"Tokyo, Japan, March 26.  In the opening game of the baseball season here between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics, 11 runs were scored." That headline would be unsatisfying to most sports fans, because it doesn't indicate which team won.  But it is very like most of the reporting of battles in Iraq: "The deadliest clashes were in Basra, where at least 47 people were killed and 223 wounded in the two days of fighting," wrote the AP's Kim Gamel in a dispatch March 26. Ms. Gamel was writing about the opening clashes of Operation Knight's Charge, the effort by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to take control of Iraq's second most populous city from Iranian-backed militias, chiefly the Mahdi Army nominally headed by the Moqtada al Sadr. Fighting subsided after Mr. al Sadr called for a cease fire Sunday.   It is rare in the annals of war for the side which is winning to seek a cease fire. 

Egyptian pop singer Shaaban Abdel Rahim, famous for his songs attacking Israel and praising Osama bin Laden, plans to release shortly a new song endorsing Barack Obama for president. Though Shaaban Abdel Rahim is wildly popular in Egypt, I doubt very much that Sen. Obama has ever heard of him.  And I'm sure Sen. Obama wouldn't agree with Mr. Rahim's take on the 9/11 attacks (Hey People, It Was Only a Tower) or the Mohammed cartoon controversy.  But why is Mr. Rahim so fond of Barack Obama? It could be the company he keeps. 

Nearly 4,000 American service members and about 100,000 Iraqis (most of them in the suicide bombings for which al Qaeda has become infamous) have been killed since March 19, 2003.  Has it been worth it? Iraqis apparently think so.  Last week ABC and the BBC released results of a poll conducted in Iraq last month.  In it 55 percent of Iraqis said their lives were going well, up from 39 percent last August.  Forty nine percent of Iraqis think the U.S. invasion was justified, up from 37 percent in August.  The Iraqis have been freed from an oppressive tyrant, and are the recipients of billions of dollars of economic aid.  But has it been worth it for us? The Bush administration had both short and long term strategic goals for invading Iraq; some publicly stated, some not.  All are on the verge of being met.

The Not Ready for Prime Time Players are hilarious on Saturday Night Live, but not so funny in a presidential campaign, as Sen. Barack Obama has learned to his sorrow. Sen. Obama has the thinnest resume of any major presidential candidate in modern times.  He has not bolstered it with his selection of key advisors, most of whom share his inexperience on the national scene. That inexperience has bitten the Obama campaign hard recently.  The gaffes and exposures of four of his main advisors in just the last few days have people asking: How can the freshman Illinois senator be any more ready for prime time than his clearly not-ready advisors?

Never before has a presidential nomination been determined by a do over.  This year there may be two.  And they may not be enough to prevent a bloodbath at the Democrat convention in Denver in August. Despite winning Rhode Island by 18 points, Ohio by 10 points, and Texas by 4 points, Ms. Clinton shaved only 12 delegates from Sen. Obama's lead, with 10 still to be allocated.  That lead is pretty narrow.  Sen. Obama has won 1,366 delegates in primaries and caucuses to date, compared to 1,222 for Sen. Clinton.  Mr. Obama needs 659 delegates more to obtain the 2,025 needed to win the nomination. Sen. Clinton needs 803.  But only 611 delegates are left to be won in the remaining primaries and caucuses, 158 of them in Pennsylvania's primary April 22.  That means the nominee will be picked by the 795 "superdelegates," who have been elected by nobody. It also means the primaries in Michigan and Florida are going to have to be held again.

You probably would have heard of Nadhmi Auchi by now if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. were a Republican. A British citizen of Iraqi descent, Mr. Auchi, 70, is a billionaire, the 279th richest man in the world, according to a Forbes magazine survey last year. A great deal of Mr. Auchi's money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table.  In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan.  Mr. Auchi is also a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has supported Mr. Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.

Texas State Sen. Kirk Watson had an embarrassing moment the night the candidate he is supporting for president won the Wisconsin primary.  MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked him to name a legislative accomplishment of Sen. Barack Obama. "I'm not going to be able to do that tonight," Mr. Watson replied. Or any other night.  Barack Obama, noted National Review's David Frum, has the thinnest resume of any candidate for president since William Jennings Bryan in 1896.  Then 36 (the youngest man ever nominated for president), Bryan had been a congressman for only six undistinguished years when, on July 9, he electrified the Democratic convention in Chicago with his Cross of Gold speech. "Men and women screamed," wrote one eyewitness reporter, and "like demented things, divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air."  He won the nomination the next day. Bryan got creamed in the general election, which suggests there is a limit to how high a populist with little on his resume besides a charismatic personality and a silver tongue can rise.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared again on CNN's "Late Edition" program Sunday (2/10) that the troop surge in Iraq is a failure. Ms. Pelosi's timing was unfortunate for what shreds remain of her credibility.  Her statement coincided with the release by U.S. forces in Iraq Saturday (2/09) of the diary of Abu Tariq, an al Qaeda leader around the northern city of Balad. The diary was captured in a raid in November.  It apparently had been written the month before. Abu Tariq once had nearly 600 fighters under his command, but his force has dwindled to no more than 20.  The chief reason for this, he wrote, was the decision of most Sunni tribes to throw in with the Americans.

I never thought I'd feel sorry for Hillary Clinton.  The truth is I don't.  But I'm grateful to her for removing a stigma from the guy I wanted to be president, Rudy Giuliani.  We have many months yet to go in this presidential election cycle, but already it's becoming notorious for whopping misjudgments.  Until recently, the stigma for having run the worst campaign in modern history seemed to be a dead heat between my guy Rudy for forsaking the earlier contests to focus on Florida, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson who thought he could win the GOP nomination from his hammock.  But Hillary Clinton is overtaking them.  How does one go from being the "inevitable" nominee of the Democratic party to a rapidly sinking underdog?  It helps to have a charismatic opponent like Sen. Barack Obama, and to not be very charismatic yourself.  But most of Hillary's wounds are self inflicted.

[Jack Kelly makes as good a case as can be made for John McCain.  I remain afflicted with what he calls MDS.  Yet I readily admit he makes a good suggestion for a vaccine. ---JW] The race for the GOP nomination for president is all but over, save for weeping and gnashing of teeth among conservatives. I don't think Sen. John McCain would be a good president.  He lacks the temperament for it; he has virtually no managerial experience, and the economy is, as George Will put it, "a subject with which McCain is neither conversant, nor eager to become so."  But there is a big difference between being a mediocre president -- as one could argue George W. Bush has been -- and being an awful one.  Yet many conservatives talk about Sen. McCain as if he were Satan's first cousin.  What Web logger Roger L. Simon calls "McCain Derangement Syndrome" is as irrational and unbecoming as is the Bush Derangement Syndrome that afflicts so many liberals.

When Democrats and Republicans agree quickly on something, it's usually either a meaningless gesture, or a raid on the federal treasury. The economic stimulus package agreed to by President Bush and congressional leaders will be more beneficial to politicians than it will be to our economy. The deal -- the principal element of which is to give income tax rebates to people who pay little or no federal income tax -- is driven by fear our economy may be going into recession.  Since the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, we're not in one yet, and neither the Congressional Budget Office nor the Federal Reserve thinks we'll go into one this year.  But the economy is weakening, for two principal reasons.

Last Sunday (1/13), the New York Times published a 7,000-word investigative report (it started on the front page under a three column hed above the fold, and filled more than two full pages inside) that is a testament to what can be accomplished by journalists who lack brains or integrity, but who possess an agenda. The theme of the story, headlined "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles," is that veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, scarred by the horrors they experienced, have launched a murder spree upon returning to the United States. Apparently Ms. Sontag and Ms. Alvarez did a search of the Nexis database of newspaper articles and found 121 stories of murders committed by veterans since the war on terror began. They then described some of those murders in lugubrious and exhaustive detail. Ms. Sontag and Ms. Alvarez apparently have learned what little they "know" about the military from Rambo movies, and never learned much about statistics.  Their story doesn't just grossly exaggerate and sensationalize a problem, it fabricates one that mostly doesn't exist.  It's the sloppiest, most biased story I've ever seen in journalism.

Sen. John Kerry always seems to be a day late and a dollar short. Today (1/10), Sen. Kerry traveled to South Carolina to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president: "Who better to turn a new page in American politics?" Sen. Kerry said at a rally with Sen. Obama at the College of Charleston.  "We are electing judgment and character, not years on this earth." There is nothing wrong with the choice of Sen. Obama to endorse, or (for Democrats) the reasons Sen. Kerry gave for endorsing him, which included Sen. Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq "from the beginning."  But the timing was weird. Then again, John Kerry always seems weird.

Pakistan reminds us that in foreign policy, often the only choices we have are between bad and worse. The place has become the central front in the war on terror.  Perhaps it always was, since al Qaeda's leadership took up residence there after being chased out of Afghanistan, and the war in Afghanistan cannot be won so long as the Taliban has a safe haven in Pakistan's northwest territories. The assassination Dec. 27 of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto may turn what for us has been an unsatisfactory situation into a catastrophe. Pervez Musharraf has been so weakened that he is more than ever a slender reed on which to lean.  But he's a stout oak compared to the alternatives to lead Pakistan - one of whom has taken a $1 million bribe from Osama bin Laden.

In all of American history, only a handful of generals -- Grant and Sherman in the Civil War, and Douglas MacArthur with the Inchon landing in the Korean War -- have turned a war around in so short a time as has Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq.  And no one has done it with so few casualties, or so little civilian "collateral damage."  What has happened in Iraq since the troop surge began about this time last year is a tribute to the kindness and the humanity as well as to the courage and skill of U.S. soldiers and Marines.  And to the genius and leadership of David Petraeus.  Grant, Sherman, and MacArthur were national heroes.  Their names were on everyone's lips.  Parades were thrown in their honor.  Grant became president.  Sherman could have been, had he wanted to be.  MacArthur was touted for the Republican nomination in 1952, which went instead to another successful general. David Petraeus, on the other hand, is the Rodney Dangerfield of successful American commanders.  He didn't even make the top ten in Gallup's poll of the most admired men for 2007.

The first thing his wife would do if she became president, Bill Clinton said in South Carolina last week, would be to dispatch him and the first President Bush on an around the world diplomatic mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation and influence by the policies of the current President Bush. George H.W. Bush became friendly with the man who beat him in 1992 when they worked together to raise funds for tsunami relief.  But the elder Mr. Bush made it clear that neither Bill nor Hillary had ever discussed such a diplomatic mission with him, and he wouldn't have been interested if they had, because he strongly supports his son's foreign policy. The episode reminds us that Bill Clinton's relationship with the truth remains problematic.  The theme -- that President Bush's policies, particularly with regard to the war in Iraq, have cost us the respect and support of our traditional allies -- is an article of faith among Democrats.  But it is untrue.  On the whole, our president is a world success.

"Blowback" is an intelligence term for adverse, unintended consequences of secret operations. The CIA first used it in a report on the 1953 operation that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Some in the intelligence community (IC) have been working with liberal journalists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to embarrass President Bush and to stymie his foreign policy initiatives. The most successful of these covert operations was the Valerie Plame affair, in which White House officials were falsely blamed for "outing" a CIA undercover officer who was not in fact undercover. (It was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who inadvertently disclosed Ms. Plame's identity.) The most recent is the new National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and hasn't resumed it. Michael Ledeen, a former consultant to the National Security Council, described the NIE as "policy advocacy masquerading as serious intelligence." The apparent purpose of the NIE is to make it politically impossible for President Bush to take military action against Iran. But the effort has been so bald that it is blowing back on its authors.

Those who watched the Republican presidential "debate" in Iowa yesterday (12/12) now understand why the Des Moines Register is such a lousy newspaper. "That was not just the worst debate of 2007, that was the worst debate in Western history, and that includes the ancient Greeks," said columnist Charles Krauthammer.  "There is no record in any major European record of a debate this transcendingly and crushingly dull." This wasn't the fault of the candidates, all of whom turned in credible performances.  The blame for this flop belongs to the debate's moderator, Des Moines Register editor Carolyn Washburn.  While most commentators compared her to an overbearing elementary school teacher, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard likened her to Nurse Ratched, the villain in Ken Kesey's 1962 novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." There was a ray of hope.  The highlight of the debate, such as it was, came when Fred Thompson, like Kesey's hero Randle McMurphy, defied Nurse Ratched.  His putdown was quickly put up on YouTube:

Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and probably won't be able to build a bomb before 2015 if it does restart it, a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has concluded.  That's very good news...if it's true. But that's a BIG if.  The NIE is a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess), not a statement of proven fact.  It's a SWAG from an Intelligence Community (IC) whose predictive record about the Middle East has been poor.  It's a SWAG that's challenged by Israeli intelligence, whose predictive history is much better.  And it's a SWAG that is diametrically opposed to the last SWAG the IC issued on Iran's nuclear program. An IC that had "high confidence" in a 2005 NIE that Iran was building a bomb and was resistant to international pressure now has "high confidence" that Iran stopped building it two years before that NIE was issued! 

Denial is the first stage of grieving. Democrats seem stuck there when it comes to the war in Iraq. It's odd that his fellow Democrats are mourning success in Iraq, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech Nov. 8: "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that the progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there." Democrats have been enabled in their denial by a news media which has been reluctant to report the dramatically improving circumstances in Iraq.  But that's changing.  The New York Times has had positive stories two days in a row.  The Los Angeles Times and Newsweek have noticed. This is dismaying for Democrats because journalists are herd animals.  When the bell cows point toward a new story line, the herd stampedes in that direction.  "The herd is likely to grow larger because the evidence of success in Baghdad and elsewhere is so palpable that reporters, regardless of their view of the war, were bound to acknowledge it at some point," said Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard. So Democrats had better work their way through the denial phase of grief fast, because if they're saying in January what they've been saying in November, they'll look ridiculous -- or worse.

We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our material resources have been squandered, our best people killed, and our reputation around the world is circling the drain.  We must withdraw immediately. No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al Qaeda had little presence in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein.  But once he was toppled, Al Qaeda's chieftains decided to make Iraq the central front in the global jihad against the Great Satan.  "The most important and serious issue today for the whole world is this third world war, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation," Osama bin Laden said in an audio tape posted on Islamic Web sites in December, 2004.  "It is raging in the land of the Two Rivers.  The world's millstone and pillar is Baghdad, the capital of the caliphate." Jihadis, money and weapons were poured into Iraq from all over the Moslem world.  All for naught.  Al Qaeda has been defeated in Iraq.

Most pundits in Washington have already conceded the Democrat nomination to Sen. Clinton because of the large leads she holds in national opinion polls.  But that lead is illusory, because normal people don't pay much attention to politics a year before the election.  It's not a surprise that there are a lot of undecideds in the national polls, or that the frontrunners in both parties are the candidates with the highest name recognition. The polls in Iowa -- where a higher proportion of voters is paying attention, because the Iowa caucuses are less than two months away -- tell a different story.  There, Hillary Clinton's lead over Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is within the margin of error. Sen. Obama is so wet behind the ears dolphins could swim there.  But he's a likeable guy, and people tend to vote for the candidate they like.

On Sept. 1, 2004, Chechens affiliated with al Qaeda seized a middle school in Beslan, Russia.  In the three day siege, 334 people --most of them children -- were killed.  Could something like that happen here? * In May of 2006, two Saudi students at the University of South Florida boarded a school bus.  They were "cagey and evasive" in explaining why they boarded the bus, said a spokesman for the Hillsborough County sheriff. * In March of 2007, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement warning that Moslems "with ties to extremist groups" were signing up to be school bus drivers. *  A Houston television station reported in August of this year that 17 large yellow school buses have been stolen. Al Qaeda prefers middle schools because the girls are old enough to rape, but the boys aren't big enough to fight back, says retired Army LtCol. Dave Grossman, who runs a private security firm.  Why would al Qaeda contemplate something so monstrous?

Perennial presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat congressman from Ohio, told a group of bloggers last week he plans to force House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take up his measure to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Ms. Pelosi "is working very quietly and very effectively behind the scenes" to gather votes to impeach President Bush, Rep. Diane Watson (D-Cal) told a town hall meeting in Los Angeles Oct. 17. Mr. Kucinich, Ms. Watson and Ms. Pelosi are three of the reasons why I think historians will regard the Democrat sweep in the 2006 midterms as the essential prerequisite to the Republican victory in the 2008 presidential election.

The New Republic is one of the founding bastions of American liberalism, founded in 1914.  For months now, its youthful editors have been standing by a story of their "Baghdad Diarist" alleging revolting behavior by our soldiers in Iraq. The allegations were shown to be false, no witnesses were found, still the editors stood their ground.  Then they had a telephone conversation with their Diarist, one Pvt. Beauchamp, who refused in the conversation to confirm his story. The phone conversation took place on Sept. 6 and was taped.  When it was leaked this week, New Republic readers discovered that the editors, having never told them about the conversation, had been lying to them all along.  There goes the credibility of yet another liberal bastion.

It's getting harder to write negative stories about the situation in Iraq, but Jay Price and Qasim Zein of the McClatchy Newspapers did their best: "A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery (in Najaf) by at least one third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds," they wrote Oct. 16. Nostalgia for the bad old days was also evident in the decision of the Washington Post to publish Tuesday (10/16) an op-ed signed by 12 former U.S. Army captains deploring the situation in Iraq.  The Post neglected to mention that none of them have been in Iraq since Gen. Petraeus took command and we started winning this war. Perhaps the Post chose veterans whose information is old and stale because those serving in Iraq now might not say what the editors of the Washington Post would like to have you hear.

The last days on earth of Abu Osama al Tunisi apparently were filled with anxiety: "We are desperate for your help," he said in a letter to al Qaeda chieftains. A copy of the letter was found by U.S. troops sifting through the rubble of the building in Musayb, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, where on Sept. 25 Mr. al Tunisi had been meeting with two local al Qaeda operatives when an F-16 cut their discussion short. Mr. al Tunisi was responsible for bringing foreign al Qaeda recruits into Iraq and placing them in operational cells, U.S. military spokesmen said.  That effort suffered a major blow when "Muthanna," the al Qaeda emir for the Iraq-Syrian border region, was killed in early September. Al Tunisi and Muthanna were among 28 local, city or regional al Qaeda leaders killed or captured in September.  Two other very big shots nailed last month were Muhammad al Afari, who was responsible for the bloody attack on the Kurdish Yazidi sect in August, and Abu Taghrid, who ran a car bomb network. Al Tunisi wasn't alone in calling for help.  "Al Qaeda has lost half its leadership over the summer, and American intelligence collectors have amassed a huge number of desperate messages from al Qaeda leaders and operatives," reports StrategyPage. The beat of victory goes on.

"Maybe he was just high on his drugs again," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.  "But that shouldn't be an excuse." That sounds suspiciously like the sort of personal attack Democrats claim to decry.  And Sen. Harkin was just one of an impressive number of big foot Democrats to take to the Senate floor last Monday (10/01) to calumniate conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. It's odd enough to have the Senate Majority Leader, his deputy, and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, among others, take up the Senate's time to attack a radio talk show host, instead of, say, working on the appropriations bills that were supposed to have been enacted into law before the new fiscal year began Oct. 1st.  But there was something odder still about Monday's performance.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich hasn't been getting as much attention as he likes lately.  So he's told a few folks he'll run for president if he can raise $30 million by the end of November. My advice to Newt is to buy lottery tickets.  But wealthy supporters of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani should consider helping Mr. Gingrich out. We have in effect semifinal matches between Mr. Giuliani and Sen. McCain for the more moderate GOP vote, and between Mr. Romney and Mr. Thompson for the more conservative vote.  A Gingrich candidacy would split the conservative vote in the early primaries further. Since I'm for Rudy, that's reason enough for me to be excited about a Gingrich candidacy.  But I have a less cynical reason.

Last Thursday (9/13) al Qaeda killed with a roadside bomb Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the founder and leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, the coalition of Sunni tribes that banded together to fight al Qaeda.  He, more than any person save Gen. David Petraeus, is responsible for the dramatic turnaround in Iraq. The political "leadership" in Iraq has ranged from poor to frightful, in large part because Saddam Hussein ruthlessly murdered anyone who might one day oppose him.  But Sheikh Abu Risha rose far above mediocrity.  "It is an Iraqi national disaster," Iraq's national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, said at Sheikh Abu Risha's funeral Friday.  "What Abu Risha did for Iraq, no single man has done in the country's history." By murdering the Lion of Anbar, al Qaeda hopes to fragment the Anbar Salvation Council, weaken Sunni efforts to fight the terror group, and to foment strife between Sunni and Shia. It could work out that way.  But the murder of Sheikh Abu Risha also may backfire.  More than 1,500 mourners attended his funeral.  Mourners chanted "We will take our revenge," and "There is no God but Allah and al Qaeda is the enemy of Allah," the BBC reported.

Fresh from having put al Qaeda to flight in Iraq, General David Petraeus routed the Democrats in Washington this week. Gen. Petraeus came to Washington in obedience to a law passed by Democrats that he report on the situation in Iraq. But Democrats wanted to pick a fight with him, because they didn't like what he had to say. "There is a long American tradition of savaging failed generals," wrote Michael Gerson in the Washington Post.  "It is more novel to attack a successful one." And not very wise.  When asked in a New York Times/CBS poll who they trust the most on Iraq, 21 percent of respondents chose Congress.  Sixty eight percent chose the U.S. military. When asked about the MoveOn ad, Gen. Petraeus had this classy response: "Needless to say I disagree with the message of those exercising the First Amendment right that so many generations of soldiers have fought and died protecting." While Gen. Petraeus was being classy, Democrats were not.

There was something odd about the Osama bin Laden video made public last week, noticed Web logger George Maschke (Booman Tribune). "The video freezes at about 1 minute and 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30," (10½ minutes later)  Mr. Maschke said.  "The video then freezes again at 14:02 and remains frozen until the end.  All references to current events occur when the video is frozen." Could the current events references have been added to an older tape? Osama is dressed just as he was in his last video, released in 2004.  But that may be simply because there isn't much of a selection at the mall near his cave. Bin Laden sounds more like Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's nutty talk show host, than like an Islamic terrorist leader.

Next week, Gen. David Petreaus will make his report to Congress on the situation in Iraq.  Much will be written about what he has to say.  I'd like to devote a few words to those who will be passing judgment on Gen. Petreaus' report, relative to their military service to America - or lack thereof. We are in the midst of a world war, as the disruption this week of bomb plots in Denmark and Germany reminds us, or ought to.  It figures to be a long war.  What Congress does or doesn't do in response to Gen. Petreaus' report largely could determine whether we win or lose. But the number of senators and representatives who are veterans -- that is to say, who have the experience to make an informed judgment about what Gen. Petreaus has to say -- is the lowest it's been in half a century. There's an easy way to fix that.

Democratic leaders in California have pledged to spend millions of dollars to defeat an initiative proposed by a Republican lawyer to divide California's electoral votes by congressional district.  If Thomas Hiltachk can gather enough signatures, the Presidential Election Reform Act will be on the ballot next June. If it passes, it will take effect for the 2008 presidential election in California. [Who Thomas Hiltachk is will blow you away.  See note at end.  -JW] Democrats may have their work cut out for them.  A Field poll indicated 47 percent of voters in the Golden State favored it, with 35 percent opposed. Democratic angst is understandable.  With 55 electoral votes, California is by far the biggest electoral prize.  And it's a prize which has been safely in Democratic hands.  In the last four presidential elections, Democrats have won by landslides. But within California there are 20 congressional districts that reliably vote Republican -- an electoral bloc the size of Ohio.  If it were taken away from the Democrats and given to the GOP, its difficult to see how the Democrats can win the presidency in 2008. The Dem's act of hara-kiri, however, is in what they are proposing to counter the congressional district plan.  It is pure political insanity.

Three scandals involving politicians were made public in the past week.  The difference in coverage by the media explains a lot. You've heard about the arrest of Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho for allegedly soliciting homosexual sex in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport.  That's been all over the news since the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported it Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that a lower middle class family in suburban San Francisco has contributed $45,000 to Hillary Clinton and $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, contributions they almost certainly couldn't afford on the $49,000 annual salary chief breadwinner William Paw earned as a postal worker.  On Wednesday, the Federal Elections Commission levied the third highest fine in its history -- $775,000 -- on the George Soros' funded group, ACT (Americans Coming Together) for flouting campaign finance laws in the 2004 election.  ACT claimed it was using money for non-partisan purposes when in fact it was spending millions to defeat President Bush, the FEC said. Sex scandals are, er, sexier than money scandals, which is one reason why you've heard more about the travails of Sen. Craig than you have about Mr. Paw or ACT.  There is another.  And it reveals the grave moral difference between Republican and Democrat voters.

America's democracy has always had its flaws, but it has long been considered the best. Our political "leaders" are changing that. Those of you who have lives may not have noticed that our presidential nominating process, which in recent years has been teetering on the brink of insanity, has plunged into madness. The Iowa caucuses traditionally have been held eight days before the New Hampshire primary.  If New Hampshire moves its primary to Jan. 8, and Iowa keeps the normal separation, then the Iowa caucuses would be held on New Year's Day. Though caucus goers may make better choices when they're roaring drunk, and it would be delightful to make political reporters work that day, this is unlikely to happen.  New Hampshire is likely to opt for its first ever Saturday primary, so Iowa can hold its caucus during the election year, though barely after the college football bowl games have ended.  But at this writing it is possible the voting for president in 2008 will begin in 2007.

It was a small change, made quietly two weeks ago on the website of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  But it could have big implications. Al Gore claimed in his 2006 crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that nine of the ten hottest years in history have been in the last decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record. Not so, says the GISS, which is affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, and is headed by Dr. James Hansen, scientific godfather of global warming alarmism.  According to the GISS, the hottest years ever in the U.S. were, in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939.  Only one year in the last five (2006, 4th) is on this list, and only three in the last ten, compared to four in the 1930s.