Here’s to Eric Edelman for doing the impossible — turned me into a raving, passionate defender of Hillary Clinton.

My feelings about Hillary Clinton, in general, may kindly be described as nuanced.  A less charitable description would be that they’re confused.

I don’t want Hillary to be the Democratic nominee for a lot of reasons: I want this election to be about Republican failures not a rematch over the whole “Clinton thing” of the 90s; I don’t like the idea of having a Bush, then a Clinton, then a Bush, then a Clinton be president, a pattern which to me is just a little too close to having a hereditary system of governance; I worry that Hillary tends to be too politically calculating in the positions she takes; there’s also her refusal to admit error in voting for the war and to state a strong antiwar position; her affiliation with the New Democrats makes me wonder whether she’s really prepared to fight for economic justice; and, finally, I’m not sure, given all her baggage, that she’s the strongest candidate we have to offer in a year when, as recent Supreme Court decisions make clear, we simply have to win.

But there’s always an “on the other hand” with Hillary.  She’s razor sharp, maybe not the political genius her hubby is, but pretty impressive in her own right; her campaign, so far at least, has been flawless; my sense is she’s probably more liberal than her DLC credentials would imply; she’s a fighter when she does take a stand; and, last but not least, she appears to have the kind of administrative competence so badly needed given the ultra-mess the Bush crowd will be leaving behind.

But whatever I may say about Hillary, pro or con, one thing you’ll never here me say is that she makes me feel politically passionate.  There’s just too much political calculation (yes, there’s that word again), too much triangulating and too much reliance on polls and focus groups for true passion to come into play.

So, again, I have to take my hat off to Eric Edelman, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for policy for doing something I would have thought impossible — turning me into a passionate defender of the former First Lady/Senator from New York.

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(CNN) GOP senator to Rove: Bush legacy on the line in Iraq

Republican senator says he warned top White House aide Karl Rove that President Bush quickly needs to craft a workable plan to withdraw U.S. troops fom (sp) Iraq in order to salvage his legacy.

*  *  *

Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President’s current strategy.

“I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f—ed up” the war.

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You know why Bush so admires the Iraqi government don’t you?  It’s because compared to his own vacation schedule, taking only a month off for vacation makes you a complete workaholic.

Based upon my experience as a trial lawyer, I can almost understand the trap Bush and the neoconservatives find themselves in on Iraq.  Every good lawyer knows you should never allow your personal feelings — feelings about the client, the opposing party or the opposing attorney — to color your judgment in a case. 

But you’re human.  So sometimes a particular case gets under your skin more than it should: you may feel your client has suffered a great injustice, or maybe you just can’t stand the other lawyer.  Whatever the particulars, the bottom line is it becomes personal.  And being personal, your objectivity goes out the window.  You desperately want to win.  You desperately need to win.  You desperately have to win.

But, contrary to George W. Bush’s worldview, desire doesn’t always equate with reality, and sometimes these cases — the ones you care so much about — turn to crap.   And when that happens, you have a choice as a lawyer: face reality and do what’s best for the client (settle, give up, suggest a non-litigation approach to the problem), or glue on the rose-colored glasses and barrel full speed ahead, often making things much worse in the process.

Something very similar seems to be at work today in the Bush Administration’s approach to the war in Iraq.  By every rational measure, America’s war goals (whatever they happen to be on any given day) are unachievable.  We’re caught in the middle of a messy civil war: every day things get worse.  Meanwhile, American lives and treasure continue to be shamefully wasted. 

But to Bush and his neoconservative fellow travelers, this war is personal.  They want to “win” so badly, they simply refuse to acknowledge any evidence that detracts from the likelihood of victory, whatever victory might mean in this context.  Let’s call it Iraq Denial Syndrome (“IDS”).

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Things are really fu*ked up in Iraq.

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Why is it that the most obvious truths are often the most difficult for supposedly wise and experienced people to grasp? 

Please repeat after me: You can’t win a war against the shifting sands.

Unable or unwilling to accept this, Bush & Co. prepare to double down for the hundredth time in Iraq, hoping against hope that this time something — just what they can’t seem to verbalize — good will happen.

(AP) Iraq Report May Mean Longer U.S. Surge

WASHINGTON (AP) — While many in Congress are pushing President Bush to alter course in Iraq by September if not sooner, his new status report on the war strongly implies that the administration believes its military strategy will take many more months to meet its goals.

The report cited no specific timeframe, but its language suggests what some U.S. commanders have hinted at recently: The troop reinforcements that Bush ordered in January may need to remain until spring 2008.

That’s a military calculation at odds with an emerging political consensus in Washington on bringing the troops home soon.

The disconnect between the military and political views on the best way forward is a symptom of four-plus years of setbacks in Iraq — not only missteps by the U.S. government but also by Iraqi political leaders, who have fallen far short of their stated aim of creating a government of national unity.

For the love of God, when will these people face reality?  You can’t win a football game by playing better baseball: it doesn’t matter how many times you change the pitcher, how many pinch hitters you rotate in or even how many topflight free agents you sign.  It’ll never work.

In Iraq, we keep trying to find a way to win a war by applying conventional notions of allies and adversaries to a civil war in which no one — let me repeat, no one — is on our side. 

It can’t be done.

Think back, my children, to those wondrous days of yore when the national media elite were falling all over themselves with outrage over a sexual misstep by one Bill Clinton.  Ah, yes, the good old days, when public discourse was obsessed with a president who loved blowjobs rather than one who loves to blow people up.

Then along came Bush, a man whose public sins could fill an encyclopedia, and suddenly all the outrage was gone.  Bush turns the federal government into a political slush fund, misuses the fear of terrorism for political gain, deliberately misleads the nation into an unnecessary and disastrous war, repeatedly violates the constitution and makes torture official American policy and what do the media bigwigs do?  While there have been a few honorable exceptions, far too many of them just yawn.

Well, if by any miracle these media prima donnas would like to recapture a little of that old outrage, here’s something that would seem a worthy candidate:

(AP) Bush Dismisses CIA Leak As Old News

WASHINGTON — President Bush always said he would wait to talk about the CIA leak case until after the investigation into his administration’s role. On Thursday, he skipped over that step and pronounced the matter old news hardly worth discussing.

“It’s run its course,” he said. “Now we’re going to move on.”

Despite a long history of denouncing leaks, Bush declined to express any disappointment in the people who worked for him and who were involved in disclosing the name of a CIA operative. Asked about that during a wide-ranging news conference, the president gave a dodgy answer.

“It’s been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House,” he said.

So let’s add it up, shall we?  It’s now undisputed that senior White House officials deliberately blew the cover of a covert CIA agent for political gain, and the worst thing the President of the United States has to say about it is that it’s a damned shame that it had to inconvenience the White House. 

So where’s the outrage boys and girls of the media?  We’re waiting.    

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Everything you may have heard to the contrary notwithstanding, it turns out that things are actually going swimmingly in Iraq: just ask George W. Bush.

It also turns out, contrary to what virtually all rational observers have heretofore believed, that Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer was actually a smashing success: just ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

And to think I blithely assumed that former Iraqi Information Minister Saeed al-Sahaf (“Baghdad Bob”) had simply dropped out of sight, when it’s now obvious that he’s been quite busy advising the leadership of the US and Israeli governments on the finer points of message management.

Talk about landing on both feet!    

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The Last Chance Democracy Cafe
Episode 65: A heavenly protest, part four
by Steven C. Day

To read the story from the beginning go here for part one.
(part two) (part three)

Vengeance is the pastime of fools: please don’t accuse me of being a fool.
Signed,
Him
(Message posted on the back entrance to the least popular Mexican food restaurant in all of heaven.)

If you had one last night left in paradise, how would you spend it?

Horace spent what he was certain would be his last night there working on a slogan for his protest sign.  He wanted it to be perfect and was frustrated that the words weren’t coming easily.

Floating weightless, formless and invisible above heaven, and still able to read Horace’s mind and feelings, I sensed his discomfort.  At a time like this, finding the right words is important.  Think of how differently history would treat Nathan Hale if, before being executed by the British, instead of saying, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he had developed writer’s block and was forced to settle for, “Hey, I tried my best.”  

No, if Horace was going to voluntarily give up his place in heaven for a higher cause, he at least wanted to do it with style.  But as he sat in quiet agitation at one of the oh so ordinary small round tables used in the Oddball Bar and Grill, writing down one thought after another, nothing came close to being good enough.

It was 3:00 in the morning, heaven time, but Horace wasn’t alone.

As I’ve mentioned before, sleep is optional in heaven: regardless of whether you get your full eight hours of shuteye or party all night like it’s 1999, you won’t be tired the next day.  No one ever gets tired in heaven; bored, sometimes, but never tired.  Still, Herb, the bartender at the Oddball, makes it a habit to go to bed on most nights: “I can only take about 14 or 15 hours of paradise at a time,” he tells patrons who wonder why he closes the tavern for part of the night.  Tonight, however, he was skipping the sack time.

He wanted to be there when Horace needed a fresh beer and to help him in any other way he could.  And he wanted to be there in the morning when Horace would be leaving the bar for what would almost certainly be the last time.  Back when he had been alive, Herb had usually let farewells pass uncelebrated: the people in his life were just so many spare coins to be spent and forgotten without remorse.  But heaven had changed him, and this time he wanted things to be different.

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