In the News
Iraq
Anthony Loyd, Times (UK) correspondent in Baghdad, says that a day-time curfew kept a lid on the violence in Iraq today but the future is far from clear and civil war is a very real possibility.
Ted Koppel/NYT op ed - It's about the oil. (NYT Select)
From a Detroit Metro Times interview with Professor Juan Cole:
MT: We got into this war with this neoconservative blueprint that we would quickly take Iraq, democratize it and move on through the region. Do you see a clear philosophy guiding what the administration is doing at this point?NYT -
Cole: No. I think they get up in the morning and they face a set of situations in Iraq and they try to develop policies to deal with those situations, and they get up the next day and there's a new set of situations and they develop policies to deal with those. I think it's reactive. I think it's ad hoc. I don't think there's a big picture. I think they're hoping that they can ultimately muddle through, that things will settle down enough so that they can get out of it with some dignity. I think it's probably a forlorn hope. In many ways it's over with, it's lost. I hear from my contacts who talk to military people on the ground there, and they say it's over with. If your counterinsurgency operation is about winning hearts and minds, that's finished..
US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad: "What we've seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone's attention that Iraq is in danger." The country's leaders, he added, "must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country."
On the 2008 Election
Poughkeepsie Journal - Most think Clinton won't be president in '08: Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion poll results show that voters believe Senator Clinton would lose if she ran. Almost 80 percent said it is unlikely Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Republican, could win the White House. As with other national polls, Senator Clinton leads the list of potential contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. She has the support of 33 percent of potential primary voters in the WNBC/ Marist poll to 17 percent for former Vice President Al Gore, 16 percent for John Edwards and 11 percent for John Kerry. No other Democrat breaks into double digits.
From The Niner Online (UNCC)-
In an American Research Group poll taken Feb. 2 - 9 of 600 likely Republican primary voters in South Carolina, McCain was the choice of 42 percent. All other potential candidates scored in single digits. Forty percent remained undecided. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus three percent. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York led among Democrats, with 30 percent of the support. John Edwards was her closest rival with 15 percent. An additional 36 percent were undecided. In a hypothetical November matchup, McCain beats Clinton, 52 - 32 percent, in South Carolina.