For those who are frequent visitors to The Washington Note, you’d know that my Apple G4 turbo-charged powerbook went on the fritz last week, and I hope to be back up and running with a new hard disk on Thursday this week.

This report is disturbing. I met former General Zvi Shtauber last year at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies and sensed that he was more of a quick hit hawk than a complex strategist.

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.