How refreshing to have a secretary of defense who will admit mistakes. Nominee Robert Gates said at his confirmation hearing today that “there clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion” — something his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, would never acknowledge. Gates also agreed that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq, though he said we are not losing it either.
Gates, who was a member of the Iraq Study Group before being nominated, envisions a dramatically smaller number of U.S. troops in Iraq, but that an American presence would be required “for a long time,” the New York Times reported.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
It’s easy to be skeptical about any expensive idea hatched by a government agency, but NASA’s plan for a permanent outpost on the moon sounds a note of optimism and forward thinking that couldn’t come at a better time.
As outlined Monday, the base would tap lunar resources to sustain itself and perhaps provide fuel for eventual manned missions to Mars. After shutting down the tired shuttle program, NASA hopes cooperation from international partners and space businesses might make the project feasible without any dramatic infusion of new money.
Or maybe not. But it sounds good to me. It surely can’t hurt to lift our eyes, at least briefly, once more to the sky.
Posted by Dave Knadler
“As a creature of Congress (an institution that Bush dislikes), Baker’s group spells trouble for Bush when it releases its report Wednesday,” columnist Robert Novak said of the conclusions to be drawn by the group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker. “It will propose, however muted its tone, gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq before the president is ready for it. The hope is that Baker will nuance the report’s words sufficiently and hedge calls for withdrawal in such a way that Bush can say that is what he has been doing anyway.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The old adage that any publicity is good publicity apparently is holding true for Kazakhstan, a Wall Street Journal editorial noted. The country is cashing in on the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” in which Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to be a Kazakh TV reporter. In the past, the Kazakh government has protested Borat’s bigoted caricature and has threatened lawsuits. But the movie has resulted in a number of favorable newspaper commentaries and TV reports about how the country really isn’t backward and, in fact, is a nice place to visit. As a result, Hotels.com has seen a 300 percent spike in searches for accommodations in the country, the Journal reported.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Douglas Brinkley, director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University, cautions historians against rushing to declare President Bush the worst president ever. But, he argues, “it’s safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder. The reason: Iraq.”
Meanwhile, Michael Lind of the New America Foundation wrote that Bush is only the fifth worst president. “In the White House Hall of Shame,” he wrote, “Bush comes behind four other Oval Officers whose policies were even more disastrous: James Buchanan (in photo), Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and James Madison.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
I’m not a regular reader of the New York Times’ political blog The Caucus, but it recently yielded an interesting bit of data about the blog phenomenon in general.
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google, said his company calculates that a new blog is being created every second of every day. He said Google now estimates that the average blog is read by one person. One. No word on whether that includes the person writing it.
Posted by Dave Knadler
