Tuesday Roundup: Iraq is Hard

Iraq was a popular topic in the news yesterday, but the coverage seemed to have a different underlying message than we're used to. No longer are we hearing about what was or wasn't done, about our successes or failure; now what we're hearing is that we really just don't know what's going on.

A suicide bomber yesterday attacked a group of Sunni and Shiite officials at a meeting convened for the purpose of helping to reconcile the Iraqi factions, killing at least 21 people. The same day, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki stated that they have "stopped the explosion of a sectarian war," and that civil war has been averted, the Washington Post reports. He states in the same interview that Iranian intervention had occurred in border areas, but that it had "ceased to exist." That night, the police headquarters in Basra was attacked, killing three policemen and wounding 20. According to the U.S. military, the suspect is a member of Iran's Quds Force, the same group that was being accused of arming Iraqis.

And the ironic thing of it all is that we can't even accurately gauge our progress (or lack thereof) in the area. The Post illustrates the difficulty in getting analyses that can actually be compared to each other. They point out some unusual discrepancies between Petraeus' numbers in his congressional testimony and the data published by the Pentagon during that same period. Most telling was the report from the Government Accountability Office that stated that it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined."

Meanwhile, on the home front, yet another Senate bill ending the war has been voted down. The Levin-Reed measure would have called for a nine-month timetable within which to bring most troops home. Get the lede on this story:

The Senate yesterday rejected a nine-month timetable for bringing most troops home from Iraq, yet another legislative defeat for Democrats in what is shaping up as a losing battle to force President Bush to end the war.

If anyone wonders why so many in Congress are hesitant to try to push through a straightforward bill ending the war, or think the Democrats are being "weak" by not trying, this is why they don't. We simply don't have the votes, and every time we show it by letting a proposal crash against the rocks of a filibuster, we make ourselves look ineffective. The average voter will think of the two parties in the light the media paints them with whether we like it or not. Pelosi is now turning to congressional moderates to form a plan that will hopefully get passed in Congress. News on what they come up with should be out later today.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports on the GM plant in Arlington — and on a whole bunch of people hanging out outside of it today. It just so happens that they are the employees of that plant, and they're taking part in the first nationwide strike in the auto industry in 31 years. The union stated its most pressing concern as the drastic underfunding of retiree health benefits. This whole thing not only serves to remind us (particularly in the South) that unions are still very active, even down here where we don't tend to see them very often, but also that the issue of universal health care is just not going away this time.

Farmers Branch is up to their old hijinx again today. City attorneys have requested from their school district the names and addresses of every child living in Farmers Branch who is enrolled in school. Why would they want that information, you ask? Well, ten gets you twenty that they're trying to strike again at their imaginary illegal immigration problem. They can't explicitly ban illegal immigrant children from attending public schools, as a 1982 Supreme Court ruling (federal, of course) guarantees them the right to attend. (Boy, that Constitution sure is pesky sometimes. If it didn't guarantee our right to carry guns, I don't know why we'd still want to keep it around.) So they're likely going with a clever ploy to get rid of them indirectly. Farmers Branch city code has minimum limits on the amount of sleeping space per occupant in a house — 70 square feet per adult in a single-family home and an additional 50 square feet for each additional adult occupant, and at least 35 square feet for each child. Apartment ordinances allow two people per bedroom plus one additional person. The Star-Telegram implies that it's likely that the city plans to use the information from public school enrollment to crack down on households violating those ordinances. I suppose no one's pointed out to them that if that does happen to successfully discriminate against illegal immigrants indirectly, it's only because it happens to discriminate against those under the poverty line directly. Then again, I'm not sure they care. So much for compassionate conservatism.

And finally today, I want to make sure that all our readers are up on their pop culture references. I had someone joke to me over the weekend about how Nelson Mandela was surprised that he was dead (no, don't worry, he's not), and the only reason I knew what the person was talking about was because of the Washington Post Yukster, Dana Milbank. Dana wins my "Funny Man of the Week" award for the second time for his coverage of President Bush's news "conference," and how it was almost — almost — newsworthy. But, of course, not quite. He just wanted to speak at the press, as usual. Guess he felt like he had to spice up the news conference so that people would actually be interested. Read Dana's piece to see how he did.