clearly can't make decisions for herself. Thank goodness she has Dickerson to set her straight. I only hope it's not too late.

is that, in this two-party system, what exactly are anti-war folks going to do come November, 2008, vote Republican? Of course not. We will again be faced with the "lesser of two evils" candidates who are slightly more pro-choice than the Reps, and who might convince us that they'd clean up lobbying in Washington, raise the minimum wage, hold some more hearings, etc.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: until liberals withhold their votes from these Democrats, even at the expense of electing Republicans, we will have no say in what gets done in Washington. Politics is power. If liberals give a pass to non-liberal Dems every election just because they're marginally better than the Reps, the country will continue its 3-decade-long conservative shift. It's the only power most of us have; if we don't exercise it, we can't complain when officeholders ignore us.

some long-time NBA scouts admitted that, when Hakeem Olajawon was a senior in college, they projected him to be a no-more-than-average NBA center. Most figured he'd block a bunch of shots, grab double figures in rebounds and score only occasionally. Even the best just can't always tell.

Don't get too confident.

since February and the 30k extra troops still aren't "in place?" Sounds like Petaeus is as incompetent as Rumsfeld.

that Pace somehow believes that invading and occupying Iraq has something to do with our freedom here in the US. i'd love to hear him explain that.

that Blair could give to his own question, given that Iraqis ARE angry at the invaders is that, like little children, they just don't know what's good for them. They don't understand that the bitter medicine, the painful injection will make them well in time. And indeed what other opinion of the "subject races" could an imperialist have? We know better than the Iraqis, Vietnamese, Kenyans, Phillipinos, Aztecs, etc what is in their best interest. Edward Said said it a thousand times and a thousand times better, but there it is.

The History Boy? If so we are right and truly honored by your presence on the thread.

Before the invasion, there were reports that the US would keep up to 16 permanent military bases in Iraq after the war. Compare this embassy with others and compare Iraq with other countries in which we maintain embassies and the conclusion becomes inescapable - we are not going to leave Iraq. We are setting up a permanent military presence in the heart of oil country. This is American policy. I suspect Cheney's secret energy task force put this together in May of '01. It'd be interesting to see those documents that he went to the wall to keep secret. Was the decision to invade Iraq made then? In any case, that's why the MSM has backed the war for so long. It is also why the Democrats have done and will do nothing to get us out of Iraq. The deal is done; all the players are on board. Some troops will leave. Most will stay. Energy policy = permanent war.

Yep, I've been thinking of Ozymandias (sp?) since the first Gulf War in 1991. Maybe the embassy wall could be engraved with something like "My name is W, Decider of Deciders. Look on my works ye mighty and despair." Doesn't scan too well, but then neither does Bush's prose.

the Reps will find a way to get Paul out of the national spotlight. It's not because he has a chance of winning the nomination. He doesn't have the money to win and money is what the front-loaded primaries are all about. But his message is so far outside the accepted range of public discourse that he will find himself disinvited to debates and patriotic journalists will dig up something on him to "prove" how dangerous, crazy, whatever he is. It's just a matter of time.

of certain pundits (no news there), George Bush has in fact not governed as a conservative. Balanced budgets, respect for the privacy of Americans and the rule of law, and minimal intervention in the affairs of other nations have been the pillars of American conservatism. He's knocked down every one of them, and at least some conservatives have noticed.

the same as they've always been. They don't have a choice about that. The US is in the process of establishing a permanent military presence in Iraq, just as was reported before the invasion even took place. The size of our new embassy alone tells you how important we view our presence there to be. The challenge for the Dems, as it so often seems to be, is to convince voters that they differ from the Reps in some substantial way. It's a tough job.

"share one thing in common" is redundant. You can share something and you can have something in common, but they mean the same thing, so to "share one thing in common" is redundant.

people start refusing to vote for Dems who don't oppose Republican policies, we can expect the 3-decade-old rightward shift of politics in this country to continue. I hear it time and again - "yes the Dems are lame and do nothing to promote my values, but they're better than the Reps." True perhaps, but if you give Dems a pass, if you vote for them regardless of how bad they are simply because they're marginally better than the Reps, you give them no impetus to vote your issues. They take you for granted.