When I read this story about conditions falling apart in Basra after British troops handed practical control over to the locals, I thought it was yet-more ammunition for my quest to persuade whoever will listen that the US ought to end its tragic military engagement in Iraq. Somehow, though, I never got around to writing the post and it occurs to me that, of course, the article could be used to prove the precise reverse — that we can’t afford to leave lest we wind up with a country-sized Basra.

This sort of thing, ultimately, is why no conceivable September report will make any real difference to the Iraq debate. It’s not that ideological blinders prevent people from seeing the facts, it’s that the facts don’t really determine anything. Signs of improving conditions can be a reason to stay or a reason to leave. Signs of deteriorating conditions can be a reason to leave or a reason to stay. Ultimately, the issue doesn’t hinge on fine-grained appreciation of the facts, nearly so much as it hinges on broader questions of how you look at American interests in the region and whether or not the prospect of spending tens of billions of dollars a day for an indefinite period of time on maintaining a military presence in a foreign country against the will of the population is the kind of thing that makes you queasy.

According to The Washington Post, he says “Obama is becoming the antiwar candidate, and Hillary Clinton is becoming the responsible Democrat who could become commander in chief in a post-9/11 world.” One can try to speculate that Kristol is playing some odd angles here, but I think the record indicates that he’s genuinely more committed to war — criticized Republican critics of the Kosovo War, criticized Bill Clinton for not killing enough people during the Kosovo War, backed John McCain in the 2000 primaries — and based on the evidence thinks Clinton will be more sympathetic to his agenda than the alternatives.

The Washington Post compiles an excellent map of Israel’s “separation barrier” to accompany Scot Wilson’s article on the subject.

As you can see, along with the completely understandable goal of defending Israel Proper, the wall involves various kinds of land-grabs along the border, and also more than a few penumbras and emanations aimed at securing the more far-flung settlements. This, combined with the gray “Jews only” roads that criss-cross the West Bank, constitutes a major inconvenience for tens of thousands of Palestinians and seems to lay the groundwork for a situation where the Palestinians on the other side of the wall enjoy some kind of autonomy or even formal independence while remaining essentially under Israeli control.

As everyone knows, the real culprits for the failure of American policy in Vietnam aren’t the hawks who ran the show throughout 20 years of U.S. effort to prop up South Vietnam, but rather the opponents of the policy, who handed the enemy the win in congress that they couldn’t achieve on the battlefield. Except, Gary Farber points out that neither Richard Nixon nor Henry Kissinger (via Jim Henley) appear to have believed the war was winnable in the early 1970s.

Another classic “me or your lying eyes” moment as George W. Bush decides to contradicts Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the question of Iran’s role in Afghanistan. Karzai, who only lives in Afghanistan and runs its government, calls Iran “a helper.” Bush, though, says he’s got it wrong.