On Saturday, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War spoke at an event in Watertown, NY, and charged that their unit commanders encouraged them to commit war crimes:

“The killing of innocent civilians is policy,” said veteran Mike Blake. “It’s unit policy and it’s Army policy. It’s not official policy, but it’s what’s happens on the ground everyday. It’s what unit commanders individually encourage.”

Veteran Matt Howard concurred: “These decisions are coming from the top down,” Howard said. “The tactics that we use, the policies that the military engages, will create situations, create dynamics, create — ultimately — atrocity.”

Fred Thompson is dropping out. Marc Ambinder offers a Thompson campaign retrospective. He says “in many ways, he tried to occupy a space that John McCain more credibly occupied; national security strength, straight talk on the economic challenges facing the country and resiliency.” Maybe. Certainly I’d assume that Thompson, who’s pals with McCain, hopes that’s right and his pool of supporters drifts that way. But in most regards I’d say Thompson tried to occupy a space that Mitt Romney less credibly but more effectively occupied — plain-vanilla conservative.

In December, after the new NIE on Iran was released, former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton established himself as one of the top hawks trying to undermine its credibility, going so far as to call for a congressional witch-hunt into anti-Bush “people in the intelligence community.”

During his trip to Israel this week for the the Herzliya Conference, Bolton has ratcheted up his criticisms of the report, saying on Sunday that the “illegitimate politicization” of the NIE was “a quasi-coup by the intelligence services.”

On Monday, Bolton said that the NIE put “pressure” on Israel to strike Iran because “the likelihood of American use of force has been dramatically reduced”:

“One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely,” Bolton told AFP on the sidelines of the Herzliya conference on the balance of Israel’s national security.

“That increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time… if it feels Iran is on the verge of acquiring that capability, it brings the decision point home to use force,” he said.

Reacting to Bolton, a “senior Israeli security official” told Agence France-Presse that “one should listen very closely to what Bolton has to say.”

Asked about Bolton’s comments today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to refute him, only saying that Bolton is “a private citizen”:

QUESTION: (Inaudible) on Israel and he basically told us (inaudible) because they said the Bush administration (inaudible).

RICE: John Bolton is a private citizen. He can say what he wants.

Bolton’s comments join a chorus of conservative hawks who continue to argue, in the words of National Review’s Mark Steyn, that a “the bombing option is becoming the only one that will be left” in regards to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Fox News reports that former Tennesee senator Fred Thompson is dropping out of the Republican race for President. Via Fox reporter Carl Cameron:

Fox News has learned that Fred Thompson is returning to his home in McLean VA and plans to withdraw from the race. He has begun calling friends, family and supporters and telling them his campaign is over.

“If we fail to take action to either impeach or repair the damage, then the next president will ‘inherit’ unchecked powers. Unchecked powers are unacceptable no matter who is president.”

UPDATE: “Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice-President Dick Cheney. Six of the nine are co-sponsors of H.R. 799, which contains three articles of impeachment,” according to CounterPunch.

John McCain’s unquestionably a popular figure, but David Kusnet is also surely right that it’s hard to see him winning in bleak economic times if he keeps talking the way he was talking at his South Carolina victory speech. There’s just nothing in there whatsoever to suggest that McCain has any awareness of anyone experiencing any kind of financial difficulties. What’s more, I think it’ll actually be quite hard for him to pivot in a more sympathetic direction. After all, throughout all his flipping and flopping and back again of the past ten years, the “cares about people in economic pain” persona is one he’s never tried on. And I think he’s never tried it on because it runs contrary to his entire schtick, which is all about finding causes greater than ourselves, salvation through nationalism, etc., etc. On some emotional level, he probably thinks a woman who needs to declare bankruptcy because the racked up massive credit card bills while her uninsured husband was dying of cancer should just grin and bear it the way he did as a POW.

After what he’s been through, it’s probably hard to muster a ton of sympathy for workaday problems. And yet that’s what politics is all about. By the same token, though, I think it would be foolish to confidently predict economic conditions eleven months from now. Maybe things will get worse . . . maybe they’ll turn around. But if they don’t turn around, it does seem like potentially big trouble for McCain.

Photo courtesy of Victory NH