• My Left Nutmeg captures the latest pukeworthy drivel from Lieberman:

  Here’s Joe on the Ray and Diane show from yesterday morning (mp3), in just his latest attack on Democrats - and Harry Reid in particular:

  Q. There was a big flap yesterday about some comments made by Harry Reid concerning Gen. Petraeus, and the outgoing Peter Pace, saying they were incompetent, basically. Is that useful, and do you know that to be true or not… It’s generally being reported in a lot of places.

  LIEBERMAN: I don’t know what Harry Reid is up to. I was very upset, even offended, by what he said about General Pace and General Petraeus. Look, you call General Pace incompetent? That’s abs - this is a man who has devoted his entire life to the Marine corps, the service of our country, defense of our country.

  Q. Why is he doing this? Why is Reid doing this?

  LIEBERMAN: I have no idea. Then to say that Petraeus is out of touch? I mean, Harry Reid in Washington says David Petraeus, who’s in Baghdad, away from his family, heroically trying to rally our forces and succeed over in Iraq… that he’s out of touch? I mean, it’s just - the danger here - my colleagues who have been opposed to the war have said “we’re opposed to the war, but we support our troops.” But when you start to attack the top two generals, you know, that’s… that’s wrong. I hope he apologizes, I just hope he misstated…

  So now the generals are “troops,” too. Poor grunt bastards.

  Look, I’m not military, but don’t the generals get the big bucks (in relative terms) and the brass trappings in exchange for taking the political heat?

  Have we really reached the point where criticizing generals — the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, no less — is not “supporting the troops?” Give me a break, Joe. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for pulling that kind of crap. Doubly so because you won’t recognize it.

  Say what you will about Pace or Petraeus, neither of them would be so small as to hide beneath the “support the troops” blanket. They’re brass, and they take their medicine like grown-ups.

  Disgraceful.

  

  
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• Not too long ago, Colin Powell was legitimately described as the most trusted man in American politics. Today he is perceived to struggle in a battle to rehabilitate his credibility, the most recent effort being a Sunday appearance on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. I have been traveling, missed the show on Sunday, but I got a flavor for the reaction to Powell’s interview yesterday when I took a high dive into the political pool with a quadruple twisting plunge on MSNBC, watching Tucker, Matthews, Olberman and Scarborough back-to-back-to-back-to-back. All had pointed questions for Powell.

  CARLSON: “Colin Powell was the chief salesman of the decision to invade and occupy Iraq. So the question is, why would Barack Obama want his advice in the first place?”

  MATTHEWS: “Why didn‘t Colin Powell just resign? Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has criticized this administration since he left office. But why did he salute the boss if he did not fully support the war? Where was Powell‘s tough talk against the administration when it would have counted?”

  ROBACH (substituting for Olberman): “Have we ever heard Colin Powell say that the president and that he ultimately made a mistake in that decision?”

  HUFFINGTON (Guest on Scarborough Country): “… where was that kind of moral authority when the country needed it? “

  I found their questions to be a bit disingenuous, and distracting from the important comments that Powell made in the interview.

  Colin Powell is speaking out. This is exactly what we need him to do. The Powell Doctrine, forged from the lessons learned in Viet Nam, served this country well in the first gulf war and as a guiding set of principles for our involvement in other military conflicts. The irony of Colin Powell being a primary enabler for the US involvement in a conflict that so clearly violated the tenets of the doctrine that bears his name has not been lost on us. The only one who can solve the riddle of of Colin Powell is Powell himself.

  Powell has been a recurring topic at DWSUWF. Last September, I asked “whether Colin Powell might, in the judgement of history, carry the label of being to Iraq what McNamara was to Vietnam”. A few weeks later I wrote and posted an Open Letter to Colin Powell, concluding with this:
  

  “Your experience with the military, with this administration, with the field of conflict in Iraq, with both failed and successful US conflicts, means you are uniquely qualified to help the American people find the right path through this thicket, by shedding some light on the problem. Permit me to be blunt. As an American citizen that supported this war to a large extent because of your support of it, and your eloquent arguments before United Nations in January of 2003, I do not find it acceptable for you to withhold your assessment of the status and outlook for this war now. Quite frankly, you owe this country the benefit of your honest assessment now. You owe us your complete, unexpurgated, unvarnished view.“

  In all honesty, I did not expect Colin Powell to respond to a letter from my blog and doubt whether he ever saw it. Regardless, his statements and appearances in the MSM over the last six months have addressed many of the very concerns expressed in that letter. It is critically important for Powell to continue to publicly air his evolving perspective on the war he helped sell, as the country struggles to find a way to bring it to an end. He provides a unique and important perspective that is worthy of careful consideration by all Americans.

  Excerpted from and continued on Divided We Stand United We Fall.

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• 
  This is getting a bit silly.

  The White House and Congress failed to strike a deal Friday after exchanging competing offers on an Iraq war spending bill that Democrats said should set a date for U.S. troops to leave….

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they offered to grant Bush the authority to waive the deadlines. They said they also suggested they would drop billions of dollars in proposed domestic spending that Bush opposed, in exchange for his acceptance of identifying a withdrawal date.

  That, by the way, is the Democrats making the obvious concession that they denied they were making a week or so ago.

  Bush, for his part, flat refused anything that had deadlines for withdrawal, even if he could waive them. He also indicated he would consider benchmarks for the Iraqi government that would include negative consequences if the Iraqis failed to meet them — although the details on that score were very vague.

  In general, I’m with Bush on this one. The timetables need to be dropped for the time being to give the surge time to work. And the domestic funding has no business being used as a bargaining chip: it shouldn’t have been in the bill in the first place.

  It’s May 18, people; time to stop playing games. The Democrats need to pass (and Bush needs to sign) a bill that does the following:

  1. Contains no timetables;

  2. Funds the war only through September, at which time the state of the surge and Iraqi political compliance can be assessed;

  3. Contains hard benchmarks for the Iraqi government to hit, with generous support if they hit them and negative consequences if they don’t.

  Reopen this fight when there’s meaningful data to fight about.

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• 
  GoodNews/Bad News. The good news is that we have entered the “End Game” of our military involvement in Iraq. The bad news is that the man making the closing moves on the chessboard is Moqtada al-Sadr, likely future leader of Iraq, and the face of “Victory in Iraq” as defined by United States policy. To be clear, this is a prediction and not a preference. I dearly hope to be wrong about this. Few in the U.S. would be happy about a Moqtada al-Sadr led Iraq. Nevertheless, it may be the best least bad outcome that we can expect and, believe it or not, is completely consistent with the administration’s continually evolving definition of “Victory.” Make no mistake, al-Sadr is a consummate politician. Like Republicans railing against “defeatocrat” Democrats, like Democrats railing against “war-mongering” Republicans, al-Sadr will rail against the “The Great Satan” America to play to his base of support. And like Republicans and Democrats, he will work with his opponents to achieve his personal ambitions for power. I’ll return to why I think an al-Sadr “End State” is a likely outcome later, but first we need to talk about some words. Specifically the words “victory” and “defeat”, “win” and “lose”, “success” and “failure” in the context of our military involvement in Iraq. […]

  Long post continues and continues and continues at “Divided We Stand, United We Fall”

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