In a scathing criticism of the failed war in Iraq, conservative columnist George Will accuses the bush administration of ignoring history by seeking to mold a Middle East nation in its own image. After pointing out all the times similar ventures have failed — and they always have — Will closes with a grim look at the next stage of Rumsfeld’s folly.

But in a New York Times story from Najaf, readers learn, regarding the problem of Moqtada Sadr and his militia, that a Marine spokesman says, “We’ll continue operations as the prime minister [Ayad Allawi] sees fit.” And readers learn that U.S. commanders “curbed a broader national amnesty proposal announced by Dr. Allawi earlier this week, limiting its terms to exclude any rebels who have taken part in actions killing or wounding American troops.”

So does sovereignty reside with the prime minister whose will evidently commands U.S. commanders? Or with those commanders who curb the prime minister’s will?

A house so divided cannot stand. If it is the prime minister’s will, or that of Iraq’s embryonic democratic institutions, to conduct with insurgent factions negotiations that strip the Iraqi state of an essential attribute of statehood — a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence — the U.S. presence will become untenable.

Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by “Baathists” is, according to one administration official, akin to saying “Nazis” when you mean “the SS” — the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr’s insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.

Please bear in mind, this isn’t Paul Krugman talking, it’s Republican George Will. He is saying that bush is now in direct danger of losing the election because of the collapse of Iraq into near anarchy. And he’s saying al Sadr may be just a gnat compared to the next phase of our occupation.

Anyone listening? Are we really going to let our stupid little president keep us bleeding forever? Can we really pulverize the Iraqis into loving us?

This is sobering. Remind us again, why should we vote for shrub?

I was dumbfounded to read yesterday that the Google founders actually granted Playboy a full-length interview a few months ago, when they knew their IPO announcement was imminent. This is a huge no-no, and their PR person should be fired right away. The interview has appeared in the latest issue, sent out to subscribers at the time when Google isn’t supposed to be saying a word. Not a single syllable.

“Quiet periods,” the time before announcing an IPO or major financial news, are sacred — you say nothing at all that might influence investor opinion. And they broke this cardinal rule. This should scare smart investors away — Google has no in-house IR (investor relations) )counsel and their PR people are true amateurs (and I promise, I know). Amazing, but true; you’d think at this late date they’d have the sharpest people in the industry handling all their PR. Instead, they’re stumbling like a bunch of amateurs.

My friend Jeremy has posted on his company blog about other reasons to fear the Google IPO. Jeremy and I have both been in high-tech PR for ages, and worked together in Silicon Valley in the late 90’s, when we were all going to become multi-millionaires. (Hah.) His points are well-taken.

When it comes to publicly traded Google stock, my mantra, at least for now, is simple: steer clear.

This article is actually quite interesting, and gives both sides of the story. The underlying message: it’s he says/she says, with no hope of resolution. And the debate is so silly — was he in Cambodia or near Cambodia? — it’s obviously an exercise in nitpicking.

What certainly comes across here is that the SBVFT’s animosity, as most of us know, stems not from Kerry’s actions in Vietnam, but the sense that he betrayed his colleagues by turning against the war. The smart ones realized he never betrayed the; he was protesting against the war and its architects — not his fellow fighters.

There’s an interesting wrap-up:

FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan group that monitors the accuracy of campaign ads, points to the crew members who support Kerry and notes initial funding for the opposition campaign came mainly from a Republican booster in Houston.

But the group added that it can’t definitively say which set of veterans should be believed.

“At this point, 35 years later and half a world away, we see no way to resolve which of these versions of reality is closer to the truth,” the group concluded.

Peter D. Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied political attitudes of veterans and military members, said the Swift Boat campaign could cost Kerry some support among undecided voters.

But he suggested Democrats want the controversy to continue brewing because it keeps the focus on Kerry’s service in Vietnam and off his tenure in the U.S. Senate, where Republicans want the spotlight.

“The Democrats are very happy to keep that story alive,” Feaver said.

That’s the big irony here. Whether it was January or February or December when John Kerry was at (or near) Cambodia, repeating this story does one thing for most voters: it reminds them that Kerry served and is a decorated war hero. While it reinforces the Kerry-haters’ belief (foolish though it may be) that he’s a liar and a rogue, they thought that before the SBVFT came along. So as I’ve said from day one, it’s a net minus for bush. The only media who are picking up the SBVFT’s spin are the World Net Dailies and other wingnut media, whose readers already know Kerry is the Antichrist anyway.

A big tempest in a teapot, and the only one to emerge from it looking better is Kerry.

Before I start my new job I’m heading for a few days to Manhattan. I leave tomorrow morning and will be back on Wednesday. Chances are I’ll slow down the posting drastically after today.

My site traffic sky-rocketed this week thanks to a dinky post that gave me a zillion google hits. That will now plunge sharply, as it always does when I stop posting for a few days. (Funny, how when I first arrived in Singapore I was grateful to get 75 visitors a day.)

It’s nice to see that some commentators maintain a semblance of sanity when discussing this nonsense. After citing a new article that blows away some of the smoke, he says:

So let me get this straight. Kerry did go to Cambodia — even though that was supposedly impossible, he did take CIA guys in — even though that was supposedly absurd, and he did get a hat from one of them — even though that was supposedly a sign of mental instability. The extent of Kerry’s malfeasance is that instead of doing it in December, he actually did it in January and February.

Considering that he’s mentioned this story only twice, most recently 18 years ago, and it turns out that his only crime is to have tarted it up with a bit of holiday pathos, I think I’ll pass on following it any further down the Swift Vets rabbit hole. But thanks to everyone who displayed their deep unseriousness about this election by participating in this smear. It will be remembered.

Deep unseriousness — indeed, heh, read the whole thing.

Incredible, as we are trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, as jobs are lost and people are thirsting for solutions and real leadership, we are tricked into taking this BS seriously. And war bloggers are aghast and furious that the big media aren’t following their lead and covering this non-story 24/7. For once, the media are doing their job and thinking for themselves, instead of chasing baseless rumors that are utterly irrelevant to the election.

For two weeks, that is.

Taiwan could withstand an attack from China for two weeks, military sources told the China Times, in comments seen aimed at assuaging fears raised by a computer simulation showing that Taipei could be captured in six days.

Tensions have been running high in the Taiwan Strait as China prepares for a possible military showdown, convinced Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian will push for formal statehood during his second term.

Both sides are holding their annual war games, with China — which views the island as a renegade province — staging mock-invasion drills and Taiwan pretending to fend off an attack.

A computer-simulated exercise showed China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could take the island’s capital in just six days, Taiwan media reported on Wednesday.

But the mass-circulation China Times quoted “authoritative military sources” as saying the computer had made certain assumptions — such as no help from the United States — and it did not mean Taiwan would be defeated so quickly.

“The sources indicate, in the event of a ‘first strike’, the air force and navy can preserve of their fighting capabilities while the army can maintain 80 percent of its fighting capabilities,” the newspaper said.

“Under these circumstances, Taiwan can hold on for two weeks in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait.”

Military experts say China is accelerating its arms build-up in preparation for war, but the PLA still lacks sophisticated amphibious vessels to turn its 2.5-million-strong army into a credible invasion force.

Furthermore, the expectation is that Washington would meet its treaty obligation and come to Taiwan’s rescue, either through diplomatic pressure on China, intelligence aid or actual combat assistance, analysts say.

If it’s any consolation, the computer simulation also shows China would suffer “huge casualties” if it goes the invasion route. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be a major factor if and when the CCP decides it needs to invade.

At the DNC, Kerry made an eloquent plea to bush to end the personal attacks and focus instead on the issues that will affect the lives of the American people. bush’s response was to ignore the offer; a few days later the SBVFT launched their first salvo, resulting in a veritable orgy of talk-show battles, angry accusations, indignant punditizing and blogosphere pyrotechnics.

Anything goes now. Expect bush’s being awol to re-emerge like never before, and expect even greater polarization, if that is conceivable. bush will do anything to hold onto his goodies. But unlike Gore, Kerry will fight equally hard to take them away. The latest outrages will energize him more than ever. Kid gloves are off.

The blogger covering the attacks on Kerry most eloquently is digby, whom I only recently discovered. Here’s what he wrote today, a great summary post of the sorry little effort to smear Kerry.

Just keep in mind that the swift boat smear is being done to obscure the fact that our great wartime leader couldn’t even fulfill his pathetic little obligation to guard the Alamo during the Vietnam war, which is emblematic of his terrible handling of the war in Iraq and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Character will out. That’s all it is. And that all of these so-called patriots are willing to smear a man who volunteered and actually served in order to cover for this sad little fellow who never spent a minute outside the cozy comfort of his daddy’s protection says a lot more about them than it does about Kerry.

There were many honorable ways to behave during the Vietnam era. There were those who believed in the war and volunteered to fight it. There were those who were drafted and went as a matter of duty. There were those who fought the war, came to believe it was wrong and came back to change the policy. And there were those who believed it was wrong and refused to participate. All of those people stood up for what they believed in and did their duty as they saw it.

There was one group, however, who supported the war but didn’t stand up for their beliefs — refusing to take the heat that being a citizen, particularly a young man, in those days required. They played the system. Many of them “had other priorities” using every possible excuse, all the while vociferously backing the war effort — as long as someone else fought it. And, the worst of this group were the privileged who supported the war but merely pretended to fight it by having their connections pull strings to get them into safe stateside duty that they could later claim amounted to “service.” They would have pictures of themselves looking handsome in their uniforms. And they could swagger around with their buddies and drop casual hints for the rest of their lives about their days in the military. But even those phonies at least actually completed the minimal requirements to claim such affiliation.

It is very rare to find someone who finagled their way into the guard ahead of people who’d been waiting longer, had the government spend huge sums of money training him to be a pilot, quit flying less than two years later of his own accord and then dropped out of sight many months before his duty was fulfilled. It’s even rarer to find someone like this declared a fine figure of a man who served his country well — particularly when there are so many who actually did.

It is a very sad thing to see military men stoop to the level of smearing a combat veteran in a desperate bid to get a fey little richboy legitimately elected. I never thought I’d see the day they would debase their own service and that of all their comrades in order to play cheap partisan politics on behalf of such a man. As one who grew up in as military family, it makes me sick to see it.

Me too.

As most of us know, the blogosphere is ablaze with posts about John Kerry’s “Christmas in Cambodia.” As usual, Instapuppy is leading the charge, and the “war bloggers” are all on over-time. The issue made its way into comments on this site, and I thought I’d give it a post all its own. I do this with reluctance because the issue isn’t really worthy of my time or yours, but I want my take to be on the record. Most of this post is based on a comment I left an hour ago on another site.

We’ve seen it before. Republican lawyers pore over every word the Democratic candidate has ever said or done, no matter how long ago or in what context, looking for a “Gotcha!” line they can use to embarrass him. They look for a Willie Horton photo. They look to see whether Al Gore was actually present at a fire he said he witnessed years ago. It doesn’t have to be of any import; it may be totally innocent or a slip-up or a moment of stupidity. No matter; if they can make it “stick,” if it can effectively smear the candidate, then the job has been done.

Do you remember during the last election when Gore made a remark about the cost of his mother’s prescription medicine, and it turned out he exaggerated the price? Or how he said he “invented the Internet” (which, of course, he never really said)? The other side seizes on these minor issues and blows them up as though all heaven and earth depends on their authenticity. Gotcha!!

Politicians sometimes embellish. Sometimes they exaggerate. Sometimes they lie (and there, Bush is the absolute king). Sometimes they’re misquoted. But to go back and harp on something of at most marginal significance — to go after it with this pathological vehemence tells us both how desperate and how unscrupulous the Bush people are. And they are so lucky: they have “third parties” doing all the accusing, so just like in the McCain smear of 2000, they can say their hands are clean. Of course, the rumor mongers are financed by Republican fat cats and led by Reagan’s former PR director, but never mind.

The very worst thing we can learn from the Christmas nonsense is that Kerry lied. Maybe he took a story he heard and adopted it as his own. Maybe he was near Cambodia, and he embellished and romanticized something that happened — I don’t know. Maybe he lied altogether. Okay, Kerry lied. But of course, there are lies and there are lies. A lie like this hurt no one; it perhaps tells us something about the man, but similar stuff can be found on just about every politician. It’s all a smokescreen to detract from the issues that matter.

The Christmas in Cambodia fantasy story and the SBVFT story intertwine, the former being an outgrowth of the latter. Warbloggers keep referring to the “200 witnesses” cited in Unfit to Command, but most of the evidence is based on hearsay and old anecdotes, and most of the men hate Kerry for one reason, his anti-Vietnam War stance. Period, end of story. What we do know is that 9 out of 10 of the men who actually served on Kerry’s boat swear by him. Those SBVFT who are hyping the media weeks before the election (funny, how they came out with this big story at this strategic moment!) were rounded up by Kerry’s 30-year nemesis John O’Neill, and were choreographed by Merrie Spaeth (who does PR work for — seatbelt fastened? — Halliburton!). The whole things smells like a sewer. The Christmas story and the stories of Kerry’s poor leadership, all fanned by John O’Neill, were all over the cable news shows this week. But I have not heard a single man or woman of character in the media or in government embrace them as truth. Those I respect, and even some I don’t, have instead denounced the whole effort as inappropriate and disgusting — and bad for the bush campaign. People like John McCain. Like John MLaughlin. Even Pat Buchanan. Even Bill O’Reilly condemned the tactics of the SBVFT.

Christmas in Cambodia is all a big flashback to 2000, another Karl Rove dirty trick, and thank God there are far more pressing issues the voters are desperate to focus on — little things, like their jobs, the sick economy, a worthless war in Iraq in which their children and spouses are at risk, obscene tax cuts for the rich that will cost their children for generations. Just little stuff. Of course, the cynical commenters here believe all these issues should be off the table while we all expend our energy and time looking into a meaningless and perhaps frivolous statement or lie Kerry has made about his being in Cambodia 30-some years ago.

The marvelous news is it just won’t work. It can’t. We are watching Najaf being pounded today (justifiably or not), we saw the “recovery” implode a week ago with the wretched jobs report, and the deficit is approaching half-a trillion dollars. And we should all slam on the brakes and only worry about where Kerry was at Christmas in 1970 or whenever it was. No, thank you.

Again, let’s assume the worst: Kerry lied. bush’s myriad lies about his military service (no, not the awol issue but how long he trained as a pilot) are rich and well documented. He won’t even answer questions about his alleged coke addiction. The list of serious bush lies makes Kerry’s awful, terrible, despicable “Christmas” lie seem thoroughly insignificant. People lie. I’ve lied, you’ve lied, everyone’s lied. What sets the lies apart are the consequences that result from those lies. And in this area, shrub is the big winner over Kerry, hands down.

Keep banging the drum for this silly story. Few serious people care. It may arise now and then through the election, it may put a dent in the poll numbers for a week, and it’ll give Sean Hannity mutliple orgasms for a while. But people have far more to worry about this year, far more at stake to make their decision based solely on a stupid anecdote.

Last comment: The comments from the usual suspects are predictable: “Where was John Forbes Kerry on such-and-such date when he said he was in Cambodia??? Why did he lie?” Answer: I don’t know, but I think he’ll be addressing the question himself soon enough. He may well have lied; I don’t know. I can’t say I completely don’t care — if he lied, I’d rather he hadn’t, the way I’d rather Gore had given us the real price of his mother’s medicine. It matters, but very little. We already have a president who is a sociopath, a man who lies constantly and in a harmful manner. We are turning the corner. We are in great danger. We are safer now than before we invaded Iraq. We are experiencing great jobs growth. The tax cuts are working. We know them all — they are so casual, it’s impossible to divorce his truths from his prevarications. So why should I care about Kerry’s very minor lie, except to admit it troubles me and I hope he learned from it. You see, bush has been caught in one lie after another but never seems to care about the past, let alone learn from it. I believe — and I admit, it’s a “faith-based” belief — that Kerry is a bigger man than bush, a humbler man, one who listens and learns and grows, a man who is imperfect but infinitely wiser than what we’ve got. To now reject him and stick with a proven liar and warmonger, a man who turned the world’s best economy into a trainwreck and fought a war of personal revenge at the expense of 1,000 American lives — to do this all because Kerry once said he spent Christmas in Cambodia, whether a truth or a lie, would be absurd in the extreme.

So mock on about Kerry’s egregious sin. Attack away. People who think for themselves know better, and reject such superficial and distracting smokescreens for what they are.

Update: Oh, I forgot how on Hannity & Colmes the other night, General Tommy Franks was presented with all this crap about SBVFT and Christmas in Cambodia and he, too rejected it. He said he believed kerry is indeed fit to serve as president, though he hinted he will be voting for bush. Hannity was quite miffed when he couldn’t get the general to slime Kerry. No one of integrity will.

New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey on TV just said he had a sexual affair with a man and is resigning. Incredible. I’m in shock — this is amazing. He admits he’s gay. Unprecedented.

Update: Video clip here.