Free Republic

Let's give congressional Democrats the benefit of the doubt: Assume some of them earnestly think they're doing the right thing to insist on adding to the supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war benchmarks and timetables for withdrawal. Still, their own arguments--taken at face value--don't hold up. Democrats in Congress have made three superficially plausible claims: (1) Benchmarks and timetables will "incentivize" the Maliki government to take necessary steps it would prefer to avoid. (2) We can gradually withdraw over the next year so as to step out of sectarian conflict in Iraq while still remaining to fight al Qaeda. (3)...

Case Study: Lebanon Case mnemonic: Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution Title: The Cedar Revolution: Mission Unaccomplished-Reasons and Remedies. http://www.alcc-research.com/perspective/CedarRevolution.html

On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on President Bush's nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. But that is now in doubt, as Sen. Joseph Biden, the panel's ranking Democrat, warns that Democrats might seek another delay in voting on this nomination that was originally scheduled for a vote three weeks ago. The pretext for the Biden complaint is that the State Department hasn't provided evidence of how Mr. Bolton used intelligence information in his speeches. Although Sen. John Kerry, another member of the Foreign Relations Committtee's anti-Bolton bloc, could not...