Wounded by an IED blast in Iraq, Maj. Pulido returned home facing tremendous physical and psychological challenges, including thoughts of suicide. What turned things around for him was reaching out for and accepting support from others, and focusing on helping service members and families in similar circumstances.

Sadly servicemembers stationed in a warzone often miss once in a lifetime moments, but with the advancement of technology and free services such as Skype Soldiers are finally able to join their ones for the moments that matter most. staff Sgt. Kirk Bell tells us more.

1AD mechanics fix vehicles to give troops doing partnership missions the gift of mobility. Story by SPC Naomi Martini, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs.

Charlie Wilson, a.k.a. Uncle Charlie, performs some R&B for troops at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq. Sgt. Reinaldo Lopez reports.

An Afghan girl recuperating and bonding with the staff at Role 3 Multi-National Hospital on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan after receiving life-threatening injuries from an improvised explosive device. Tech. Sgt. Elicia Summerville has more from Afghanistan.

USD-C dog handlers provide K9 support to Iraqi Security Forces during a joint patrol. Story by SPC Katie Summerhill 366 MPAD, USD-C Public Affairs.

Iraqi infantry soldiers retrain as mortarmen as part of a larger Iraqi initiative to further their artillery force. USD-C soldiers advise and assist the instructors during the training. Story by SSG John Freese 366 MPAD, USD-C Public Affairs.

Iraqi and American soldiers donate wheelchairs to a private clinic in rural Babil, Iraq. Story by SGT Collin Black 1st Armormed Division Public Affairs.

I thought Iraqis were a bit more restrained than this. This is the sort of behavior you’d expect from Keith Olbermann or Helen Thomas.

Bush was, as usual, cool under fire:

Zaidi yelled “Dog, dog!” as he was surrounded by Iraqi security officers, who tackled him and began to beat him. Zaidi was later removed from the ornate room in the heavily fortified Green Zone where the news conference was taking place.

Bush was not injured and joked about the incident minutes later: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. Thank you for your concern; do not worry about it.”

Zaidi, colleagues said, was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and was later released.

Zaidi would do well to consider this point, made on Twitter, by Cameron Kaiser:

btw, to those snickering over Bush+shoes, remember throwing shoes at Saddam would’ve meant death, and that would’ve been lenient.

When I accepted a position in Iraq as a civilian contractor many of my family and friends were pretty concerned about my safety, maybe even questioning my sanity. This is not my first trip to Iraq and I knew that on the FOBs (Forward Operating Bases), you are probably safer than many towns and cities across America. While some FOBs do experience mortar and rocket attacks, they are becoming fewer and farther between. In the case of Al Asad, where I work and live, the housing areas are quite literally miles from the base fenceline and have not seen any appreciable attacks in over 18 months.

As I’ve been roaming around western Iraq, I’ve noticed an incredible number of civlians working to support the US military’s efforst in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m not talking a few either. In an earlier post “Ugandans Provide Security” I noted there were approximately 6,000 Ugandans working at securing various facilities on each base throughout Iraq. That number pales in comparison to the number of food service workers, sanitation workers, bus drivers, sales clerks, MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) workers, facilities workers (heating, cooling, plumbing, energy production, etc…), custodians, and many, many more. The amazing thing I’ve noticed is most of these folks are not Americans, they are “TCNs” or Third Country Nationals. There are some “LNs” or Local Nationals (i.e. Iraqis), but not too many. I truly don’t have any idea how many TCNs there are, but the number must be at least 10 times the number of Ugandans.

Why so many TCNs? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out: TCNs work for a fraction of what an American would work for and they do jobs many Americans would simply not do. I’m pretty certain, the Department of Defnese is exercising due diligance in contracting these workers. The budget for OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan), and the larger Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) is tremendous, but stretched thin to keep the fight going. By using TCNs, the savings are incredible no doubt.

But, as I watch America slide into a serious Recession and possibly a Depression, it begs the question: Could these jobs be accomplished by Americans? My simple answer is YES.

As a new President enters office, I believe it is an opportunity to revisit this situation. As “New Deal” era plans are being made, there is already a ready made infrastructure that could employ tens of thousands of Americans within 6 months if a concerted effort were put into place to replace each and every TCN with an out-of-work American.

There is undoubtedly also some minor political benefit gained in employing third country nationals so it might not make sense to replace all of them but the balance could be adjusted. The issue is really just part of the larger outsourcing trend that Obama has promised to tackle. Ultimately, I don’t expect much to change and I’m not alone:

To illustrate the major views of Malaysian tech leaders, let me just talk about the most recent conversation I had. It was with TL Wong, chief executive officer of a business process outsourcing firm, Zeltrans, which is just three years old. He responded to a question about how the economic downturn was affecting his company.

TL said that for outsourcers, the downturn may be a good thing. He told me he had been approached by two more large American companies which wanted to cut costs by outsourcing to his company. Then he mentioned Obama’s intention.

Naturally, I asked him for his take on Obama’s intention. TL said there were two camps among his peers. Some companies were scared, but the majority thought there would be no or very little real action possible by Obama on this. “And if there was, the US is going to find it a very expensive exercise. What always counts at the end of the day is: the bottom line. Always will.”

Local residents in a Syrian border town said that American forces killed seven men in a helicopter-borne commando attack inside Syrian territory.

Doctors in the town of Al-Sukkariya, some eight kilometres from the Iraqi border, said seven corpses and four wounded had been delivered to a nearby clinic after the attack.

The eyewitness accounts said that four helicopters were involved in the operation, with two of the helicopters landing in the town and eight American soldiers disembarking. The eyewitnesses said that the seven killed men were supposedly construction workers.

Afterwards, the US helicopters then left Syrian airspace with all the soldiers again on board.

So, either the U.S. military is taking construction code enforcement incredibly seriously or the Syrian’s are learning the hard way that they can’t sponsor or allow cross-border operations with impunity.

The area is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.

Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing U.S. Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans.

On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a “different story.”

“The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,” Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.”

Update:
It looks like we’re confirming the attack – and it was related to the hostile cross-border traffic:

U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

The Reaper is off to a good start in Iraq:

During an overwatch mission over southeast Iraq, Reaper operators with Balad’s 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance and Attack Squadron discovered a suspicious vehicle. The Airmen immediately relayed the information to personnel in a local ground unit, said Lt. Col. Micah Morgan, the 46th ERAS commander. After the suspicious vehicle was confirmed to be a VBIED — a variant of the number-one killer of Americans on the battlefield — a joint terminal attack controller cleared the Reaper to employ a GBU-12 laser-guided weapon against the vehicle.

“This was a great example of the Reaper’s unique capabilities,” Colonel Morgan said. “We searched for, found, fixed, targeted and destroyed a target with just one aircraft.”

I’m sure that there will be many more drops to come.

Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks – not U.S. military muscle – for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”

Obama praises the heroic work of our troops as well but it always sounds like a forced disclaimer thoughtlessly tacked on to one complaint after another. His position yesterday:

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But The same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

So yesterday he took a sort of it’s working but I’ll find a reason to oppose it anyway approach and today he’s trying erase his pointed criticism of the entire strategy. Are American’s actually comfortable looking to this man for leadership?

The man is a great orator but an absolute political lightweight and as a Commander in Chief he would, as most Americans recognize, be a complete joke. Just look at the National Review’s attempt to document his ever-changing position.

Others Blogging:

Stop the ACLU
This must be a part of his “change you can believe in” platform.

Power Line
Question of the day: Who is heading up the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth over at the Obama campaign?

Wake Up America
How can a person that has not been to Iraq in 919 days, has never spoken one-on-one with the commander on the ground in Iraq and has not yet gone on his fact-finding mission to Iraq, actually state what his plans for Iraq are?

Political Punch
Another conundrum for Obama: the surge of US troops in Iraq having created a safer and more secure Baghdad, McCain can now (perhaps for the first time) point to an aspect of the war where he is able to argue that his judgment was superior to Obama’s.

Right Wing Nut House
Where will all this dizzying manuevering get Obama? Because the press will not call him out for this monumental flip flop – this Mother of All Campaign Backfills – it is not likely he will be hurt very much at all. More likely, the disillusioned left will grumble a bit and still turn out for him in November. Those on the far left always have Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. For the center, there is only the here and now in politics which is what Obama is counting on with this incredibly cynical move.

Riehl World View
Obama claims to have judgment you can trust. I have to assume he’s talking to our enemies in the Middle-East given the judgment he displayed on the surge.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government.

He stops short of proposing to call this Operation Frequent Wind but why not? Just for old time’s sake. Still, Obama may not achieve this goal so like all politicians he’s leaving himself tons of wiggle room:

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later.

The political strategy employed here may be more dangerous than it seems. The “consult with commanders” line that he’s tossing around these days is either your typical political escape hatch (to be employed if he keeps the troops deployed longer than liberals would like) or an outright lie to convince moderates and conservatives that he’ll carry out a responsible withdrawal. Of course, I suspect that it’s an outright lie. He’ll consult with them alright, but will he heed their advice? Not a chance. Anyway, there’s more. Like all good Democrats he believes that we can skip the hard work and just write a check to solve any remaining problems:

We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

I’m not sure which refugee crisis he’s referencing here. Is it the one created by the war or the much larger one that will be created by his rapid withdrawal? It doesn’t matter, to Obama at least, it appears that he wants to end the war at any cost and the fact-finding trips, consultations with military brass, and tactical adjustments are all window-dressing on a surrender that he plans to orchestrate at a time when victory is most certainly within reach.

Their bodies were recovered by the army’s 10th Mountain Division, little else is known, but they did not die in vain:

“Byron went to Iraq to help people who couldn’t help themselves,” said Pte Byron’s stepfather, Gordon Dibler. “I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain.”

The two soliders had been MIA for just over a year. The body of a third missing soldier, Pfc. Joseph Anzazk Jr., was recovered shortly after the attack in 2007.

However, since charges were first announced in December 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.

Six have now had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder against squad leader Frank Wuterich were changed to the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Wuterich faces trial later this year, along with Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking officer accused over the incident who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order.

Wuterich told a preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton last September that he would “always mourn the unfortunate deaths of the innocent Iraqis who were killed during our response to that attack.”

But he said: “Based on the information I had at the time, based on the situation, I made the best decision I could have.”

The Ohio Statehouse is hosting the memorial:

The exhibition was created in memory of 22 fallen Marines and a Navy Corpsman from the Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division who lost their lives while serving in Iraq in 2005. The exhibition will be unveiled in the Ohio Statehouse Rotunda on May 23, 2008 during a private ceremony for the families of the fallen. The exhibition will be on view to the public from May 24 through November 11, 2008. The exhibition will be free and open to the public.

The Ohio-based Marine Reserve unit, once known as “Lucky Lima,” was one of the hardest hit single units in Operation Iraqi Freedom, suffering deaths of 22 Marines and their Navy Corpsman. Created by Columbus artist Anita Miller, the memorial will contain life-sized paintings of each of the 23 fallen heroes. Names and statistics of each of the fallen men, an ever-living candle, boots and space for visitors to leave mementos will be part of this moving memorial installation.

Miller has worked during the last two years to create and paint the memorial. She has created eight painted panels set in an octagon that depict portraits of each of the 23 men who lost their lives in the war.

The Ohio Statehouse grand Rotunda will serve as a solemn place to honor these American service members from May 24, 2008 through July 7, 2008. The exhibition will then be featured in the South Hallway beneath Representatives Hall from July 8 through November 11, 2008.

The exhibition at the Ohio Statehouse will offer thousands of individuals the opportunity to learn about the sacrifices that these fallen servicemen have given our state and nation.

The Fallen Heroes:
Private First Class Christopher R. Dixon
Lance Corporal Christopher P. Lyons
Staff Sergeant Anthony L. Goodwin
Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis Youngblood (Navy Corpsman)
Sergeant Justin F. Hoffman
Staff Sergeant Kendall H. Ivy II
Lance Corporal Nicholas William B. Bloem
Corporal Andre L. Williams
Lance Corporal Grant B. Fraser
Lance Corporal Aaron H. Reed
Lance Corporal Edward A. Schroeder II
Lance Corporal William B. Wightman
Lance Corporal Timothy M. Bell, Jr.
Lance Corporal Eric J. Bernholtz
Corporal Dustin A. Derga
Lance Corporal Nicholas B. Erdy
Lance Corporal Wesley G. Davids
Sergeant David N. Wimberg
Lance Corporal Michael J. Cifuentes
Lance Corporal Christopher J. Dyer
Lance Corporal Jonathan W. Grant
Sergeant David Kenneth J. Kreuter
Lance Corporal Jourdan L. Grez

You can learn more about the memorial at LimaCompanyMemorial.org

Are the political ambitions of the broader jihad totalitarian, genocidal, millenarian – in a word, nuts? Or are they negotiable? President Bush knows where he stands. Just before the words that Barack Obama took umbrage at, he said:

“There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It’s natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously.”

Here are some words of Hussein Massawi, the former leader of Hezbollah:

“We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

Are his actions consistent with those words? Amazingly so. So, too, are those of Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran.

President Reagan talked with the Soviets while pushing ahead with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe. He spoke softly – after getting himself a bigger stick. Sen. Obama is proposing to reward a man who pledges to wipe Israel off the map with a presidential photo-op to which he will bring not even a twig. No wonder he’s so twitchy about it.

Four years of soft talk/no-stick is a pretty terrifying proposition.

John McCain is starting to get specific about his plan for the presidency. I think this release signals a subtle shift in McCain’s campaign and I hope that he continues to add layers of detail as the race continues. This initial effort is not really a tactical plan but it does clearly lay out his objectives. More importantly, he uses fairly specific language that in essence tells the American people that he can and will be held accountable for his time in office. He covers a lot of ground but the national security portion is the most interesting piece:

After four years of a McCain administration, America will be more secure and working with its allies and partners around the world to make us safer. In 2013:

The Iraq War has been won, Iraq is a functioning democracy, violence is much reduced, and America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure.

The United States maintains a military presence in Iraq, but a much smaller one that does not play a direct combat role.

The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan has been greatly reduced.

There is a functioning League of Democracies that has effectively applied pressure on Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force to stop the genocide.

There is no longer any place in the world al Qaeda can consider a safe haven. An increase in actionable intelligence leads to the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants.

Through increased international cooperation and concerted use of American power, we have disrupted terrorist networks and exposed plots around the world.

The United States and its allies have made great progress in advancing nuclear security.

The size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased, and are now better equipped and trained to defend us. A substantial increase in veterans educational benefits and improvements in their health care has aided recruitment and retention.

Here he does what the Hillary, Edwards, and Obama cannot. He offers a realistic, and honest, way forward in Iraq and the greater war on terror. He knows that many people will not like what they hear but McCain is the only adult in the race. He’ll do what needs to be done and say what needs to be said even if it is difficult.

He touches on economic, healthcare, and other issues as well. You can read the entire statement on his site.

Parts of the older Blogs of War archives have been offline for over a year. This weekend I started republishing material from the earliest days of the war.

Thousands of updates were posted in the initial weeks of the war. The mainstream media was still moving at a snail’s pace online in those days and the constant stream of updates earned Blogs of War global media attention. Here are the first 24 hours:

The War: Hour 1
The War: Hour 2
The War: Hour 3
The War: Hour 4
The War: Hour 5
The War: Hour 6
The War: Hour 7
The War: Hour 8
The War: Hour 9
The War: Hour 13
The War: Hour 14
The War: Hour 16
The War: Hour 17
The War: Hour 18
The War: Hour 19
The War: Hour22
The War: Hour 23
The War: Hour 24

10:05am CST
Donald Rumsfeld is briefing reporters at the Pentagon. “The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered”. “To the Iraqi people let me say that the day of your liberation will soon be at hand.”

10:18am CST

Now that was really unexpected. When the sirens went on we thought we will get bombs by the tom load dropped on us but nothing happened, at least in the part of the city where I lived. Air-craft guns could be heard for a while but they stopped too after a while and then the all clear siren came.

Today in the morning I went with my father for a ride around Baghdad and there was nothing different from yesterday. There is no curfew and cars can be seen speeding to places here and there. Shops are closed. Only some bakeries are open and of course the Ba’ath Party Centers. There are more Ba’ath people in the streets and they have more weapons. No army in the streets. We obviously still have electricity, phones are still working and we got to phone calls from abroad so the international lines are still working. water is still running.

- Where is Raed? (Iraqi Blogger)

10:23am CST
More oil field fires reported in Southern Iraq. First reported as 2 now 3 or 4. – Sky News broadcast

10:27am CST
“There is considerable belief in this government that they may, in fact, have gotten Saddam.” – Drudge Report

10:32am CST
Coalition forces moving into Iraq and heading for a “specific target” – Sky News broadcast

10:54am CST
Reporters in Kuwait ordered into bunkers due to expected “barrage of missles” – MSNBC broadcast

10:56am CST
MSNBC sums up the events of the last 15 hours pretty well in this article

They sang Joy to the World as well. Hopefully Baghdad will see more joy, and many more silent nights, in 2008.

A soldier sends Christmas greetings to his family in West Virginia and reminds folks to remember the origin of the holiday.

Violence is down about 60 percent in Iraq since the June troop surge, and the top military commander in Iraq said today that he wants the trend to continue in 2008.

“Every trend we watch is down roughly about 60 percent: civilian deaths, numbers of attacks, and thankfully our casualties are down as well,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “As we go into the new year, we clearly want to build on the momentum that has been achieved by our forces working closely together with Iraqi forces.”

Petraeus said Iraqi forces also had a surge this year, with 110,000 new Iraqi soldiers and police.
Petraeus appeared on the morning news program to discuss the release of this week’s quarterly report, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq.” With the success of the surges comes the question of reducing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq while maintaining the positive trends, he said.

Some areas, including sections of Baghdad itself, are seeing even more remarkable advances:

“We have seen attacks drop from an average of 150 a week in (the) late January and February timeframe, to less than 10 attacks a week,” Funk said. “The result has been nothing short of phenomenal. When I walk through the local markets, they are full. Small businesses are erupting everywhere.”

The decrease in violence has fostered a feeling of growing civil stability among Iraqis that has encouraged local entrepreneurs to take advantage of economic grants provided by the U.S. military, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other sources, Funk explained.

“A sense of the return of normalcy has caught on, and there has been remarkable progress,” the colonel said.

“Were they good fighters?” I said.

“They’re not good fighters,” he said, “but they got a bunch of us. They knew we were clearing every building. And they’d learn from us. Whenever we went to a position we always filled sandbags and stuff like that.”

“And they would do the same thing,” he continued. “They knew that if we couldn’t come through the front door, we’d go through the back door. So they would barricade one door and leave one open. And they’d put a bunker and a machine gun down that main hallway. They would sit in the back corner of a room and soon as you kicked open the door they would just keep firing. So maybe they weren’t very good fighters, but they were quick to adapt and were actually pretty smart.”

“I’ve read that some of these guys injected themselves with drugs,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “we found syringes, different types of drugs. The corpsman tried to explain to me what they were at the time, but I didn’t really pay attention to him. They found a lot of medical stuff like that, but for the most part they were just smart. They basically knew what we were going to do every time. We would clear the house, so all they had to do was wait.”

“Do you talk about this stuff with your friends and family?” I said. I was curious if he, like Corporal Koch, kept the war all bottled up inside to himself.

“If they ask, I’ll tell them,” he said. “It doesn’t really bother me. The more people understand what’s really going on over here, the more support they’ll give us.”

There’s much more, including photos, on Michael’s blog.

Being a garrison force is not what the Marine Corps brings to the table, the commandant said. “We’re expeditionary, and we do not get engaged in some of the long-term duties that you see in Germany, or Japan or Korea,” Conway explained. “We are much more mobile than that, and we want to keep that mobility and that flexibility and not get tied down.”

And they still have work to do it Iraq.

Anyway, there is an official site for those who are interested. Wikipedia has more information including a pretty comprehensive rundown on the participants.

National security advisor Steve Hadley recently laid out some goals, if you can call them that, for the event:

…the focus of these discussions are the Israelis and the Palestinians launching a negotiating process, supporting them in their efforts to implement the road map, which we still think is the critical path for achieving peace, and, in parallel, building Palestinian institutions and making sure there’s international support for that. That’s what really this meeting is all about and that’s what we hope will come out of it.

In other words, they’re not hoping for much. Or as Rick Richman puts it:

So the conference will “launch negotiations” — since the last few months of actual negotiations over a “document” have failed. Since failure is not an option, this will be called a success.

Frank Viviano is bit more optimistic:

The atmosphere is marked by weakness, uncertainty and pessimism. Yet that may prove to be the Annapolis conference’s greatest strength, an unexpected prelude to breakthrough on the 60-year road to an Arab-Israeli-settlement. It is between the lines of bleak editorials, op-ed columns and analyses in the press of the Middle East itself that this hope, however slim, can be read. From Riyadh and Beirut to Cairo and Jerusalem, pre-conference media coverage has been a strange mosaic of dark foreboding and unusual glimmers of light. No less unusual is the fact that Annapolis will bring together all of the governments and mainstream players in this unending conflict for the first time – precisely because because all of them are reeling in crisis. In a sense, there could be no more potent chemistry for success at the negotiating table. The closest equivalent is the “Nixon shock” of 35 years ago, when a fiercely anti-Communist U.S. president, faced with riots in the American streets and a war about to be lost in Southeast Asia, suddenly found common ground with a marxist China gravely enfeebled by cultural revolution.

John Bolton is cranky, pessimistic, and right (as usual):

“If there is a conference and it fails, we are not simply in the status quo that we had before,” Bolton said during a Web-based question-and-answer session. “We are in a worse position, because it will show a decline in American influence, a failure in a very visible way. I wish we weren’t doing this at all.”

And The Washington Post falls somewhere in the middle:

If there are causes for optimism, they lie in the hopeful public rhetoric of Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas — and the fears that lie behind it. Mr. Olmert has publicly pledged several times that Israel will negotiate seriously, and he said last week that he believed there was a chance to complete a peace deal by the end of next year. His government, like many in the Middle East, is deeply worried by Iran’s attempt to expand its influence throughout the region and believes a failure of the talks would play into Tehran’s hands. That prospect may be enough to produce some progress at the Annapolis meeting and in the months to come. But the breakthrough that Ms. Rice thought was possible still looks remote.

While, Henry Siegman hits all of the Arab talking points on the way to this ridiculously one-sided conclusion:

If the international community has been largely indifferent to—or impotent to do anything about—what some have tried to portray as a quarrel between Israel and Palestinians over where to draw the border between the two, it is far less likely to remain indifferent to an Israel intent on permanently denying its majority Arab population the rights and privileges it accords to its minority of Jewish citizens. It would be an apartheid regime that, one hopes, a majority of Israelis would themselves not abide.

The results of a major exit poll of voters in today’s federal election has predicted Kevin Rudd will be the next prime minister of Australia and that John Howard will lose his seat of Bennelong.

The Sky News exit poll taken in 31 key seats predicts a two-party preferred result of 53 per cent to Labor to 47 per cent to the Coalition.

Howard was a strong ally in the war on terror and he helped keep the global warming wackos at bay. His successor will hurt us on both fronts:

Rudd, a 50-year-old former diplomat who speaks fluent Chinese, says the 68-year-old Howard is ill-equipped to deal with new challenges like global warming and a high-speed Internet network.

He says his first priority if he is elected will be to sign the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, something Howard has refused for years to do.

Rudd says he would withdraw Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles. Howard says all the troops will stay as long as needed.

Well, at least France is sucking less these days.