I attended a candlelight vigil outside the White House this evening. It was organized by MoveOn, one of hundreds of ‘New Priorities’ events held throughout the country today. My guess would put about 150 people there, which was pretty good turnout considering the full day of events and the rain that just let up in [...]

From Matt Yglesias: It’s a poignant reminder of how crazy the current version of our policy — basically help equip anyone who’ll accept our help and kind of hope for the best — has become. Writing about the WaPo reporter killed recently in Iraq.

So, it’s looking more and more like Blackwater personnel basically opened fire on Iraqis in Nisoor Square in September. An investigation has been started, of course, which meant Congress couldn’t get any actual answers out of Blackwater CEO Erik Prince earlier this month. And now the Iraqi government (such as it is) is trying to [...]

I’ve started regularly reading Wired’s Danger Room, a blog that focuses on defense policy and other related issues. For example, they’ve done a really great job following Blackwater’s involvement in the Nisour Square incident, and of contractors in general. The scope is a bit different than that of coverage by Spencer Ackerman over at TPMMuckraker, [...]

Vis-à-vis my earlier post on Bush policy, Matt Yglesias has a great Guardian piece online about Bush’s pie-in-the-sky idea that Iraq was supposed to be an example of why other countries shouldn’t build WMD or nukes: The crux of the matter, however, is that the Iraq war was not just about Iraq, but about a [...]

Ezra Klein, commenting on the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment, makes this great point: The Senate’s adoption of the Lieberman/Kyl amendment designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist group” isn’t merely embarrassing, it’s counterproductive. Designating the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group — which in contemporary American terms means they’re a target — makes it all the more important [...]

Clay Bennett:

There was an interesting theme running through the Webernets yesterday regarding the Iraq war, the surge, and the inevitable aftermath of our future withdrawl. First, Juan Cole suggests that Democrats are going to be dragged through the mud when, after Bush leaves office, the U.S. begins to reduce the number of troops in Iraq. Josh [...]

The LA Times reports what everybody else is thinking: The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush’s plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor. [...]

Take six minutes to watch this Glenn Greenwald video about the Patreaus report:

A “knowledgeable Iraq observer” over at Laura Rozen’s place offers some commentary and analysis of the surge, including background on the dynamics in play between Iraq’s ethnic groups, the role of Al Queda in Iraq, and whether our additional troops has had any effect at all: What about the former insurgents that are now cooperating [...]

Josh Marshall hits at something we should all be wary of as the “report” is delivered: In other words, it’s not just a matter of getting the numbers from Petraeus and his staff and deciding whether you believe them or not. They won’t even tell us what the numbers are — let alone how they [...]