, and since they don't acknowledge the primacy of the CinC over the Generals, they can't see Obama's behavior as anything other than disgraceful. And they have to work overtime to cover for error-prone McCain.

This is the same thinking that suggests that Obama is unready, undeserving and simply lucky. They don't see where a skilled politician actually creates his own luck by simply being more correct than they are about the strategy, while they get bogged down in the tactics.

And they don't see where Obama is eating McCain's lunch on foreign policy and readiness to lead, the supposed bread-and-butter of the outmatched Republican trying to figure out when the rules changed on him (foreign policy is supposed to be his strength, but it's the other guy who is looking Presidential.)

The game isn't even close (and if there were ever a time to suggest the image of the one guy playing checkers and the other guy playing chess, this is it.) And the sad thing is that it's not just the McCain people that haven't quite figured it out, it's his enablers in the press fighting for the status quo. Even for them, overlooking his frequent gaffes is becoming more and more difficult to do (more on some major gaffes later.)

Then again, so is envisioning McCain winning in November. Who'd want to vote for a President that doesn't even understand the rules of the game?

It was just a few years ago the very idea that the Arctic was showing signs of increased summer melts was hooted down as alarmist. The threat to native species and native cultures presented by the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was laughed off as just another crazy, radical, environmentalist scheme to mess with the economy. Except for a few wigged-out pockets of denial amplified by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, most of the laughing has ceased. Not, of course, that the Cheney-Bush administration has retreated from its censorship of science, as noted here by smintheus, to provide one example. In that instance, the censorship came about for the purpose of getting some new Arctic oil leases into the ... uh ... pipeline without pesky scientific concerns being allowed to introduce obstacles into the discussion.

Discussion of the situation is made more difficult because the melting is not a steady downward plunge. This year, for instance, as of a week ago, Arctic sea ice extent clocked in at 3.44 million square miles. This was well below the 1979-2000 average of 3.83 million square miles. But it was 0.41 million square miles above the value for July 16 last year.

So, you can expect to hear any day now from the usual suspects that the wider extent of ice this year proves the Arctic may not be heading for ice-free summers in the next couple of decades. This claim, of course, will ignored data showing that, while first-year ice is thicker than was predicted this summer, multi-year ice is much thinner than seen in 2006 and 2007. In other words, the long-term trend and consequences are not in doubt, whatever spikes may occur year-to-year.

Meanwhile, nationalists and entrepreneurs seem to have no doubts about the melting. There continues to be a laying of claims to the Arctic seabed, which began last year when famed explorer Artur Chilingarov led a Russian North Pole expedition and planted a Russian flag 13,390 feet below the surface, and remarked: "The Arctic is Russian. We must prove the North Pole is an extension of the Russian landmass"

Paul Coring at the Globe and Mail wrote Tuesday:

"We were there first and we can claim the entire Arctic, but if our neighbours like Canada want some part of it, then maybe we can negotiate with them," says Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant Russian ultranationalist, who happily hands out pictures of a Russian flag sitting on the seabed at the North Pole. ...

Supposedly cooler heads prevailed in Greenland this spring at a meeting of the five circumpolar countries: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States. They agreed "to the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims" in a joint communiqué called the Ilulissat Declaration.

But the race to claim the top of the world and, more importantly, reap the vast bonanza of oil and gas believed to lie beneath the Arctic seabed is only just getting under way. ...

No surprise, then, that Russia is conducting naval exercises in the Arctic. Canada had soldiers stamping about in the North this spring, and some analysts fear power projection, not talks at the UN, will decide who controls the Arctic.

Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries can extend their zones beyond 200 nautical miles (about 370 kilometres) from their coasts if they can prove the outer edge of the continental shelf extends beyond that distance. Hence, the contentious Russian claim to the Lomonosov Ridge.

The prize may be huge. One study estimates 400 billion barrels of oil lie beneath the Arctic seabed, beyond the existing 200-nautical-mile economic zones where countries can regulate and control drilling. That's a little less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

Tonight's Rescue Ranger Krewe consists of vcmvo2, Larsstephens, jlms qkw, Avila, ItsJessMe, dopper0189, shayera, and srkp23, with YatPundit riding trains in The Netherlands tonight, wishing they were New Orleans streetcars.

• In McCain vs. Amtrak, gooners explains why it's a good thing that the light at the end of the tunnel really is a train. (Larsstephens)
• alefnot analyzes the carbon cycle and its vital place in the health of our ecosystems in Earth Science: Carbon cycle basics -- Reservoirs. (vcmvo2 & Larsstephens)
• xofferson introduces Kossacks to Kathy Kelly and tells us that she's Walking across Wisconsin, witnessing against war. (shayera)
• In As The Spirit of the Eagle Weeps diarist WolfmanSpike tells a personal story of Native American pride and experienced prejudice. (dopper0189)
• anidealiveson shares a love of space exploration in the beautifully-written Space is There, and We're Going to Climb It. (ItsJessMe)
• In History for Kossacks: Bonus Expeditionary Force, Unitary Moonbat pens a definitive yet chilling tale of the tragic events leading up to the US Army's firing on its own soldiers. (vcmvo2 & Larsstephens)
• In McCain's Rewritten Essay: You Can't Handle The Truth, organicdemocrat gives us a sneak preview of McCain's re-written New York Times Op-Ed piece. (ItsJessMe)
• JohnnyRook analyzes coverage of Al Gore's speech on Thursday and finds Gore Ignored: The Dead-Tree Media's Dereliction of Duty. (shayera)
• In Media Liberals Applying a Softer Standard to McCain, Ivan Carter compiles a damning and detailed account of the media's complicity in "the straight talk express." Bookmark this for future reference! (vcmvo2)
• angryreader18 takes a look at the national debt and tells Kossacks that The National Debt: A National Problem. (shayera)
• California Nurses Shum wonders if it's true that As Goes California Health Reform, so Goes the Nation? (shayera)
• A fine series on the nation's student debt crisis continues in Slow death by strangulation, part 8 by Dotted Timeline. (dopper0189)
• vbdietz offers up one for the hotlist--an excellent round-up of news about Netroots Nation: NN08 in the News & on the Blogs Roundup #3. (srkp23)

brillig has Top Comments- 7/22/08 Sunburn Edition

jotter has High Impact Diaries - July 21, 2008

Please suggest your own favorites of the day, and use as an open thread.

Hee hee. We always knew he'd never stay there as the political necessity would disappear. From video smuggled out of a private fundraiser:

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker."

How cute. He thought he was the decision maker when it was really Karl Rove who told him to get that campaign prop in Crawford.

It's time for some straight talk, my friends. My base has deserted me, falling for the new, fresh and vastly more interesting face in town. And I'm pissy. And I want to whine about it. Endlessly. All over the Google and the Internets.

Here's my latest:

John McCain today:

My friends, we have to drill off shore. We have to do it. It's out there and we can do it. And we can do that. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?

Well, if McCain's buddies from the oil companies say it, it must be true, right? After all, they wouldn't have any self-serving interest like those crazy energy experts who say:

...it's at least a five to seven year process before new drillling could begin — and that could be optimistic. The industry already is in a frenetic push to find more sources of hydrocarbons and faces severe shortages of rigs and other equipment and workers.

And really, it's good to know that when John McCain needs an honest answer to a tough question, he goes straight to the source...his big money donors.