The War as We Saw It  —  VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal.  Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population.

Cooper Contradicts Rove: He's 'Dissembling' With 'Non-Sense' About The Plame Leak  —  During his tour of the Sunday shows this morning, Karl Rove attempted to downplay and dismiss his role in the CIA leak scandal, telling Fox News' Chris Wallace that he acted benignly in his conversations with reporters about Valerie Plame's identity:

Why Rove Resigned?  To Grant the Administration Immunity  —  There have been a flurry of stories depicting the degree to which the Bush Administration has politicized ... everything.  McClatchy described how Treasury and Commerce were making decisions based on the political value for the Republican party.

TRANSCRIPT: The Democratic Debate  —  George Stephanopoulos Moderates Democratic Debate on a Special Edition of "This Week"  —  STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this special edition of "This Week."  We're back here at Drake University in Iowa for the first Democratic presidential debate in Iowa.

Giuliani's Fox-y pal cash flap  —  It's no secret that Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator, has helped to raise Rudy Giuliani's profile - but now he's helped the former mayor raise money, too.  —  In a little noticed event this month, Hannity - co-host of Fox News' …

Speaking of sanctuary, where's ours?  —  At the funeral of Iofemi Hightower, her classmate Mecca Ali wore a T-shirt with the slogan: "Tell Me Why They Had To Die."  —  "They" are Miss Hightower, Dashon Harvey and Terrance Aeriel, three young citizens of Newark, New Jersey …

Rudy plays the security card: ID for all tourists  —  EVERY foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Blogs: All the noise that fits  —  The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters.  —  The late Christopher Lasch once wrote that public affairs generally and journalism in particular suffered not from too little information but from entirely too much.

Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay  —  Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay.

More Duplicity in the FISA Stampede  —  James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the New York Times reporters who originally broke the warrantless domestic spying story, report further on the recent legislation gutting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

There Aren't  —  Of course there are smart people, those we could call "experts," in any field and yes of course they're generally happier and more interested in talking to each other than to the rabble.  But AEI and EPI aren't two parts of an "economic policy clerisy."

[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: Seeing Is Believing  —  There's only one thing at this stage that would truly impress me, and it is this: proof that there is an Iraq.

The day reality hit home  —  The writer Andrew Anthony was a committed member of the liberal left - until the attacks of 11 September, 2001.  A veteran of CND and Nicaraguan solidarity campaigns, he was astonished at the liberal left's anti-American reaction.

The Founders Had an Idea for Handling Alberto Gonzales  —  William Belknap, Ulysses S. Grant's disgraced secretary of war, is experiencing a revival.  Impeached in 1876 for taking bribes, he has become the inspiration for a movement to remove Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from office.

The Politics of God  —  I. "The Will of God Will Prevail"  —  The twilight of the idols has been postponed.  For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems.