I have been hard on the Left Blogs/so called "Netroots" lately on Iraq. My main reason is they have been wrong about it. But I have also been hard on them because it seemed to me they were abdicating a critical role the Left Blogs play in the political debate. I thnk Atrios explains that role nicely:

Overall what blogs have been able to do is create an unfolding political narrative which has been largely absent elsewhere. Sometimes it's about emphasizing different things, sometimes it's about combating DC conventional wisdom, sometimes it's about highlighting things which are being ignored. But taken all together it's about telling the story of politics in a different way.

When the Left blogs/Netroots decided to cheerlead the House Supplemental, playing the "pragmatic" insider, they ceded their real power in the debate. Move On and others simply failed to understand what their power is. It is not in settling for inadequate proposals and cheerleading inevitable compromises. It is describing the progressive postion and providing a narrative that keeps the Beltway, Media and politicians honest.

The Left Blogs/Netroots forgets this at its peril. If it goes down that road, and comes to resemble the Right blog relationship with the GOP in its relationship with the Democratic Party, it will be considerably weakened as a force in the political debate.

Consider Alberto Gonzales:

Gonzales, the nation's highest legal officer, has been point man for serial assaults against the rule of law, most recently in the crude attempt to politicize criminal prosecutions. Obstruction of a prosecution is a felony, even when committed by the attorney general.

Gonzales is still on the job.

Now consider Randall Tobias, head of the Agency for International Development:

On Friday night, ABC News said Mr. Tobias had confirmed on Thursday that he was a customer of an escort service.

Tobias resigned.

In Republican world, private conduct that causes only private harm, if any, is a greater reason for disgrace than repeated efforts to undermine the country's legal structure. Go figure.

Via Kevin Drum, the NYTimes tells us what we already knew, Bush's surge policy is a sham, merely designed to run out the clock on Iraq while Bush is President:

The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.

. . . Several American officials who have spoken recently with Mr. Maliki say they believe that he would like to achieve the kind of political reconciliation that Mr. Bush outlined in January as the ultimate goal of the troop increase. But they say the Iraqi prime minister appears to have little ability to manage the required legislation, including bills requiring fair distribution of oil revenues among Iraq’s Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and reversing the American-led de-Baathification that barred many Sunnis from participation in the new government.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is predictable. Bush's feelings are what drive policy now. We can't have him face the fact that he lost the Iraq Debacle and is the worst President in history. That he destroys our military, irreparably damages our national interest and causes the needless deaths of our soldiers is of no moment compared to his feelings.

Disgusting.

The news is all agog over the arrest of a top al-Quaida guy in Iraq who allegedly was a mastermind of the July 7 London bombings.

Why is this news now? He was captured by the CIA last year.

Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.

He wasn't even transferred today -- but earlier this week.

Is the Administration just in need of a positive news story for the weekend? It sure seems so.

It's Friday afternoon and time for a new document dump over at the House Judiciary Committee which is investigating the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

The documents are here.

Another group were released yesterday, available here.

TPM readers will be analyzing them in the comments here.

Christy at Firedoglake discusses James Comey's upcoming testimony before the Committee next Thursday. He was No. 2 at DOJ.

When the North Carolina Attorney General declared the three charged Duke Lacrosse players innocent of sexual assault and stated there was no credible evidence to support that any attack had taken place that night, he promised he would be releasing a report.

The report was released today. You can read it here (pdf).

His findings:

• The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault would have been contradicted by other evidence in the case from numerous sources;

• The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault and the events leading up to and following the allegations would have been contradicted by significantly different versions of events she told over the past year;

• No testimony or physical evidence would have corroborated her testimony;

• The accused individuals were identified through questionable photographic procedures;

More...

This comment really annoyed me for some reason. So I decided to republish a piece I wrote that I think responds to it. Please forgive me this personal privilege.

The War Over The Debacle
by Armando

Sat Oct 22, 2005 at 10:52:24 AM PDT

Over at the normally cool TPM Cafe, there has been a pretty hot exchange going on between the Liberal Iraq Debacle Hawks (I use the word Debacle instead of War because I think it is important that we be clear that what they advocated for is a Debacle, whether they thought it would be one or not.) and those who opposed the Iraq conflict.

I won't get into the details of the debate - I think Matt Yglesias and Sam Rosenfeld wrote the definitive piece on the issue, but I wanted to note this churlish response from George Packer:

I've got court all afternoon so feel free to take over and direct the conversation.

Via Booman, Dana Milbank documents that the Republicans seem to be unaware of where the leadership of Al Qaida is. When debating the Iraq Supplemental, the GOP seemed confused as to where Al Qaida actually is:

"When a newly revitalized al-Qaeda carries out a 9/11-scale attack, you will own that one," Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) told his good friends across the aisle.

Sen. Norman Coleman (R-Minn.) advised his Democratic colleagues that they were "handing al-Qaeda a victory that they will be able to use to strengthen their forces and then hurt and kill more Americans."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), adopted the Republican language that Democrats were proposing a "deadline for defeat." He warned that "if we follow the plan in this legislation," Americans would lose their "security from terrorism here at home.

Gentlemen and ladies of the Republican Party and their fellow travelers, may I point out to you that the leadership of Al Qaida is to be found in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Michelle Malkin is really funny. Via atrios, tbogg delivers the punchline:

Michelle Malkin, has a bitchin' idea on how to show those defeatosurrenderquitterocrats a thing or two about stick-to-it-tiveness; Send 'em a white feather:

The White Feather has been a symbol for cowardice. I suggest that white feathers be sent to the leaders of the Senate and House for the cowardly vote that abandons our soldiers around the world. . . .Wha? Oh. Michelle has an update: Update: Several readers note that legendary Marine Corps sniper Carlos Hathcock wore a white feather in his hat band. . . .

Maybe not. But if it is a go, how about sending them to Bush and Romney:

[Romney said] "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person." [Bush said about the war on terror]"I don't think you can win it."

Let Bush and Romney be as perplexed as Congressional Dems Michelle. I guess white flags are too expensive for this "gesture."

I did not watch the Democratic Presidential Debate because, frankly, I have no real interest right now in an election that is a year and a half away. My main interest now is in how the Congress can end the Iraq Debacle. That is what I listen for from the candidates.

But if Richardson said that he would choose Byron White as his model Supreme Court Justice, cross him off the list today:

[Richardson's] choice of "Whizzer White" as his ideal Supreme Court Justice in tonight's debate is...odd. Myself, I would prefer a justice who was on the right side of (just for starters) Roe, Miranda, and Bowers.

It is worse than odd. It is disqualifying.

Update [2007-4-27 10:36:7 by Big Tent Democrat]: Ed Kilgore's debate roundup was the most interesting I found.

Josh Marshall writes:

With Harry Reid's controversial 'war is lost' quote and with various other pols weighing in on whether we can 'win' or whether it's 'lost', it's a good time to consider what the hell we're actually talking about. . . . The supporters of the war had two basic premises about what it would accomplish: a) the US would eliminate Iraq's threatening weapons of mass destruction, b) the Iraqi people would choose a pro-US government and the Iraqi people and government would ally themselves with the US.

Rationale 'A' quickly fell apart when we learned there were no weapons of mass destruction to eliminate. That left us with premise or rationale 'B'. But though many or most Iraqis were glad we'd overthrown Saddam, evidence rapidly mounted that most Iraqis weren't interested in the kind of US-aligned government the war's supporters had in mind. . . . This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region.

. . . It's a huge distortion to say that this means the war was 'lost'. . . . Of course, the damage that's been done over the last four years of denial is immense . . . The reality though is that the disaster has already happened. Admitting that isn't a mistake or something to be feared. It's the first step to repairing the damage. . . .

This is exactly right but understates the case. I'll explain on the other side.