Today on the new blog Democracy Arsenal, Heather responds to an interesting post from last week on the “Top 10 Myths Progressives Need to Let Go of to Regain the Upper Hand in Foreign Policy.” Discussing #4 on trade policy, Heather contends that 93% of Bush voters favored labor and environmental standards in trade agreements — so how left can that sentiment really be?

Democracy Arsenal is the blog of the newly-launched Security and Peace Initiative (SPI). SPI is the offspring of the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress and will focus on promoting a responsible US foreign policy. It will also place special emphasis on identifying and promoting emerging voices in progressive foreign policy, thereby building the next generation of foreign policy thinkers.

During his trip to Iraq this week, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admitted that the Bush administration doesn’t have an exit strategy. On the other hand, he said, the White House does have a “victory strategy,” the goal of which is apparently “to help the Iraqi Forces develop the skills and the capacity to provide their own security.”

Except, according to a new GAO report, he doesn’t even have that.

Though more than a year and a half has passed, and some $5.6 billion dollars has been spent, since Gen. Abizaid first announced plans to train thousands of Iraqi security forces, the GAO reported last month that “Coalition leadership has yet to develop a system to assess the readiness of Iraqi military and police forces so they can identify weaknesses and provide them with effective support.”