Good Friday noon,
Impeachment talk is back in the air. On Tuesday, a bunch of Republicans (who thought it would embarrass the Democrats) almost brought about a floor vote on an impeachment resolution against Vice Pres. Cheney by Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Dem leadership got the resolution referred to the House Judiciary Committee instead. The leftier […]

Just mentioning, I’ll be on the Dan Barreiro radio show (KFAN, AM-1130 AM) between about 4:10 and 4:20 p.m. today. And on Minnesota Matters show (with host Mark Heaney) on Air America (AM 950) just after the 5:30 p.m. break. I assume it will be all about the modest scoop on Jim Ramstad.
Do I look […]

Good Thursday morning Fellow Seekers,
The mainstream accounts of the failure of Sen. Jim Webb’s amendment all emphasize that it fell four votes short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. But if the goal is really to change administration policy in Iraq, this threshold is greatly overrated, because President Bush would have vetoed the […]

With all the time I spent typing while trying to listen, I may have missed it, but I didn’t hear anything from any member of Congress during the day that suggested they had moved an inch in their feelings about Iraq as a result of the Petraeus and Crocker testimony. I take we ended up […]

I became an admirer of Ambassador Ryan Crocker since I read this Washington Post profile of him as he was being named to his current impossible job.
It included this:
“In late 2002, as the Bush administration prepared for war, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tasked Crocker and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns with exploring […]

Repeating what I said before about the need for simple, straightforward indices measured by neutral parties…
Gen. Petraeus was just asked about the allegation, which I recall reading in a Paul Krugman column, that in order to sustain a claim that sectarian violence is declining, he doesn’t count killings if a person is shot in the front of the […]

Writing during the first break in the hearing.
I’m trying to listen with an open mind to Petraeus and Crocker. It’s hard, probably impossible, when the main substance of their presentations have been known in advance, and have been debunked in advance by critics who have become more and more sure-footed by years of experience and […]

Good Monday morning Fellow Seekers,
Well there’s not much waiting left. Petraeus makes his first presentation today, and the letter he wrote to the troops is a perfectly good preview of what he will say, plus Michael Gordon of the New York Times has the leak.  And at this point, it isn’t much of a surprise. […]