In Australia, yesterday, President Bush reflected again on Iraq. He reiterated that the war is an ideological struggle, that Iraq and Afghanistan are two fronts in the war, that the goal is to create new democracies that can be allies of the U.S. in the war, that the U.S. can succeed, and that it will […]

Good Wednesday morning Fellow Seekers,
The joint appearance on Almanac a week ago Friday featuring Al Franken, Mike Ciresi and Jim Cohen, was the closest thing we’ve had to a debate among the DFL Senate candidates. It was polite (or bland, depending on your tastes) and didn’t highlight a lot of clear differences among the three […]

This post replaces the hasty one I threw together at noon, immediately after hanging up from a 45-minute conference call between Sen. Norm Coleman and Minnesota reporters about his weekend trip to Iraq.
During the call, Coleman endorsed Sen. John Warner’s recent proposal to bring 5,000 U.S. troops home by Christmas. That gesture is designed to […]

I’ve seen the op-ed version of Gen. David Petraeus’ report from Baghdad. There’s a link below. This is not a joke, but there is a surprise ending, unless you already know it. To me, it was a surprise when a friend referred me yesterday to the op-ed. Here are outtakes from the Petraeus piece:
“There are […]

Good Labor Day morning Fellow Seekers,
Juan Cole, the University of Michigan historian of the Mideast and prolific blogger at Informed Comment, recently dug up what Winston Churchill, a hero of today’s neocons, thought about the British mission in Iraq at what you could call a moment comparable to today’s U.S. situation.
In case you lost track of […]