Start with Abu Gonzales, Lurita Doan. Get them to turn on each other. Destroy their political effectiveness. Destroy the machine that makes all of this possible. Isolate Bush and Cheney from any appearance of being honest brokers, of being responsible players.

Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec.

Athenae posted a good rah-rah, fight-fight-fight exhortation, ending with "Not. One. Inch."

I commented,

The war wil continue because, regardless of what Democrats do, there are enough Republicans in Congress to keep the Dems from overturning a Bush veto.

The Senate Intelligence committee releases a new part of its Phase II investigation (.pdf): Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq. Chairman Rockefeller: "Today's report shows that the Intelligence Community gave the Administration plenty of warning about the difficulties we would face if the decision was made to go to war. These dire warnings were widely distributed at the highest levels of government, and it's clear that the Administration didn't plan for any of them. The Intelligence Community believed an American invasion would be exploited by Iran and al Qaeda terrorists and that an occupation of Iraq would fuel Islamist extremism. They also assessed that al Qaeda would seek to re-establish its presence in Afghanistan while the United States was diverted in Iraq."

Today America watched a Democratic Party kick them square in the teeth - all in order to continue the most unpopular war in a generation at the request of the most unpopular president in a generation at a time polls show a larger percentage of the public thinks America is going in the wrong direction than ever recorded in polling history.
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I'm not a purist nor am I a "pox on both their houses" kind of guy. I have worked to elect Democratic politicians and I supported Democratic leaders when they pushed an Iraq funding bill that included binding language to end the war. But what happened today was perhaps the most stunning travesty I've seen in a decade working in Democratic politics. A Democratic Party that six months ago was elected on a promise to end the war first tried to hide their complicity in continuing the war in the House, and then gave a few token speeches as the blank check sailed through the Senate club. And it all happened, as the New York Times reported today, because these Democrats believed criticism from President Bush - the man who polls show is the most unpopular president in three decades - "seemed more politically threatening to them than the anger Democrats knew they would draw from the left."

They make their political calculations with only their own interests in mind. The elections next year will give people exactly wht they always give them - a chance to choose what they consider the lesser of two evils.

The Democrats had an opportunity to save lives and change the political paradigm.

They chose not to.

Democratic politicians, Capitol Hill staff, political consultants and all their lobbyist friends sitting comfortably tonight in their Northwest Washington homes believe the public thinks Democrats are "weak" because they don't more strongly support leaving American troops to be killed or maimed in the middle of a bloody civil war in a country half way around the globe that had no WMD and had nothing to do with 9/11. What they seem unable - or unwilling - to realize is that the public has believed Democrats are weak not because some in the party have opposed the war, but because many in the party refuse to wield the power the public entrusts them with on all sorts of issues.