D-Day Minus One
Only the brain dead could remain impassive before the impending drama of Tuesday's primaries. They're not going to change the world, but...well...the rest is rather obvious.
In the meantime, more than 200 citizen journalist/volunteers signed up for HuffPost's OffTheBus Superdelegate Investigation and helped us build this map of superdelegate profiles (with more coming in as I write).
Our volunteers are also continuing to interview the superdelegates and have turned up some pretty interesting results.
In this piece, I reveal some of the findings i.e. that the Clinton campaign, fearing a flight of the superdels, is now more concentrated on holding to those who have already pledged instead of investing resources in trying to convert the pro-Obama delegates. Read all about it here.
(When I get a breather, maybe mid-week, and only if you've been good and only if the campaign sked permits, I'll write you up an account of my debut as a player in the recent World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational. Hint: It will be a short endeavor and, no, that chubby guy in the picture next to Jennifer Tilly isn't me.)
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:06 am
Hopefully, representative of the Clinton campaign: Hillary Clinton Falling (You can help her down more with your cursor.)
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I’m sure our genial host will dismiss as a cheap political stunt the news that the Clinton camp released today that Hilllary will introduce legislation this week banning the use of mercenaries like Blackwater in Iraq or Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Jeremy Scahill writes that Obama foresees the need for these “Contractors” in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. I’ll still go with Barack buts its moves like this that make me nervous.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
One question never addressed in the debates or anywhere else I’ve looked is just what sort of support our military is expected to give the mercenaries once we begin to withdraw troops from Iraq. Personally, I believe the US government should negotiate so that private enterprise should foot the bill for those costs.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
A good starting point for discussing the particulars of withdrawal from Iraq is an acknowledgment that the surge has been a success.
Why has it worked?
Appeasement.
The U.S. military expanded its appeasement of Sunni militia, which had previously been at war against U.S. troops, and went from tolerating them and lifting the ban on militia activity, to directly paying them for their services in fighting Al Qaeda.
Withdrawal works the same way. We now know, thanks to the appeasement (the surge is really a propaganda term and a head fake) of key insurgent factions–including Al Sadr–violence has been damped.
We know it works, so now, we need only expand it, which means broadening the responsibility for fighting terrorists to those most capable of it: The Insurgents.
You have to give the Bush administration credit for a rather clever head fake. Instead of just saying that it was going to reverse its stance of labeling all insurgents as terrorists and refusing to negotiate with terrorists. It called the policy “The Surge” and let the press argue over whether it should be called “The Escalation” and whether additional troops would matter.
In the end, the additional troops were utterly beside the point.
The surge is “working” the same way withdrawal would. It’s handing responsiblity for security over to people the Bush administration had formerly insisted were terrorists we could never negotiate with.
These “Awakening” militia are of course opposed by Iraq’s government because they understand all to well that they spell the beginning of the end for the occupation that installed them and on which they now depend for survival.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Amazing. There are still people who believe President Clinton or Obama will withdraw from Iraq.
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
yeah, people who never escape their own logic bubbles are “amazed” at what people tell them about what’s going on outside…
I suspect Bob is equally amazed that the war wasn’t a “cake walk”
that there is no statue of George W. Bush in downtown Baghdad..
or that it war didn’t pay for itself in oil revenue…
or that democracy hasn’t broken out all over the Middle East…
or that no WMD were found…
or that Iraqi insurgents are fighting against, not for, Al Qaeda…
or that a wide majority of Iraqis say they want the U.S. to withdraw…
or that so few Americans are willing to volunteer to fight in the war and that record numbers of officers are opting out of the military, despite record-high bonuses for doing re-enlistment…
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Bunker is having a juvenile outburst. Bob reminds him the loser left are not going to get the loss and defeat of America in Iraq they so desperately want, regardless who they vote for, and he goes into a reality tantrum.
Don’t hurt yourself……….oh go ahead.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
BB’s analysis is off. The current Iraqi government is far closer - objectively and openly - with Iran than with the United States. The United States is sticking around because the Iraqi government is too weak to ask them to leave, but they certainly are strong enough to remain in power, given the support of their neighbour. The Sunni “awakening” militia is a creation of PR agencies. It is in fact, as Patrick Cockburn and others have reported, a Saudi front. To wit, as in Lebanon, the US regularly takes the side of fundamentalist Sunni Islamists.
And Lebanon and Columbia are the real stories right now. The US is backing Columbia like it does Israel (ie with deniability but plenty of green lights) - Columbia killed FARC militants precisely to show up Chavez’s inarguable successi n arranging the relelase of hostages, a process for which he even earned Sarkozy’s respect. Columbia would rather, with US backing, repress FARC, then free the hostages. And now it seems that the Uribe government is on a limb.
And the same goes in many places - Chad, Lebanon, Israel, etc. The US is stirring up wars all over the world, that no matter who is in power in 2009, they will inherit. Bush is trying to do as much dmaage as he can….or rather, enhance America’s position through vicious covert action, precisely what America did after it lost Vietnam.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Jim R makes plain that this war is, for him, primarily pyschodrama.
It’s about his feelings, i.e. of being a “winner” or a “loser.”
The facts on the ground, of course, are a lot more complicated. For the foreseeable future, EVERYONE loses and the only question is whether the U.S. will exit in a relatively planned, orderly fashion or be forced out willy nilly as in Vietnam…
March 4th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Bob Williams, I have the same expectations that Clinton or Obama would live up to their promises as I did that the Democratic Congress would accomplish their promises in the first one-hundred days.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Bombshell…(I’ve known about this a long time through word of mouth but confirmation is interesting and disturbing…Palestinian Pinochet indeed)
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804?printable=true¤tPage=all
March 4th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Thanks for the link, jc. Good story for a change from VF.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Well, Ohio and Texas just dragged this mess out longer. Thanks, Ohioans, Texans. You people suck.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Democracies suck. Why can’t we just have a committee of smart people who know what they’re doing appoint a Republican for President.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Actually, Jim, your moronic comments suck, as usual. But you knew that, right? Now, go make yourself useful, ass.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Sam reminds us of a well known characteristic of the far left. Too serious to sense humor. It was a joke jerk.