Chris Nelson’s Nelson Report of Friday, 5 January, does a great job of capturing the competing games going on around the President’s “surge proposal.” The President will be outlining his plan Wednesday at 9 pm Eastern and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be testifying tomorrow in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
We still need to hear what the President’s speech specifically includes regarding a new strategy for Iraq, but the key question will be whether there are any clear, undisputed benchmarks by which the public can measure the relative success or failure of the President’s plan.
While the book exposed a lot of the systemic rot in the Bush administration’s Iraq-related decision-making process, there were several things wrong with Bob Woodward’s State of Denial. To discuss one of these, Woodward was duped about the diminishing power of Vice President Cheney and his team.
It has become a sad cliche that Americans deserve better from their leadership than they are getting.
I do think that this is a good move. Khalilzad, who has been both Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, may have signed a number of PNAC letters, but he is a realist. The situation has deteriorated around him in Iraq — but he knows how to deal in the region.
Some things make sense about Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte’s move to serve as Condi’s Deputy at the State Department — and others don’t.
On December 31st, my colleague and friend Nir Rosen posted on Iraq Slogger what I think are the first English language translations of the banter around Saddam Hussein’s hanging.
Annie the Amazing Weimaraner’s resolution is to get even better at catching that tennis ball. Oakley’s is to catch a squirrel. But he also thinks a duck would do. Just to be friends of course. I have a few.
The probability is that 2007 will be a worse year for America’s national security portfolio than 2006. I’ve just been reading thoroughly Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, which I had previously read only in snippets.
Arlen Specter has impressed me this week by bucking the Bush administration and going to Syria to meet President Bashar al-Assad and then to Jerusalem to meet leading Israeli authorities and pressing for a Palestinian-Israel final settlement. He has even stated that he favors direct talks with Iran.
