Euro spikes through 1.46

Topped at 1.466 and headed back down toward the ionosphere.

Stay Classy, Right-Wingers!

Another missive from the self-appointed Bastions of Morality:

Of course, now he’ll write in to tell me that he’s not a bastion because his parents were married.

Amazing, the things right-wing internet junkies will post when they think no one can see their IP addresses.

(Update:  And here’s some more classiness from the right wing.)

Congressional Realpolitik

The Senate Judiciary Panel has approved Michael Mukasey’s nomination to be Attorney General.

The 11-8 vote came only after two key Democrats accepted his assurance to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding.

I don’t believe Mukasey’s assurances that if he had to choose between enforcing the law and enabling Bush’s policies, he’d enforce the law. If he were at all inclined to independence, Bush wouldn’t have nominated him.

But I have to agree with Senator Feinstein:

Feinstein, D-Calif., said her vote for Muksaey’s confirmation came down in part to practicality. If Mukasey’s nomination were killed, she said, Bush would install an acting attorney general not subject to Senate confirmation and make recess appointments to fill nearly a dozen other empty jobs at the top of Justice.

Now it’s up to Congress to call Mukasey’s bluff and enact a law specifically outlawing waterboarding.

The Trends in Iraqi Violence and the True Elements of Victory

From a report by Anthony Cordesman (no web link available, at least not yet); emphases mine:

There has been a wide range for reporting that indicates the US and Iraqi government are scoring significant victories against Al Qa’ida in Iraq, and that the levels of the worst kinds of violence are dropping, along with the levels of US and Iraqi casualties.

These data come from a combination of GAO, MNF-I, and Iraqi government sources and are summarized in graphic and tabular form in the attached report. It should be noted, however, that the data and trends are contradictory and that the Iraqi data are significantly less favorable than the data provided by MNF-I.

More significantly, the progress in defeating Al Qa’ida in Iraq and the worst elements of the Shi’ite militias highlights the urgency of political accommodation on practical terms that the various sectarian and ethnic divisions in Iraq can live with. The attached analysis also shows that so far, such progress has not addressed the issues that divide Iraqis and threaten the unity of the country.

To be specific, little progress has been made in addressing the causes of Arab Sunni versus Arab Shi’ite violence, and tensions between Arab and Kurd. Outside interference is a growing problem, and so is civil violence within key sectarian and ethnic groups. Shi’ite on Shi’ite tensions and violence are a major problem in the south, and Sunni on Sunni tensions and violence threaten the progress made in Anbar.

Only one thing can tie these elements of victory together with any hope of a lasting solution: political accommodation. The US military can only “win” to the point where it gives Iraq’s political and religious leaders an opportunity to reach an accord. Once again, no amount of American military success can — by itself — have strategic meaning.

[…]

Progress in only a few of the key areas — like the hydrocarbon or “oil” laws, provincial elections, amnesty, easing the terms of “de-Ba’athification” to give Sunnis a fair share of political power and military command, incorporating Sunni local forces into the police, and defining the conditions for federalism — could make a major difference. It could also eventually pave the way to disarming and demobilizing the insurgent forces and militias — although full success in meeting this goal may lag years behind any success in meeting the others.

What is clear, however, is that the military progress over the last ten months is all too easy to waste at the political level, and that defeating Al Qa’ida is at best the prelude to dealing with the rest of Iraq’s problems. Time is running out, and Iraq’s leaders need to act.

The English translation:

Al-Qa’ida (Al-Qaeda, whatever) is not the problem here; they never have been and never will be. The majority Shia can’t stand them and the Iraqi Sunni insurgents, most of whose leadership is made up of secular Baathists, rightly see them as godbothering foreigners and amateurs. The only reason they have any following at all is because anyone that opposes Bush gets some points, even if they’re undeserved. Therefore, boasting of defeating Al-Qai’da in Iraq is like a surgeon boasting of removing a hangnail from a cancer patient.

Undoing the boneheaded moves of Paul Bremer’s “de-Baathificiation” is a start: He’d pissed off the Sunnis by disbanding the army (which hadn’t been paid by Saddam in months and would have fought for us if we’d only given them paychecks), then put more of an emphasis on privatizing Iraqi governmental functions (and of course securing the oil) than anything else, such as the welfare of the Iraqi people. (See Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine for more on how and why this was done.) But at this point, the US’ continued presence is a hindrance more than a help; the Iraqi government is seen (rightly) as a puppet of Bush, and will never have legitimacy in the eyes of the people unless they go it alone, without US troops.