Andrew Bacevich on Obama’s big chance:
The burden of identifying and confronting the Bush legacy necessarily falls on Obama. Although for tactical reasons McCain will distance himself from the president’s record, he largely subscribes to the principles informing Bush’s post-9/11 policies. McCain’s determination to stay the course in Iraq expresses his commitment not simply to the […]

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Fascinating exchange between Sullivan and Max Boot in regards to the question of “what now” in Iraq, with Boot comparing Iraq to Germany (as all neocons do) and saying something amazing:
The broader point is that the success of American military interventions has usually been closely related to their length. The longer we stay, the more […]

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I’m sort of missing the point of this David Brooks missive, unless the point is specifically supposed to be: Neener-neener-neener, Bush was right:
The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, […]

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In which we learn that “Curveball,” the source of so much of our (erroneous) information on the invasion of Iraq, was actually working at Burger King at the time he was feeding us “intelligence”:
In early 2002, a year before the war, he told co-workers at the Burger King that he spied for Iraqi intelligence and […]

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Well, the fall election will be one, won’t it?
But the point of the surge was to galvanize an Iraqi political solution so that we could leave. This won”t be easy under McCain or Obama. It may take time to get it right. But the goal of getting out of the place entirely is clear, no? […]

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Sullivan gets a letter:
No, I have not become a neo-con — but let’s be realistic: beyond the drive to re-take the East, there’s all that oil. We need it. They have it. Therefore we must control them. It’s that simple. It’s not even a moral question, it’s just biology: where the energy source is, the […]

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Matt Y. notes an NBC News story about Obama’s post-primary bump (up over McCain 47-41), in which NBC notes:
“The 200-pound ball and chain around McCain’s foot is George W. Bush,” Hart says. “Unless he figures out a way to cut it loose, he’s going to be dragging it throughout this election.”
Which prompts Matt to say:
The […]

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Sullivan:
That’s the critical question in this campaign: do Americans want a neo-empire in the Middle East? Do they want US troops permanently stationed in Iraq with up to 60 permanent bases? That’s what the Bush administration wants to foist onto Iraq; and that’s what McCain believes in. The viral video now buzzing on the Internets […]

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Last week I was paranoid for suggesting that maybe we are seeking permanent bases in Iraq.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to build permanent bases:
BAGHDAD -Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed “status of forces” agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in […]

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So here’s Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, saying that there will not be any permanent military bases in Iraq:
“It is not going to be forever,” he told reporters at the State Department.
Define that, please.
Because you could say our military presence in Germany and Japan isn’t “forever,” either - 60 years isn’t forever.
But let’s […]

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So the Senate intel committee is taking a look at pre-war intelligence. Phase II is just out. And it contains some very interesting findings:
–Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the […]

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This sounds about right:
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi […]

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As Matt Y. and others note, all this punditocracizing about why Obama won/why Hillary loss tends to miss the bloody elephant in the room…
Clearly, Iraq alone wasn’t enough to carry Obama to victory. But had Clinton voted against the war in 2002 there would have been no Obama challenge — it would have been a […]

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Yesterday’s bit on Bush’s pep talk - and Dragonrider’s subsequent acknowledgement that things do seem to have improved in Iraq - brought out the expected: See! The war was a success!

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And you wonder why it’s taken so long to get traction in this lovely little war.
Getting lost in the media furor over McClellan’s memoir is the new autobiography of retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, who is scathing in his assessment that the Bush administration “led America […]

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McClellan goes on Olbermann last night to talk about his book and says something destined to outrage the 28 pecenters, but which makes perfect, unfortunate sense for everyone else:
I think that you would need to take [the administration’s] comments [on Iran] very seriously and be skeptical.

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Right.
“The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war,” she told reporters at a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in Stockholm where she is attending an international conference on Iraq.
Chief among those reasons was the belief, shared widely before the war, that Saddam Hussein had or was developing weapons […]

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Curious to see that Obama’s response to the BushMcCain “appeasement” charge is now getting as much play as the charge itself. But he’s going about it wrong.
Obama responded Friday to Bush’s speech Thursday to the Israeli Knesset. The president referred to the leader of Iran, who has called for the destruction of the U.S. ally, and […]

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John McCain: Troops home by 2013. Maybe.
“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,’’ Mr. McCain is to say, according to excerpts of his speech provided by his campaign. “The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is […]

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Because, you know, Our Leader knows the true meaning of the word “sacrifice“:
Q Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to […]

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