To borrow a line from the Clash's Should I Stay Or Should I Go, "This indecision's buggin' me."

In order to start out this post right, a little Fred Dalton Thompson quiz must be taken.  When was the first date Fred Thompson publicly announced that he was considering a run at the presidency in 2008?  

A) March 11, 2007   B)  April 11, 2007   C)  May 11, 2007 

The answer is A, March 11, 2007, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.  

We are now under two weeks away from the six month anniversary of Thompson’s announcement he was considering getting into the race, and here’s what’s transpired at Team Thompson.

Read more at Radioblogger.com.

As Instapundit demonstrates, yes.

Keep in mind that the New York Times is the top of the heap.

From Shrinkwrapped. 

And more on MSM's many failures concerning Iraq and Iran, this time from Jeff Goldstein. 

(Yesterday I linked to an important and lengthy ProteinWisdom post on the subject which had been authored by Karl, but attributed to Jeff.  My apologies to Karl.)

UPDATE:  The leaders of the war against the war are getting desperate indeed.  See Bill Kristol's assessment of the GAO's "report" on "benchmarks" in Iraq and the Washington Post's write-up.

You know that when a campaign puts the words, “Yes, we’re serious” in a campaign e-mail, it’s gonna be good.

Mitt Romney’s create-your-own-ad contest is exactly the kind of online innovation I’ve been waiting for out of the Republican candidates for President. The winning ad gets a real, live media buy. In other words, supporters are co-creating something of actual value and importance to the campaign. That’s meaningful, and supporters get that.

Lots of user-generated content contests fail because the sponsor tries to create an incentive that exists only in the online parallel universe. Users sense the second-class treatment, and yawn. This is gutsier because they’re putting real dollars behind it (hopefully it won’t be just a phantom buy), and after MoveOn’s Hitler ads, the quintessential example of bad user generated content, it’s particularly bold.

The JumpCut platform will help the campaigns manage the flow, and give even average users the chance to edit a video. The production values and complexity of the winning video probably won’t match what the TV admakers can put together. But does it matter? Wasn’t the great thing about “The Pitch,” the best campaign video of 2004, the fact that it was understated — effectively a bunch of photos stitched together? (See if you can remember the narrator.)

Plus, as has been pointed out before with user-generated contests like this, the genius is not what happens with the winner, but how the also-rans take pride in their videos and spread them through their personal networks. This is a creative way to spread the Romney message with hundreds of small videos distributed throughout the Web.

I don’t know if Romney is anywhere close to Hillary Clinton’s one million e-mail addresses, but it’s creative stuff like this that shows me that Romney has the warewithal and creativity to catch up. It should be no surprise to anyone that I buy into the Trippi theory of insane Democratic competition on the Web redounding to the benefit of (probably) Hillary. The relevant bit starts at 2:15, but the crack right before about the GOP candidates and YouTube was depressingly (if temporarily) prescient:

I’ve had some issues with Romney, but his supporters are right to point out that his superior organization is a point in his favor when going up against the brutal Clinton machine. It’s something savvy Republican primary voters have a right to evaluate, and this year, the Web is going to be a huge component of that organization, because we will be outraised by $100 million or more if our campaigns only start thinking about building lists and engaging online on February 6th.

Kudos to Team Romney. Now let’s see the Rudy, Fred, et al. counter, and start a spiral of online competition that will make the eventual nominee stronger.

I am off to Texas today to broadcast tomorrow from the state GOP convention.  Dean will be sitting in today.  Before I go, a quartet of pointers.

First, Dr. Barnett posts more on our exchange from Tuesday here at his blog.  I will invite him back for an extended conversation next week as his analysis is usually valuable and often unique and perhaps I am missing it, which is what Dr. Barnett clearly believes.  I put what I thought was a fair summary of key parts of his views to three other professionals yesterday --General Simmons, Christopher Hitchens and Dr. Kimberly Kagan.  Their responses:

From Major General James E. Simmons, Deputy Commander for Support of Multi-National Forces, Iraq:

HH: Now General, yesterday, I don’t know if you’ve read Thomas P.M. Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map, but he comes on frequently, Pentagon strategist and briefer, and he said look, the Shia and the Sunni have just got to go at each other, there’s got to be a bloodletting, it’s Saudi Arabia versus Iran in Iraq, and we ought to get out of their way, and let the killing go until they’re tired of it. That’s kind of a fatalist and almost a nihilistic approach. What’s your reaction to that, General? 

JS: I don’t think that’s…I don’t think that’s necessary. My dealings with the Iraqi people here is that there are many, many well educated, reasonable, middle of the road people who want to come to a political settlement to the differences here between the different political parties, the different sects that are here in Iraq. And I do not believe there needs to be any kind of bloodbath in Iraq to solve inter-religious or inter-sect problems here in Iraq. 

From Christopher Hitchens (Dr. Barnett approvingly cited Hitchens' take on the three wars in Iraq):

HH: I know, we disagree. I want to get to the key, though, of Dr. Barnett’s argument, which is repeated a lot, which is only a diplomatic solution will work, and we’ve got to force Iran to come bargain with us and with the Saudis, who are representing the Sunni fundamentalist… 

CH: Yes. 

HH: Do you see any evidence that Iran wants to bargain with us on that kind of a grand scale to settle our differences and get about the partitioning of power in the Middle East? 

CH: No, I see no such evidence. I mean, I think that all the evidence is that the Iranian mullahs, for some insane reason of their own, hugely overestimating, I think, their own strength in a confrontation, are looking for a fight on several fronts, not just in Iraq, but in Lebanon, where they’ve been trying to detonate again a fragile but very defensible and very honorable non-sectarian government, in Syria, where they’re the insurance of the only remaining and very weak and discredited Baathist dictatorship, on the international front by sending death squads to commit acts of terrorism in foreign cities as far away as Argentina, and London, and of course, in the very grand overarching scheme of things, at the UN and at the European Union, not minding being caught flagrantly lying about every agreement they’ve ever signed on nuclear matters, quite extraordinary. They seem to be looking for a fight.  

HH: President Sarkozy said we are rapidly approaching, this week, either an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran. Do you agree with his assessment? 

CH: Well, I must say I think that the logic of that is very, very hard to impeach.  Yes, we’ve either got to say all right, we give it up, we give it up all over our attempts to negotiate with them, to bribe them, to give them inducements, to allow in proper inspections, to stop lying and cheating, that all of that, the whole wage of international law, this time run by the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Authority, not by the Defense Department or the CIA, by the way, in case that counts, that all of that’s worthless, that we simply allow an outlaw regime to acquire apocalyptic weapons when it displays a messianic ideology, an ideology of ultimate destruction, not just of Israel, but the whole world. Its leaders claim to believe that their messiah’s return is imminent. People like that shouldn’t have apocalyptic weaponry.  

HH: Would any attempt to do that, just to throw in the towel, yield any result appreciably different than what we got in ’37, ’38 and ’39, when we tried it with a different fascist regime? Would they be bought off, Christopher Hitchens? 

CH: No, it doesn’t seem to me that they do. I mean, look, these are people who have publicly, with really incredibly little protest, arrested four or five senior American citizens of Iranian descent, returning peacefully to their own country to have discussions, arrested them, framed them up, tortured them, forced confessions out of them on television, behaved in the most barbaric manner, with no cost. The Canadian-Iranian journalist, recently a woman was beaten to death in prison, and the Canadian government’s appeals to have the head of the Iranian Secret Police arrested when he traveled were met with no response at all. It’s outrageous that we don’t band together against this international gangster regime.  

And from Dr. Kimberly Kagan, who authored a just-published comprehensive assessment of Iran's actions in Iraq:

HH: I want to test a couple of theories off against both your researches and your experience when you were visiting Iraq, Dr. Kagan. I had Thomas P.M. Barnett on yesterday, and Dr. Barnett, of course, the author of The Pentagon’s New Map, is of a couple of opinions, one of which is that look, we’re in the middle of a conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, and they’re going to have to go at it with each other, and there’s an inevitable clash here that’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of casualties, minimum, and it’s just got to happen, maybe we’d be best to get out of the way. Your assessment of that? 

KK: First of all, as a military historian, I would have to say that there’s no such thing as inevitability within a conflict. One of the things we learn about war is how much chance and decision making plays in the outcome of any particular diplomatic or military negotiation. That said, the point is that within Iraq, I think that we have a much more complicated situation, and the one thing I’m sure of is that U.S. forces were to withdraw prematurely, then we would see a rise in sectarian conflict, and a rise in regional intervention within the state of Iraq. And so I think actually that U.S. forces, working with the government of Iraq, are preventing rather than promoting conflict between Iraq and its neighbors. 

HH: Now let me ask you about Dr. Barnett’s second proposition, which is that George Bush has failed to do that which could have been done to bring Iran into serious peace negotiations. When I finished reading your piece today at the Weekly Standard, I concluded, as I had previous, there’s just no evidence that they want to genuinely negotiate with us. Am I wrong? 

KK: You are correct. The U.S. embassy within Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, have conducted diplomatic talks with the Iranians, both at the end of May, and also at the end of July. And although it is certainly worthwhile to engage in certain kinds of discussions to find out what Iranian aims are, it seems as though the Iranians have not actually admitted that they are supporting violent activities and militia groups within Iraq, despite the evidence that Ryan Crocker and others have presented to them. And so that really indicates that they do not seem to be willing to negotiate on this point, but rather are looking toward the diplomatic talks as some way of circumventing having a real discussion.  

Dr. Barnett wrote "the debate is getting so dysfunctional on our end: all name calling and cries of traitor if you discuss our options in anything less than totally unconditional terms (to be against Bush is to hate America and its military and be a surrender monkey)."  While the reverse of that sort of extreme and useless rhetoric certainly goes on in some precincts on the left, that isn't what is going on here, and I don't think I have seen any such charge laid against Dr. Barnett from any of the key analysts of the center-right.  I do think Dr. Barnett's recommendations concerning Iran and Iraq --his professional analysis-- looks like the appeasement policies of the 1930s towards Germany.  Those policies were not put forward by "traitors" or "surrender monkeys," but by profoundly wrong British patriots who raised their hopes above the evidence above them, and thought the sacrifice of various populations a necessary evil. 

It seems to me that the question President Sarkozy out forward --"an Iranian bomb or bombing Iran"-- is the key question of the next two years.  Keeping it front and center is the job of journalists.  The job of analysts is to persuade the government and influential policy makers of the right steps to take, and that persuasion often takes place through the media and those journalists interested in the question. Though Dr. Barnett has persuaded me of quite a lot in our past conversations, he is far from doing so on the questions of what to do next vis-a-vis Iraq and Iran. 

I hope he'll  be back next week to try again.  Off to the Lone Star State....

 

Some key excerpts from my interview today with Major General James E. Simmons, Deputy Commanding General for Support of Multi-National Forces, Iraq (transcript here).

On Iran's aggression in Iraq:

HH: [D]o you think Iranian-backed attacks are increasing or decreasing right now? 

JS: I believe that the Iranians have supplied, they have surged supplies, training and munitions into Iraq to counter our surge operations that we are conducting. 

HH: And what level does that rise to? Are they doubling, tripling their effort? 

JS: I would hate to put a number on it, but what we saw was in July, we had the highest number of EFP’s that we have had in theater. Those EFP’s come from Iran. We have still seen a significant uptick in EFP’s, although the numbers are probably going to be lower in August than they were in July.  The number of rocket attacks and indirect fire attacks into our FOB’s and our camps has been elevated, and the fires have come predominantly from Shia-dominated areas, and those are Iranian made munitions that are being fired in that. And then we have some very clear evidence that there has been training that has been sponsored by folks that use the techniques that Iranians use to train people.  

HH: Can you expand on that a little bit, General, as to what kind of evidentiary markers you find that would lead one to believe the Quds forces are involved, or Hezbollah? 

JS: It’s the techniques that they use for in placing the weapons systems, particular the indirect fire systems that they’re using, which require some form of military training to be able to execute that. 

On conditions in Basra:

HH: Now there were reports out of Basra a couple of weeks ago that after the Brits have withdrawn that the radicals had taken control of the city. Are those reports accurate? 

JS: They are not accurate, and that is a fabrication at best. This was a planned turnover of the Palace and the PJCC to Iraqi control, to the Iraqi legitimate government forces. It was done to standard with, and to well-trained, well-equipped Iraqi Security Forces. There were some peaceful demonstrations that were celebratory in nature, but at no time was any Coalition forces threatened, and the local Iraqi officials under General Mohan, kept a good handle on the situation in Basra. 

HH: So what is the situation then in Basra, because that Washington Post story made it sound like the Wild West without the saloons.  

JS: It was a demonstration of OMS, or Shia people there that were celebrating, to the best of my knowledge, the return of an Iraqi landmark to the Iraqi government.  

On the effect of American officers on the Iraqi Security Forces:

HH: Now General, when I was looking over your bio to prepare for this, you’ve served a whole bunch of places in the world, Germany, Korea, Kuwait, of course now in Iraq, so you’ve seen a lot of different foreign armies operating. Is the quality of the Iraqi officer corps of the sort that can preserve a military supporting a civilian government over the long haul? Or as we’ve seen before, a lot of Arab governments have fallen to a lot of army officers with guns drawn in coups. What’s that situation like? 

JS: That, you know, Hugh, that’s a real good question. I have not personally observed political motivation from the senior leadership in the Iraqi Army. And what I see is some dedicated professionals who are seriously interested in the welfare of Iraq as a nation, and they are concerned about getting the insurgency under control, and making sure that they have an army that’s capable of defending Iraq against her traditional enemies here in the Middle East. Of course, there is a history in Iraq of the army selecting the leadership of the government. I mean, that has certainly happened here in Iraq during its relatively short history as a modern nation. But I have not seen that in dealing with the majority of the senior folks that I deal with. Now what I would tell you is that when you get further down the system, and you get down to the captains and the majors, they are very, very strongly influenced by our young leaders that are out there on the battlefield with them every day. And they are embracing the idea of the American armed forces about selfless service and dedication to the nation, and I see that as those more junior officers continue to develop and grow into leadership positions, that the Iraqi Armed Forces has a potential to have a very capable and professional armed forces that is loyal to the elected government.

I hope you'll read the entire interview (or listen to it here when the audio is posted later tonight), because you won't be getting this sort of information from the MSM, as demonstrated and explained by Jeff Goldstein in a comprehensive post on the abject failure of MSM when it comes Iraq.

UPDATE:  A reaction to the interview from Hamilton, Madison and Jay.

Dr. Barnett responds to our conversation yesterday and my post below with two entries at his blog, here and here.  He asserts that "Hugh wants to pre-emptively tag the Dems for future Sunni-v-Shia killings in the inevitable drawdown and pullback to follow,"and that I want "a number to pin on them now in advance of Petraeus' report. The stabbed-in-the-back storyline is being pro-actively weaved."

I am not trying to misrepresent Dr. Barnett's views, and point people to the transcript.  Others drew even harsher conclusions than I did, but the reader can decide for himself what Dr. Barnett is advocating.

On the other hand, Dr. Barnett's characterization of my views is simply wrong.  I believe there are excellent prospects for stability in Iraq, and I base that assessment on everything coming out of Iraq as well as interviews such as the one I conducted with Major General Simmons this morning which will play on the program today as well as on interviews with General Petraeus, John Burns, Michael O'Hanlon, General Keane, Fred Kagan, Max Boot and Bill Kristol (each of the six civilians have been in Iraq in the recent months.)  I don't think the bloodletting that Dr. Barnett views as inevitable is in any real sense "inevitable," and those urging it --both Democrats and Republicans-- are playing with genocide as though that's just a consequence of the world in which we live.  When Dr. Barnett admitted to there being at least a "small chance" of avoiding the sectarian slaughter he predicts will follow our withdrawal from the middle of the Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq, he gives up the argument about morality.  There's a lot of evidence that there is a great deal more than "some chance" of that happening, but even "some chance" of reducing loss of life and helping Iraq emerge as a stable democracy compels us to stay committed to the freely elected government of Iraq.

I also find it unpersuasive --indeed very unrealistic-- to assert against a great deal of evidence to the contrary that we can negotiate with the Iranians, and urge Kim Kagan's comprehensive report on Iranian interference on everyone who believes we are missing an opening with Iran.

I will ask Dr. Barnett back next week, but it seems to me that advocates of his strategy or of an even more comprehensive withdrawal have to begin their analysis by asking the people who are there or who have been there recently what they see happening in Iraq.  What a folly and a terrible tragedy it would be if the U.S.abandoned Iraq to a paroxysm of sectarian killing far worse than that of 2006, and to another tyrant in the mold of Saddam if it could have been avoided.  As long as there is a good, or even "some" chance of that result, we should be supporting the surge.

Major General Simmons is the Deputy Commanding General for Support of Multi-National Corps, Iraq, and is my guest today for a wide ranging interview on conditions in Iraq..

MY LONG TIME SPARRING PARTNER Glenn Greenwald has unearthed an old quote of mine that he thinks brilliantly illuminates my intellectual incoherence.  When the campaign to out Larry Craig began last October hot on the heels of the Foley debacle, I wrote:

I'm sorry if this topic causes embarrassment to Larry Craig and his family, but I assume by now they've figured out that politics in 2006 is a thoroughly rotten business. . . .

THE FIRST LEFT WING PATHOLOGY "OUTED" by the Craig story is the relentless meanness that characterizes modern day liberalism. . . .BUT MOST DAMNING OF THE LEFT is the casual assumption of group-think that this exercise demonstrates. The logic is that if you're gay, you must therefore support gay marriage. What's more, you must support everything that someone like Glenn Greenwald supports. To do otherwise evidences self-hatred and a betrayal of the cause.

In his post on the subject, Glenn wrote that I was specifically addressing the bathroom sex charges.  If you read my post, I was addressing the general campaign to out Craig.  I’m sure Glenn will rush to publish a correction.  Since I consider outing a viciously mean political tactic, I remain comfortable with that post.  For what it’s worth, I believe most of the gay community agrees with me on this matter.

So what’s happened to make things different now than they were back in October when the cretinous Mike Rogers began his outing effort?  Craig outed himself.  What’s more, he lied (and continues to lie) to his constituents.  If he had said last year words to the effect of, “My private life is private, and will remain that way,” everyone would have understood the coded message and backed off.  No one bother charting Barney Frank’s nocturnal activities once he came out of the closet. Barney’s honesty took his sex life off the table as a political issue.

There’s also the obvious additional note that cruising for sex in a public Men’s Room and getting arrested for those cruising activities are things that disgust most people.  Kids presumably use that restroom.  So presumably do unsuspecting travelers, who unsuspectingly heeded nature’s call in Minneapolis’ smelly indoor version of a highway rest stop.  Senator Tappy-Toes’ activities are not acceptable, not for a United States Senator, a person in a committed relationship, or for someone who purports to live up to our community’s standards.

On a related note, reader BR emailed, “I don't understand, if it's not homophobic, how trying to pick up a date in a public restroom is any different than picking up a date in a tavern, or an office. Can you explain?”  My answer is no.  If you don’t understand the difference on its face, then it’s unlikely that I can explain it to you.

ONE LAST NOTE here for the gay community.  As a Jew, I’m frequently disgusted by the Anti-Defamation League.  The ADL purports to speak for all of American Jewry, and yet is led by a craven, intellectually dishonest hierarchy.  Recently, the ADL once again stepped in the proverbial poo when ADL leader Abe Foxman refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide as a real genocide.  This was Foxman at his finest: Pointless, stupid, and using our own experience with the Holocaust as a bullying club to beat his critics.  Abe didn’t win this one, and relented late last week.  Anyway, my point is that as a Jew, I rush to remind my Gentile friends and readers that this man doesn’t speak for me.

What I find odd about the Craig situation is how the left has rushed to either defend his actions or at least try to mitigate them by comparing him to someone like David Vitter.  If I were part of the gay community, my initial reaction to Craig’s actions wouldn’t be a pathetic attempt to minimize the depravity of looking for love in an airport men’s room.  It would be to insist that as a community, the people who engage in antics like that are outliers and degenerates.

I spent several years living in working in Boston’s Back Bay and South End neighborhoods.  Both had large gay populations.  I won’t resort to the old clich that many of my best friends are gay, because they’re not (although I do have questions about a few of them – you know who you are).  But spending a lot of time around gays in my neighborhood, at the gym and at work, I got to know the community.  Good people.  I think these experiences are partly to credit for why I’m more favorably inclined to the gay agenda than most arch-conservatives.

Behavior like Craig’s confirms the worst and darkest prejudices of people who fear and/or loathe the gay community.  Larry Craig is an outlier, and his behavior a disgrace to everyone who has associated or is now associated with him – the Republican Party, conservatives, Mitt Romney, and gay America.  People who care about the gay community should be rushing to condemn Larry Craig and distance themselves from him.  And yet they’d rather score cheap political points. 

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

U.S. forces detained then released another group of Iranians in Iraq yesterday.  The president said yesterday that:

Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran backs Hezbollah who are trying to undermine the democratic government of Lebanon. Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent, and target Israel, and destabilize the Palestinian territories. Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.

He added:

Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people. Members of the Qods Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are supplying extremist groups with funding and weapons, including sophisticated IEDs. And with the assistance of Hezbollah, they've provided training for these violent forces inside of Iraq. Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months -- despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq.

Some say Iran's leaders are not aware of what members of their own regime are doing. Others say Iran's leaders are actively seeking to provoke the West. Either way, they cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces and the murder of innocent Iraqis. The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities.

What is Iran's role in Iraq?  The Weekly Standard has just published The Iran Dossier,  by Kim Kagan.  The introduction:

Iran, and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, have been actively involved in supporting Shia militias and encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq since the invasion of 2003-and Iranian planning and preparation for that effort began as early as 2002. The precise purposes of this support are unclear and may have changed over time. But one thing is very clear: Iran has consistently supplied weapons, its own advisors, and Lebanese Hezbollah advisors to multiple resistance groups in Iraq, both Sunni and Shia, and has supported these groups as they have targeted Sunni Arabs, Coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces, and the Iraqi Government itself. Their infl uence runs from Kurdistan to Basrah, and Coalition sources report that by August 2007, Iranian-backed insurgents accounted for roughly half the attacks on Coalition forces, a dramatic change from previous periods that had seen the overwhelming majority of attacks coming from the Sunni Arab insurgency and al Qaeda.

The Coalition has stepped-up its efforts to combat Iranian intervention in Iraq in recent months both because the Iranians have increased their support for violence in Iraq since the start of the surge and because Coalition successes against al Qaeda in Iraq and the larger Sunni Arab insurgency have permitted the re-allocation of resources and effort against a problem that has plagued attempts to establish a stable government in Iraq from the outset. With those problems increasingly under control, Iranian intervention is the next major problem the Coalition must tackle.

Today, Iran's provocateur-in-chief, President Ahmadinejad, announced that "Today, Iran is a nuclear Iran. That means, it fully possesses the whole nuclear fuel cycle."

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad went further:

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said at a news conference, referring to U.S. troops in Iraq. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

Yesterday on the program, Thomas P.M. Barnett urged a regional settlement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, one that the U.S, could hurry along by ceasing all efforts to bring about Sunni-Shia reconciliation in Iraq.  When I pointed out that such a withdrawal from a portion of the U.S. mission could lead to genocide, Barnett asserted killing on a large scale was inevitable anyway, and that the killing had to precede the regional settlement.  "[W]e’re going to get the same outcome whether it’s slow-motion or whether it’s fast," Barnett argued.  "[W]e need to compromise with the Iranians now to make the Iraq thing work, and squeeze them later on the Bomb as it ensues," he went on. "By bundling those two things together, we’re guaranteeing that Iran’s going to fight us in Iraq, and I think that’s going to make our situation on a political basis untenable in the short run, and it’s going to, I’m more concerned about a reaction here in the United States than I am about the number of losses that I think are going to happen anyway in Iraq."

His conclusion:

My argument would be if you do this in a slow motion, you’re going to get the same body count. It’s just going to be stretched over time. And I don’t know what the moral argument is on that one. 250,000 dead over a three year period versus over a six month period. You know, I don’t know where you come down morally on that one. They’re all preventable deaths, is my argument. We’re not making the diplomatic surge, which is unfortunate, in concert with the personnel surge, because I think we have been successful in Kurdistan, and continue to be, and I think we have been successful against Al Qaeda-Iraq. What we haven’t been able to do because we’re in the middle of a proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh is to stop those two powers from fighting.   

Barnett is a very smart guy, but there is in his recommendation more than an echo of indifference to a  "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing," and a limitless belief in the efficacy of diplomacy vis-a-vis Iran.  There is also a rush to damn Bush rather than recognize that there wasn't an alternative to toppling Saddam, and there isn't an alternative now to confronting Iran.

And there is no way that America should countenance the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis because we are afraid to confront a fanatical regime next door led by a millenialist mullahs who clearly aim to remove Israel from the map in a blinding flash, a flash that will start a series of events too awful to contemplate.

When French President Sarkozy announced this week that we are approaching an unfortunate choice, "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," it was a candid and welcome assessment of where we are and the terrible choices ahead.  Iran does not want peace with the West, and Hezbollah on the north and Hamas to the south do not want peace with Israel, lying between them.  Both branches of militant, radical Islam do not want peace.  They want the war they have started to grow more intense and to spread.  Many within both branches of Islam oppose them.  We need to stand with our allies and confront the evil squarely, not run from it and hope it will moderate itself over a peace table that doesn't exist, agreeing to terms that will never be written.

The alternatives for Americans are clarity about the war we find ourselves in and the nature of the enemy we are fighting, or appeasement followed by a renewed attack on us or a holocaust in the Middle East that won't end as Dr. Barnett seems to think, with a few hundred thousand murdered in Iraq.

The hysterical anti-war group has completely cowed the Democrat Party, and the election of Hillary next year means the certain embrace of appeasement.  Either a Giuliani or a Romney presidency means the continuation of the resolve to meet the dual enemy on many fields with an American military much more experienced in the tactics of this war and with a growing number of allies in the Muslim world. 

I am hoping that reality and not wishful thinking governs the electorate a year from now.  The consequences of the return of the appeasement Democrats to the executive branch are too awful to fully imagine.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig obviously did a very bad thing in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport in June.  Whatever took place between Senator Craig and an undercover police officer was bad enough that Senator Craig tried to hide it from everyone around him, public and private.  It was bad enough that he pled guilty, hoping it would stay buried forever.  There are many things about this affair that have made him politically radioactive, and fatally so. The press statement he gave to the media earlier Tuesday afternoon did not help make his predicament any less dire.  In fact, it made it worse.  

Senator Craig said very strongly that he did not do anything wrong, that he is not gay, and that he is not ruling out running for re-election next November. Here's what else Senator Craig has not done.

Read more at Radioblogger.com