If they make actual progress, the need for contracts begins to dry up.

The reason we need contracts is because there’s a â€war†going on. And to prove there’s a â€war,†there has to be a mounting casualty count.

We keep thinking the rising number of American dead is going to undermine support for the war. But the GOP plan has always been precisely the opposite. The more who die, the stronger they think their â€let their deaths not be in vain†argument gets. The more who die, the more stinging they think their â€cut and run†accusations become.

That could hardly be more concisely or effectively put.

What a devasting indictment of this administration. Why aren’t we seeing this on op-ed pages across the country? (Rhetorical question)

Great overview.

Even with the SWIFT program, what are the chances that we can track down terrorist sources and funding if we can’t find where we mislaid that 9 billion of Iraq reconstruction money?

We don’t know yet, and we may never know, but calling the arrests in Florida a â€sting†is premature in my opinion.

To me, a sting is when you hear that a man is looking to hire somebody to kill his wife and you slip in a cop who pretends to be a contractor who tapes the conversation and nails the guy on conspiracy. Huzzah. I heartily approve.

But was this a sting? Or did an FBI infiltrator join a wacko group and start making specific suggestions about targets it might strike and how it might do so, tape the stupidly excited responses of others in the group, then trigger arrests? That is not a sting, but something else entirely.

Several of us ex-SDSers managed in 1976 to obtain our individual FBI files via the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act. Although much was blacked out, by judicious comparison of each others’ files, we figured out who two police infiltrators were and probably a third. Mirabile dictu, they were the fellows who had introduced discussions about bombing this or that, or assassinating political leaders. We had, in all cases, ejected them after listening them repeat such suggestions over several months in the late ’60s.

As I said, I make no judgments in this particular case. But I remain skeptical.

But the GWOT delivered two elections already, and will likely deliver two more.

Don’t think of it as a ’war’ — think of it as the world’s most expensive campaign commercial.

The real war aim is the delegitimization and marginalization of any domestic opposition to Junta Boy and his kleptocrats, for as much as a generation.