http://richardsonforpresident.com/iraq

. . . We should get our troops out of Iraq this year. Our continued presence there only enables the Iraqi factions to delay making the hard political choices they need to make to end the civil war . . . We must remove ALL of our troops. There should be no residual US forces left in Iraq. Most Iraqis, and most others in the region, believe that we are there for their oil, and this perception is exploited by both Al Qaeda and anti-American Shia groups. By announcing that we intend to remove all troops, we would deprive them of this propaganda tool . . . I support the Feingold-Reid bill to force the President to end the war . . .
- - Bill Richardson

Pajamas Media's straw poll results are at http://pajamasmedia.com/strawpoll2008/results.php
and their favorite Democrat is Richardson. Most readers of Pajamas Media web sites aren't Democrats, so you have to ask yourself what they see in Richardson. I think they see a guy with the guts to defy the pundits.

Maybe some other Dems should try that.

I'm undecided as to which of the Dems I'd prefer, but I sure would like to see them all showing more intestinal fortitude. Not only would they get more support from the Democratic base, but they'd also get more respect (and thus more votes in 2008) from independents and Republicans.

That would be difficult and quite possibly riskier today than it was in the 18th centuury but you can't argue with the rest of it. However, we can pay closer attention to Eisenhower's admonition of the MIC and drastically reduce our military spending and footprint.

There's only one way the administration position can be said to make sense but once conceded, it makes perfect sense. The only goal of the entire Iraqi operation is to have permanent bases in Iraq. The civil war doesn't matter. The situation on the ground doesn't matter. As long as US troops can operate, then we are successful, and roadside bombs and other sources of casualties are simply nuisances that can be ignored.

Of course, because the public was sold a bill of goods about our reasons for being there in the first place, it's still necessary to do the dance that we are actually trying to accomplish something. But those in the know already realize that our current status quo was indeed the desired end state.

Thats why to leave is to lose and to stay is to win. Nothing alse matters!

McCain is spending some big money on Google syndication ads that say "Surrender is Not An Option - Sign the Petition Today."

I wasn't aware that "surrender" was one of the options being considered. Actually, to be more accurate, it should say "Options are Not An Option."

...remains ever smaller but just as powerful as ever. They retain, for instance, complete domination of the Washington Post operations, news and editorial both.

Moqtada al-Sadr's decision to withdraw his party's ministers from the Iraqi cabinet is the lead story at the BBC and the London Times. It is now the lead story at the NY Times website. It appeared on pg. A-11 of the Washington Post this morning. It is buried on the Washington Post's website, not even meriting mention among the top ten or twelve stories. It appears under the small-type caption "More Headlines" at the very bottom of the page of the Post's website, sandwiched between the proposed sale of Sallie Mae and a story about student loan lenders.

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Moqtada al-Sadr's decision to withdraw his party's ministers from the Iraqi cabinet is the lead story at the BBC and the London Times. It is now the lead story at the NY Times website. It appeared on pg. A-11 of the Washington Post this morning. It is buried on the Washington Post's website, not even meriting mention among the top ten or twelve stories. It appears under the small-type caption "More Headlines" at the very bottom of the page of the Post's website, sandwiched between the proposed sale of Sallie Mae and a story about student loan lenders.

We are all familiar with the disgraceful abasement of the Washingtonn Post's editorial page at the hands of neocon sockpuppet Fred Hiatt. His pitiable editorials on Iraq, the Plame Trial, AttorneyGate and other bush administration scandals has been well documented here as well as in the reliably scathing comments to Hiatt's editorials at the Post's own website. But the problem extends far beyond the editorial page. Len Downie, editor of the Washington Post, is in the tank for the bush crime syndicate, perhaps not as deeply as Hiatt, but far enough so that the biggest story out of Iraq in months is BURIED at the WaPo.

Can anyone suggest a journalistically credible rationale for this decision by the Post's news editors? Is it reasonable to relegate this story - the first step towards complete withdrawal from the Iraqi government by the party that controls the largest militia in Baghdad and Iraq - to the same coverage accorded a bid to acquire Sallie Mae?

This is the worst possible thing that could happen in Iraq, and the fact that al-Sadr is probably not capable of bringing down the government (i.e., forcing new parliamentary elections) makes things even worse. If al-Sadr can't bring Maliki to the table after this cabinet withdrawal, then al-Sadr is forced to withdraw from the government generally, leaving the Maliki government even more inclined to be completely intransigent in their dealings with the more militant Shiite factions. This in turn will induce al-Sadr, now fully outside the peaceful processes of dispute resolution within the Iraq government, to resort to violence in Baghdad against both U.S. troops and innocents on a scale that will make the chaos and casualty levels in Iraq today look like a picnic.

The Washington Post is a complete disgrace. The belated decision by the NY Times to give this story its proper emphasis will put great pressure on the Post to finally elevate this story to the top, but only after the Post has effectively buried it for more than 24 hours.