Back in Septeber, while I was boldly predicting that GEN Clark would not run for the Presidency, I wrote this:

But what is the premise, the attraction of a Dean/Clark ticket? Clark was a 4 star, but is a constant critic of the war in Iraq. Seems that the appeal here is to people who think that the war on Iraq is going badly. But to believe in this ticket, you have to believe not only that it is going badly, but that it won't get any better. In fact, if you are really hoping that these guys (or either of them) can win, then you have to almost actively hope that they don't get better.

The same is true for the economy. And sure enough, over at The Daily Kos, they are doing just that.

I don't think partisanship is bad in itself, but this is absolutely the worst sort of partisanship. The sort where you hope things go badly so that the other side looks bad. Republicans obviously overcame that idea in California. Let's hope the Democrats can do it nationally.

There is a thought. A good one. Well turned out by Jonah Goldberg.

Well, I don't buy any of it. There are two kinds of people when it comes to foreign policy after 9-11: those who think we have the luxury to take chances and those who don't.

And that's not even the best part.

For lunch, you had a salad, a smothered pork chop, mashed potatoes, a dinner roll, and cabbage. And a piece of cheesecake for dessert.

And a glass of iced tea so sweet it could induce insulin shock.

And it cost $5.00.

And by the register, there is a card you can take, encouraging you to reelect a man named "Hoot."

About Allah.

I have had comments today from two eminences of the blogosphere - James Lileks and Donald Sensing.

Either that, or somebody is funning with me.

UPDATE: Checking the IP on the Lileks comment, it resolves to "Star Tribune Newspaper" = must be real!

Read this:

RESTON -- A stand-off in Reston has ended with police discovering a dead man inside a home. The trouble began around 10 a.m. when a Fairfax County sheriff's deputy tried to serve an eviction warrant at a house on Lakeport Way.

The deputy heard what he believed to be a gunshot, and that started a stand-off that lasted about five hours.

Police finally went into the house and discovered the body. A spokeswoman could not immediately say if the gunshot the deputy heard was the man killing himself.

No police or deputies were hurt.

This took place about 300 yards from where I ate lunch today. While I ate lunch, before and after, too, as it was a 5 hour event. An eviction gone bad, a gunshot, no injuries to police. Okay.

However, when I left lunch, I drove past the entrance to Lakeport Way. There were, easily, 40 police cars there. A dozen motorcycle cops. A half dozen news crews. The bomb squad truck. The Crisis Negotiation Team bus. The Fairfax County Tactical Headquarters bus. The major road in front was closed for 2 hours - just after I passed by.

Either there is a lot more going on than this story reports, or it was a real slow day at the police station.

Tuesday Bleats are an issue for Lileks because he has 4 deadlines for Tuedays. Today, he fisks the Hokey Pokey.

And then he touts the marketing hype of the new Mac OS. People lining up for an OS! I guess he has forgotten all about the release of Windows 95 (The Best Buy in Augusta, Georgia, opened up at midnight that day so people could buy the new OS). Hype and marketing are supposed to be one of the reasons why Microsoft is evil. But now that Mac does it, its all good.

Andrew Sullivan writes this morning:

There's not much point in sugar-coating what happened. It was a great victory for the Baathists and international terror. If they can keep this up, the chances of a peaceful reconstruction in Iraq look more remote than they did last week. Why? Not because this was that sophisticated an attack, but because it was relatively unsophisticated. Not so much because the Baathists can win, but because they don't have to. All they have to do is prevent the coalition from winning, which keeps Iraq in limbo, and tilts American public opinion against the war. I'm not an expert but obviously we need a more successful military strategy to defeat these insurgents.

Well, there is no point in sugarcoating it - it was bad people doing bad things. (Sorry for the simplisme.) But there is no point in hyping it, either - this was no "victory" for Baathists or al Qaida or whoever was behind it. It was not an attack on the US (or the Coalition) or our interests. It was an attack on Iraqis and international relief organizations. These were soft targets because the hard targets - us - are too expensive for them to go after in force. The President is right about this - it is a measure of their desperation. They truly fear that we are winning with the Iraqi people - and that is why they attacked them.

UPDATE: Michele gets it.

And this pisses Mike off.

Donald Sensing gets it, too.

Dozens dead. Hundreds hurt. An ambulance used to blow up the Red Cross.

Any questions about who the bad guys are again?

Looks like DoD is getting on the ball. Rich Galen, publisher of Mullings, is off to do some good work. As Rich writes:

My principal duties will involve helping Americans understand better the work which is being successfully accomplished in Iraq.

As an example, a Civil Affairs Reserve unit from Chicago was recently the subject of a Stars & Stripes article for the work they did rebuilding an elementary school which had been looted and ransacked just off the Baghdad Airport property.

On the first day of school, the children arrived in their best clothes and took turns thanking the soldiers after which the principal presented the company commander with a bouquet of flowers.

If I had been on the ground and operational, we would have taken a camera crew to the first day of school, put together a package, and fed it back to Chicagoland TV stations.

That isn't spin, it isn't deception, though I suppose in the most technical sense, it is propaganda. It is getting the message out that good things are happening. And it is a spectacularly good idea. Excerpt from what I wrote on July 22d:

We are making great progress in the War on Terror, but the story of "soldier killed in an ambush" every other day sounds like we are losing the battles - in the absence of another story.

This is not just the President's problem. This is the Army's problem, or more accurately, CENTCOM's problem. In the absence of a story of a win, stories of losses will proliferate. And while long term we are making a difference in Iraq, without concrete achievements, people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about it may not grasp the larger story. Concrete achievements like today's firefight that killed Saddam's sons.

Obviously those events cannot be planned that way. They can't announce "next Tuesday we will capture or kill Saddam Hussein." But they can establish modest goals for the near term that can be achieved and shown to be victories. Things that have to be done and would be done anyway. But that happen now unheralded.

posted by blaster at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

This time I am off to Mississippi. Any bloggers in the Columbus, MS, area?