Meanwhile in Iraq

Bush calls 'dangerous' insurgents 'mean' in speech: Bush described the attempts by insurgents to pull the country into secterian violence "mean" and "deadly" and said that "we've got to help the Iraqi's deal with it".

Bush says weighing temporary increase of U.S. troops in Iraq: "I haven't made up my mind yet about more troops (for Iraq)," Bush told an end-of-the-year news conference. "We're looking at all options, and one of those options of course is increasing more troops, but in order to do so there must be a specific mission that can be accomplished with more troops."

Powell, Baker, Hamilton ... Thanks for Nothing! Washington Refuses to End the War: Four years ago, "moderates" like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton are refueling the U.S. war effort by depicting it as a problem of strategy and management.

It Can’t Be Won Militarily; So, Send More Troops?, By W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern: As Robert Gates takes the helm at the Pentagon this week, he can be in no doubt that Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush remain determined to stay the course in Iraq (without using those words) for the next two years. What Gates probably does not realize is that the U.S. military is about to commit hara-kiri.

The war is already lost: Ideological zealotry has helped destroy Iraq, revive the Taliban and increase the terror threat: Once a war goes badly wrong and its justifications are shown to be lies, to insist that a "democratic" Iraq is visible on the horizon and that "we must stay the course" becomes a total fantasy. What is to be done?

The $2 Trillion Dollar War: A leading economist says the true cost of Iraq is far higher than President Bush claims -- and America will pay the price for decades to come.
At least 111 killed in another bloody day in Iraq: Iraqi police found 76 bodies around Baghdad, all with gunshot wounds and most with signs of torture, the Interior Ministry said.

More Than 70 Killed On Tuesday In Another Bloody Day in Iraq: Police found 53 bodies in different districts of the Iraqi capital, many with signs of torture, an Interior Ministry official said.

Bush warns of new sacrifices in Iraq: A "sombre" President George W. Bush said today he planned to increase the size of the United States armed forces to cope with the "beginning stages of an ideological struggle" between liberty and evil across the globe.

U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq, Bush Says: The administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation's permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.

Bush defies commanders by bolstering troops: George Bush today confirmed that a temporary increase in US troops for Iraq is under consideration, despite the opposition of his top generals.

Top US Mideast commander to retire in early 2007: Abizaid has opposed calls for sending more troops to Iraq as part of a temporary spike to combat growing communal violence.

Premier Wants U.S. Forces to Target Sunni Insurgents: - Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has created a two-pronged security plan for Baghdad in which U.S. forces would aggressively target Sunni Arab insurgents instead of Shiite militias.

Washington pushes ahead with plans for Iraq “regime change”: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite fundamentalist Da’awa Party are being presented with an ultimatum: abandon the Sadrists or go down with them.

Desperation in the White House: The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor's nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opinion about Iraq while hearing nothing.

In case you missed it: CIA Official Reveals Bush, Cheney, Rice Were Personally Told Iraq Had No WMD in Fall 2002: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister — who agreed to act as a spy for the United States — had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

The rascals are still in charge: The people who have been catastrophically wrong about everything are still in charge. And a year from now, when things are even worse in Iraq, we can be sure the neo-conservatives will still be demanding that yet more American soldiers die so that Kagan and his ilk can continue to live out their increasingly destructive geopolitical fantasies.