Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post:

A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn’t work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. …
No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the “good” news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?

I wonder if it will make any difference. The only way it could is if the White House or the GOP were up to pushing the positive story. Evidently they aren’t, and never have been, which is an utter mystery to me. And we might well say that if you don’t have the ability not only to sell a war before it begins, but also during its course — you are not prepared to wage it, or to win it. Hat tip to Bizzy Blog.

Breathtaking. Unprecedented. Fearless. Historic. Excerpt:

Imus: Let me interrupt you for a second, but this is nonsense, Senator Schumer. I want to be respectful, but you can’t possibly be serious and suggest — I mean I’m not a fool. You can’t suggest to me that because the Democrats are now in power that something is going to be done about Walter Reed and about the mess in the Veterans Administration and all of this, and that if the Democrats hadn’t taken control of Congress that nothing would have been done. That’s preposterous; of course it would have.

Schumer: Well, something would have been done if the story would have gotten out . . .

Imus: Here’s another question. Have you ever been over to Walter Reed?

Schumer: Ahh, not in a while, no.

Imus: How long has it been since you’ve been over there?

Schumer: Oh, before Iraq.

Imus: So, before Iraq since you’ve been over to see the soldiers. So, we have elected you — first in the Congress and now in the Senate — and you’ve got a bill now to do something we’ll get to in a minute; but you haven’t even been to Walter Reed Hospital.

Schumer: No, no, no. But I have visited regularly the veterans’ hospitals throughout my state. That’s where I have focused on . . .

There’s much more. As to Imus — I guess there is something to be said for making so much money that you simply don’t care any more. On the other hand, Schumer is the Senate’s most Jewish Jew (sorry, Joe — nothing personal — it’s really a compliment, in a way — see you at the kiddush). And we do know what the “I Man” thinks about them. That’s the only reason I can think of that Imus challenged Schumer head-on while he’s usually pretty obsequious to his left-wing guests (and new friend anti-“neoconservative” Pat Buchanan).

You know what? It’s worth it.

(Via Instapundit.)

In 1972, Dr. Seuss (who was born 103 years ago this week) wrote a book called Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please go Now! A few years later, as the Watergate scandal dragged on to its painful end, columnist Art Buchwald reprinted the book’s text, substituting “Richard M. Nixon” for the title character.

I was going to let the whole Ann Coulter CPAC mess pass without comment, since it happened a couple of days before I started on this blog (eons in blogospheric time), and I figured that there wasn’t anything that needed to be said that hadn’t been said. But tonight I saw this article, in which she not only failed to shut up, but promised that she wouldn’t:

“Apparently our top three Republican nominees aren’t that smart,” Coulter said. “And by the way, if they’re going to start apologizing for everything I say, they better keep that statement handy cause there’s going to be a lot more in the next year.”

All this statement does is confirm my comment and complaint about Coulter from the day of her CPAC speech: everything she does is about her. I don’t particularly care what effect Coulter’s statements might have on the 2008 campaign, nor do I harbor any illusions that in the absence of Coulter, the campaign would be a highbrow, Whig-Clio style political debate about Big Ideas. Still, it would be nice if it weren’t about Ann Coulter.

Unlike Buchwald, I don’t have permission from Mr. Geisel to reprint the whole text, so I’ll just choose this representative excerpt:

Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Ann H. Coulter will you please go now!

And hopefully that will be the last time I ever have to address the subject of that woman.