From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On the New FISA Rules—

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The administration had resisted [FISA oversight] for five years arguing that we were in an emergency, it had to create new structures, new intelligence producers and do it rapidly and without hindrance, so it did it for five years. And now, after this period, it’s decided it’s going to accept the constraints of FISA . . .
But it’s not even clear if you have to get authorize for every wiretap or if you got a . . . blanket authorization in which case, essentially the administration has won. Essentially it’s allowed to do everything it did. It’s got a single authorization that it could do it.
Now, we don’t know which of those two alternatives is true, but I think it’s odd that we’re sitting here on national television discussing a secret order by a secret judge and a secret panel about a secret program. . . . It shows how well our secrets are kept.
The administration appears to have won. It got its program for the five years. It now has — is doing what it was doing before, but under a FISA authorization, it looks as if it’s a fairly broad one and that’s success.

—On Maliki and Iraq—

MORT KONDRACKE: Yeah, if these 400 Mahdi army people stay in captivity, if, as reported, Sadr’s people are being attacked by Iraqi troops, that was a report to that affect today, if indeed as various people in their government have said that they are really working on an oil-sharing revenue-sharing law, that would be great, if they’re going to de-Baathify, that would be great. So, in coming days we could get reports of progress on all these benchmarks that the president . . .
KRAUTHAMMER: If it weren’t for . . . American soldiers’ blood, [Maliki would] be either in exile, in jail, or at the end of a noose. . . . Now this is his last chance. He knows it. And the surge will depend — I think American soldiers and Lieutenant General Petraeus who’s going to be leading all this is extremely competent and he could succeed in the plan in Baghdad. . . .
We can win the war. We can win this war, but it depends on Maliki. It’s going to depend on what he does, what his brigades do and what he does in curtailing the Shiite death squads.
If the 400 are released, that’s going to show bad faith. But if he is going to hold the Mahdi army extremists and killers and thugs, that’s a real step. We’ll see in the next month or two if he’s a serious partner. If he is, I think we can actually win the war. The real issue has been that ever since the Samara bombing and the formation of his government, he has not acted as an ally.