...leads me to believe that any AKA Smith-style banked, well-tended, one holiday-at-a-time bonfire will just produce a lot of Clintonian smoke (what follows is from the Nation):

A few weeks ago The Nation disclosed that Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, Mark Penn, leads a giant PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, that aggressively helps corporations stop union organizing drives. We cited the specific example of how B-M successfully assists the highly profitable and controversial uniform and laundry supply company Cintas in blocking union efforts to organize 20,000 of the company's garment workers and truck drivers.

Hillary's right-hand man is head of one of the most villainous PR firms around. And that's not even hyperbole -- if there's something rotten to be spun and covered up, Burson-Marsteller's your firm of choice. It's why most of their clients are Republicans. That speaks volumes about where Hillary's at.

As for Christo1988, even the blink-and-you-miss-it ambition of First Lady Hillary was apparently enough to earn her hatred from folks. If she'd never tried to head the healthcare reform process, and just blandly served tea, they'd have likely loved her.

But that's a tangent; the real issue is the conduct of her campaign, and her stances, which are Republican Lite. She's really running as that rarest of creatures these days, the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller: a liberal New York Republican.

My problem is that she's doing so as a Democrat, which leaves actual Democrats (to say nothing of liberals and progressives) twisting in the wind.

Would America's Delta Force then be considered lawful combatants, given that they operate extranationally, covertly, and don't wear uniforms (since the uniform-wearing is usually what we invoke when referencing a lawful combatant from an unlawful one)? I keep wondering what'll happen to them if they get caught in a hostile country, in terms of international law.

If we covertly deploy a Delta Force (or perhaps a SEAL team, although I think they're less irregular than the Deltas) in another country, and they're caught, are they then terrorists, using America's tilted standard of justice as the criterion?

Or are they lawful combatants because, despite the absence of uniforms, they're in the employ of a government, versus a non-state entity like Al-Qaeda? Even if such employ is covert and their actions are unlawful abrogations of sovereignty?

What if another country deployed un-uniformed military operatives inside the US for reconnaissance or other purposes? Would we consider them lawful combatants, unlawful combatants, or terrorists?

If we do it = lawful, if they do it = unlawful can't be the legal standard. I imagine the Bushies will try to subvert this recent ruling, because it takes a load-bearing playing card out of the extralegal house of cards they've assembled.

All the more reason why supporting, and not subverting, international law is an important safeguard for American interests abroad, versus an inconvenient stumbling block that erodes our credibility.

Sorry, but that "null set" response cracked me up, made me think of something SLATE (I think) wrote about Romney being a cyborg. He really does seem like a robot who's a bit off-kilter (like him not recognizing Ralph "Antichrist" Reed on sight, confusing him with Gary "Mr. Toad" Bauer).

I expect him at some point to cry out: "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!"

Mr. Grieve wrote...

focus on training Iraqi security forces

Kinda worried about what we'll (or Blackwater, or whoever's contracted to do the training) will be training the security forces to do. Are we talking Latin American-style "School of the Americas" type of training? (e.g., shoot in the back of the head, disappear the bodies, declare it a victory for democracy) or what, exactly? How do you keep order in a civil war? I'm reminded of that classic picture of the SVN guy shooting the suspected NVN sympathizer in the head on the street in the Vietnam War.

Douglas Moran is right on about the gamesmanship; they've done that with everything, policywise, always proceeding on their predetermined path regardless of the facts. They'll change their tune the minute we have regime change in this country, and will demand results and accountability and then blame the Democrats for losing Iraq when a withdrawal finally happens, say 25 years from now. *gak*

They're going to dredge up some bogus progress reports and punt the war onto the next administration's lap (which'll give us the "choice" of "We're winning!" and "We don't want to be here, but we can't leave yet, can we?")

The "Mission Accomplished" wasn't winning in Iraq, so much as coming up with a winning formula for an election, the mission being the never-ending mandate! The model of the Wartime President that Bush has used to keep things going.

I'm reminded of Zeno's Dichotomy paradox, about never being able to get where you're going, as you keep halving your destination's distance, and never quite reaching it.