Be sure to read this one:
UP IN THE AIR
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

Laura Rosen, author of the War and Piece blog, is one fire about the turn of events in Iraq. Check out two recent posts:

Death squads, torture squads … :

Is this what Rumsfeld and Cheney were going for? Are the neocons satisfied? Is this enough organized application of violence for their tastes?

“The Salvador Option.”:

So the US is no hapless bystander to the Shiite death squads we are seeing, but they are the product of deliberate Pentagon policy? Is Cambone going to be hauled before Congress or what? Talk about missing the black helicopter crowd. One cannot but long for justice for these guys. Could some forward looking European nation please arrest them next time they stop over, just to give them a scare? A little Pinochet-like unpleasant episode, if not a full fledged trial?

You knew it when the same despicable characters that brought us the El Salvador and the Contras during the Reagan administration were put in positions of power in Iraq and the GWOT that detestable horrors would ensue. Sure enough. It looks like they are dragging the good name of the USA through the mud again. This time it seems even worse. Not that we can tell by reading the press.

Over on Slate, the ever readable Fred Kaplan offers some predictions in Bush’s Can’t-Lose Reversal - Wednesday’s speech will set the agenda for withdrawal from Iraq:

Brace yourself for a mind-bog of sheer cynicism. The discombobulation begins Wednesday, when President George W. Bush is expected to proclaim, in a major speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, that the Iraqi security forces—which only a few months ago were said to have just one battalion capable of fighting on its own—have suddenly made uncanny progress in combat readiness. Expect soon after (if not during the speech itself) the thing that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have, just this month, denounced as near-treason—a timetable for withdrawal of American troops.

Any move to de-escalate the Iraqi insurgency, particularly by removing the primary fuel feeding the fires—US troops, is to be welcomed. But I doubt that Bush’s moves will be anything more than political cover. At Kaplan concludes in his article,

More to the point, does the president have a plan for all this? (The point is far from facetious; it’s tragically clear, after all, that he didn’t have a plan for how to fight the war if it extended beyond the collapse of Saddam.) Has he entertained these questions, much less devised some shrewd answers? If he’s serious about a withdrawal or redeployment that’s strategically sensible, as opposed to politically opportune, we should hear about them in his speech Wednesday night.

Helena Cobban has been blogging about the inevitability of a military draw-down for months now, way before the current consensus emerged. She is a dedicated pacifist, a Quaker, who will not be satisfied with anything short of complete withdrawal — which I just do not see in the cards. But she was the first person I read who anticipated the pragmatic necessity of the coming troop reductions.

Today she has a powerful post, Modalities of imperial retreat:

[…]the loss of Algeria was nonethless part of a worldwide retraction of French imperial power. Britain’s worldwide empire was also very busy indeed retreating in those days. Both those formerly sizeable global powers were losing global power at a rapid clip between 1950 and 1970, and it is important to remember that.

Now, the same kind of erosion of global power is happening, to some degree, to the United States’ globe-girdling military behemoth. And all of us who seek a world that is not dominated by military force and that is not structured to provide privilege to the US citizenry over and above everyone else in the world should be very clear about that fact, and should welcome it.

I’m less of a pacifist than she, and I don’t really embrace the idea of the coming decline of Imperial USA. But she is very persuasive. Check it out. Also check out here most recent post, Christian Peacemakers abducted in Iraq.

Doesn’t look like the start of the best Thanksgiving ever, does it? But there it is, lying on the living room floor just a few hours before 19 of us sat down to my best Thanksgiving yet. A whole Costco sized bottle of Ketchup all over e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Spectacular.

After Sam and I stopped laughing, which took a while, we took a few anspshots, hurriedly clean up the mess, and got back to work. OK, Sam sat on the couch watching the tube. I kept jamming.

I love Thanksgiving. I love hosting it at my house. I love sharing it with friends.

Just about my favorite day of the year.

I found this over on Brad DeLong’s blog. Does Manufacturing Matter?

Manufacturing employment has gotten hammered to an unbelievable degree in the Bush era:

Pretty dramatic, and damning.

Today we’re getting all graphic on ya! Kos gives us this: The new map
How can Utah and Idaho be so stubborn?

Love the graphic. Don’t you? I found it here: Discourse.net: Worst President Ever?, where there is actually a pretty interesting discussion on the proposition Turns out there have been some spectacularly bad presidents that give W a run for the title. Somehow I find that comforting…

The secret product I’ve been working on over the past year+ is finally on the shelves. It hasn’t really been a secret for months now. We showed it off at lots of trade shows and gave peeks to lots of press. Now we’re selling it and selling it hard.

And the press is lapping it up, and the retailers are pimping it hard. Here’s an offbeat clip from Engadget LeapFrog Fly pentop computer reviewed by New York Times:

LeapFrog’s much-ballyhooed Fly pentop computer has finally made it onto retail shelves — just in time for the holiday shopping season — and David Pogue of The New York Times has a review that highlights some of its features, many of which will attract adults as much as the kids LeapFrog hopes will use this. The Fly can, for example, be used as a scheduler, with remarkable ease: write down the time and date of an appointment, and the pen will turn itself on and speak a reminder at that time. Need a quick calculator? Draw one with the Fly and start using it immediately. Of course, kid stuff is what LeapFrog has built its name on, and the Fly includes plenty of kid-friendly features… Ultimately, the edutainment features are what will determine whether the Fly, er, flies off of shelves this season, but we’re already looking forward to picking one up off of the playroom floor and snagging it for ourselves once the kids get bored with it.

I hope he’s onto something. We would love nothing more than to have grown kids crave this one. No matter how grown they might be.

OK, so its a few days old now. So is the relentless, shameless, bald propaganda counterattack by the Cheney Administration. So let’s revist TPM quoting Mutha on Cheney:

‘I like guys who’ve never been there that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don’t like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.’

Here is a powerful rebuttal by J.D. Henderson at Intel Dump to the administration’s FUD campaign against the newly energized war critics: They spoke the truth then and they speak the truth now

Questioning the president on such vital issues does not mean I am in favor of pulling out of Iraq in defeat - I think we will be better off with a stable Iraq that does not threaten us - precisely why I favored containment in the first place. And questioning a president’s possible deliberate deception of the American people is NOT questioning our troops. That he dares equate questioning his policies and decisions with lack of support for the troops is craven and cowardly.

Mislead on, Mr. President. But beware the words of another republican president - you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Dusting off another good one from my recent blog grazing. Here’s Kos with . . . Meanwhile In Iraq:

Does Bush even know what is going on? Who can have any confidence in this Administration on Iraq? It becomes virtually impossible to even discuss the relative merits of alternate strategies when the Bush Administration is involved.

This is the worst President and worst Administration in the history of the nation. The situation would be near impossible to manage for the best of Presidents and Administrations. When we are governed by the worst, it is little wonder that folks like John Murtha advocate withdrawal as soon as is practicable.

Worst Ever.