With the entry of Mark Begich, the mayor of Anchorage, into the Alaska Senate race, Dems stand a decent chance of gaining another seat. The polling ain't too bad either.
Scholars and Rogues dissects the "Balkanization of Iraq" and how you need a scorecard to keep track.

But we no longer have an excuse to tune out Iraq on the grounds that it makes our heads spin. In the past week, two articles — one first-hand reporting, the other an analysis — provide us with that much-needed scorecard.
In his Rolling Stone piece, “The Myth of the Surge,� Nir Rosen relies on his facility with the Arab language to interview and eavesdrop on members of the Sunni “Awakening.� Excerpt:

“To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias. . . . the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight. All told, the U.S. is now backing more than 600,000 Iraqi men in the security sector. . . . the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. ‘Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems,’ as U.S. strategists like to say.�

Meanwhile, in his Nation piece, “Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?,� security analyst Robert Dreyfuss explains the extent to which Iran has influenced events in Iraq. Excerpt:

“Despite its very public saber-rattling against Iran. . . the United States has spent most of the past five years in a de facto alliance with Iran in support of the Shiite-led (and US-installed) regime in Baghdad. . . . Taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the US destruction of Saddam Hussein’s government, Tehran has established a vast presence, both overt and covert, in Iraq.�

Money quote: “‘The American military occupation of Iraq has facilitated an Iranian political occupation of Iraq,’ says Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.�After reading these two articles, you’ll finally have a clear picture of who the players are. And how, in small wars, the original intent becomes diluted or perverted. As usual, local war lords wind up in the driver’s seat.

Prosebeforehos on how history repeats itself, a point I've iterated before: rhetoric regarding the US occupation of Iraq isn't too different from the rhetoric the British batted around when they were mired there in the 20s. Pretty depressing.
Foul play regarding candidates and churches…on the left? That's the accusation, at any rate, but I'd be surprised if the United Church of Christ (good guys) had overstepped their legal boundaries.
So in honor of the UCC, here's their badass (and controversial) commercial from a while back.

This is an open thread.
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