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U.S. President George W. Bush has apparently decided that the path to victory lies in a plan devised more than a year ago by ... wait for it ... Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.

That's right, as the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, the "bottom-up" strategy Bush was touting in Anbar yesterday, "bears some striking similarities to the 'soft partition' strategy pushed by senior Democrats." The Journal is referring, of course, to the "unity through autonomy" (Times Select) plan floated by Biden and former Council on Foreign Relations Chairman Leslie Gelb in May 2006.

Watching Republicans turn tail and support Biden's plan is as comical as it is tragic. Let's not forget just what conservatives said about Biden's plan back when he devised it.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was certain that Biden's plan would doom Iraq to failure, saying the president supported only a "federal, democratic, pluralist and unified" Iraq. He added:

A partition government with regional security forces and a weak central government ... is something that no Iraqi leader has proposed and that the Iraqi people have not supported."

The feelings of the conservative intelligentsia were summarized by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told the Washington Times (no longer online) that Biden's plan was "virtually certain to make things worse, not better."

The GOP's armchair pundits, meanwhile, attacked Biden viciously. "Liberal Democrats – who can figure them?" wrote 30-year Army veteran Michael John McCrae in The Conservative Voice. He added:

The terrorists see these proposals and they cheer their supporters in the American Congress."

After almost four years of fighting in Iraq, at a cost of nearly 4,000 American lives, round and round we go.

A few months ago, I predicted the U.S.-India nuclear deal would "mutate, but move forward, in the coming months." With negotiations between the United States and India completed and a draft agreement released, mutated may be too mild a description of its policy shifts.

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According to Sharon Squassoni of the Carnegie Endowment, "As far as I can tell, the U.S. caved to all the Indian demands."

Among other things, the United States agreed that if it ever recalled its nuclear technology, it would reimburse India for the "fair market value thereof and for the costs incurred as a consequence of such removal." So if India tested a nuclear weapon and the U.S. government terminated cooperation—as required under U.S. law—and demanded its stuff back, American taxpayers would have to pay India for the privilege.

The U.S. Congress, which must approve the deal before it can go forward, still seems interested, but has so far reacted cautiously. As expected, Pakistan has expressed strong displeasure, citing a "nuclear arms race in the region" as one possible outcome of the deal. But goodwill toward Pakistan is at an ebb in Washington, and the U.S. administration brushed this claim aside.

In fact, it may be in India where the critics are loudest. There, opposition to the deal is wide-ranging, based on nonproliferation concerns as well as national sovereignty; coming from the Left parties as well as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which controlled the government when India tested nuclear weapons in 1998. So it's no surprise that on Monday, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed India's parliament on the deal, he faced a maelstrom of anger.

So why is this tortured agreement still moving forward? Aside from the oft-mentioned strategic concerns (grand alliance of democracies, counterbalance China, etc), the business communities in both countries have been lobbying hard for the deal. According to the U.S.-India Business Council, the planned expansion of India's civilian nuclear industry could generate $150 billion in commercial opportunities for U.S. companies. And India's third-biggest electric provider, Tata Power, has already lined up "major nuclear equipment suppliers and is ready to go." Remember Ike's famous warning about the danger posed by the military-industrial complex? Perhaps he was on to something.

According to Bob Novak, the U.S. government is working on a solution to Mort Abramowitz's Kurdish problem. The trouble is, it's just not a very smart solution: 

At a high level, U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.

While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to selected members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish Army to suppress the Kurds' guerrilla campaign. The Bush administration is trying to prevent opening another war front in Iraq that would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure.

Gee, who might possibly expose this secret mission? Reading further, it looks like Novak's source was someone in Congress who wants to torpedo the plan:

What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq? The surprising answer was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S. Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and now under secretary of defense for policy. [...]

Edelman's listeners were stunned. Wasn't this risky? He responded he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied.

So much for that. But let's give Edelman some credit here. Surely, a graduate of the Dick Cheney school of congressional relations would know this would leak. So perhaps the plan was simply being floated in order to buy more time with the Turks, and Congress was used in order to kill it.

An interesting question came up during last night's CNN-YouTube Democratic presidential debate: Would candidates, if elected to the White House, be willing to forgo the president's annual salary of $400,000 in exchange for the federal minimum wage, which just went up to $5.85 an hour?

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Edwards? Sure. Hillary? Yep. Obama? No problem. Sen. Chris Dodd? No way.  

DODD: I have two young daughters who I'm trying to educate them. [Ed: On the basis of that sentence, you may not want to home school them.] I don’t think I could live on the minimum wage...

Fair enough, Senator. That's why people distinguish between the minimum wage and a living wage. And you've done admirable work on this issue in the past, seeking to raise the minimum wage to more than $7. But what surprised me most was your next comment, which suggested that you consider your Senate salary a little spare:

OBAMA: Well, we can afford to work for the minimum wage because most folks on this stage have a lot of money. It's the folks... on that screen who deserve -- you're doing all right, Chris, compared to, I promise you, the folks who are on that screen.

DODD: Not that well, I'll tell you, Barack.

Really? In fact, Sen. Dodd, you make $165,200 a year as a senator; your net worth has been reported to be between $1.5 million and $3.5 million; and you own a vacation cottage in Ireland. What's more, you can anticipate a nice retirement thanks to your Senate pension, which averaged about $50,000 a year in 2000. Would that the rest of us could be so fortunate.

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Relax, folks, you can all go back to brushing your teeth with Chinese toothpaste: The government in Beijing has just outlawed juicing the stuff with diethylene gylocol (DEG), an industrial solvent. DEG-laden toothpaste has yet to kill anybody, but the Chinese have been feeling cautious lately. In addition to the recent ban, Beijing is gearing up to institute national food safety checks, and just executed the former head of food and drug safety. You know, just to be on the safe side.

Just when I thought the coast was clear, however, I came across the disturbing news that two new phony products have cropped up in China: Dumplings stuffed with cardboard shavings, and bogus Rabies vaccines. Talk about putting the "dim" in dim sum.

But before anybody goes back to shrieking about how China is out to kill us all, take a look at this interesting report from the New York Times. It compares the number of food shipments the United States has turned away from various foreign countries over the past year, and it turns out that China is surpassed by both India and Mexico. And if you think Chinese seafood is bad (391 shipments rejected), you'd better stay away from Danish candy (520 rejections).

So if Beijing isn't all the devil incarnate, then what's behind the hype? Sure, China has exported a few particularly nasty products in the last few years, but the "ChiComs" are no worse than some of the other top U.S. trading partners. I'd say all this hullabaloo has a lot to do with the sad fact that Americans just love to hate China. It's not a new phenomenon, but it has been magnified by China's dramatic rise. At this point, Americans (and their congressmen) will take any shot they can get at Beijing. The ultimate goal? To control the Chinese while that's still even remotely possible.

In a major blow to the Bush administration, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici just endorsed a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

This is big. Domenici is a senior ranking and stalwart Republican, with 36 years in the Senate under his belt. He sits on the defense appropriations subcommittee. He's also up for reelection in 2008.

Come September, I suspect we'll be hearing a lot more Republicans sounding like this:

I want a new strategy for Iraq.... I am unwilling to continue our current strategy.

I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward. I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq ... but I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

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CNN apparently decided that Paris Hilton's hearing was the bigger story, so I missed this until just now: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced today that General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military, will be stepping down. If all goes according to plan, Pace will be replaced by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chief of naval operations, when the former leaves office on September 30. Vice Chairman Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., will also be replaced.

Gates's press conference and statement were unusual because the defense secretary was seemingly transparent about his motives in letting Pace go. No excuses about "spending time with his family":

Gates said he intended to re-nominate Pace and Giambastiani but after consulting with senators of both parties came to the conclusions "that because General Pace has served as chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the last six years, the focus of his confirmation process would have been on the past rather than the future."

He said the confirmation process would have the possibility of being quite contentious. "I am no stranger to contentious confirmations, and I do not shrink from them," Gates said. "However, I have decided at this moment in our history, the nation, our men and women in uniform, and General Pace himself would not be well-served by a divisive ordeal in selecting the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

In other words, Democrats threatened to turn Pace's reconfirmation hearings into a hearing on Iraq, and Republicans told Gates they'd rather avoid that. Another explanation raised by the New York Times is that Pentagon and White House officials believe the U.S. military "needs a new direction after years of being strained by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Interestingly, both the combatant commander for U.S. Central Command, William J. Fallon, and the prospective nominee to replace Pace, Michael G. Mullen, are Navy admirals. Fallon is rumored to be dovish on Iran, but it's worth noting that the U.S. military's two highest profile jobs will soon be held by guys who know a thing or two about protecting sea lanes such as ... the Straits of Hormuz.

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It's the beginning of the so-called summer driving season in the United States, which means gasoline prices are going up. And that means it's time for U.S. politicians to pander to popular ignorance about energy prices. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Federal Price Gouging Protection Act," a bill that would make it illegal for gas companies to charge "unconscionably excessive" prices at the pump. A similar effort is underway in the Senate.

"Price gouging" is not a legal term in the United States, and the bill does not change this fact. What's an "unconscionably excessive" price? Presumably, as with pornography, the courts will be able to identify this phantom menace when they see it. Maybe they'll have better luck than the Federal Trade Commission. After Hurricane Katrina, the FTC investigated (pdf) allegations of price gouging and found none, concluding:

Based on well-established economic principles, the price increases were roughly in line with increases predicted by the standard supply and demand paradigm of a competitive market. 

But the most idiotic part of the bill is that the same groups pushing for action on "price gouging" also rightly believe that the United States needs to reduce its demand for oil on national security and environmental grounds. Yet as Robert Samuelson points out in a spot-on column in today's Washington Post, only the pain of high gasoline prices will actually move significant numbers of Americans out of those Hummers and into Priuses and plug-in hybrids. The politicians surely know this, but knowing better has hardly stopped opportunistic lawmakers before. Why start now?

Since the 2004 campaign, more and more U.S. politicians have latched on to YouTube as a way to "go viral" and reach the increasingly powerful "netroots". Witness Democratic presidential long shot Bill Richardson's clever new job interview ad, which has already been viewed over 50,000 times since Tuesday. And as Kevin Drum cynically observed yesterday, the real prize for the attention-starved New Mexico governor will be when the New York Times writes "another thumbsucker about the power of new media, complete with chin scratching quotes from [new media gurus] Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis."

Well, here's something altogether new for the gurus to ponder: politicians who wish to be journalists. Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey recently debuted his own YouTube channel, where he has so far advertised not himself, but ... YouTube. Here's Markey's interview with YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley:

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President Bush reportedly isn't thrilled about the House Democrats' plan for a new Iraq funding supplemental. The plan would immediately make available about half of the $95.5 billion Bush requested from Congress. The other half would be contingent upon the Iraqi government meeting benchmarks, with a subsequent Congressional vote on the second half of the funding in July.

The plan is too clever by half. It's unlikely Democrats can muster the votes to quash a veto by July, whether the inept Iraqi government meets a set of arbitrary benchmarks or not. So this plan merely forces Democrats to vote twice for continuing to fund the war—Bush will have won two times over.

The smarter play is to wait for September. Because if you're a Democrat in Congress, four realities are undeniable. First, nearly six in 10 Americans now support setting a timetable for withdrawal. Second, you were elected in 2006 on a platform of bringing the troops home. Third, your base wants an immediate end to the war. Fourth, there's an election in 18 months. So the last thing you want to do is vote every couple of months to continue providing funds for the war in Iraq. That's exactly what you promised the American people you wouldn't do.

Come September or October, when Gen. David Petraeus reports back on the progress of the surge (and the defense authorization bill is floating around), Republicans in Congress will be getting extremely nervous that Petraeus will ask for more time, as Blake pointed out last week and House GOP moderates pointed out to Bush yesterday in a heated meeting. If you're a centrist Republican like Olympia Snowe, John Warner, Dick Lugar, or George Voinovich, you have to start thinking seriously about joining Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith in supporting a timeline for withdrawal by fall. The same timeline language that passed the Senate with 51 votes on April 26 could probably pass the Senate with as many as 60 votes in October.

There will be plenty of opportunities to stick it to Bush in the months ahead. So the Democrats ought to relax. Time is on their side.

Everyone seems to want to compare the 2008 election to 1960. I guess the analogy is that, if Democrats can make 2008 a referendum on Iraq, just as John F. Kennedy made 1960 about America falling behind in the Cold War, then victory is in the bag. Jennifer Ruben made the case in the New York Observer on Tuesday:

It has been over 45 years since John F. Kennedy campaigned against Richard Nixon, an inveterate anticommunist with impressive foreign-policy credentials, on the 'missile gap'.... It has taken over four decades, but the time may once again have come for the Democratic Party to run on defense and foreign policy.... It's 1960 all over again.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that Kennedy was as wrong about the missile gap as George W. Bush was about WMDs in Iraq. In the end, I'm fearful the better analogy might be to 1976. All of the candidates in the field so far—from both sides of the aisle—look more like foreign-policy lightweights such as Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter than they do John F. Kennedy.

I'll get to the Republicans in a later post. For now, what I want to know is: What foreign policy, exactly, do the Democrats plan to run on in 2008?

Until yesterday, I thought the policy was withdrawal from Iraq, an idea that resonates with the Democratic base, many independents, and an increasing number of Republicans. But it took Democrats about 12 hours from the time of Bush's veto to drop their insistence on a timeline for bringing troops home. That didn't look very Kennedy-like to me. But it didn't stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from trying to remain indignant, saying, "But make no mistake: Democrats are committed to ending this war."

But how? Sure, as Blake's post suggests, upcoming appropriations bills will provide some opportunities. But what's to say Bush won't veto those too, and that he won't still have the votes to block an override? And after the troops have come home, the terrorist threat won't have gone away—merely modifying terminology won't change that. What's the Democrats' plan for keeping Americans safe?

I'm hardly the first to ask this question. When the Democrats took control of Congress, I remembered a 2004 article by Peter Beinart—who, like Kennedy, is a liberal hawk— in which he posited that the fundamental failure of the Democrats is their inability to formulate a foreign policy consisting of anything other than criticisms of Bush:

When liberals talk about America's new era, the discussion is largely negative--against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America's worsening reputation in the world.

Beinart has gotten many things wrong, particularly when it comes to Iraq and the war on terror. But here he's got a point. And three years later, the Democrats still haven't convinced the U.S. public that they are anything but "not Bush." Is that good enough to win? We'll find out in 2008.

It's extremely rare for active-duty officers to criticize the U.S. military establishment. So it's a big deal that Lt. Col. Paul Yingling let one rip in today's Armed Forces Journal, a publication aimed at military readers but owned privately by a subsidiary of Gannett Company, Inc. (Gannett also owns USA Today.)

Yingling is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, though perhaps not for long. As Thomas Ricks notes in today's Washington Post, Yingling was the commander responsible for the "miracle of Tal Afar" so often cited by U.S. President George W. Bush.

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Yingling doesn't single out any general by name, but says that "America's generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand," a statement that a majority of the U.S. public would probably agree with at this point.

His preferred solution to the military's failure to get it right in Iraq, though, is for the U.S. Congress to use its power to confirm three and four-star generals as a way of holding generals accountable for their actions. To which I say: yikes. Think generals are political now? Wait until they start having to take some grandstanding Congressman out to lunch. And it's not as if the legislative branch has the staff or the tools to evaluate who's a good general and who isn't.

Better ideas, please.

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The most telling thing about the Senate vote this afternoon on the $124 billion supplemental war spending bill, which happens to require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq in October, is who abstained from voting: John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Tim Johnson.

"The Maverick" McCain was either too busy campaigning for president to return and vote on the most important and contentious issue facing Congress today, or he was afraid vote for or against a troop withdrawal on the record.

Likewise with Republican war critic Lindsey Graham. Sure, he's on everyone's A-list for Veep. But he's also one of the smartest guys in the Senate, which is why I would have expected him to backup his rhetoric with a vote.

How disappointing.

I think we can guess at the origins of this Newsweek interview with Imad Mustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States:

The inked-up pages of Imad Moustapha's date book have a story to tell. In the first four months of 2007, the Syrian ambassador to Washington has had more interaction with U.S. officials than in all of 2005 and 2006. He has met with every single member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He coordinated the trips to Damascus of at least three congressional delegations, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's this month. He's even had talks with a senior official in the State Department.

Look no further than Mustapha's own blog, where most of his entries since he began blogging in April 2005 have been about art, his family, or meetings with friends. This entry is dated April 20, 2007:

I have never thought when I started my blog a couple of years ago that it might become physically impossible for me to squeeze-in any time, however short it may be, to write a new entry. Yet this was the situation I found myself in during the last month. I had to travel to Syria twice within 10 days while sustaining my crazy schedule of giving public speeches, and media interviews. Once back from Damascus, I had more appointments than ever before. Visiting Capitol Hill alone to meet with various congressional leaders can easily consume 23 hours a day. However, spending long hours in the plane crossing the Atlantic and Europe hence and forth carries with it one blessing: for hours and hours I put on my Bose noise reduction headphones attached to my iPod in the shuffle mode, delve into a book, and read, read, and read…