Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) is recovering from surgery after suffering stroke-like symptoms during a conference call with reporters yesterday. Apparently the problem was not a stroke but cerebral bleeding caused by a defect in one or more blood vessels (“an intracerebral bleed caused by a congenital arteriovenous malformation”). The political ramifications of Sen. Johnson’s condition are obvious, but for now let’s just hope for a full recovery.
Archives for December 2006
Open Thread
Guess who’s going to spend the next sixteen hours (or what feels like it) in front of a microscope. Govern yourselves until I get back.
* This seems like promising research, but I should probably warn those kids about something…
* If you’re in England, watch your back.
* Arctic sea ice is melting faster than ever. Next comes the giant lens of cold fresh water, then the shutdown of the deep-sea conveyor current. Combine that with record CO2 levels and the massive release of permafrost methane. What do you get? I haven’t a freaking clue. But it ought to be fun.
Letting The Nuclear Cat Out Of The Bag
Asked by the interviewer about Iran’s calls for the destruction of Israel, Olmert replied that Israel had never threatened to annihilate anyone.
“Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map,” Olmert said. “Can you say that this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?”
Granted that everybody more or less knows that Israel maintains a nuclear arsenal. On one level you could argue that Olmert’s slip changes little. But on the rhetorical level there are several very important reasons why Israel has made some effort to keep its arsenal under wraps. First, a frank admission turns around the domestic calculus for regional competitors like Iranian president Ahmadinejad. Iranians have mostly balanced a feeling of national pride with legitimate concerns about provoking the international community, leaving Ahmadinejad with a mixed mandate at best. I expect that this news will change that.
Second, even UN bashers will should acknowledge (this is a debatable point?) that Bush needed UN Resolution 1441 before he could move against Iraq. The Iran debate will also play out first and most importantly in the UN Security Council. Thanks to the wreck our president has made of America’s credibility our brief is weaker than it should be – keep in mind that Iran denies a nuclear program and we have no credible evidence suggesting they have one. None of us want Iran to go nuclear, but absent international action there isn’t much of anything that we can do about it. Even if we had the resources to knock out Iran’s facilities we don’t know where most of them are*.
If strong international action is needed to get inspectors into Iran, and I think it is, an expanded nuclear map in the mideast is not something that will help us. Olmert’s slip seems like an opening for Iran to declare that she will gladly admit nuclear inspectors, as long as Israel does the same.
(*) Presupposing that Iran’s bomb program exists, which, again, it might not.
House Dems Pick Up 29 30 Seats In 2006
Congrats to Ciro Rodriguez, the new Democratic representative from Texas 23. It’s hard to overstate the upset value of this race. Incumbent Henry Bonilla ( R) barely missed winning outright when he outpolled Rodriguez 49-20 in November. Since then polls have trended in Rodriguez’s favor, but to my knowledge none showed Rodriguez ahead or even particularly close.
Let’s stipulate that it is risky to treat this race as a general indicator. Too many factors could be specific to this district and the massive cash infusion from the DCCC must not have hurt. Caveats aside, I will go out on a limb and say that Republicans should be extremely grateful that the election wasn’t held one month later.
***Update***
Think that Democrats will push for a revote in Katherine Harris’s district? It would be politically smart, though a touch cynical, to keep tonight’s upset in mind. Not that it isn’t the right thing to do anyway.
House Dems Pick Up <del>29</del> 30 Seats In 2006Post + Comments (18)
Not Fast Enough
The updated tally for this morning’s car bomb in a Shiite crowd is 70 dead. Another car bomb killed at least five Shiites three days ago. On November 24 another car bomb killed 22 Shiites. They were mourning the dead from a round of car bombs and mortars on November 23 which killed at least 161 people in Sadr City. Tortured corpses litter Baghdad streets and the Iraqi countryside.
White House press secretary Tony Snow conceded Monday that conditions in Iraq are “not getting better fast enough,” but he insisted “the strategy for victory is working.”
I guess Tony has a point. Similarly the Titanic isn’t un-rotting, rising from the ocean floor, reassembling itself and backing away from the iceberg anywhere near fast enough. If only the dumb ship would would hurry up.
Fish Or Cut Bait Watch
Andrew at Obsidian Wings.
If the Iraqi Army cannot be built up to the degree necessary to restore order, there aren’t any particularly good alternatives available to us. Staying in Iraq may help to keep a ceiling on the violence, but that is a ticket to an indefinite presence in Iraq that will not only mean neverending losses for both our forces and Iraqi civilians, but an ongoing goad to Islamists who will seek to strike us in the United States in retribution for our occupation of Iraq. Leaving Iraq may open the floodgates to a level of violence that would make the current carnage a fond memory.
Ultimately, we have no good choices unless there’s a way I’m not aware of to create a national consciousness in the Iraqi Army. As such, while I hate to say it, I think that withdrawal may be the best available option.
Andrew is an experienced military officer and, as far as can be determined without siccing the datamining hounds on him, not a hippie. Keep an eye out as credible people one by one acknowledge that the choice between the undesirable and the impossible isn’t a choice at all.
Open Thread
I have the flu, as well as a number of thingsgoing on. I hope you enjoy Tim’s website the next few days.