1. From FireDogLake, Come Saturday Morning: Iraq — Still Broken After All These Years:

The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S. casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.

1. Talk about absurdity. How is Mark Penn spending his gigantic haul? is answered by Arlen at the Daily Background:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s pit-bull pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn has his Washington, DC, neighborhood in an uproar. He recently started multimillion-dollar renovations on his house on O Street in Georgetown, but didn’t alert anyone beforehand, said one local. “It includes an underground garage and home office. His yard is an ugly, huge gaping hole that looks like the descent into hell.”

Blog blog, bloggity blog:

1. From the Seminal (who I recently added all up on my own slog of the blog-o-blech), George Bush’s Top Ten Choices for the Next President of Cuba:

#10) Jacques Chirac — “he’s got experience running a commie regime.”

#9) “That nice Cuban maid who taught me to read when I was 14.”

#8) Elmer Fudd — “one bad ass outlaw replaces another.”

#7) Will Smith — “what can’t he do?”

#6) Hillary Clinton — “look Hil, you are president. Syke!!”

#5) Chico Escuela

#4) Sasquatch — “just to prove he exists”

1. This:

2. The Atlantic Review has an excellent post on future quagmire building in Iran, and how many we need in our daily diet:

Tired of the same old boring quagmire? Looking for a new kind of quagmire to talk about with your friends? Good news if you are, because Iraq is not the only quagmire around. No need to look far—keep it in the “axis of evil.” Iraq’s neighbor, Iran is also a quagmire of a sorts… a diplomatic quagmire for the transatlantic allies.

3. If this is at all possible, Bill Clinton claims they’ve been running their campaign “on a shoestring”: