Iraq

(NYTimes) The number of "internally displaced," Iraqis fleeing their homes, "has more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000" since the US troop buildup began. (There's a sharply ramping graph.)

(AFP) US generals continue to warn of a "Tet" like offensive. This one is unique though because he cites Sept. 11 as the likely cause. (Have the Iraqis ever done anything on Sept. 11? No, because they still have nothing to do with it.)

(McClatchy) Local Kurdish officials claim, "Iranian soldiers crossed into Iraq on Thursday and attacked several small villages in the northeastern Kurdish region." (No Iranian statement in the article?)

(Guardian) The British are close to leaving their last base in Basra, and the BBC has some pretty shocking comments from British soldiers.

(Reuters) Allawi formally withdrew his three members from the Iraqi cabinet. (Did Haley Barbour get paid?)

(WaPo) The "third leg" of the Nov. 2005 Iraq plan has failed miserably. The plan for the US military to take over and run factories has been hampered by a lack of security and electricity. (I like how they try to blame US companies for not buying Iraqi.)

And, if you haven't seen it elsewhere, Josh Marshall,

By that I do not mean we, as America, are bigger or better than Iraq as a country. I mean that that sum of our national existence is not bound up in what happens there. The country will go on. Whatever happens, we'll recover from it. .....

Not so for the president. For him, this is it. He's not bigger than this. His entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store.....

And when you boil all this down what it comes down to is that the president now has very different interests than the country he purports to lead.

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