Man, what happened to the good old days when the Saudi's just went ahead and cut off our supply of oil when they got pissed off at U.S. foreign policy?  At least the House of Saud while pledging they will help Sunni insurgents, thankfully drew the line on giving money to al-Qaeda in Iraq.  The Bush "listening tour" continues...

This wasn't easy to find in today's news but last night Democrat Ciro Rodriguez beat Republican incumbent Henry Bonilla to take Texas' 23rd Congressional district.  This was the last undecided House race and puts the number of Democratic pickups in the 2006 midterms at 6 Senate seats and 30 House seats.  Welcome back, Ciro!

This White House denial that they're trying to get rid of Nuri al-Maliki  is pretty meaningless given we seem to be passing the point where we have any sort of control over events in Iraq, but what if we were able to push for the removal of al-Maliki, what then?  What move would we make that would neither further strengthen Iranian influence in Iraq nor ensure another failed Prime Minister and governing coalition given the make up of the current political environment in Iraq? 

I don't know, either? 

This may come as a shock to thousands of American farmers who grow soybeans every year as well as for over a billion Asians who've founded civilizations upon and eaten it as a staple for centuries but... uh, brace yourselves.....uh, "soybeans are making our kids homosexuals."

(h/t Americablog)

Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay.  What do they have in common?  Well by the misguided reasoning set forth in this Washington Post editorial they should be three of the most prosperous nations in South America due to all the positive effects decades of military dictatorship have had for economic development in that part of the world. 

In fact the entire South American continent should seemingly be the most modern and prosperous in the developing world, but its not, and most of these countries are abandoning free market reforms put in place in the 1980's and 90's and even earlier.  What, you say Chile was different and Pinochet did it right?  Well then maybe we'll see future military coup's justified not merely for the need to restore social order and stability but as a means of bringing Pinochet-style political and economic reforms.  As this 1998 article by Mario Vargas Llosa makes clear that has already happened in Peru, Guatemala, Paraguay, Columbia, Bolivia and Venezuela and few of those countries ranks the kind of praise heaped by the Post on Chile. 

The problem with this editorial is that the Post tries to find the positive in U.S. foreign policy support for South American military dictatorships during the Cold War in order to needlessly praise the recently deceased Jeane Kirkpatrick, so the last thing they want to do is delve into the considerable wreckage left by these authoritarian regimes across the continent and the needless political polarization and extremism, both left and right, they generated.  In the end we won, so we're led to believe Pinochet was a good guy and democracy and free-markets are flourishing not regardless of these regimes but because of them.  Nevertheless, what does it say to the rest of the world when the opinion page of the Washington political and foreign policy establishment basically praises a particular type of military authoritarianism as a legitimate and necessary stage in the path to democratization and economic development for the Third World? 

 Arthur E. "Gene" Dewey, who was President Bush's assistant secretary of state for refugee affairs until last year, said that "for political reasons the administration will discourage" the resettlement of Iraqi refugees in the United States "because of the psychological message it would send, that it is a losing cause."

We've reached a sad crossroad in which an ever-increasing number of Iraqis are choosing to leave their country with few prospects of ever returning and the U.S. government is actively discouraging their resettlement in the United States due to the fact that it "might look bad."  

Since we've already liberated them once, we're evidently under no obligation to do so again, but despite assurances that policy might change, the more interesting thing not said in the article is that our current policy means that we probably aren't even planning for the eventuality of a major influx of Iraqi refugees.  For example, the article uses Vietnamese refugees as an example of how U.S. policy can change but neglects to mention that a resettlement plan happened only after the situation had evolved into a major crisis of international proportion.  Hell, there wasn't even a real plan in place before the fall of Saigon to evacuate Vietnamese employees of the American embassy and consulates, also for political reasons.  In fact, things went so badly that despite the best efforts of a handful of very courageous State and Defense Department employees on the scene we still managed to leave well over half of our Vietnamese employees behind. 

For Christ's sake, the President's poll numbers are so low that sending the wrong "psychological message" is almost meaningless right now.  In the short term, increasing the quota and planning for a worst case scenario are merely acknowledging that millions of Iraqis are already fleeing the country and the U.S. will honor its commitments in respects to protecting the Iraqi people while taking some pressure off neighboring countries.  If the situation on the ground stabilizes in the near future then many of those who can return probably will.  If this is one of the consequence of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, so be it, but let's not pussyfoot about and play political games with those in harms way.

Unfortunately, many D.C. insiders are simply incapable of looking outside the capital beltway for fresh opinions and new approaches that might otherwise help our nation.

That's true.  Too bad the new blogger is the Ultimate D.C. Insider:

Longtime readers might remember this post from January of 2005:

Death Squads.  That's right, Rumsfeld's newest solution to the Iraq problem are “Salvadoran“ style death squads.  Crazy tinfoil hat conspiracy theories from nutjob leftist websites?  No, its straight from Pentagon background briefers to the pages of Newsweek

Here we are some two years later and speculation has become reality.  One of the key points that comes out of Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, is that the South Vietnamese Army could never step up to the plate and defend the country against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.  Its clear that the security forces of the Iraqi government cannot defend the country against the insurgents.  It is no coincidence either that the response of the Shia faction has followed the same strategy that the U.S. and South Vietnam followed in that conflict--death squads.  The Phoenix program used targeted assasinations to eliminate the supposed enemies of the South Vietnamese state.  Its Iraqi counterpart are the Shia militias of al-Sadr and his Badr Brigade rivals.

I've always been a little intrigued by the new ACU uniforms developed for the U.S. Army a couple years ago and now in general issue to the troops.  While I applaud the reconfiguration of pockets, collars and such, for the life of me I can't figure out why you'd come up with a general utility camouflage pattern supposed to work in all types of environments that obviously doesn't. 

Anybody else think that this guy in the picture blends into his surroundings?  Me neither? 

The ACU camouflage pattern itself was modelled on the MARPAT pattern used by the Marines, ditching the brown for tan and gray and then eliminating the black all together.  Now, the color black, which historically has been helpful in breaking up form, was gotten rid of because quote, "...it is not a color found naturally in woodland areas."  As you can see from the background to the picture above, shade evidently doesn't count as a naturally occurring instance of black yet it is there nonetheless. 

Now, while you wouldn't want to wear this uniform in a woodland or jungle setting, if you're expecting to fight in arid or desert and maybe scrub mountainous terrain for the foreseeable future, this camouflage pattern may just be your cup of tea....

While my heart goes out to Jack Kingston that he won't be able to spend four whole days of the week at home with his family come January, the story should really have been about how the previously institutionalized short work week helped facilitate all the things that people, including politicians, complain the most about politics these days; the "permanent campaign" and the primacy of raising money over actually governing.  To be honest, the system worked well for Republicans like Kingston because the extent to which the House GOP Leadership centralized political and legislative decision-making in the leadership left most rank and file members with little to do but vote the way Tom Delay wanted and run around campaigning in their districts on the taxpayer's dime.  Roy Blunt's quote is particularly instructive as to his party's priorities which evidently revolve exclusively around playing political games to trip up the work of the new Congress for the next two years. 

Ed Kilgore reminds us that before the ease of commercial air travel most members of Congress lived in dorms in Washington D.C. for the entire Congressional session.  Not only did the Union survive, but Congress did more, relations between members were generally better and at the end of the day most Congressmen were forced to run on what their Parties did or didn't accomplish instead of the shallow hot-button issues/personal destruction crap that is standard fare today.  I don't want to idealize the past and I don't know what the effects of the new five day week will be, but I do applaud the shift in tone signalled by the new legislative calendar and given the Republicans purposely left a whole slew spending bills and other legislative issues unfinished it will probably prove a practical move to boot. 

 Who say's Al Gore doesn't have a sense of humor?

Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie yet?
   Well, he claimed that would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.

Emphasis added, of course. 

(h/t The Carpetbagger Report)

Derb, on the Corner today:

Re: When Is 100 Hours not 100 Hours? [John Derbyshire]

May I be forgiven for my uncharitable thoughts, Kathryn, but my first reaction on seeing that subject line was: "When it appears on the billing statements of the Rose law firm." 

Posted at 11:13 AM

Whitewater "broke" in 1993.  It is like the last 13 years never happened.