Josh Marshall’s been following the continuing torture saga pretty closely:
I’ve been talking to a few people today who have some professional insight into the whole torture saga, just what happened, what this or that secret memo might say. And I’m getting the sense that waterboarding to force people to tell us the ‘truth’ about Saddam’s […]

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You’ve gotta love it:
The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would’ve provided a foundation for one […]

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Got an e-mail from one of my reliable winger correspondents about today’s Baghdad bombing, the second attack in two days, and “part of a spike of violence that comes as the U.S. military begins drawing down its forces.”
My question to him - and everyone on the right - is this:
If the “peace” achieved over the […]

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You have just really got to be kidding me:
CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
But Obama informed […]

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This is pretty much right on the mark:
I never believed that GWB actually tricked the nation on the “weapons of mass destruction” rationale for invading Iraq. Rather, the nation fooled itself into thinking that the war, in the first place, was anything but an act of vengeance for the gross injury of 9/11. After a […]

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…but sentimentality about the mission itself can be a big problem, notes Yglesias:
The Iraqi people didn’t ask to be liberarted conquered and occupied by a foreign power that destroyed their country and then immediately set about meddling in Iraqi politics and until just a month or so ago was struggling mightily for the right to […]

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Insufficient gratitude shown by an Iraqi who obviously doesn’t appreciate how we liberated him and his country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0YkKEr14Ac

What was the point of this war, again?

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Thanks, Bill Kristol! It was all due to the intestinal fortitude of conservatives like you!

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Nice. Matt Y. finds this nugget in a piece by Andrew McCarthy at the National Review, underscoring everything that’s been wrong about our approach to the Mideast - and really, the rest of the world - these past seven years:
Thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds have been expended to provide […]

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Via Matt Y., a video on the “hidden” cost of our wars.
I was curious, in the first presidential debate, to hear John McCain say he’d freeze all federal spending - except military. We never think to take a hard look at military spending, do we? And here I thought Obama missed a golden chance. The […]

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Via Matt Yglesias, we see John McCain having a few memory problems as he asserts that “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_ZbW2REcI

Notes Matt:
We all recall, of course, John McCain’s outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.
But that’s different. Because it’s us.

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Ron Suskind’s new book has ignited a whole bunch of controversy, particularly on its claim that a key letter - supposedly from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein linking the dictator to the 9/11 terrorists - was forged. Suskind’s sources claimed the CIA was behind the forgery, which has unleashed a flurry of […]

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Been following the new war between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, and it’s alarming for a lot of reasons - in a lot of ways, this really does seem the opening salvo in what might be a wider war between Russia and the west, or Russia and western interests.
But an aspect of the reporting […]

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Address it to Saddam.

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I’m sorry, but McCain is simply losing it here.
Republican John McCain is pushing back against Democratic criticism that he misstated the timing of the buildup of troops ordered by President Bush in early 2007. He says parts of the new strategy began months earlier.
The Arizona senator has told reporters during a stop at a super […]

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So this, then, is the neoconservative position on why we ought to just ignore Maliki and stay in Iraq as long as we like, conveniently (and predictably) supplied by Max Boot:
But Maliki’s public utterances do not provide a reliable guide as to when it will be safe to pull out U.S. troops. Better to listen […]

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You know, as well as I do, that John McCain wanted to goad Barack Obama into visiting Iraq in hopes of a “Dukakis moment.”
This ain’t it:

And indeed, as the New York Times notes, Obama’s trip couldn’t have been more disastrous for McCain:
The central tenet of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is suddenly aligned with what the […]

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Via Hilzoy over at Sullivan’s place, Spencer Ackerman notes how Maliki has McCain boxed into a corner:
 ”There’s nowhere left for McCain to go here. Either he endorses a timetable for withdrawal, which he has consistently said would be a disaster, and cedes his only big issue to Obama — and more importantly, concedes that Obama’s […]

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Continuing the weekend’s theme, we now see that Iraqi officials want the Americans out of their country by 2010.
I’m here to tell you that’s not happening, even if Obama is elected president.
Two thoughts here. The first is that John McCain’s campaign absolutely hits the wall with these developments. Because it places him in the position […]

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Iraqi prime minister Maliki: Obama is right when he talks about withdrawing troops in 16 months.
News prompts memorable response from one GOP consultant who occasionally advises McCain. And that memorable response is correct.
It has not been a good week for John McCain. With Bush talking about “time horizons” - hmmm, “time horizons” sounds suspiciously like “time frame,” […]

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