There are no good options for Iraq.

* preznit blinky speaks:

"I know it's hard for Americans to believe this, but the enemy that attacked us before has got people that want to act like them, are maybe taking instruction from -- I can't tell you whether this plot we disrupted was al Qaeda. I'm not going to say that unless I'm certain it was."

* Greenfield:

For GOP, terrorism issue no longer a sure thing. Is Iraq a distraction from or part of the fight against terror?

people are excited that even this question is apparently now permissible. sheesh.


* talkleft:

"Our own government is beginning to look to me like it is adopting President Bush's rallying cry "They hate us because of our freedom."

"We, the people" is taking on a different meaning since 2000.

I think it is the Bush Administration that hates us because of our freedom. They want to search us, wiretap us, know all about us, and run our lives. They won't be happy until the United States is a fascist state, of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.
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Or, replace "corporations" with "rich Republican conributors." It's all the same to them, and, I might add, to the rest of us.

* glenn:

"Seventh, the court made its scorn quite clear for the administration's Yoo theory of executive power because, as the court put it, "there are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." Citing Youngstown again, the court made clear that even in time of war, and even with regard to the President's Commander-in-Chief powers, the President is subject to constitutional restrictions -- a proposition long unquestioned in our system of government until the Bush administration began inventing radical theories of executive power.

Finally, and really quite extraordinarily, the court (a) declared the NSA program to be in violation of FISA, the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment and (b) issued a permanent injunction enjoining the Bush administration from continuing to eavesdrop in violation of FISA."
the judge although threw out most of the States Secrets stuff, because, well, it's not secret.

* glenn:

"Making (Iraq) matters worse still, the power of lawless militias is rapidly increasing, and are directly controlled by high Shiite government officials and/or by what the Post calls "radicalized clerics." Put another way, for the billions of dollars and thousands of lives we have squandered (figures which increase every day), we have transformed Iraq into the ideal playground for both Iran and Al Qaeda-type groups to assert control, and we clearly have no way to reverse any of that, because the longer we stay, the worse it all gets.
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Once the U.S. finally extricates itself from the Iraqi disaster, a comprehensive public accounting is critical. While much attention has been paid to the pre-war misinformation disseminated by the government and the media, the post-invasion deceit has been worse -- much worse. There was, at least, a reasonable question about whether Saddam had WMDs. Nobody knew the answer to that question for certain one way or the other prior to the war. But it has long been apparent that conditions in Iraq were deteriorating, that our occupation was achieving nothing constructive, that violence was spiraling out of control, and that our invasion had achieved the opposite of the goals we proclaimed to be pursuing.

But the political establishment -- the Bush administration, its followers, and our "serious" pundits alike -- were all so invested, so personally invested, in the invasion which they advocated and caused that they just all agreed to pretend that it was not happening. Pointing out the magnitude of the disaster we caused -- both to Iraq and, at least equally, to the U.S. -- was deemed inappropriate, distasteful, hyperbolic, and even subversive. As a result, and in stark contrast to the quick and open Israeli recognition that their war was going poorly, we continued to pursue a clearly misguided and destructive path because our political leaders and their media enablers were too weak and self-interested -- and, in many cases, still are -- to acknowledge reality.

The parties responsible for this ongoing deceit about the state of affairs in Iraq are too numerous to list. It obviously begins with the White House and their Congressional loyalists, but there are plenty of illustrative examples outside of those circles as well
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There are no good options for Iraq. Simply withdrawing in the face of the horrendous mess we made is both reckless and dangerous, but staying is achieving nothing good. But the first and most important step is to recognize who it is who led us into this disaster and, through deceit and desperate irrationality, kept us there due to a refusal to acknowledge reality. And then we should stop listening to them immediately and completely."