Hillary Clinton’s strongest supporters, her consultants say, are “women with needs.” She can ask Bill how to court them.
Washington is whipping itself into a preemptive panic over a September progress report on the Iraq War. Republicans seem primed to abandon President Bush unless the much anticipated report by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker shows significant progress – and maybe even if it does. We already know two things about that September report: 1) Iraq will look different from its present condition. The situation is very fluid, as shown by the fact that the center of the Sunni insurgency has moved from the notorious Anbar Province to Diyala Province. The Sunni tribes have flipped against al-Qaeda in Anbar, making for an extraordinary turnaround in an area that was considered lost not long ago and scattering insurgents to Diyala (where we are now engaging them in a major battle). 2) Whatever progress has been made in Iraq, the picture will still be mixed. A country that has been riven by vicious sectarian fighting and is beset by competing violent extremists is not going to be stabilized two or three months from now. That’s why arbitrary deadlines for the surge and for our military engagement make no sense, whether they are de jure or de facto.
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