OPEC is warning that Iran, home of possibly real, as well as most assuredly recycled and photoshopped missile tests, should not be attacked by the US or Israel. Prices would go “unlimited.” IHT:

“We really cannot replace Iran’s production — it’s not feasible to replace it,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said…Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, produces about 4 million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels. The country has been locked in a lengthy dispute with Western countries over its nuclear ambitions.

In recent weeks, the price of oil has risen higher on speculation that Israel could be preparing to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The saber-rattling intensified this week with missile tests by Iran. That has further shaken oil markets because of concerns that any conflict with Iran could disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf region.

“The prices would go unlimited,” Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.” Analysts said the timing of Badri’s remarks was noteworthy, given that the idea of an attack on Iran has been around for years.

As is usual these days, oil prices went up $5.60 immediately upon Iran’s announcing that it had launched a few more missiles. So what’s going on? Is this about oil prices and market manipulation by OPEC? Is Iran sabre-rattling because things are going well in Iraq, and it would like to provoke some action that would help it destabilize that country? Is the bluster in service of an attempt to derail the “unavoidable” Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Or is there some obvious rationale that we are just missing?

We note that Mr. Ahmadinejad was helpful as ever in clarifying the situation. His comments seem from outer space lately. On one day he repeats he periodic threats to destroy Israel, which will “disappear off the geographical scene.” The next moment, the whole thing is a joke to him: “very funny show…These type of wars are considered as a funny joke.” And then the Iranian president starts claiming a fan club among US Generals: “Their first request was to have their picture taken with me…This official told me he holds a special place for me in his heart and said he had postponed his holidays in the United States to be able to meet me.”

Of course Mr. Ahmadinejad may be insane (he at least marches to the beat of a very different and bellicose drummer). But the real insanity is that over the last thirty years, the US government and corporations have permitted this nation to become 70% dependent on imports of its most vital economic and warmaking commodity. That is unilateral disarmament. Who is more nuts, him or us?

A report on Iraq from CBS and the AP credits the surge ordered by President Bush, the Anbar Awakening, and the Iraqi government with great success in reducing violence and increasing stability in that country. Amazing. Excerpt:

Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal…

Iraq’s government has felt increasingly confident in recent weeks about its authority and the country’s improved stability, and Iraqi officials have sharpened their public stance in the negotiations considerably in just the last few days. Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by the 2007 buildup of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al Qaeda in Iraq and crackdowns against Shiite militias and Sunni extremists.

The byline of the report on one website credits AP’s chief of Middle East news for the report. We have to admit to surprise to read these sentences from AP: “Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by the 2007 buildup of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al Qaeda in Iraq and crackdowns against Shiite militias and Sunni extremists.” What accounts for the changed tone of the reporting?

EJ Dionne has an interesting piece on the Obama Iraq flip-flop. Dionne says: “voters know that John McCain is far more likely than Barack Obama to continue the war in Iraq indefinitely. Obama would be foolish to blur that distinction.” But in making his argument, he raises the interesting question of what it is that Senator Obama actually believes at this moment in time, and what concrete actions he would take as President. First, an excerpt:

When a candidate calls a second news conference to say the same thing he thought he said in the first one, you know he knows he has a problem. Thus Barack Obama’s twin news conferences last week in Fargo, N.D. At his first, Obama promised he would make a “thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy in his coming visit there and “continue to gather information” to “make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable.”

You might ask: What’s wrong with that? A commander in chief willing to adjust his view to facts and realities should be a refreshing idea. But when news reports suggested Obama was backing away from his commitment to withdrawing troops from Iraq in 16 months, Obama’s lieutenants no doubt heard echoes of those cries of “flip-flop” that rocked the 2004 Republican National Convention and proved devastating to John Kerry.

So out Obama came again to reiterate his timeline. “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq,” he said. “I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war — responsibly, deliberately, but decisively.”

The unsteady moment suggested that Obama has not figured out how to slip the trap John McCain’s campaign is trying to set for him…The flip-flop charge may be of limited use to the GOP this year because McCain has changed his own positions rather promiscuously…

Dionne assumes that Senator Obama is genuinely anti-war, and that appears true, as well as having the additional merit of having been politically very useful in his Chicago environs, “one of the most liberal districts in Illinois encompassing Chicago’s lake front, Hyde Park, the University of Chicago and African American neighborhoods in the southern half of the district.”

What then should one make of Obama’s new commitment to make sure that “Iraq is stable”? Some conservative commentators suggest that there is no way that a Democratic President would saddle his administration with a strategic defeat in Iraq, and maybe that is so. But the commitment contained in “I intend to end this war” does not suggest that victory is desirable or even an option. Perhaps Senator Obama really does know, deep down, what he would do on January 21, 2009. But he sure has not made it clear, and his goals are internally contradictory. That’s quite a bit worse than a flip-flop.

It is always interesting to watch how the MSM shape their political coverage in ways great and small to the advantage of their chosen candidate. Often the most important aspect of the coverage is what is left out of a news story or an editorial. Here are a couple of examples in which a negative was left out of a piece favorable to Senator Obama and a positive was omitted from one on Senator McCain.

The Washington Post carries a story called “Obama Addresses His Faith — Senator Describes Spiritual Journey.” Guess what name does not appear in that piece.

CNN has a story called “McCain Truth Squad defender was Swift Boat Vet member,” which is about Bud Day. It shows a still from what it calls an “attack ad” in which Day appeared (watch the “attack ad” and judge for yourself). It fails to mention a few of the more important facts about Day. (HT: Powerline)

The same media that so loved the maverick John McCain has found their candidate for November and it is not the Arizona Senator. In 2004 they said their coverage was worth 15 points to the Democratic ticket; no doubt they are aiming higher than that this year.

The NYT writes on a 25 year tradition of large American flags and asks what they mean in kind of a snarky way on the anniversary of American independence:

Once the gaudy lure of attention-seeking car dealerships or other roadside attractions, big flags have found a comfortable home inside the ballparks, arenas and raceways of American sporting events…The trend began nearly 25 years ago, spiked after 9/11 and now seems simply part of the cultural backdrop…the flags raise something else — the question of whether a bigger flag is a more patriotic one, or just a bigger one.

Roger Kimball notes a somewhat older tradition of large American flags — this one dating to September 1814 and the occasion of the Battle of Baltimore, the bombardment that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the “Star Spangled Banner”:

We learned about the origins of the war, about how the British took and burned Washington, about how at last a thousand U.S. troops under George Armistead at Fort McHenry successfully defended their bastion against the British naval onslaught, saving Baltimore and turning the tide of the war…The British ships, anchored out of range of Armistead’s cannons, pounded the fort with mortar and Congreve rocket fire over the course of twenty-five hours. Sometime before sunrise, the bombardment suddenly stopped. Key was uncertain of the battle’s outcome until dawn broke and he saw the American flag fluttering above Fort McHenry. (When he had taken command, Armistead asked for an extra large flag so that “the British would have no trouble seeing it from a distance.”)

You may decide which story seems more edifying on this 4th of July. (HT: Protein Wisdom)

The NYT today chided Senator Obama for some of his flip-flops of recent days. One of the interesting elements of the Times’ criticism is that it passed over the rather high profile gun control flip-flop without really calling it the reversal it was, and it chose to avoid the biggest policy reversal of all (Iraq). Instead, the Times chose instead to name campaign finance and FISA as among the relatively arcane flip-flops that deserved to be identified as such. Excerpt:

there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election. His team explained that, saying he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was forgoing public money, he also was eschewing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt….the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.

The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11…

when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. “We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight”…Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever.

The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state…

On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control…What could be more reasonable than a city restricting handguns, or requiring that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mortal threat to children? We were equally distressed by Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s barring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder.

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

The editorial concludes: “There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq…We don’t want any ‘redefining’ on these.” It’s too late. With his advisers providing him with ample cover, Senator Obama is already “refining” a new position that is, in effect, exactly the opposite, at least in practical terms, of his old and clearly stated position. Whether the Times will call this a flip-flop remains to be seen. Judging from this piece, the editors will do their best to elide the issue.

(UPDATE: Iowahawk gives new meaning to the idea of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and thus perhaps helps clarify the Illinois Senator’s real position on Iraq.)

That was then:

* In 2003 and 2004, he spoke out against the war on the campaign trail;
* In 2005, he called for a phased withdrawal of our troops;
* In 2006, he called for a timetable to remove our troops, a political solution within Iraq, and aggressive diplomacy with all of Iraq’s neighbors;
* In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.
* In September 2007, he laid out a detailed plan for how he will end the war as president.

Bringing Our Troops Home

Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

This is now:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month. Earlier, a top Obama adviser had said that the senator is not “wedded” to a specific timeline…David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, began backing off during remarks Wednesday on CNN’s “Situation Room,” telling guest host John Roberts that Obama has actually advocated “a phased withdrawal, with benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that called for strategic pauses, based on the progress on these benchmarks and advice on the commanders on the ground.”

Meanwhile, in what would be laughable, except that the MSM will cover it seriously, Senator Obama attacked the McCain campaign for daring to notice the mother of all flip-flops, and then he added a back flip for good measure. AP:

Democrat Barack Obama says he’s always been open to refining his Iraq policy but blamed Republican John McCain’s campaign for suggesting “we were changing our policy when we haven’t.”…He said what he learns from military commanders on his upcoming trip to Iraq will refine his policy but “not the 16-month timetable” for withdrawing U.S. troops from combat in Iraq.

Senator Obama’s flip-flops make those of Senator Kerry look highly polished and professional by comparison. Pity that the media, so in the tank for the Illinois Senator, really don’t seem to care too much.

War critic George Packer in the New Yorker says that Senator Obama needs to shift his position on Iraq, because the realities in that country have changed:

With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far.

Obama’s plan, which was formally laid out last September, called for the remaining combat brigades to be pulled out at a brisk pace of about one per month, along with a strategic shift of resources and attention away from Iraq and toward Afghanistan. At that rate, all combat troops would be withdrawn in sixteen months. In hindsight, it was a mistake — an understandable one, given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today — for Obama to offer such a specific timetable. In matters of foreign policy, flexibility is a President’s primary defense against surprise.

At the start of 2007, no one in Baghdad would have predicted that blood-soaked neighborhoods would begin returning to life within a year. The improved conditions can be attributed, in increasing order of importance, to President Bush’s surge, the change in military strategy under General David Petraeus, the turning of Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda, the Sadr militia’s unilateral ceasefire, and the great historical luck that brought them all together at the same moment. With the level of violence down, the Iraqi government and Army have begun to show signs of functioning in less sectarian ways.

Probably the most opportune time for Senator Obama to make the switch is after his upcoming trip to the area later this year (and presumably after the Democratic convention). No doubt he will be praised in the MSM for doing a 180 on the issue that formed the initial basis of his presidential run.

Michael Barone says that Senator Obama’s position on Iraq is now a problem with electoral consequences. (We wonder how small will be the percentage of Americans who will cast their vote based on Iraq; after all, even the NYT has finally waddled in with a story that should have been written some time ago, “Big Gains for Iraq Security.”)

In January 2007, when George W. Bush ordered the surge strategy, which John McCain had advocated since the summer of 2003, Barack Obama informed us that the surge couldn’t work. The only thing to do was to get out as soon as possible.

That stance proved to be a good move toward winning the presidential nomination — but it was poor prophecy. It is beyond doubt now that the surge has been hugely successful, beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates…Violence is down enormously, Anbar and Basra and Sadr City have been pacified, Prime Minister Maliki has led successful attempts to pacify Shiites as well as Sunnis, and the Iraqi parliament has passed almost all of the “benchmark” legislation demanded by the Democratic Congress — all of which Barack Obama seems to have barely noticed or noticed not at all. He has not visited Iraq since January 2006 and did not seek a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus when he was in Washington…

The editorial writers of The Washington Post have been paying close and careful attention. And even though they may be temperamentally more inclined to favor Obama’s candidacy over John McCain’s, they have not been unwilling to take Obama to task for his inattention to American success. Obama, the Post noted tartly on June 7, “has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country — a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained.”

On June 18, a Post editorial made the same point again and noted that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyard Zebari told Obama in a phone conversation that a precipitate withdrawal would embolden al-Qaida and Iran. But Obama told ABC News’ Jake Tapper he said no such thing. Perhaps he’s still trying to avoid facing facts that undermine his narrative. Which might also explain why he said he was willing to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions while he has not been able to find time to meet with Petraeus.

Perhaps Senator Obama should accept Michael Yon’s offer. (Fareed Zakaria recommends that Senator Obama give a speech that almost no one will likely listen to after the second paragraph.)

The Democratic presidential candidate spoke about Osama bin Laden:

“First of all, I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden’s head…And if I’m president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive…What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism”.

So what does this mean? How would it be possible to kill Osama bin Laden without his supporters calling him a martyr? Are we missing something? Or is Obama saying that he wants to capture Osama alive, to put him on trial and give him a jail sentence? Does Obama intend to repeal the existing executive order with the intent of not making Osama a martyr? Or is Obama deliberately trying to sound obscure? Why?

Reuters today reports yet another exoneration in the matter of Haditha:

A military judge on Tuesday dismissed the case against the highest-ranking U.S. Marine charged in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha, whittling down the list of those who must still face justice for the 2005 killings to just the accused ringleader. Military Judge Col. Steven Folsom dropped all charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was accused of violating a lawful order and dereliction of duty…Folsom threw out the charges against Chessani after finding that a four-star general who oversaw the investigation was influenced by an investigator who later became his advisor.

The appalling Congressman Jack Murtha in 2006 found the Marines guilty of “murder” with zero evidence, and did so on the national stage:

“Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long?” Murtha said on “This Week” on ABC. “We don’t know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command.”…”I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened…This is worse than Abu Ghraib.”

Haditha happened in November 2005. The Haditha Massacre entered the lexicon shortly after that, as a result of irresponsible, biased reporting in TIME Magazine and the MSM, and irresponsible, biased accusations like that by Congressman Murtha, all apparently in the service of an anti-war agenda with no consideration for the actual servicemen fighting actual battles with their lives at risk.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani and his comrades have suffered nearly 1000 days in hell from this persecution for no good reason whatsoever — and to the detriment of our armed services and the fine men who protect our freedoms. Who will give them back the three years of their lives that our enemies in Iraq, with the help of our media and Congress, have taken from them?

Michael Yon, who has spent more time embedded in Iraq than any other journalist, has something of value to offer to politicians who might care to learn:

One of the biggest problems with the Iraq War is that politics has frequently triumphed over truth. For instance, we went into Iraq with shoddy intelligence (at best), no reconstruction plan, and perhaps half as many troops as were required. We refused to admit that an insurgency was growing, until the country collapsed into anarchy and civil war. Now the truth is that Iraq is showing real progress on many fronts: Al Qaeda is being defeated and violence is down and continuing to decrease. As a result, the militias have lost their reason for existence and are getting beaten back or co-opted. Shia, Sunni and Kurds are coming together — although with various stresses — under the national government.

If progress continues at this rate, it is very possible that before 2008 is out, we can finally say “the war has ended.” Yes, likely there still will be some American casualties, but if the violence continues to drop and the Iraqi government consolidates its gains, we will be able, in good conscience, to begin bringing more of our people home. I will be paying very close attention to the words of Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, who is replacing General Petraeus as the overall commander in Iraq.

Whatever we do in Iraq from here forward, we must strive to make better decisions than those made between 2003 and 2006. And one way to achieve that is by making certain that our civilian leaders are fully informed. All three candidates for President are extremely intelligent, but that doesn’t mean that all three are tracking the truth on the ground in Iraq. Anyone who wants to be President of the United States needs to see Iraq without the distorting lenses of the media or partisan politics. I would be honored to visit Iraq with Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain or any of their Senate colleagues.

I hereby offer to accompany any Senator to Iraq, whether they are pro-or anti-war, Democrat or Republican. I will make this offer personally to a few select Senators as well. Our conversations during the visit would be on- or off-record, as they wish. Touring Iraq with me, as well as briefings by U.S. officers and meetings with Iraqis, would provide an accurate and nuanced account of the progress and challenges ahead, so that the Senators might have a highly informed perspective on this most critical issue. Our civilian leaders need to make decisions based on the best information available. The only way to learn what is really going on in Iraq is to go there and listen to our ground commanders, who know what they are doing. Generals Petraeus and Odierno have years of experience in Iraq, and vast knowledge of our efforts there. But the young soldiers who have done multiple tours in Iraq also have unique and invaluable perspectives as well. These young soldiers have personally witnessed the trajectory of the war shift dramatically, and can articulate those changes in concrete and specific terms. It doesn’t matter if a soldier is only twenty-something. If he or she spent two or three years in the war, that person is likely to have valuable insights.

The best way to understand what is really going on is to listen closely to a wide range of service members who have done multiple tours in Iraq. Some will be negative, some will be positive, but overall I am certain that the vast majority of multi-tour Iraq veterans will testify that there has been great progress, and now there is hope. Combat veterans don’t tolerate happy talk or wishful thinking. They’ll tell you the raw truth as they see it.

Whether any Senators take advantage of my offer, I do hope that the presidential candidates visit Iraq, not just for a photo opportunity, but to spend time with our commanders and combat veterans, who know the truth and are not afraid to speak it.

Meanwhile, a certain presidential candidate apparently already knows more than he needs to know. Senator Obama is already conducting diplomacy with the Iraqi foreign minister five months before there’s even an election in the US: “I emphasized to him how encouraged I was by the reductions in violence in Iraq, but also insisted that it is important for us to begin the process of withdrawing U.S. troops, making clear that we have no interest in permanent bases in Iraq…My concern is that the Bush administration — in a weakened state politically — ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it was my administration or Sen. McCain’s administration…The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that’s currently made.”

From the beginning, Haditha looked fishy to us. Now, with Lt. Andrew Grayson being found by the jury in his court martial not guilty on all counts, it looks more and more like the Haditha “massacre” was a put up job of the enemy and some elements in the American media. Grayson commented after his acquittal:

“The Haditha Marines stood resolute to the cause and they knew in the end that their resolve would result in their innocence. Thank God.” Grayson said there were times when he could have taken the “easy way out” by accepting a plea deal that would have spared him jail time in exchange for his testimony against other Haditha suspects. But in the end, he said, “one must do what is right.”…

Wednesday evening, Grayson said court-martialing Wuterich “was questionable at best” because the squad leader was simply following what he was trained to do -– observe the military’s rules of engagement. As for Chessani, Grayson described him as “one of the most steadfast men…He led by example and he knew the difference between right and wrong.”

So far charges against five Marines have been dropped and two cases are still pending. Bruce Kesler has a lot more to say on this troubling detour away from fighting and winning which more and more looks like it was orchestrated by America’s enemies and certain fellow travelers.

The New York Times casually asserted last month that the US had used biological weapons against foreign countries. What the NYT originally said on May 4:

Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright notes, correctly, that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.

The NYT piece as corrected on June 1 omitted the original assertion entirely, not just in an appended correction:

Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright alleges that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.

We found it interesting that there is no cached version of the original NYT story on Google, so we wanted to see if we could find the wording of the original story, and we did, though it took a while. It had not vanished down the memory hole. It is also interesting how casual was the assertion by the NYT that the US had committed such war crimes. We wonder: did those war crimes in the imagination of the Times occur before or after President Nixon’s executive order in 1969 prohibiting germ warfare under any circumstances whatsoever? (HT: Powerline)

Good news appeared in the editorial pages of the Washington Post, albeit in the form of campaign advice to the prospective Democratic nominee. But good news is still good news:

There’s been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama…

the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable…

Of course, as Bruce Kesler notes, the NYT still backs the “this-war-is-lost” caucus. Which paper’s line will Senator Obama follow? (Or should he just forget the whole Iraq thing and head straight to Iran?)

The UK Guardian says the Senator Obama is “limping” to the finish line in the Democratic primary season. The New York Times has him “wheezing” as he crosses the tape to become the Democratic nominee. If current trends hold, he could have potentially enough delegates to claim the nomination in the next week or two, but that is not clear at this point

Senator Clinton still has the greatest number of votes in the primaries and caucuses, but the media cut her no slack. She and her allies can point to their fairly compelling demographic arguments, but to no avail, and, increasingly, to no notice. The left in the Democratic Party, and more importantly, the media have made their choice and there’s no stopping them now.

Our view is that Senator Clinton is the stronger candidate against Senator McCain in the general election. Senator Obama seems to have peaked in February, and it remains to be seen if the herculean efforts of the MSM can prop him up all the way through the long months until November. But perhaps that is a mischaracterization. Perhaps the MSM don’t really have their work cut out for them at all.

Perhaps America and Americans have changed. Maybe they want to try a new Age of Foolishness on for size by electing such an inexperienced but glib fellow (Scott Johnson uses a different term at the end of this piece). Perhaps the slow motion train wreck of Senator Obama’s chruchgoing and churchleaving (or was that grandma, not a train?) will not be seen by voters as a relevant insight into the man’s judgment. Perhaps that he is a “peacenik by gut” who has poor instincts when it comes to dealing with adversaries will be seen as irrelevant in November. Perhaps his blessedness will carry him to victory. Or maybe America just wants change, no matter what, instead of more grumpy old men (actually, the Grumpy Old Men promise foolish change too). One way or another, it looks like we’re going to find out.

Azadeh Moaveni is a reporter covering Iran for Time magazine. She went back for a visit recently, and found that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is apparently held in low esteem by his countrymen. WaPo:

On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran’s main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. “Let the Americans come,” she said loudly. “Let them sort things out for us once and for all.” Everyone in the women’s section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent…

I used to hear similarly pro-American sentiments frequently back in 2001, when Iranians’ romance with the United States was at its most ardent. A poll conducted that same year found that 74 percent of Iranians supported restoring ties with the United States (whereupon the pollster was tossed into prison). You couldn’t attend a dinner party without hearing someone, envious of the recently liberated Afghans, ask, “When will the Americans come save us?”…

I lived in Iran until last summer and experienced all the reasons why Ahmadinejad has replaced the United States as Iranians’ top object of vexation. Under his leadership, inflation has spiked at least 20 percent…My old babysitter, for example, says she can no longer afford to feed her family red meat once a week. When I recently picked up some groceries — a sack of potatoes, some green plums, two cantaloupes and a few tomatoes — the bill came to the equivalent of $40.

Inflation has hit the real estate market particularly hard. Housing prices have surged by nearly 150 percent, according to real estate agents. For most Iranians, previously manageable rents have become tremendous burdens. On one of my first evenings back in Iran, I watched Ahmadinejad on television as he addressed Iranians from the holy city of Qom. He blamed everyone — the hostile West, a domestic “cigarette mafia” — for the economic downturn, just as he had previously claimed that a “housing mafia” was driving up real estate prices. Many Iranians who initially believed this kind of conspiracy talk now admit that the president’s policies and obstinacy are actually at fault…

there are the interminable lines that have accompanied the government’s new gas-rationing scheme. During the busy early evening, it takes an hour to fill up on gas, and policemen are required to direct the snarled traffic. Ahmadinejad has insinuated that the unpopular plan was a precaution against possible Western sanctions, but most people I spoke with considered it another instance of his administration’s mismanagement…

Ahmadinejad has also resurrected unpopular invasions into Iranians’ private lives. On the second day of my trip, newspapers announced that police would begin raiding office buildings and businesses to ensure that women were wearing proper Islamic dress. One of my girlfriends, an executive secretary, told me that as a precaution, her office had set up a coded warning message to be broadcast over the intercom. On the third day, police swept our street to confiscate illegal satellite dishes.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents the religious-revolutionary, warlike, and self-destructive side of Iran in its current identity crisis with the modern world. Exactly what would be accomplished by the remarkably foolish idea of meeting with the man and regime that are pushing that country to a precipice?

The US, European, and certain Middle Eastern countries have for years tried to sit down with Iran and come to agreements of various sorts, mostly without any success. Amir Taheri provides some very interesting historical context in a piece in the WSJ that should be read in its entirety:

Iran is gripped by a typical crisis of identity that afflicts most nations that pass through a revolutionary experience. The Islamic Republic does not know how to behave: as a nation-state, or as the embodiment of a revolution with universal messianic pretensions. Is it a country or a cause?

A nation-state wants concrete things such as demarcated borders, markets, access to natural resources, security, influence, and, of course, stability – all things that could be negotiated with other nation-states. A revolution, on the other hand, doesn’t want anything in particular because it wants everything.

In 1802, when Bonaparte embarked on his campaign of world conquest, the threat did not come from France as a nation-state but from the French Revolution in its Napoleonic reincarnation. In 1933, it was Germany as a cause, the Nazi cause, that threatened the world. Under communism, the Soviet Union was a cause and thus a threat. Having ceased to be a cause and re-emerged a nation-state, Russia no longer poses an existential threat to others.

The problem that the world, including the U.S., has today is not with Iran as a nation-state but with the Islamic Republic as a revolutionary cause bent on world conquest under the guidance of the “Hidden Imam.” The following statement by the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme leader” of the Islamic Republic – who Mr. Obama admits has ultimate power in Iran — exposes the futility of the very talks Mr. Obama proposes: “You have nothing to say to us. We object. We do not agree to a relationship with you! We are not prepared to establish relations with powerful world devourers like you! The Iranian nation has no need of the United States, nor is the Iranian nation afraid of the United States. We . . . do not accept your behavior, your oppression and intervention in various parts of the world.”

So, how should one deal with a regime of this nature? The challenge for the U.S. and the world is finding a way to help Iran absorb its revolutionary experience, stop being a cause, and re-emerge as a nation-state.

Whenever Iran has appeared as a nation-state, others have been able to negotiate with it, occasionally with good results. In Iraq, for example, Iran has successfully negotiated a range of issues with both the Iraqi government and the U.S. Agreement has been reached on conditions under which millions of Iranians visit Iraq each year for pilgrimage. An accord has been worked out to dredge the Shatt al-Arab waterway of three decades of war debris, thus enabling both neighbors to reopen their biggest ports. Again acting as a nation-state, Iran has secured permission for its citizens to invest in Iraq.

When it comes to Iran behaving as the embodiment of a revolutionary cause, however, no agreement is possible. There will be no compromise on Iranian smuggling of weapons into Iraq. Nor will the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps agree to stop training Hezbollah-style terrorists in Shiite parts of Iraq. Iraq and its allies should not allow the mullahs of Tehran to export their sick ideology to the newly liberated country through violence and terror.

As a nation-state, Iran is not concerned with the Palestinian issue and has no reason to be Israel’s enemy. As a revolutionary cause, however, Iran must pose as Israel’s arch-foe to sell the Khomeinist regime’s claim of leadership to the Arabs.

As a nation, Iranians are among the few in the world that still like the U.S. As a revolution, however, Iran is the principal bastion of anti-Americanism. Last month, Tehran hosted an international conference titled “A World Without America.” Indeed, since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, Iran has returned to a more acute state of revolutionary hysteria. Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to truly believe the “Hidden Imam” is coming to conquer the world for his brand of Islam.

Yet another set of reasons that Senator Obama’s proposal to sit down with Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrible idea. Question: does Senator Obama really understand the history of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting he refers to all the time, and does he understand the terrible consequences it led to, up to and perhaps including the origins of the Vietnam War?

Since the 18th century, American combat deaths have totalled about 650,000 — in a way a surprising number. Who would have thought that you could build a nation of 300 million people and keep it free and self governing for three centuries at such a price?

Please don’t misunderstand us. We’re not trying to minimize the losses; we understand, for example, that each of the 269 men from Newton, Massachusetts who died in WWII was a tragedy of heartbreak and grief to their families and friends. And combat deaths are but a fraction of total casualties in all of America’s conflicts. But it is really amazing what these proud few have procured for the many with their sacrifice. As the man said, “the United States is blessed to have such citizens.” Truly.

It’s hard not to notice today the prices that some unfree parts of the world have been paying recently. They say that deaths in Burma, with its corrupt, totalitarian regime, could easily exceed 100,000. China has had 15 million homes destroyed and 80,000 dead, including 10,000 children in rickety, substandard schools, perhaps due to “official negligence, and possibly corruption” in the Communist government. The price paid for freedom is large; apparently, the price paid for the lack of freedom can be larger still.

Senator Obama quotes President Kennedy time and again: “We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate,” when describing his willingness to meet with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others among America’s adversaries and enemies. (Just what Obama thinks he can accomplish with this disciple of the Mahdi who sees himself bathed in divine light, who repeatedly has called for the destruction of Israel, denies that the Holocaust happened, and proclaims that a conspiracy of 2000 Zionists wants to rule the world, is anyone’s guess.)

It is difficult to overstate just how terrible an idea this notion of Obama’s is, from a variety of perspectives, both strategic and tactical; it certainly did not work out for the original JFK. Nathan Thrall and Jesse James Wilkins in the NYT:

Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy’s legacy: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev.”

But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age…

Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.

Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”…A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall.

The consequences of the disastrous summit were not limited to the Berlin Wall, a symbol that became synonymous with Soviet enslavement for three decades. Kennedy’s meeting with Nikita Khrushchev “is generally considered to be one of the major factors leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962,” possibly the nearest that the world has come to nuclear war.

There is a pattern in Senator Obama’s life that is hard to miss. He has for decades associated himself with, and listened to, family and friends who have bitter grievances against the United States. Perhaps he has regarded listening to such people as in itself salutary or transformational, whether he regards their grievances as legitimate or not. So perhaps he thinks that doing so with Iran and Ahmadinejad would be helpful in some similar way.

Of course one key difference between the former and the latter is that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Iran has been at war with the US (in one way or another and fairly successfully) since 1979. There is a kind of neo Cold War that exists between the two countries. Thus there would appear to be quite a bit of parallelism between a Kennedy-Khrushchev summit and an Obama-Ahmadinejad meeting — and perhaps the same sort of disastrous consequences could ensue.

Senator Obama would appear to have made a rookie mistake in generalizing from his personal experiences. After all, a Reverend Wright might rant and rave, but he was at one point a US Marine; by contrast Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Iran has made a point of killing US Marines for a quarter century. If Senator Obama is to be the next JFK, he should at least try to learn from the mistakes of the original JFK.