Morning Roundup

•From the WaPo -

Democratic leaders who had hoped to emphasize their domestic agenda in the opening weeks of Congress have concluded that Iraq will share top billing, and they plan on aggressively confronting administration officials this week in a series of hearings.

Pushed by House members who want a quick, tough response to the Iraq strategy President Bush is expected to announce this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has backed off from her initial assertion that nothing should detract attention from the legislation she hopes to pass in the first 100 hours of House debate.

This is what happens when you have people representing you and actually listening to you.

Contrary to what the nutosphere claims, Americans are not opposed to troop withdrawal and the Democrats realize this. Without a hardnosed stance to Bush’s escalation policy, the Democrats are in danger of alienating voters. Their domestic plan is good, but that most important issue of our time is the Iraq war. Nothing good will come out of ignoring it, while leaving it in the hands of Bush, who’s already bungled it beyond belief.

•Deb Price, a columnist at the Detroit News, has posted a column explaining that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is no longer needed.

W hile serving in Iraq and South Korea during his five-year Army career, Specialist Patrick English came out to about 50 fellow soldiers.

The enlisted man never had a problem, even in group showers -- which are increasingly uncommon -- with heterosexual military men who knew he was gay.

I never understood why the army allowed this discrimination. Even if soldiers were fearful of gays (which is no longer the case), that doesn’t mean that we should discriminate against them. All discrimination stems from irrational fear, yet we don’t give any of that the time of day.

And, seriously, if members of our military are fearful of gays, do we really want them protecting us from enemies? All a terrorist would have to do is blow them a kiss, and they’d, like, fall down in a fit of fear. Obviously, nothing good can come of that.

•Just in case any of you wondered, Wesley Clark is still against escalation.

The odds are that this week President Bush will announce a "surge" of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Will this deliver a "win"? Probably not. But it will distract us from facing the deep-seated regional issues that must be resolved.

The administration views a troop surge of modest size as virtually the only remaining action in Iraq that would be a visible signal of determination. More economic assistance is likely to be touted, but absent a change in the pattern of violence, infrastructure enhancement simply isn't practical.

Clark’s entire OpEd paints a picture of an administration that still doesn’t seem to understand what is happening in Iraq and how to solve the problem.

Most telling is this statement -

Vicious ethnic cleansing is underway, as various factions fight for power and survival. In this environment, security is unlikely to come from smothering the struggle with a blanket of forces -- and increasing U.S. efforts is likely to generate additional resistance, especially from Iraq's neighbors. More effective action is needed to resolve the struggle at the political level. A new U.S. ambassador might help, but the administration needs to recognize that the neoconservative vision has failed.

Uhhh, ya think?

Nothing about the war should be left to this administration… an administration who still doesn’t understand that situation in Iraq and still doesn’t understand that a military solution is not real


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