Right Wing Nut House

My latest column is up at PJ Media. In it, I break down the numbers from last night’s primary win for Clinton and show why Democratic superdelegates should be worried:

Hillary Clinton received 62% of the white vote. Barack Obama received 89% of the African American vote. The question facing superdelegates is: how can they run a candidate who loses the white vote by almost 2-1 in a state they absolutely must carry to win the election? And it wasn’t just the voter’s race that made a difference. Clinton ran up astonishing majorities in the mostly white, mostly rural counties in the northeast part of the state. In Luzerne county she received 75% of the vote. She got 70% of the vote in Wyoming county. Culturally conservative but economically moderate, these blue collar voters in places like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre were considered at one time “Reagan Democrats” - reliable Democratic voters when it came to candidates on the down ballot but Republican when voting for President. In recent elections, they have returned to the Democratic party in greater numbers and have given the party a victory in the state in every election since 1988.

These are the voters Barack Obama told his rich donor friends in San Francisco were “clinging” to religion and guns rather than voting what he feels are their economic interests. Indeed, Clinton bagged 58% of gun owners in the state while taking 58% of those who attend church weekly. Obama received 56% of the votes from those who never attend religious services.

There is no evidence that Obama’s San Francisco remarks cost him any votes. But they certainly didn’t win him any, and the comments may have reinforced the image with these rural white voters that Obama does not share their core values.

The religious divide also tells a story. For the first time since 1976, Democrats won the nationwide Catholic vote in 2006. This vote is vital in several northeastern states and is important in states that lie along an arc that extends from the shores of Lake Erie in New York down through the rest of the Great Lakes, all the way to Illinois and then up through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Catholic vote is decisive in Pennsylvania with nearly 40% of the total vote last night made up of Catholics.

I don’t think the Democrats dare nominate Hillary now that it is a certainty that Obama will win the pledged delegate race. But it is still six weeks to the end of the primary season and Obama seems to be averaging a gaffe every couple of weeks. Perhaps he will really stick his foot in it at some point and force the supers to switch to Hillary.

But his handlers have scrapped the idea of any more debates and the candidate himself is dodging the press as if they all had ebola. Being thus shielded, all we will see of the candidate and read about are the issues he and his supporters wish to highlight.

Which “issues” are those? The adoring crowds. The spine tingling rhetoric. The fainting women. How charismatic he is.

You know…all those important issues the left was complaining weren’t covered at the ABC debate last week.

One of the criteria the American people use to judge a presidential candidate is “likability” - a nebulous and indefinable attribute to be sure. Experts tell us that part of the “likability” question is whether the voter wants this guy (or woman) coming into their homes every damn day for the next 8 years via television.

Obviously, this attribute has not played a huge role in determining how people vote - otherwise people would have chosen Hubert Humphrey’s “Happy Warrior” exterior over Nixon’s dourness and certainly Gerald Ford’s steadiness over Carter’s nauseating sanctimony.

But are we really ready to spend the next 8 years with a whiner like Obama?

Chomping down on sausage and waffles at Glider’s Diner in Scranton today, with his Pennsylvania BFF (Sen. Bob Casey) at his side, Obama avoided commenting on former President Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas.

Asked by a reporter if he had heard that Carter reported a positive outcome from the meeting, Obama looked sternly at the reporter in question and said, “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?”

Asked again by the reporter, Obama bit — not at the question but into a butter covered bite of Glider’s specialty over-size Belgian waffles. With a wink this time he said, “Just let me eat my waffle.”

Obama whines about the unfairness of the Philadelphia debate. He whines about Hillary’s attack ads. He whines about an intrusive press (he hasn’t had a press conference in 10 days). He famously whined after a presser about Rezko “C’mon guys. I answered 8 questions already.”

He whines when he’s forced to explain his associations with people like Jeremiah Wright, Rezko, or William Ayers. He whines when the press or other candidates call him out on his lies and exaggerations. And now he has backed up his whines by pulling out of the North Carolina debate. I guess when the going gets tough…the whiners skedaddle.

Then again, perhaps Obama is doing us a favor by running away from another grilling like he received in Philadelphia. He has spared us having to sit in front of the TV and wonder what embarrassing question Katy Couric would be asking next as CBS was scheduled to broadcast the debate. Perky Katy would probably not have asked Hillary this:

Tonight, in an interview with ABC, she took a question on an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president we will attack Iran,” Clinton said. “In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

The move from vague threats to a specific commitment — and the vocabulary seems to suggest nuclear retaliation, if not to actually say that — seems like a substantive change in the country’s approach to the Middle East.

UPDATE: Clinton aide Howard Wolfson says she wasn’t referring to, or suggesting, nuclear weapons.

One can almost imagine Perky Katy screwing up her cutsie pie face and wrinkling her button nose in disgust that we would consider being so beastly to the cutthroats in Tehran - even after they have deposited a nuclear love note on Israeli soil.

It doesn’t matter because Iran won’t attack Israel - with nukes anyway. But it sure is interesting that Hillary feels it necessary to out-gonad Obama which is admittedly a relatively easy task for the former First Lady, she being born with an extra set. Maybe she could loan our metrosexual messiah one of hers - it just may stop his incessant whining.

This actually would be a fantastic general election campaign strategy for McCain - getting Obama to whine about everything - since there are probably going to be more of these “problem associations” to come out in the months ahead:

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, “You will find him as honorable and committed as I have.”

Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition.

McCain, of course, has the same problem Obama has; he sets himself up as a different kind of politician who is above mucking around in the political sewers with special interests while carrying on business as usual when it comes to his “special friends.” In the larger scheme of things, this favor for Diamond is hardly a mortal sin. But as an example of campaign hypocrisy? Guilty as charged, Senator.

The campaign claims an aide handled the army base matter under the rubric of “constituent services.” Kevin Drum does the math:

Indeed. A “constituent matter.” McCain’s pal managed to snag this prime coastal land — complete with special water rights — for $250,000 and then sell it two years later for $30 million. That’s some serious constituent service.

Again, this is hardly unusual by Washington standards. But if I were McCain, I’d start to downplay the whole “Straight Talk Express” thing starting now.

Thankfully from McCain’s point of view, Obama won’t be able to make too much of the Republican’s associations because once he raises the subject, Rezko/Wright/Ayers will jump up and bite him on his less than ample behind.

But that is in the future. Today, Pennsylvania Democrats have the opportunity to end this marathon campaign simply by bowing to the inevitable and voting for Obama. Why they probably won’t do that is a mystery to me. Think of how the Democrats have been tearing at each other since shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries more than 6 weeks ago. Now imagine what they’ll be doing to each other 6 weeks from now when the campaign season ends. It will be the Hatfields and McCoys on steroids with the only thing stopping open warfare is the two candidates firm belief that the second amendment doesn’t exist.

If white voters give Hillary the margins that some pollsters are saying - 57%-60% - superdelegates will be placed in the impossible position of having to make a choice between a candidate that can’t win a majority of Democratic delegates and one that will find it almost impossible to win a majority of general election voters.

That hellish choice can be avoided if Obama can get close enough in Pennsylvania today to deny Clinton her major “electability” argument. But most of the polls say that Democrats just aren’t willing to accept Obama quite yet. And the race, such as it is, will go on.

The primary campaign became something of a Salvador Dali painting this past week as the canvas on which this surreal process has been rendered revealed an image that has lost all touch with reality and descended into a miasmic dreamworld where up is down, black is white, and consequences are divorced from actions - especially in the case of Barack Obama.

Dali once famously said “The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.” Something similar could be said for the differences between the Obama on the stump and Obama the real person. This became abundantly clear last night when the largest campaign crowd yet - more than 35,000 by most estimates - thronged to the park in front of Independence Hall to hear the probable/potential/possible next President of the United States chant his “hope and change” mantra while totally ignoring the reality of a man whose past associations include an incredible group of hate mongering anti-Americans, racist pastors, crooked “fixers,” and “politics as usual” politicians who give the lie to his pretty words and noble sentiments:

“In four days, you get the chance to help bring about the change that we need right now,” Obama said. “Here in the city and the state that gave birth to our democracy, we can declare our independence from the politics that’s shut us out, let us down, and told us to settle.”

And he blasted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the party’s nomination, even as he called her “a tenacious opponent and a committed public servant.” She is the front-runner in Pennsylvania, as Obama acknowledged last night, even though he leads her nationally.

“She’s taken different positions at different times on issues as fundamental as trade and even war to suit the politics of the moment,” Obama said. “And in the last few months, she’s launched what her campaign calls a ‘kitchen sink’ strategy of negative attacks, which she defends by telling us that this is what the Republicans would do.”

The crowd - the estimate of 35,000 came from officials at the Independence Visitors Center - began assembling early, filling Independence Mall and spilling into the surrounding streets. They waited with relative patience, chanting “O-ba-ma” whenever the music stopped, until 8:45, when the rally finally started. They gave him a thunderous greeting and cheered often throughout a speech that was crafted with the setting in mind.

That’s only the half of it. Marc Ambinder reports on what happened after the rally was over:

It wasn’t so much that Barack Obama had real fight in him tonight, or that more people attended his rally in front of Independence Hall than any other event since he announced his candidacy. It was the spontaneous demonstration of support that happened when it ended.

5,000 people (at least) had nowhere to go but up Market Street. Obama’s charge of the night: “Declare independence!” was with them. They started with the familiar “O-Bam-A.” By 7th and Market, they had graduated to “Yes we can!” By 10th and Market, with hundreds streaming in between cars on the road, they were just cheering. At first, a few Philly cops, killjoys, tried to rough the crowd to the sidewalks. It didn’t work. The cops retreated to the sidewalks. By the time I ducked into my hotel, a full mile away from Independence Park, the Obama crowd was still marching.

Have we become so cynical that despite all the evidence to the contrary - his lack of any track record in effecting change (even eschewing opportunities to do so when the presented themselves), his accepting help from politicians who practice the very kind of politics he rails against, his association with people who have no desire to “unite” the country, only tear it down - that so many would become besotted with “Obamamania” that they deliberately look the other way at this hypocrisy coming from their candidate?

This disconnect became all too visible the last few days as left wing blogs supporting Obama were beside themselves over the efforts by ABC debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephenopolous to pull back the curtain and reveal Obama as the hypocrite he truly is. Their primary beef with ABC? The moderators asked questions the candidate didn’t want to answer and his supporters didn’t want to hear. As long as the press coverage limits itself to the “issues,” only the Obama on the stump will be highlighted. As long as the press reports on the incredible crowds, the adoring fans, the candidate’s rhetorical gifts (not “issues” in any sense of the word but hey! - no one ever accused the left of being consistent about anything), Obama’s Legions are satisfied.

But let the press actually do their jobs and ask the candidate why he is on a first name basis with someone who is “proud” he tried to blow up the Pentagon and the crap hits the fan in Obamaland. Any attempt to reveal the life Obama has led outside of politics isn’t relevant. Not because it has nothing to do with why someone would cast their vote for their candidate - an incredibly stupid assumption that bespeaks an ignorance of why people vote - but simply because they don’t want to know and more importantly, they don’t want the rest of us to know.

The candidate himself pushes this idea that the press should only ask questions he wants to answer in North Carolina on Thursday:

With a voice dripping with sarcasm, Barack Obama offered a eulogy yesterday from Raleigh, N.C. “I will tell you [the campaign] does not get more fun than these debates,” he said. “They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record [note to the wordsmith: all records are new when set] because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters most to the American people. It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we [were allowed to regurgitate what we've been saying for months] about health care, 45 minutes before we [got to repeat everything we've been saying for months] about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard [a reprise of the tedious argle-bargle] about jobs, 45 minutes before we [got to harangue everybody for the 12th time] about [how we can't do anything about] the price of gasoline.”

Indeed, Wes Pruden is on to something here. Any discussion of “issues” at this late date in the campaign would have put people to sleep. Now ABC, as you might have guessed, is a for-profit outfit that was horrified at the thought that people might find the candidates’ spouting for the umpteenth time their bullet points about Iraq, health care, jobs, and the price of gasoline so intensely boring that they would flip over to watch a playoff hockey game or perhaps “Deal or no Deal.” Better to make both Hillary and Obama squirm a little by having to answer questions that inquiring minds want to know - like why did you allow a self confessed, unapologetic terrorist hold a fundraiser at his house for you Senator Obama?

Obama’s answer has been recycled time and time again, given when he has been confronted with questions about Wright, Rezko, Daley, Jones, and all the other personalities from Obama’s real life away from the stump that define who he is as a man and not the messianic candidate on the stump who promises so ardently to change things:

Sen. Obama was briefly put on the spot with a question about still another of his shady friends in Chicago, but he was allowed to dance away without the obvious follow-up. What was the extent of his friendship with Bill Ayers, an ex-con and unrepentant member of a ring of cop-killers from the ’60s? This could have been a fastball but was only a floater, and the Illinois Kid sent it back sharply for a Texas Leaguer. “The notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing someone in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, that somehow that reflects on my values, is crazy.”

But that’s not quite the point of the question. The senator knew that Bill Ayers was more than “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and was once a member of the Weathermen when they served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a small but radical Chicago foundation of suspicious provenance. At the behest of the unrepentant Bill Ayers — who boasts that he and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who both served time after years on the run, didn’t do enough to plant bombs to kill innocents when they had the chance — the foundation awarded $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church “in recognition of Barack Obama’s contributions.” Messrs. Obama and Ayers voted to award a generous grant to the Arab-American Action Network, to finance “actions” (not otherwise specified).

Obama’s catch-all excuse for the Wrights, Ayers, Rezkos, Auchis, Daleys, and other less than stellar characters in his past is the same for each; everyone has a Wright/Ayers/Rezko/Auchi/Daley et. al. in their past so what’s the big deal? Wright is everyone’s “crazy uncle.” Ayers is just some guy who “lives in the neighborhood.” Rezko is “one of thousands of contributors” to his campaign. In each case, Obama tries to portray himself as everyman, asking his supporters (who don’t need much urging) to imagine all the characters from their past who are less than upstanding.

My friend Shaun Mullen does the same thing:

I’ll get this turdball rolling by noting that I knew several members of the Weather Underground back in the day and am a longtime friend of one whom I invited into my home when he was a fugitive. But even in the context of those crazy times, the Weathermen were a bunch of zonked-out wannabe revolutionaries who ultimately diverted attention from their occasionally worthy causes by doing a lot of really bad stuff.

All that so noted, I had a hard time getting behind President Clinton’s pardon of two members of the Weather Underground for some very serious criminal acts on the eve of George Bush’s 2001 inauguration but have a whole lot less of a problem with Bill Ayers, a former but never arrested Weatherman and present-day University of Illinois professor who hosted a fundraiser in his home for Barack Obama when the presidential candidate was running for the Illinois Senate.

Allow me to channel Salvadore Dali; “The difference between Barack Obama and Shaun Mullen is that Shaun is not Barack Obama.” Shaun is not running for president. Shaun does not get up in front of 35,000 people and say he is better than every other politician out there because by jing, he’s for a “new” kind of politics while they aren’t. Shaun does not lie through his teeth about the nature and extent of his past associations.

The band plays on, ignoring the discordant chords coming from outside the bandshell because that would disturb their ideal of perfect harmony, perfect syncopation, perfect togetherness. For most of Obama’s supporters, tuning out the sour notes is easy. They hear what they want to hear - Obama on the stump - and ignore the music being made by the candidate in his real life - complete with beautiful melodies as well as dark, minor key atonal counterpoints that for many of us has begun to dominate our opinion of the candidate.

Will they ever gather the courage to hear the entire composition?

It is a major story in the New York Times, Politico, the New York Post, and the left wing Guardian in Great Britain. It is the most curious of all Barack Obama’s problematic relationships and calls into question not only his judgement but the core of his political beliefs.

How radical are the politics of Barack Obama?

The story is about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn - two members of the radical 1960’s terrorist group the Weather Underground and the fact that the possible next president of the United States is on a first name basis with a self-confessed bomber of the Pentagon who not only has no regrets for his terrorist action but wishes he could do it all over again.

Larry Rohter and Michael Luo of the New York Times:

On March 6, 1970, a bomb explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village town house, killing three members of the radical Weather Underground and driving other members of the group even deeper into hiding.

On Wednesday night, those events emerged as the focus of a sharp exchange between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama at their debate in Philadelphia. Mr. Obama was asked by a moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, about his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground leader who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the early 1970s, the Weathermen, who took their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department Building and banks, courthouses and police stations.

Charges against Ayers and Dohrn were dropped because the Feds spied on the duo illegally. But the question absolutely must be asked just what was Obama thinking having anything at all to do with this man:

Mr. Ayers is listed as a member of the nine-member board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an offshoot of the Woods Charitable Fund, founded in 1941 by a prominent lawyer and telephone company executive. According to the fund’s Web site, it has focused in recent years on “issues that affected the area’s least advantaged, including welfare reform, affordable housing” and “tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty.”

For a time, Mr. Obama was on the board with Mr. Ayers, though he no longer has a formal association with the group. At the debate, he described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Mr. Obama said he was being unjustly linked to “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old.”

What would any other politician have done when he or she discovered that a terrorist was sitting on the same board as they? Wouldn’t just about anyone else have said “no thank you” to such an invitation?

There’s more to this relationship than Ayers simply being a “guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The two were introduced back in 1995 when Obama was presented by outgoing state senator Alice Palmer to Ayers and other far left activists in the University Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park at Ayers house according to this story by Ben Smith in Politico. And RezkoWatch reports on 2 other forums where we know Obama and Ayers participated:

Wondering whether the three may have crossed paths is not speculation. It is a fact that they have. Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama have appeared together at a number of gatherings and academic events. In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” to debate “the merits of the juvenile justice system”.

In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis” panel.

And Campus Watch reports on a farewell dinner for the radical Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving the Arab American Action Network to take the Edward Said endowed chair at Colombia University, where Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn all gave glowing testimonials to Khalidi - whose group received $75,000 from the Woods Foundation

In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia’s SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)

This information along with the fact that Obama served with Ayers on the Board of the Woods Foundation, gives the lie to Obama’s claim that he doesn’t know Ayers very well. And both of those forums at U of C were set up by none other than Michelle Obama in her capacity as University of Chcago PR executive; evidently she too saw nothing wrong in glad handing with terrorists.

It is beyond belief that the press is just now getting around to this, the most incredible of all Obama radical associations. And the scary thought is that it will change few minds about Obama and his hypocritical brand of “new politics.”

Much of this blog post originally appears at The American Thinker 

Well, so much for any advantage relating to “elitism” the Republicans may have had with regard to Obama’s “God, guns, and racism” remarks at the San Francisco fundraiser.

Only on a planet inhabited by such ignoramuses, such geese as this GOP Congressman from Kentucky would Obama be about ready to skate on his extraordinarily arrogant and dismissive attitude toward the white middle class.

This idiot has just handed Obama the advantage:

U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis, a Hebron Republican, compared Obama and his message for change similar to a “snake oil salesman.”

He said in his remarks at the GOP dinner that he also recently participated in a “highly classified, national security simulation” with Obama.

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”

Davis all but call’s Obama a stupid n*****.

Okay, now the elitist in me is about ready to emerge. But one look at this guy’s picture says it all. The Gomer Pyle ears, goober eatin’ grin, and something inbred around the eyes bespeaks a throwback. Put a uniform and a badge on this guy and I can see him aiming the fire hose at women and children in Selma.

This man should be censured by the House. Everybody in America knows by this time how hurtful and just plain wrong it is to refer to a black man as “boy.” It doesn’t matter if he calls white men “boys.” The connotations are entirely different and everyone knows it.

If the guy is so ignorant that he didn’t think it was wrong, then he’s too stupid to serve in the House - even for a Republican.

Needless to say over the next 24 hours the debate on the Obama gaffe will shift. It will no longer be how arrogant and dismissive of the white middle class is the Democratic candidate for president but rather how much did he get right in his little rant?

UPDATE: 4/15

There appears to be a gap in the commenters between those who see the word “boy” as a problem when applied to blacks and those who don’t.

My - what a surprise.

I learned not to call grown black men “boy” when I was about 5 years old (I am 54 years old). Maybe younger. The fact that many of the commenters to this post either didn’t learn that lesson or reject it because it is somehow “politically correct” doesn’t surprise me. The most casually racist stuff gets deleted by me on a regular basis if only because I don’t want my site polluted with such abnormality.

Look - most of what we on the right call “politically correct” deserves every criticism thrown its way. PC has become a straitjacket for free speech. Anyone who reads this site knows full well my opposition to most examples of PC and its debilitating effect on political dialougue in this country.

However…

There are some things you cannot say without revealing yourself to be a closet case. The “N” word is one of them. “Gook” is another. “Spic, greaser, wetback” and a few others are also verboten.

There might be 10 words in the English language out of 50,000 whose connotation is just too hurtful to others and should simply never, ever, ever be used. This is not “PC.” This is what we call “common courtesy” at the least or better yet, being aware of other people’s feelings and sensibilities. In other words, being compassionate.

One of those words that cannot be used without offending someone is “boy.” The Congressman recognized it. Most real conservatives recognize it. Why many of you in the comments cannot is simply beyond my comprehension and experience.

There are some issues that you just don’t write about if you’re a conservative blogger looking to maintain or build your site. And one of those issues is torture and this administration’s blatant violation of the law in approving interrogation techniques that are universally recognized (outside of the right in America) as illegal.

I say universally recognized because the “enhanced” techniques that were apparently a topic of conversation many times by Bush Administration aides are clear violations of the UN treaty against torture (as amended) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I won’t mention the Geneva Convention which may or may not apply as a governing instrument in this case.

But we needn’t worry. Those interrogation techniques violated US law as well - war or no war - and only by stretching the executive powers of the president farther than they have ever gone - beyond Lincoln, beyond Wilson, beyond Roosevelt - could even a fig leaf of legality be placed over this gigantic open wound that will continue to fester until we resolve to purge those who brought this evil upon us.

Bill Clinton may have sold the Lincoln bedroom for campaign contributions and used the White House for his carnal romps. But I don’t think that grand structure ever bore witness to the kinds of discussions held by Bush Administration aides as they coldly weighed the options of using various torture techniques on al-Qaeda suspects in our custody:

ABC reported that the so-called “principals” discussed interrogation details in dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House.

Then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by a select group of senior officials or their deputies, ABC said.

“Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding,” ABC reported.

In addition to Rice, the principals at the time included Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the report said.

Ashcroft, in an Albert Speers-like moment of moral clarity, knew perfectly well what future generations would think of those involved in these discussions:

Citing sources, ABC said Ashcroft agreed with the policy decision to allow aggressive interrogation tactics and advised that they were legal but was troubled by the discussions.

Ashcroft argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources were cited as saying.

ABC cited a top official as saying that Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

Marc Ambinder ponders the unthinkable. He titles his post “War Crimes:”

A provocative headline, I know, perhaps needlessly so, but it remains one of those hidden secrets in Washington that a Democratic Justice Department is going to be very interested in figuring out whether there’s a case to be made that senior Bush Administration officials were guilty of war crimes. Stories like these from ABC News — Top Bush Advisors Approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ — will be as relevant a year from now as they are right now, perhaps even more so.

Michael Goldfarb sees only the politics of the issue:

I’d love to know who’s whispering that in Ambinder’s ear. If this is a secret among Democrats, it certainly is well kept…I’ve never heard a conservative seriously entertain the possibility. But if that’s the plan for an Obama administration, let the healing begin!

I always thought that there would be a Pinochet type move to get at Rumsfeld or Bush if they ever went to Europe after the Administration was out of office. Rumsfeld has already faced such pressure and Bush will be a marked man wherever he goes - if he ever leaves his Texas ranch after his term is ended.

But it is unlikely that any such charges will be brought. JB at Balkinization:

Remember that sections 8 and 6(b) of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006. Moreover, as Marty has pointed out, there’s a strong argument that a later Justice Department would not prosecute people who reasonably relied on legal advice from a previous Justice Department. Perhaps the Justice Department could argue that the officials’ reliance was unreasonable, but that might be difficult to show.

And putting aside the purely legal obstacles to a prosecution for war crimes, there’s also the political cost. Why would an Obama or Clinton Administration waste precious political capital early on with a politically divisive prosecution of former government officials? One can imagine the screaming of countless pundits arguing that the Democrats were trying to criminalize political disagreements about foreign policy. Such a prosecution would make politics extremely bitter and derail any chance for bipartisan cooperation on almost any significant issue. Obama or Clinton would rather get a health care bill passed, deal with the economy, or try to solve the Iraq mess, than have the first several years of their Administrations consumed by a prosecution for war crimes by officials in the Bush Administration.

JB also points out that any trials in venues like the Hague or other international criminal courts would be resisted by a Democratic Administration for the same reason and others as well.

Now certainly there is a strain of anti-Americanism at work in Europe and elsewhere overseas with regard to this issue as well as a smug, self-righteousness on the part of the European left that nauseates me.

For more than 70 years as the Communists murdered, tortured, starved, beat, and raped their way across Europe, killing upwards of 20 million - people whose only crime was that they didn’t believe they were living in a workers’ paradise, the European left gave the thugs a pass and even supported them in their efforts to cow the populations of Eastern Europe into submission while doing their damnedest to see the west defenseless against communist aggression.

How dare they. They do not have the moral standing of a jackrabbit. For them to all of a sudden get their panties in a twist over American violations of international law when they spent decades ignoring the greatest, most heartless human butchers in world history is an example of monumental hypocrisy and moral blindness that a thousand years from now will be the shame of western civilization. And for the anti-American European left to climb atop this moral high horse now speaks of a selective outrage that should sicken anyone with an ounce of historical perspective and a modicum of human decency.

No. This is an American problem. And we Americans must deal with it. Perhaps it would be worth the political war for a Democratic president to at least initiate an investigation by the Justice Department into the question of war crimes committed by the highest ranking members of the Bush Administration. The results of that investigation may conclude that the principals are innocent or just not prosecutable.

But the consequences of doing nothing are equally problematic. Somewhere along the line, a majority of Americans must be made aware of what these men have done and why what they approved is wrong. The damage is deep. But I disagree with hysterical liberals that our reputation and moral leadership is gone, never to be seen again. How we deal with what has been wrought in our name says volumes about us as a people and how determined we are to clean up our own house.

I have given up trying to convince most of my readers of the necessity in speaking out against what has transpired these last several years with regards to the approval of torture at the highest levels of our government. But I will continue to write about it because it is something about which I feel very strongly. I will not, as many liberals do, berate those of you who disagree with me. This is a matter of conscience. Each of us must examine our own beliefs, our own mind and come to our own conclusions in this matter.

Anything else would be un-American.

It will be a media circus when General David Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker take their seats before the Senate Armed Services Committee today to give an update on progress in Iraq - from their point of view. The caveat is important because objective reality when it comes to Iraq is about as solid as a dish of warm jello. By any measurement, the place is still a mess - a hash of armed to the teeth militias, a still weak central government, an army of questionable fighting ability, a too long delayed reconciliation between the sects, and the ever present handprint of those merry mullahs in Tehran.

How all those ingredients are mixing together and what is emerging is a matter of dispute. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs but neither can you put a pig in a prom dress and expect people to compliment you on your choice of dates.

I have come to the inescapable conclusion that no one knows what is really happening in Iraq - including the Iraqis themselves. And that goes double for the United States government and triple for the anti-war left. If anyone did have a solid understanding of the reality of what is happening there both on the ground and in the subsurface strata made up of the perceptions, opinions, fears, hopes and dreams of the Iraqi people, a way forward would have revealed itself.

Instead, we get a multiplex spinorama from all parties. Hell, even the Iranians are spinning which tells you something about their understanding of the modern media. That little dog and pony show in Iran where a “cease fire” was reached between Moqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi government is a perfect example of the learning curve of the Iranians when it comes to dealing with the western press. Mookie has the anti-war left convinced that he asked for the cease fire because he was beating up on the Iraqi army and wished to save civilians in Basra. The Iranians were very helpful in spinning this little fable as were several Iraqi politicians.

The problem, as we found out later was that Maliki agreed to no such cease fire and continued operations in Basra and has escalated his crackdown on the Mehdi Army in Baghdad:

Sharp fighting broke out in the Sadr City district of Baghdad on Sunday as American and Iraqi troops sought to control neighborhoods used by Shiite militias to fire rockets and mortars into the nearby Green Zone.

But the operation failed to stop the attacks on the heavily fortified zone, headquarters for Iraq’s central government and the American Embassy here. By day’s end, at least two American soldiers had been killed and 17 wounded in the zone, one of the worst daily tolls for the American military in the most heavily protected part of Baghdad. Altogether, at least three American soldiers were killed and 31 wounded in attacks in Baghdad on Sunday, and at least 20 Iraqis were killed, mostly in Sadr City.

The heightened violence came on the eve of Congressional testimony in Washington by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador here, to defend their strategy for political reconciliation and improved security in the country.

Mookie has made a habit over the years of unleashing his militia to engage the Americans (and this time, the Iraqi Army), getting a bloody nose (as in Najaf and Fallujah), and then grandiosely announcing that he is willing to talk peace thus raising his standing with the people as a reasonable sort of fellow who wants to play politics with Maliki.

The fact that this gambit worked beyond his wildest dreams with the US media and anti-war left when he lost 300-400 of his best fighters in Basra while fighting the Iraqi army is an astonishing testament to the myopia of the left with regards to any news coming out of Iraq. As J.D. Johannes said on my radio show last week (and has been repeated by many observers), the winner of a fight does not ask for a cease fire. The idea that Mookie requested an end to the fighting in Basra because he wanted to pull Maliki’s chestnuts out of the fire is silly, stupid, and worse, counterintuitive. What happened is a little more complicated.

According to Bill Roggio, some cowboy politicians from Maliki’s Dawa party journeyed to Iran (without authorization from the government) and asked the Iranians to get Sadr to stop fighting. Sadr released his 9 point statement demanding the government withdraw from Basra, stop targeting his forces, and release prisoners.

The left celebrated Mookie’s forbearance while completely ignoring one glaring fact; Maliki never authorized the overture in the first place and secondly, he rejected Sadr’s 9 points outright:

Just as the Iraqi security forces began to address the shortcoming in the operation and the situation in the center-south began to stabilize, Sadr decided to pull his fighters off the streets. Members of Maliki’s Dawa political party approached the leader of Iran’s Qods Force asking him to get Sadr to stop the fighting. Shortly afterward, Sadr ordered his troops to withdraw from fighting and issued a nine-point statement of demands for the Iraqi government.

By this time, the Mahdi Army took significant casualties in Basrah, Baghdad, and the greater South. “Security forces killed more than 200 gunmen, wounded 700, and arrested 300 others, since the beginning of the military operations in Basrah,” said Major General Abdul Kareem Khalaf, the director of operations for the Ministry of the Interior. The Mahdi Army suffered 173 killed in Baghdad during the six days of fighting.

Spokesmen from the Mahdi Army claimed the Maliki government agreed to Sadr’s terms, which included ending operations against the Mahdi Army, but the Iraqi government denies this. “I refuse to negotiate with the outlaws,” Maliki said on April 3. “I did not sign any deal.”

The fact that operations continue in Basra gives to the lie to the idea that Maliki agreed to anything.

Meanwhile, Maliki got busy on the political front and lined up an impressive coalition of parties, sects, factions, and personalities to demand that Sadr disarm.

The position of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, whose fighters fought government forces to a standstill in Basra, was looking precarious. His former erstwhile ally Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister who personally led the Basra crackdown, saw his standing bolstered by his tough approach to the militias.

Despite the inconclusive results of his Basra offensive, Mr al-Maliki has refused to back down and this weekend stitched together a rare consensus of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to back a law banning from future elections any party that maintains a militia.

That united stance has put the Sadrists on the back foot, and support for the militia was waning even in Sadr City itself as official forces pushed ever deeper into al-Mahdi Army territory.

No, the Iraqi Army still did not perform very well in Basra. There were defections (nowhere near 1,000 as reported), there was greenness, there was a lack of coordination, there was confusion and there was a lack of battlefield leadership. But as Roggio points out, the army did much better elsewhere in the south and is doing just fine in Baghdad (with Americans backing them up). Call it a mixed bag with causes for both concern and optimism.

Sounds like the testimony that Petreaus is going to give today.

In a reprise of their testimony last September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker plan to tell Congress today and tomorrow that security has improved in Iraq and that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken steps toward political reconciliation and economic stability.

But unlike in September, when that news was fresh and the administration said a corner had been turned, even some of the war’s strongest supporters in Congress have grown impatient and frustrated. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Crocker will face many lawmakers who had expected more by now and who are wondering whether any real change will occur before the clock runs out on the Bush administration.

And that, my friends, is the problem in a nutshell. Petreaus will pretty much give a rehash of his September testimony, pointing to incremental improvements since that time, but the fact is he doesn’t know a way forward that would bring the bulk of American forces home except continuing current strategies and policies.

This may be fine and dandy for some. But the majority of the Congress - including Republicans - are finding that a bitter pill to swallow:

“I think all of us realize we’re disappointed at where we are,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said at a hearing last week. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) asked, “How do we get out of this mess?” While the cost in U.S. lives and money increases, said another senior GOP senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity: “We cannot . . . just say we’re coasting through and waiting for the next president.”

Among the questions these and other lawmakers said they plan to ask Petraeus and Crocker is why the United States is still paying for Iraqi domestic needs ranging from military training to garbage pickup when the Maliki government has $30 billion in reserves — held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland — as well as $10 billion in a development fund, significant budgetary surpluses from previous years and a projected 7 percent economic growth rate for 2008.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), the panel’s ranking Republican, who projected that Iraqi oil income would reach $56.4 billion this year, asked the Government Accountability Office last month to investigate how much money the Iraqi government has.

“I think it’s a very significant issue that has not had sufficient exposure,” Levin said in an interview. “They’re perfectly content to watch us spend our money while they build up these huge cash reserves from oil windfalls. It’s a real stick in our eye, as far as I’m concerned.”

Despite Maliki’s recent success in pulling together society to call for Sadr’s evisceration, the effect will probably be transitory. The factions and sects are not going to break out into songs of brotherhood and sit down to hammer out the details of meaningful reconciliation. They can barely stand being in the same room together. Self-interest will eventually prevail and some kind of modus vivendi will emerge. But if anyone thinks that such a goal can be achieved in the next year or two, they are kidding themselves.

As I said at the top, no one really knows what is actually happening in Iraq. And because of that, we look at the good news about al-Sadr’s imminent demise as some kind of breakthrough moment in the history of post-Saddam Iraq. I’m sorry but history doesn’t work that way. Only the passage of time will prove out that theory.

And time is something the American people and Congress are not likely to grant the Iraqis who are struggling to re-invent their fractured society with guns and bombs still going off on a regular basis.

I have a special column up at PJ Media on the passing of Charlton Heston:

Charlton Heston will not be remembered as one of the best actors who ever lived. But he is right up there with the greatest movie actors of all time.

But Charlton Heston, who died yesterday at the age of 83, could overcome almost any of those drawbacks by the sheer force of his gigantic personality that filled up the big screen to overflowing, making his co-stars, extras and the film itself seem small by comparison. It wasn’t his intensity but it was. It wasn’t his physique, but it was. It wasn’t the tilt of his head, the granite jawed profile, the steely eyed glares he gave everyone from the Pharaoh of Egypt to a “damn dirty ape” but it was.

There are many times over the years I have seen an historical figure portrayed on film and wished they had cast Charlton Heston instead. Heston filled up the screen with his dominant personality and whenever I see George Washington on film I find the portrayal lacking in stature. Heston may have been the only American who ever lived who could do justice to Washington’s presence when in a crowd which was said to be electric and humbling. It’s a shame he never played our first president.

Heston is one of the last of the great Hollywood movie stars of the 50’s and 60’s. His passing is a reminder of what movies used to be and will probably never be again; epic journeys into the human imagination.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Maybe it’s something in the water. Or perhaps it’s a virus that only infects politicians and their cronies in the state in which Barack Obama chose to build his poilitical base.

Personally, I prefer the “politicians being inhabited by aliens” scenario where the outrageously corrupt behavior of our political leaders in the state is the result of an invasion of extraterrestrials who have taken over their bodies and minds.

If so, they certainly have moved in and made themselves right at home. The recent political history of the state is replete with some of the most jaw dropping examples of illegal shenanigans one can imagine.

No less than 3 of the last 7 governors of Illinois have gone to jail for corruption. The most recent inmate being previous governor George Ryan who pressured state workers to raise money for his campaigns when Secretary of State, while overseeing a “pay for play” scheme at drivers license bureaus where unqualified truck drivers bribed state employees to get licenses. One such driver was involved in a horrific accident that killed 6 children. The resulting investigation into that crash unmasked the conspiracy. More than 70 lobbyists, state employees, and government officials have been convicted in connection with the scheme.

And to list the corruption associated with Mayor Daley’s Chicago Democratic Machine would require an encyclopedia-length dissertation. The most recent example of Machine sleaze was the conviction of one of the Mayor’s closest aides in a city hall patronage scandal that had Barack Obama praising hizzoner for beginning to “clean up” city hall.

Frankly, I believe the Augean Stables would be an easier place to start cleaning up. Might as well start with something less taxing than trying to clean up Chicago politics.

The sleaze is not limited to Chicago — not by any means. The sad fact is, the entire state is in some ways a gigantic cesspool of bid rigging, kickback schemes, cronyism, and outright bribery greased by campaign contributions, and where the businessman, the criminal, and the politician merge into a seamless, corrupt beast that greedily feeds at the public trough.

The beast survives due to an apathetic public and, despite some noble exceptions, a curiously quiescent press who seem to have adopted the blasé attitude in some cases that everyone does it so what’s new?

What is new is that someone has stepped forward and under oath, given chapter and verse of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To Political Sleaze in Illinois. For seven long days prominent Republican fundraiser and financier Stuart Levine has been in the witness chair at the trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko — Chicago political “fixer” and star fundraiser for both Governor Blagojevitch and Senator Barack Obama. Levine is the primary witness in the federal trial alleging massive fraud and extortion on Rezko’s part, shaking down firms doing business with the state by forcing them to make contributions to the Governor’s campaign in return for state contracts.

Levine is a character out of Dante’s Purgatorio — a tortured soul addicted to cocaine, crystal meth and other drugs while leading a secret life filled with drug fueled day long parties at a suburban hotel. At age 62, Levine proves the adage you’re never to old to act like an immature idiot. Details of what really went on at these all day sybaritic trysts with Levine and up to 5 male friends are sketchy because the judge has refused the prosecution permission to get into the sexual aspects of Levine’s romps.

No matter. It is on the drug use that the defense will concentrate, hammering home to the jury that Levine’s story is not believable because he very well could have imagined it all. And what gives impetus to the defense claim of Levine being a first class fantasist is the unreal scope of the corruption that he, Rezko, and a few cronies spread throughout the state government in order to raise money for Blagojevitch as well as line their own pockets with “finders fees” and other kickbacks.

Tony Rezko had his fingers in an extraordinary number of money making pies — property developer, slumlord, pizza franchise owner, and friend and patron to dozens of the most prominent politicians from both parties in Illinois. He even went in on a money making scheme with a former Chicago cop to train Iraqi “power plant guards” in security techniques — a contract signed by a school chum of Rezko’s who is a former Iraqi Minister of Electricity, currently under indictment in Iraq for embezzling $2.5 billion in reconstruction funds.

The gig with Levine was just one of many projects with which Rezko was involved where he used his connections with politicians to enrich himself — legally in most cases. But the way Levine describes the shakedown operation, Rezko could have no illusions about the legality of what he was doing.

Levine was in a perfect position to initiate the kickback scheme. Not only was he a power in state politics, he sat on two prominent state boards where he was able to handpick members who would pretty much do as he asked. And what he asked was that they steer state contracts to companies that gave money to Blagojevitch. Rezko was very helpful in this regard as he recommended Levine’s cronies to Blagojevitch for positions on the two regulatory boards — a hospital expansion board and the Teachers Retirement System.

Levine also received what he euphemistically refers to as “finders fees” from the companies for assisting them in getting the contracts. The feds call them what they are: illegal kickbacks. Until the government swooped down on him in January 2006, Levine carried on with his scheme, using Rezko’s clout with the governor to staff the two regulatory boards he served on with cronies who would do his bidding.

But things didn’t go so smoothly always. On Wednesday, jurors listened to testimony from Levine that may put Governor Blagojevitch himself in legal jeopardy. Stephen Spruiell from National Review sums up the story of one investment company who refused to play ball:

Levine used his positions on various state boards to steal as much money as he could from people with business before those boards. One of those people was a Hollywood producer and financier named Tom Rosenberg. Rosenberg was a principal at a firm called Capri Capital. Capri managed over a billion dollars for the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, of which Levine was a trustee.

Through a variety of corrupt means, including allowing TRS executive director Jon Bauman to write his own (glowing) evaluations, Levine wielded a disproportionate amount of influence over TRS investment decisions. Levine used this influence to steer TRS contracts to whomever would pay him and his associates the biggest “finder’s fees.” Levine decided that Rosenberg was getting far too much TRS business and paying far too little in the form of kickbacks to him and his cronies — an arrangement that Levine saw an opportunity to amend when Capri sought a new contract from TRS in early 2004.

According to his testimony, Levine and an associate named Bill Cellini (both Republicans) conspired with two of Governor Blagojevich’s top fundraisers and advisers — Tony Rezko and a roofing contractor named Chris Kelly (both Democrats) — to offer Rosenberg a choice: Either pay a $2 million bribe or raise $1.5 million for Blagojevich’s re-election campaign. Rosenberg was to be made to understand that all of his business with TRS was at stake.

As you can see, when it comes to political corruption in Illinois, there is only one party: “The Green Party” — as in the color of cash.

But Rosenberg was not someone they could threaten or push around. In a phone conversation taped by the government, Rosenberg angrily denounced Cellini and Levine and promised to “take them down” if they didn’t back off.

This set off alarm bells with Rezko, Levine, Cellini and others involved in the kickback schemes. Clearly, if Rosenberg tattled, they’d all go to jail for a very long time. So in the end, they only backed off putting the arm on Rosenberg, but they made good on their threat to deny Rosenberg any more state business.

In this, they had the blessing of the Governor of the State of Illinois Rod Blagojevitch.

Apparently, Rezko related the entire story to Blagojevitch, who it appears agreed with the crooks that Rosenberg should be frozen out of doing future business with the state. Levine is heard in another taped conversation saying that “the big guy” himself had given the word.

This would be a clear misuse of his office and, depending of what the governor knew of Rezko, Levine, and their cronies, it could lead to possible conspiracy charges as well.

NRO’s Stephen Spruiell interviews Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica, a Republican who says that Blagojevitch’s indictment is “inevitable:”

“What we have,” Peraica says, “is a level of corruption that is integrated both vertically and horizontally across all layers of government: city, municipal, county, and state.” To him, the Rezko case illustrates that corruption in Illinois is a bipartisan problem. “We have a corrupt political combine, where the members of the two parties… have come together, not pursuant to a public interest, but to pursue their own financial interests, which they have done with great zeal and ingenuity.”

And what of Barack Obama? A couple of the players in this little drama have close connections to the Senator. In addition to Rezko, there is the case of Allison Walker, Obama’s old boss at the law firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland who was also a business partner of Rezko. Davis’s firm handled an unknown amount of business for Rezko’s property management company — the same company under investigation for illegal activities in connection with government contracts used to rehab low income housing (an unrelated investigation to the Rezko trial).

Davis, a friend of Rosenberg’s, acted as a go-between, carrying the investment manager’s message to Rezko that he might raise some money for the governor’s campaign if that would help keep his business in the mix for a contract with the teachers pension fund board that Levine ran as his own little fiefdom. This didn’t satisfy Rezko who told Davis to have Rosenberg call Levine. From there, Levine put the squeeze on Rosenberg as described above.

Neither Obama or Davis will get very specific about how much work the law firm did for Rezko or what Obama did over the years to assist Rezko in the management of several low income properties that by all accounts were barely habitable. Most of them have been condemned as of today. And the government wants to know just what Rezko did with those millions in rehab funds and loans he received from the city, state, and federal government.

Obama may not be an intimate part of all this corruption. But it is equally clear that he has benefited politically from his association with the sleaze artists like Rezko. He has also eschewed attaching himself too closely to the reform movement in Cook County politics by endorsing for office not only Mayor Daley, but the notorious former Cook County Board Chairman John Stroger and the equally corrupt Alderman Dorothy Tillman.

It appears that when principle collides with political expediency, Obama has chosen to ally himself with those who can do his career the most good - even at the expense, as Commissioner Peraica says of “principles and morals and good government.”

The anti-war crowd has been saying for years that it is possible, indeed necessary, for the United States to simply walk away from Iraq by systematically drawing down its forces without regard to the security of the Iraqi government or people.

Also for years, I have been saying that despite monumental blunders and stupidities committed by our side, that such a scenario just wasn’t a viable option unless we could be assured of leaving behind some kind of stable government that at the very least, couldn’t be hijacked by al-Qaeda and made into a base of operations that would threaten us and our friends around the world.

I still believe that to be a viable, sensible, logical position to hold - but just barely. Once again, I feel myself “stretching” to defend a position that even just a few days ago I felt quite comfortable with.

Almost a year ago, I responded to my critics who accused me of changing my mind about Iraq by writing a post that tried to show how events can undercut long held assumptions and present you with the choice of being dishonest about how you truly feel by stretching your logic and reason in order to have your beliefs comport with your original assumptions or change the underlying assumptions on which you base your beliefs in order to reflect a new reality:

One by one, assumptions I had formed at the beginning of the war and occupation fell victim to changing realities in Iraq. This is not the same place it was 4 years ago nor is it even the same as it was a year ago. And if it has changed – if the facts, perceptions, and reality has changed, what did that do to the underlying justification for my opinions?

Once I began “reaching” to justify my opinions, I got very uncomfortable. The threads of logic became more tenuous the more I examined those pesky assumptions. I realized that many (not all) of my original assumptions were basically obsolete, done in by the cruel logic of domestic politics and a growing realization that the the US military could do everything that was asked of it and more and still come up short thanks to the balking politicians in Iraq, the twisted narrative of the war being spun by the left and the Democrats, Administration failures to implement a strategy that would win the war, and a growing belief that the country was sliding out of control.

So if you’re in my shoes, what do you do? Continue to defend a position you know is becoming untenable as a result of changing realities (and new information not available at the time you formed your original assumptions)? Or do you alter your assumptions and change your opinion?

Until I got on the internet, I always believed it was the mark of a thoughtful man to constantly challenge one’s beliefs and adjust them if necessary to the changing realities of the world. This is how I went from believing in liberalism to thinking like a conservative. There came a time after college graduation where liberal dogma refused to stand the test of rigorous self-examination and I gravitated toward a much more conservative worldview. Within that conservative framework, I have altered my opinions many times regarding many issues. For instance, I am much more conservative on immigration than I was even just a few years ago while I have perhaps moderated my views on issues like affirmative action and minority set asides.

Those are small examples but telling. Think about it. What kind of idiot - right or left - would maintain a mindless belief on an issue even after the original assumptions on which they based that conviction have been superseded by events or a different set of facts?

The situation in Iraq at the moment is quite fluid and not beyond repair. A return to some kind of status quo albeit with a weakened Maliki and suddenly ascendant al-Sadr is possible. But I think that some of those underlying assumptions about Iraq that I held just a week ago have proven themselves to be changing - and not for the better.

To wit:

1. It was always an assumption that the Iraqi militias would have to be destroyed or neutralized in order for peace and security to come to Iraq.

But 6 days of fighting in Basra shows that Iraqi army incapable of doing either. And any political solution regarding the militias would necessarily put them on the police force or in the army where their loyalties would always be suspect.

2. It has been an assumption from the beginning that the Iraqi army was capable of “standing up” without American assistance so that we could safely draw down our forces.

I don’t believe the Iraqi army did that badly in Basra. There are enough credible reports that they stood up to some pretty vicious assaults by the Mehdis and may, in some instances, have been facing an enemy with superior arms including heavy weapons not in their arsenal. What is clear is that the spin on this battle has been incredible. Reports of “defections” by the army to the Mehdis have been wildly exaggerated while every temporary setback by the Iraqi army was given glowing coverage.

But their performance was nevertheless disappointing. Their inability to make much headway against the Mehdi in most neighborhoods and their reliance on American and British air power shows that they still have a long way to go before they can handle internal security for the country much less beat off an invading army from Iran or Syria.

How much more training can we give them? My military friends who read this site will no doubt tell me that it is a very difficult task to build an army from scratch and that leadership on the battlefield is a difficult commodity to recognize and encourage. I will buy that notion but will also point out that there is a political clock ticking here at home and performances like that shown in Basra by the Iraqi army do not engender confidence that they can “stand up” before time runs out and Congress (or a new president) pulls the plug.

3. It has been an assumption that Malki could unite the country despite dragging his heels on reconciliation measures.

This is one that has been slipping away for months. In fact, Maliki is proving to be not a uniter but a divider, interested in pursuing power for his coalition at the expense of other Shia parties and the Sunni minority. This was certainly a large part of the rationale he used for entering Basra in the first place. And in the end, it may be his undoing.

4. It has been an assumption that al-Sadr must die.

Mookie may have become too large a player in Iraqi politics to take him out. He and his party have become the “agents of change” in the south where precious little has been done with regards to reconstruction of basic services like electricity and sewage. His power in the national government may be small but the power of the national government is nothing to shake a stick at. If nothing else, he has become a powerful regional actor who both the US and Maliki must now deal with. His ties to Iran notwithstanding, perhaps it is time to if not embrace him, at least stop trying to kill him and the Mehdi. In other words, turn a huge negative into a slightly net positive.

5. It has been an assumption that the Kurdish north is not a big problem and that we can allow the Iraqis to deal with security in that area.

This is definitely one of those assumptions that is changing. Al-Qaeda has made its presence known in Mosul and Kirkuk while a low intensity conflict between Shias and Kurds for control of the vital oil center of Kirkuk has been going on for almost a year. Is there anything the US can reasonably be expected to do to alter that situation?

6. It has been an assumption that the US must stay in Iraq in order to kill the remnants of al-Qaeda.

This is probably the strongest argument for maintaining a large combat force in Iraq. But the Sunni militias have proven that they are very effective in securing their neighborhoods against al-Qaeda attacks while also rooting out terrorist cells on their own. Will we soon get to a point where the Sunnis can “stand up” so we can “stand down?”

These are just a few of the underlying assumptions about Iraq that most reasonable people, I believe, would have to say are in flux at the moment. Does this mean I believe we should walk away from Iraq? Not at this point. But unless some of these basic assumptions about our role as occupier and friend of Iraq can be changed for the better, I can certainly envision a day where such a course of action would become self-evident.