Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez blasted the Bush administration today for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability. The New York Times reports that Sanchez is “the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war.” More:

“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

UPDATE: Sanchez said that in Iraq the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”

UPDATE II: In Nov. 2003, Bush hailed Gen. Sanchez’s “strong leadership.”

Much of the far right’s smear campaign against 12-year old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost was driven by the right-wing blogosphere. One blog in particular, Redstate, featured especially vitriolic comments. A poster there wrote of the Frost family:

If federal funds were required [they] could die for all I care. Let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. [...]

I would hire a team of PIs and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. Then I’d do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.

Rather than distancing themselves from the smear campaign, the White House today decided to embrace RedState and reward the blog with an official White House posting.

In a post entitled “Democrats’ SCHIP Budget Gimmick,” Nicholas Thompson, a staffer in the White House’s Office of Strategic Intiatives, rallied the conservative troops around Bush’s hard-line stance, reminding them that “we are less than one week” from Congress’ veto override vote.

In today’s New York Times, columnist Paul Krugman writes:

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. [...] Leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them.

The White House’s tacit endorsement of a blog that promoted baseless attacks against a 12-year old boy serves as a perfect illustration of Krugman’s point.

UPDATE: According to RedState, the poster who smeared Graeme was actually a respected voice in the right-wing blog. “As it turns out, it was the well-known contributor mbecker who posted that now famous comment.”

Today, CNN hosted “Dear Abby” author Jeanne Phillips, who recently publicly declared her support for gay rights and received the first-ever “Straight for Equality” award from Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. “I guess I just have a sense of fair play,” Phillips told CNN. “I have some wonderful gay friends and I think they should be entitled to all the civil rights everyone else has.” Watch it:

CNN also showed Phillips a recent clip of Lynne Cheney saying that people “ought to be able to enter into the relationships they want” because it is a “free country.” Phillips responded, “I never thought I’d agree with the Cheneys on anything.”

Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Tierney (D-MA) introduced a resolution today chastising the State Dept. for “withholding from Congress and the American people information about the extent of corruption in the Maliki government.” Waxman writes:

“The resolution further condemns the State Department for retroactively classifying documents that had been widely distributed previously as unclassified, and [for] directing its employees not to answer questions in an open forum that call for ‘assessments which judge…the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption.’”

Earlier today, several House Chairmen wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling for “honest answers” about corruption in Iraq.