For the sake of our Army, our treasury, our national payche and the lives of our soldiers, someone needs to tell president Bush that we’re winning in Iraq and our presence is no longer necessary. Washington Note proprietor Steve Clemons, who has good sources among disillusioned Republicans, nominates the president’s Mom, who is said to be extremely annoyed with her son’s current roster of advisors and handlers. She’s a steamroller, but one has to question whether she can take on Dick Cheney, whose four-heart-attack motto at this point must be “Victory or Death” (his), and win. Perhaps she can round up enough troops — Laura, Condi and Karen — to pull it off and purge the “Victory or Death (our troops’) contingent.

Pennsylvania Republican senator Arlen Specter, who feebly represents the bloody remnants of the pro-choice GOP wing, GOP, was mau-maued by his fellow Republicans when he said a year ago that he would oppose Bush administration Supreme Court nominees who threatened the right of women to choose an abortion. Specter was told that he would not succeed Utah’s Orrin Hatch as chairman of the Senate judiciary committee unless he recanted. He did, and was duly awarded the chairmanship.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is set to embark on a diplomatic campaign aimed at easing European Union concerns about the existence of secret Europe-based CIA prisons housing kidnapped or otherwise off-the-books prisoners of the War on Terra^® who are subjected to abuse or torture. Her tack: “The US doesn’t torture anyone, and if we do, you’re helping us. But we don’t.”

Among the many tragedies arising from the war in Iraq is that most, if not all of the explosives and weapons being used to kill US troops and Iraqi civilians are leftovers from Saddam’s regime that the US failed to secure during and after the invasion. Indiana Republican senator Dick Lugar and Illinois Democrat Barrack Obama have introduced legislation that would fund a US effort to secure similar quantities of abandoned armaments elsewhere in the world.

Two superficially unrelated stories published yesterday and today provide unpleasant insights into the Bush administration’s new domestic Iraq strategy. One, a New York Times article, identifies the seminal author of the White House “Iraq National Strategy” document as a political scientist who was hired by the White House after telling them that Americans will support the war if believe it’s winnable. The other, from CNN, reports what can only be described as a political stump speech given by Joint Chiefs chairman General Peter Pace to an audience at Fort McNair’s National Defense University.

Reporting for Government Executive magazine, Jason Vest — Digby’s nominee for Judy Miller’s job at the New York Times — suggests that the bribery and corruption investigation that nailed Republican representative Duke “I’m on the side of the angels here” Cunningham may reach into the CIA as well.

We can’t always give scandal, torture, theft and rock and roll the attention they deserve, so we accumulate short takes on the subjects at our sibling site, the Bad Crow blog. Here’s what’s been happening over there of late.

National Journal columnist Charlie Cook is concerned that what he describes as a “crippled duck” president and a weakened Republican majority in Congress will create a leadership vacuum in the country. He asks what what will happen “if the world’s only true superpower drifts somewhat aimlessly for next three years or so, with no person or party in true control.” One possible answer is “nothing,” which could very well be a dramatic improvement over the last five years.

There have been some interesting recent developments in the CIA’s Italian kidnapping caper. The case came to light last June, when an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents for nabbing Egyptian Muslim cleric Hassan Nasr (aka ‘Abu Omar’) off a street in Milan on February 17, 2003, and shipping him, via an American airbase in Germany, to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. Egypt wanted Nasr, 42, because of his involvement in Jemaah Islamiah, an organization dedicated to establishing an Islamic government in Egypt. During a crackdown on Jemaah Islamiah in the early 1990s, Nasr fled Egypt and eventually received asylum in Italy in 1997.

I’m going to do something out of character and offer up some good news. There have been a number of post-mortems on New York City politics which paint a very bleak picture for the Democratic Party. After all, the Republicans have managed to win 4 consecutive Mayor’s races – two of them by crushing landslides. [...]

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Washington Post blogger (and doesn’t that sound odd) Jeff Morley posted an item on Wednesday about the shuttering of the State Department’s international media survey site, concluding with the suggestion that “U.S. officials still want to know what the world thinks of the United States. They just no longer care to share that information with the rest of the government or the American public.”

‘Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
every creature’d been tortured
including the mouse.

Gerald Ford famously remarked that an impeachable offense is “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” But even so relativistic a body as the Republican House should be able to see that this president, this administration, meets any standard for impeachment from any moment in history. They’re criminals. They’re scum. They should be in jail. The president and vice president should be impeached first and then jailed. They should be crushed so thoroughly that no one will ever again attempt to cheat and cheapen this country as they have done.

Amid threats of political retaliation from vice president Dick Cheney, Republican senators Chuck Hagel, Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe joined Senate Democrats in calling for investigations into the illegal electronic surveillance authorized by president Bush. Hagel, Snowe and Democrats Ron Wyden, Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein all signed a letter requesting Senate intelligence committee hearings on the surveillance, while Specter, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, reiterated his promise to hold hearings on the matter next month. Senate majority leader Bill Frist remained noncommittal pending his efforts to scuttle the hearings.

The Washington Post adds some detail today about the connections between Republican Congressman Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, the K Street kingpin who is reportedly in the final stages of negotiating a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.