What Time is it?

Todays Laugh,
The Shiny-Walled Box Thingie
An Amish boy and his father were visiting a nearby mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny silver walls that moved apart and back together again by themselves.
The lad asked, "What is this, father?"
The father (having never seen an elevator) responded, "I have no idea what it is."
While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady in a wheelchair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched as small circles lit up above the walls.
The walls opened up again and a beautiful twenty-four-year-old woman stepped out.
The father looked at his son anxiously and said, "Go get your mother."
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Todays Quote,
"It’s an historic moment for the women of America. It is a moment for which we have waited for over 200 years."
NANCY PELOSI, on becoming speaker of the House.
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War Could Last Years,

By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Jan. 7 — The new American operational commander in Iraq said Sunday that even with the additional American troops likely to be deployed in Baghdad under President Bush’s new war strategy it might take another "two or three years" for American and Iraqi forces to gain the upper hand in the war.
The commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, assumed day-to-day control of war operations last month in the first step of a makeover of the American military hierarchy here. In his first lengthy meeting with reporters, General Odierno, 52, struck a cautious note about American prospects, saying much will depend on whether commanders can show enough progress to stem eroding support in the United States for the war.
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Biden On Iraq: Bush Will "Be Able To Keep The Troops There Forever, Constitutionally, If He Wants To"...
Whether lawmakers are prepared to advocate legislative steps to withhold funds from an expanded mission is unclear. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday that as a practical matter, there was little that lawmakers could do to prevent Mr. Bush from expanding the American military mission in Iraq.
"You can't go in like a Tinkertoy and play around and say you can't spend the money on this piece and this piece," Mr. Biden said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "He'll be able to keep the troops there forever, constitutionally, if he wants to."
"As a practical matter," Mr. Biden added, "there is no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.' "
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Quagmire of the VanitiesBy Paul KrugmanThe New York Times

The only real question about the planned "surge" in Iraq - which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation - is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.
Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they're cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be "the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof."
Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they're delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration's unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one's losses - the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.
Of course, such gambling is easier when the lives at stake are those of other people's children.
Well, we don't have to settle the question. Either way, what's clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush's character flaws.
I began writing about the Bush administration's infallibility complex, the president's Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power - the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn't want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity - it's a recipe for disaster.
Consider, on one side, the case of the C.I.A.'s Baghdad station chief during 2004, who provided accurate assessments of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. "What is he, some kind of defeatist?" asked the president - and according to The Washington Post, at the end of his tour, the station chief "was punished with a poor assignment."
On the other side, consider the men Mr. Bush has turned to since the midterm election. They constitute a remarkable coalition of the unwilling - men who have been wrong about Iraq every step of the way, but aren't willing to admit it.
The principal proponents of the "surge" are William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. Now, even if the Joint Chiefs of Staff hadn't given the surge a thumbs down, Mr. Kristol's track record should have been reason enough to ignore his advice. For example, early in the war, Mr. Kristol dismissed as "pop sociology" warnings that there would be conflict between Sunnis and Shiites and that the Shiites might try to create an Islamic fundamentalist state. He assured National Public Radio listeners that "Iraq's always been very secular."
But Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan appealed to Mr. Bush's ego, suggesting that he might yet be able to rescue his signature war. And am I the only person to notice that after all the Oedipal innuendo surrounding the Iraq Study Group - Daddy's men coming in to fix Junior's mess, etc. - Mr. Bush turned for advice to two other sons of famous and more successful fathers?
Not that Mr. Bush rejects all advice from elder statesmen. We now know that he has been talking to Henry Kissinger. But Mr. Kissinger is a kindred spirit. In remarks published after his death, Gerald Ford said of his secretary of state, "Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."
Oh, and Senator John McCain, the first major political figure to advocate a surge, is another man who can't admit mistakes. Mr. McCain now says that he always knew that the conflict was "probably going to be long and hard and tough" - but back in 2002, before the Senate voted on the resolution authorizing the use of force, he declared that a war with Iraq would be "fairly easy."
Mr. Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be "sacrifice." But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities - a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won't admit that they were wrong.
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Republicans’ division over Iraq grows
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Leading Republicans on Sunday showed further signs of dissent over President George W. Bush’s reported plans to send more troops to Iraq, while the Democrats, now in control of Congress, said they would not give the president a "blank cheque" for reinforcements.
"If the president recommends what we seem to believe he’s going to recommend, I intend to support him," declared Mitch McConnell, the Republican’s new minority leader in the Senate, before conceding on Fox News Sunday that other Republicans would not endorse the plan.
Republicans are divided over the expectation that Mr Bush intends to announce a big troop increase on Wednesday as part of the strategy and personnel overhaul the White House is calling a "new way forward".
Senator Chuck Hagel last week called the idea "Alice in Wonderland", while, on his return from Iraq last month, Senator Norm Coleman said he would "stand against" any such plan.
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Buffalo Bob: What time is it Congress?

It's Impeachment Time!