Via Yglesias, Iran on Maliki's visit to Teheran:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said Baghdad in its ties with other countries only acts based on the interests and demands of the Iraqi nation. The office of the Iraqi Prime Minister on Saturday in response to a warning by the US President George W. Bush against Baghdad’s development of ties with Tehran announced in a statement: The groundless warning was issued with the aim of overshadowing the successful achievements of Mr Al-Maliki in his recent visit to Tehran.The Iraqi Prime Minister’s office further announced: If the US President assumes that the level of Iraq’s ties with other countries would be determined according to his views, then he is wrong.George W. Bush on Thursday on the second day of Maliki's visit to Iran repeated his baseless claims that Iran interferes in the internal affairs of Iraq. This is while Nuri Al-Maliki on the same day appreciated Iran for helping Iraq establish security and stability, calling for expansion of ties with Iran.

Glenn Greenwald makes many great points in his article discussing his interview of Michael O'Hanlon. I'll discuss those on the flip but I do want discuss O'Hanlon's offense at what he thinks were unfair attacks on him.

Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack are and were Iraq Debacle and Surge supporters. There was nothing as bad to me in their work on this than their misleading description of themselves as critics of the war. As Glenn states, they were critics the way Bill Kristol, Frederick Kagan and John McCain were critics - they wanted more troops. They wanted the Surge. They got the Surge. So their praise for the Surge was to be expected. Do I believe they were going to praise the Surge no matter what they saw? In a word, yes. Because they were going to see what they wanted to see.

Let's face it, the only way to make this trip and their Op-Ed a newsworthy story was to deceive as to their views as Iraq Debacle and Surge supporters. They had to be sold as critics of the Debacle and the Surge and they dishonestly did that. I have said from the beginning, that this was their major sin - their deliberately dishonest presentation of themselves in order to make their views on the Surge newsworthy. After that, I did not think their actual views merited a fair hearing. If they were willing to lie about that, how could you trust them on anything else? Personally, I think they should no longer be considered honest observers on Iraq after what they did. The dishonesty should disqualify them as persons to be listened to on the subject. More.

Force-feeding is painful. Newsweek this week examines whether doctors should be force-feeding the detainees in the wake of a recent visit by Dr. S. Ward Casscells, the new assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. His verdict: it's okay.

Casscells watched as a half-dozen Gitmo prisoners went through the 45-minute procedure. They were strapped into "restraint chairs" and a L/jo-inch soft rubber tube was fed through their noses. (Prisoners may request a local anesthetic to ease the discomfort.) The patients ingest a tasteless high-protein mix, and guards watch them for an hour to make sure they do not self-induce vomiting. "Nobody kicked or screamed," Casscells says.

Other Gitmo doctors agree:

There are seven doctors at Gitmo, and according to Casscells, none has objected to the forced feedings."

Hundreds of other doctors around the world disagree and sharply condemned force-feeding in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.

From the Sunday London Observer:

Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.

....[T]he exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them.

Some, including Colin Powell, say our army is just about broken:

More...

Update (TL): Crooks and Liars has the video.

***

I just finished watching the Meet the Press debate between Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas and DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. and they both acquitted themselves admirably.

The theme of the program was much more unites the DLC and the Netroots than separates them. I think that is true. So what are the differences? Kos laid them out eloquently - it is a question of not being afraid to tout Democratic values. Kos argues for contrast with Republicans. The DLC has in the past argued for blurring distinctions. Today, Ford appeared to be abandoning his objection to contrast with Republicans.

But, while both performed well, I thought Kos was outstanding. Obviously I think he has the better case to make. I was especially impressed by his explanation that he understands that not all Democrats in the country can, or even should, adopt liberal orthodoxy on all issues. I have known this about him of course (like him, I have railed against single issue groups that support GOP incumbents over better Democrats on their issues, see NARAL and Linc Chafee), but his explanation on MTP was an excellent one. It is a much misunderstood insight. I have written about it in the past:

Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus in the Washington Post have some behind the scenes details of how the FISA Amendment passed.

It doesn't change anything. The Dems caved and Speaker Pelosi promising to revisit the bill doesn't make their rollover any more palatable.

There's a 16 page article on Rudy Giuliani in the new issue of the New Yorker. Too much of a puff-piece for my taste, but this quote shows the Rudy I remember:

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where his ambitions and his talents fully merged.... He was one of the first prosecutors to use the perp walk as a public-relations weapon against white-collar criminals, who traditionally had been allowed to present themselves before the court for arraignment. In February of 1987, he brought charges of insider trading against two Kidder, Peabody executives. As a Wall Street Journal editorial later put it:

Giuliani had his agents burst into Kidder, Peabody, throw Richard Wigton up against the wall and handcuff him. He arranged to bust Timothy Tabor so late in the day that he had to spend a night in jail before he could post bond. Mr. Giuliani didn’t think Mr. Wigton was going to pull a knife or Mr. Tabor would flee the country. He lusted after the headlines, and hoped strong-arm tactics would coerce settlements. This is not the kind of prosecutorial zeal we need when the underlying law is far from clear.

The charges against Wigton and Tabor were subsequently dropped.

Here's another of Rudy's excesses:

From 1980, The Grateful Dead and Uncle's John Band

Whoa-oh what I want to know, where does the time go?

With the TL kid in town this week, wiretap motions due and my new MacBook arriving and beckoning me to set it up (thanks again to all who contributed) blogging fell by the wayside this week.

I should be back to regular posting Tuesday. Till then, thanks to Big Tent for keeping TalkLeft updated and to readers for stopping by.

Results:

Mitt Romney 32%
Mike Huckabee 18%
Sam Brownback 15%
Tom Tancredo 14%
Ron Paul 9%
Tommy Thompson 7%
Fred Thompson
Rudy Giuliani
Duncan Hunter
John McCain
Jon Cox

They expected 30,000. 14,000 showed up. The GOP is in trouble in 2008. As for this silly exercise, Romney lost the expectations game so he lost. Huckabee won. Watch for Huckabee talk now.

The latest low mark for the Rudy campaign - sending out reps to say that the first responders do not know who attacked us on 9/11:

A former deputy mayor, Joe Lhota, said the critics are politically motivated and wrong. "They're taking their anger out in the wrong direction," Lhota said. "He was literally there four and five times a day; he did anything but run away. "They're losing sight of the fact that this country, and this city, was attacked on that day by terrorists; it's their fault."

Rudy failed the first responders and New York City with his incompetence on terrorism. If he is going to campaign on the murder by the evil bin Laden of 3000 Americans, then his incompetence must be discussed. As a commenter at TPM shrewdly notes, conservative Jay Cost has said that Rudy's is a bloody shirt campaign:

I am reminded of the politics of the post-bellum era - in which average-to-below-average Republicans in the North could be elected by "waving the bloody shirt," i.e. referencing their (seemingly) prominent roles in the Civil War to win the support of Northerners. . . . He is, in a certain sense, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11. Can the Republican Party refuse it?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is in Baghdad.

The Justice Department said that Gonzales arrived in Baghdad on Saturday for his third trip to Iraq to meet with department officials who have been there to help fashion the country's legal system.

Just what does the Department of Justice do in Baghdad? Here's the DOJ's 2006 press release outlining its role:

More...

Our unitary executive is at it again. Even though Congress refused to pass comprehensive immigration reform, he's taken it upon himself to issue new regulations that will crack down on immigrants, toughen border enforcement and increase the use of felony charges against those in violation.

At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, formally unveiled the measures, which had been disclosed in general terms earlier, to reinforce border security and drive illegal immigrants out of the labor force.

....Mr. Chertoff said the “real hammer” would be more frequent use by the immigration authorities of criminal felony charges against employers and illegal immigrant workers. He said the authorities had made 742 criminal arrests so far this year in illegal employment cases, compared with 716 such arrests in all of last year, which was a record.

If you had any doubt this is a payback, consider this: