…over at the Washington Post, where in an editorial we learn that Barack Obama is wrong in saying the war in Iraq takes our eye off the terrorist ball because:
That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. […]

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Yeah. You know how we “found” that uranium in Iraq, thus Validating Everything Teh Leader Ever Said!!!!
Not so much:
Nothing has emerged to change the basic conclusion of U.S. weapons inspector David Kay, who led a post-invasion effort to find WMD in Iraq. As Kay famously said, “It turns out that we were all wrong.”
No secret […]

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Speech today, and it’s a good one.

Sullivan has the text. Obama talks of opportunities missed as a result of the relentless focus on Iraq; and what he would do to bring the war to a close. Anyone who says “surrender” is simply lying:
George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq - […]

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Sullivan, continuing to argue with Max Boot, makes a very good point:
But let me remind Boot that there was no mention before the war that we were there to secure oil supplies as he now argues.
In fact, that very idea was regarded as a left-wing smear. Nor were we told that we would invade and […]

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Juan Cole notes how the sudden Iraqi interest in timetables for a U.S. withdrawal doesn’t bode too well for Mr. McCain:
McCain always had a difficult case to make to the American people about why they needed to expend blood and treasure to stay in Iraq. McCain maintains that it is for their own safety, but […]

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Come now. Was there ever any doubt?
The United States on Tuesday rejected a demand from Iraq for a specific date for pullout of US-led foreign troops from the country, saying any withdrawal will be based on conditions on the ground. “The US government and the government of Iraq are in agreement that we, the US […]

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Iraq wants a U.S. timetable for withdrawal.
Gee, do you think that’s going to happen?
Kidding aside, this will test the right-wing mythology of Iraq as a sovereign nation. If Iraq is and is to be sovereign, and they want a timetable for withdrawal - then they have to get one, don’t they? And if we refuse […]

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Naomi Klein is author of one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve ever read, “Baghdad Year Zero,” in which she talked about her theory of “shock doctrine” and the rise of “disaster capitalism,” which she later turned into a book.
At its core, as she describes in a new piece in The Nation, disaster capitalism is “today’s […]

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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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