Can we win in Iraq? Not according to Henry Kissinger.

If you mean by military victory, an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible,'' he told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday.

If it's for world peace, it would be rude to say "no."

The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace.

Good for Rich:

ELECTIONS may come and go, but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town’s conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry.

Right now the capital is entranced by a fictional story line about the Democrats. As this narrative goes, the party’s sweep of Congress was more or less an accident. . . . [N]ow the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.

The only problem with this version of events is that it’s not true. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic winners, including Jon Tester of Montana, are to the left of most Republicans, whether on economic policy or abortion.

As Rich notes, this narrative distracts from Iraq:

[D]isengagement from Iraq is the patriotic thing to do. Diverting as “divided Democrats” has been, it’s escapist entertainment. The Washington story that will matter most going forward is the fate of the divided Republicans. Only if they heroically come together can the country be saved from a president who, for all his professed pipe dreams about democracy in the Middle East, refuses to surrender to democracy’s verdict at home.

For all you naysayers who thought we were crazy when we wrote about bringing back the draft, here it is, Charlie Rangel, obviously having a deranged moment, is introducing a bill to reinstate the draft.

Rangel mistakenly thinks that a draft would have prevented the war in Iraq.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.

A draft would not have prevented Iraq any more than it prevented Vietnam. I cannot support risking the lives of this country's youth to make a political point. They should not be used as pawns in the war debate.

Let's hope Rangel's bill dies as swift a death this year as it did in 2004.

I'm still busy at work so here's an open thread. There's also some good diaries this weekend:

• November 19, 2006 - Cheney Says Dems Can't Stop Bush's War With Iran
• November 17, 2006 - Keisler must be blocked.
• November 17, 2006 - New Report Finds Bush Banned Rights Before Military Tribunal Law Enacted By Congress
• November 16, 2006 What Do Hunger & Torture Have In Common? No Pain Equals No Existence.

Expecting the executive branch to obey the law and respect civil rights is "shortsighted," according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "Overreaching" is a good description of the president's asserted power to wiretap the conversations of American citizens on American soil without a warrant, but Gonzales accused a court of "overrreaching" when it declared the administration's warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional.

Gonzales and Cheney's attacks on the court order came as the administration was urging the lame-duck Congress to approve legislation authorizing the warrantless surveillance. The bill's chances are in doubt, however, because of Democratic opposition in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to end debate and vote.

Gonzales wouldn't "speculate" about the administration's response if Congress doesn't give the president the power he craves. Of course he wouldn't. He knows that the administration will continue the surveillance program with or without congressional approval -- and will probably ignore "overreaching" court decisions that attempt to stifle the president's lust for power.

The president's father claimed to see "a thousand points of light" in the charitable organizations "that are spread like stars throughout the Nation." The current administration praises private efforts to help the unfortunate while it harasses Muslim charities. One victim of the administration's double standard is Dr. Rafil Dhafir, whose arrest TalkLeft discussed here.

In direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by brutal sanctions on Iraq, Dhafir, a man of Iraqi descent and Muslim faith, and an American citizen for almost thirty years, started the charity Help the Needy (HTN). ... When the deaths of children over the age of five and adults are added, the number killed as a direct result of the sanctions rises to between 1.5 and 2 million dead civilians. ...

For the crime of breaking the U.S. and U.K. sponsored UN sanctions on Iraq and sending humanitarian aid to sick and starving civilians, Dhafir was held without bail for thirty-one months and then sentenced to twenty-two years in prison.

The linked article recaps the case against Dr. Dhafir, a case that ran on twin tracks: a fraud prosecution for activities that, according to its prosecutors, had no link to terrorism; and contradictory claims by federal authorities that Dr. Dhafir's charitable activities assisted terrorism.

Law Prof Mark Denbeaux and team have completed their report on the review hearings (pdf) undertaken at Guantanamo:

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that the United States Government must provide adequate procedures to assess the appropriateness of continued detention of individuals held by the Government at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Department of Defense established the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (“CSRT”) to perform this mission.

Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader-elect, says:

Forty-nine is not a bad number of Senators to have, in a chamber that requires sixty to control. And I can assure you that our Democratic friends will give President Bush's judicial nominees a floor vote - if they want to get anything done, in a chamber that requires 60 to control.

Three detainees at Guantanamo have been released and sent to Albania. It was determined they were no longer enemy combatants. Were they ever?

Jim Webb wrote:

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. . . . The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes. ... [T]he true challenge is for everyone to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages and disappearing jobs.

I propose the following tax plan to address in a small way the problem Jim Webb identifies.

TalkLeft asked this question last year: "Are federal prosecutors worried that they can't convict Osama Awadallah if he has a fair trial?" If the prosecutors were indeed worried that a fair trial might produce an acquittal, they were right.

Awadallah was charged with committing perjury while testifying before a grand jury that was investigating the 9/11 attacks. His first trial ended with a hung jury. At the conclusion of a second trial, it took the jury only an hour to conclude that Awadallah is not guilty.