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Matt Yglesias says Bush is (still) being dishonest about his own dishonesty:
It's tiresome to need to point this out at this late date but, yes, George W. Bush and his administration misled the country while making the case for war with Iraq and, remarkably, are still trying to mislead people about it. In a Dec. 1 interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson, Bush said that "the biggest regret" of his presidency was "the intelligence failure in Iraq."
Gershom Gorenberg reports on the possible demise fo the Israeli Labor Party:
Polls predict that when Israel holds elections on Feb. 10, Labor may fade to 10 seats in the 120-member Knesset. The real race is between Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima. There are proximate reasons for Labor's fadeout, including the party's reflexive return to the manifestly unpopular Ehud Barak as leader. The reflex hints at deeper problems: Barak is a kibbutz-born ex-general with no clear political positions, an embodiment of the old Labor aristocracy.
A. J. Rossmiller explains how the Mumbai attacks reveal that terrorism can work:
As the national mood in India shifts from shock to rage, options on all sides are quickly becoming constrained. Unfortunately, the initial aftermath of the attack in Mumbai makes it likely that the goals of the terrorists -- destabilizing India and strengthening extremists in Pakistan -- will have some success. To what extent is still unclear, but the dirty secret of terrorism is that sometimes it works. Unless all parties in this conflict take careful steps to avoid drastic escalation, this may be one of those times.
And Tim Fernholz argues that Jim Jones will make or break Obama's foreign policy:
Bureaucratic process can be the difference between a successful administration and a failed presidency, especially in the foreign policy arena, where authority to make decisions could plausibly sit in several different offices. Too many turf battles could result in situations in which the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. The men and women selected by Obama to head key foreign policy and security offices -- General Jim Jones for national security adviser, Governor Janet Napolitano for secretary of homeland security, Robert Gates for a second term as secretary of defense, Senator Hillary Clinton for secretary of state, Eric Holder for attorney general, and Dr. Susan Rice for ambassador to the United Nations -- are all strong personalities, but it is the ins and outs of their relationships with each other that will determine the new administration's foreign policy.
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--The Editors
