In two major reports released this week, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones concludes that “progress achieved after six years” in Afghanistan “is under serious threat.” “Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,” said the Jones-led the report by the Atlantic Council.

Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates attempted to spin the negative downturn in Afghanistan, claiming that “NATO has had a very successful year in 2007″ and that the significant increase in suicide bombings in 2007 was the “manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms“:

Gates conceded there’s “a rising security issue” there, but said “it’s because the Taliban are turning to terrorism, having failed in conventional military conflict with the NATO allies.”

“And so we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on. These are actions of people whose conventional military efforts have failed,” he said. “The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that.”

Arguing that increased acts of violence are signs of progress is a common Bush administration tactic:

- In June 2007, then-White House Press Secretary Tony Snow described intense new levels of violence in Iraq as “signs of success.”

- After the Samarra Mosque was bombed in 2006 — setting off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq that verged on civil war — Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the attack as a sign that insurgents had “reached a stage of desperation.”

- In May 2005, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that “So suicide attacks, whether in Okinawa or in Baghdad today, are not a sign of strength. They’re a sign of desperation.”

- In March 2004, “in a trio of interviews with cable news outlets yesterday,” Vice President Cheney “brushed off the attacks as a sign of ‘desperation’ among U.S. foes.”

A true sign of desperation is an administration trying to equate increasing acts of violence with “signs of success.”

Jonah Goldberg chiding his fellow NROniks for their McCain-bashing seems pretty persuasive to me. I don’t like John McCain, and I can see why he’s not the conservatives’ favorite, but he’s clearly a conservative and one with high electoral appeal so it’s not clear to me why you’d throw a fit over the prospect of him running.

Then again, I actually think it’s strange that Goldberg is the one with sensible views on this. Working within the frame of Goldberg’s expansive definition of “fascism” I think it’s pretty clear that John McCain comes much closer than any other major American political figure to fitting the bill. He offers a pure kind of politics-as-salvation where we’re supposed to find a higher purpose through submission to the needs of the Nation. He doesn’t just pay lip service to supporting the troops, he clearly believes that military service — preferable in wartime — is more virtuous than other pursuits (thus his dissing of Mitt Romney’s business background) and he’s thus sometimes led to seem to see war as a worthwhile end-in-itself.

Number of people who tuned into last night’s CNN Democratic presidential debate, “making it the most-watched primary debate in cable news history, and the second-most watched on TV this election cycle (ABC’s Democratic debate on Jan. 5 drew 9,360,000).”

Yesterday, former Office of Legal Counsel head Jay Bybee — who signed off on the infamous August 2002 “torture memo” — spoke at Yale Law School. The Yale Daily News reports that the “speaker had hardly finished his first sentence when about 25 Yale Law School students in the audience stood up and sheathed their heads in black trash bags, in imitation of hooded military prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.”

Now that MoveOn’s decided to endorse Barack Obama there’s really and truly not much out there worth having in endorsementland except the grand prize of Al Gore. Josh Green steps up to the plate with the breathless speculation you crave:

On the other hand, Obama is now close enough to a big win that Gore’s endorsement could easily put him over the top. Gore is beloved among Democratic primary voters. His staunch denials have been unusually effective in tamping down speculation that he’ll endorse, so an announcement would be earthshaking and guaranteed to dominate the airwaves until the February 5 primaries. Take Tennessee, Gore’s home state, which could wind up making the difference. Democratic polling there is somewhat sparse, especially that done after John Edwards’s withdrawal. But Tennessee looks to be a state in which Clinton currently holds a lead—that is, unless a certain favorite son were to endorse her opponent.

I think that’s persuasive. On the other hand, I’ve never been totally sure where the widespread assumption that Gore prefers Obama has come from. I understand the basis for the idea that there are important Gore-Clinton tensions, but at the same time Gore seems like very much the sort of person who might be sufficiently persuaded by Clinton’s arguments about experience, etc. that he just doesn’t have strong feelings about the race.

From March 2-4, right-wing climate-denier group The Heartland Institute will host what it calls a ‘Climate Skeptics’ Conference. Heartland President Joseph Blast boasted that his conference would feature climate change deniers: “This is their chance to speak out.” The online poster for the conference declares, “Global Warming is not a crisis!”

Heartland’s environmental stance is completely out of the mainstream. The debate over human contribution to global warming is long over. Even as all three top GOP presidential candidates recently endorsed California’s effort to reduce auto greenhouse gas emissions, Heartland ridiculed the idea, calling California and its allies “environmental extremists.”

Heartland’s extreme anti-environmentalism no doubt spawns from its supporters. Between 1998 and 2005, oil giant ExxonMobil gave nearly $800,000 to Heartland. The group’s Board of Directors also explains the group’s climate change denials:

– Thomas Walton is the Director of Economic Policy at General Motors.

–James L. Johnston is a former senior economist for oil company Amoco Corporation.

–Walter F. Buchholtz is a former member of Heartland’s board of directors and worked as ExxonMobil’s Senior Issues Advisor.

–James M. Taylor is editor of Heartland’s weekly Environment & Climate News and wrote an op-ed criticizing Gore’s “Assault On Reason” insisting that “global warming threats they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.”

RealClimate quips, “Normal scientific conferences have the goal of discussing ideas and data in order to advance scientific understanding. Not this one.”

Today on ABC’s Good Morning America, First Lady Laura Bush joked about President Bush’s dancing:

Both George and I are not great dancers. He doesn’t really like to that much, but I do like to. And Barbara and Jenna and I danced from when they were in the first grade.

Here’s proof:

Ann Coulter may not have been invited, but President Bush and Dick Cheney have. According to a CPAC email, both the President and Vice President will speak at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference for the first time.

Last year, the speakers at CPAC were eager to run away from the Bush record. Will this year’s speakers do the same?

Dave Roberts notes that last night’s CNN debate was the fourth such debate sponsored by a coal industry front group, and that, coincidentally enough, none of the four coal-funded debate broadcasts featured any questions about climate change. Your liberal media in action.