We have a big week coming up in terms of our failing open-ended occupation of Iraq.  Here are some dates:

• Tuesday April 8th deadline for Mahdi Army members to turn in all weapons to Iraqi government of be disarmed by force.
• Tuesday or Wednesday General Petraeus to testify before congress.
• Wednesday April 9th big Million person march of Shi'ia in Najaf  making the fifth anniversary of the start of the occupation.
• Thursday April 10th Secretary Gates to testify before congress.

There is something that needs to be put on the table about John McCain that can't wait.  The blow-up in Iraq has put that back in the front pages and we can expect to hear McCain talk about how this proves how correct he is that we need to fight there bigger and better to achieve the Victory our Troops Deserve.

For McCain this is all about Vietnam. This man truly believes that the only reason that we lost Vietnam was that the politicians in charge of things were not willing to fully unleash the US military -- in particular the Air Force.   Take a look at this old article in The Nation from the 2000 campaign McCain's Vietnam by Robert Dreyfuss. The short version of Dreyfuss' assessment of McCain after traveling with him in New Hampshire is this:

Angry in temperament and pugnacious in style, McCain exhibits a swaggering readiness to avenge America's defeat in Vietnam. . . . 

There is a big thread by Jerome Armstrong on MyDD this AM about a LA Times column by  black civil right activist and long timeformer NAACP staffer Michael Meyers titled Obama Blew It wherein he finds Obama's address the other day lacking in many ways. 

I think that before we simply accept the word of a black "expert" on race relation we need to look at some of his recent positions on various issues.  He seems to get a lot of ink and air time based on his contrarian views. 

ABC news is reporting that it was not the investigation of a prostitution ring that snared up the Democratic Governor, but rather was an exhaustive federal investigation of his finances by the Justice Department with help from the FBI and IRS that in the end uncovered payments that the governor had been making to prostitutes.   This lead to the busting of the ring in order to gather confirmation that in fact the politician had been employing prostitutes.

I have to wonder how many other Democrats are having all of their expenditures gone over with a find tooth comb by the Justice Department and IRS.  Is that really what we pay these people to do?  I wonder how many Republican politicians are getting the same type of investigation of all of the payments that they make?

Take a look at this article today

UN: Some 350,000 Gazans stream into Egypt as militants blast border wall
. . .

Some 350,000 Palestinians poured out of Gaza and into Egypt early Wednesday, the United Nations said, after masked gunmen blew dozens of holes in the wall delineating the border.

The Gazans rushed to purchase food, fuel, and other supplies made scarce by Israel's blockade of the Strip, after militants detonated 17 bombs in the early morning hours, destroying some two-thirds of the metal wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

Hamas did not take responsibility for knocking the border wall down, but Hamas militants quickly took control of the frontier, as Egyptian border guards took no action.

I was a bit surprised when in last night's debate Hillary explained that the attacks that took place in Brittan just after Gordon Brown became PM were clearly the result of  a high level decision of Al Qaida to "test" Brown.  As proof of this she claimed that they had gotten special training abroad.

Reading Juan Cole this AM I came to the his extract from the Reuters news of violence in Iraq and this entry

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed one suspected insurgent and arrested four members of an Iranian-backed special groups cell during an operation in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

I assume that the formulation "Iranian-backed special groups cell" came directly from a U.S. military news release and I wondered where this came from.  My understanding has been that "eastern Baghdad" aka Sadr City is in general the stronghold of the Mahdi Army and civilian branches of the Sadr movement.

I did a few searches on that language and found that the whole "special groups" was a term that had been injected into the discussion of Shia violence in Iraq last July by  Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, in a news conferenceat the "Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad" in early July.

Juan Cole made a somewhat contrarian argument this AM that asks the provocative question: Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?

Professor Cole's thinking seems to go as follows:

• The next president will be a Democrat
   
• That next president will start to end the occupation of Iraq in the summer of '09
   
• As things look now it is likely that when we leave several civil wars will break out (Shia vs. Shia in the Basra area, Shia vs. Sunni in Baghdad area, and Sunni Arabs vs. Kurds and Turkmen in Kirkuk area).  This will be ugly an likely bring in other regional powers and could well cause a spike in oil prices.

The danger Professor Cole sees in this is that the next president will have happen to him/her the same thing that happened to President Ford when we finally totally lost the war in Viet Nam.  Or what happened to President Carter when oil prices spiked and put the economy into "stagflation".

I heard a several legal types say that -- notwithstanding its nonverbal nature -- this was a clear case of "solicitation of an illegal sex act" but until now I never could quite understand just what the "illegal" act was here. 

I think that the answer is to be found in this blog post by a gay guy who seems to know something about the "T-room" scene.

It seems to now be the official bi-partisan position that there is a grave danger that al Qaeda will take over Iraq unless we use our military to prevent it.

This line about what will happen if we leave is of course the latest talking point of the Bush administration.  In a speech President Bush  gave yesterday a large section is devoted to supporting his argument that in Iraq we are fighting the same people who attacked us on 9/11

Today I will consider the arguments of those who say that al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq are separate entities. I will explain why they are both part of the same terrorist network -- and why they are dangerous to our country.

As mentioned in Sicko Ronald Reagan got is start in national politics when the AMA hired him for a campaign to defeat what we now call Medicare.  Operation Coffeecup involved making a stereo LP entitled RONALD REAGAN speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE [link is .mp3 downloadable or playable with properly configured browser].  In the first ever such marketing campaign of its type that LP was distributed on the ladies' auxiliary (doctors wives) of the AMA in every county in America. 

On the July 5 edition of Hardball [transcript] Bob Shrum was up against former Cheney aid Ron Christie when the discussion was pushed into the area of Clinton's pardons.  Shrum says

I do not defend all of those pardons that Bill Clinton made on his last day in office. But I think there is a critical distinction; none of those pardons has anyone every alleged could have in any way insulated him from some kind of criminal investigation.

At this point Christie named Susan Mcdougal and Henry Cisneros as examples where Clinton had done just that.

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 The BBC is reporting that a beloved Mickey Mouse© clone who entertained Palestinian children on the Hamas-affiliated al-Aqsa channel has met an untimely death at the hands of Israeli agents before the very eyes of his horrified young fans.

This just in from AP via Joshua Marshall -- Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq [6/29 update: See the exact quote and scathing comments on this from Juan Cole today]

Some time ago I posted about Liam Madden who joined the Marines out of the local high school but who after a tour in Iraq helped start the Appeal for Redress movement that involved sending a public letter to Congress asking for "redress" from various conditions related to the war in Iraq -- the term "redress" come from a statute that gives even active duty military the right to petition for "redress" from congress.

As of now both he and his fellow Appeal for Redress founder Adam Kokesh have both received honorable discharges from the Marines but still have some time to serve in the Inactive Ready Reserve. Sgt. Kokesh is due to have that service end June 18th of this year but he has now gotten a letter telling him that a hearing will be held on June 4th to decide if his discharge should be changed to a dishonorable one. Sgt. Kokesh tells his own story (and asks for help with his legal defense on this blog posting Legal Defense Fund for Adam Kokesh) on his personal blog. The posting includes scans of the legal documents that have been sent to him.

It looks like there is hope for hard pressed Iraqi farmers after all.  Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad for The Independent is reporting that there is a new cash crop taking hold in some of the best rice growing areas of Iraq.

In yesterday's article Amid the anarchy, farmers begin to grow opium poppies, raising fears that the country could become a major heroin supplier we learn that

Juan Cole links today to a very interesting interview of his with Allawi for the Chronicle of Higher Education What's Next in Iraq? Juan Cole Interviews Ali A. Allawi.

Clearly Allawi has given some thought to the future of Iraq and, while he does not see anything particularly good, he seems to come to the conclusion that only an orderly end to the US occupation can (perhaps) force the Shia government to come to some semi-stable relationship with the Sunni minority.

As to why, contrary to the official American line, Allawi thinks this really is an "occupation"  -- and presumably why he calls his book The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace -- Allawi gives this summary of the reasons

Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" opened to an enthusiastic audience today at the Cannes Film Festival.  As reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir for Salon

There wasn't a single empty seat inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière -- which holds more than 2,000 people -- for "Sicko," and dozens of stragglers were locked out on the sidewalk. Moore's screed against the outrageous state of American healthcare was received with uproarious affection, but one might argue that Cannes provided the softest possible crowd. An American left-wing populist, attacking America's profit-motive, private-sector ideology before a roomful of international intellectuals, at least half of them Europeans. May I introduce a new phrase into the Franglais dictionary? C'était un slam-dunk.