no policy for victory and no politics beyond victory

* clemons:

"While I have some issues with Hayden, I do believe that he is one of the last hopes in restoring some order at the CIA and rolling back Donald Rumsfeld's colonization of the nation's national security bureaucracy.

Rumsfeld is my target, and those who see Negroponte, Hayden, and Rumsfeld on the same page are incorrect.

Negroponte will use Hayden to gore Rumsfeld, Stephen Cambone, and William Boykin."

i never really thought that we had any friends inside the egadministration - so i really shouldnt care about these comments from clemons - but the idea that negroponte and hayden are the best hope we have against that evil triumverate? sheesh! i think i'd prefer to be lonely.

* blumenthal:

"Bush's belief in a military solution, moreover, renders moot progress on a political solution, which is the only potentially practical approach. His war on the Sunnis simply agitates the process of civil war. The entire burden of progress falls on the U.S. ambassador, whose inherent situation as representative of the occupying power inside the country limits his ability to engage in the international diplomacy that might make his efforts to bring factions together possible. Khalilzad's tentative outreach to Iran, in any case, was shut down by Washington. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for her part, finds herself in Bulgaria, instead of conducting shuttle diplomacy in Amman, Jordan; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Tehran. The diplomatic vacuum intensifies the power vacuum in Iraq, exciting Bush's flights of magical thinking about victory: I speak, therefore it is."

BUT SCHOOLS ARE BEING PAINTED!!!

Blumenthal ends thusly:

"But while war may be the game changer for Bush's desire to put in place a one-party state, forge a permanent Republican majority, redefine the Constitution and the relationships of the branches of the federal government, and concentrate power in the executive, Bush has only the rhetoric of "victory." He has not stated what would happen the day after "victory." Although a victory parade would be his political nightmare, now the absence of victory is his nightmare. With every proclaimed "turning point," "victory" becomes ever more evanescent. He has no policy for victory and no politics beyond victory."

how bout them apples?