In 2004, after narrowly defeating John Kerry, President Bush boasted he had earned political capital and he intended to spend it.

What political capital, then, have Democrats just earned?

The dust has settled, most of the results are now in, and for Republicans, the results are not good. Democrats have taken solid control of the House, capturing 27 Republican-held seats and leading in two other races. They are on the verge of taking the Senate as well, with Democratic wins in Virginia and Montana likely, although not yet certain.

Ultimately, one can point to two things that cost Republicans this election: Mark Foley and Iraq. Exit polls indicated many voters were unhappy with Bush, with the war in Iraq, and with what they perceived to be corruption in Congress.

The jury is still out on the corruption—that issue will undoubtedly come up again and again in the not so distant future—but clearly Iraq is not going to go away anytime soon. To paraphrase an old saying: Republicans made their own bed on that one, and now they have to lie in it.

The “good” news for conservatives? We’ve essentially been operating with a Democratic-controlled Congress since Bush became president. Republicans technically controlled Congress, but the result was out of control government spending and big government policies. Maybe now that they’re no longer the party in power, Republicans will make some sort of attempt to return to their fiscally conservative roots.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

The filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald also describes Cheney’s involvement in I. Lewis Libby’s communications with the press.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame’s CIA identity. But it points to Cheney as one of the originators of the idea that Plame could be used to discredit her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Former war supporter William Buckley made a surprising admission in his most recent National Review column:

One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed . . . And the administration has, now, to cope with failure.

This follows up on another recent statement Buckley made, where he explained that “If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

John Marshall has an interesting column that deals with Buckley’s change of mind.

Back in October of last year, I published an article in Virtue Magazine titled “Why They Hate Us.” In the article, I stated:

. . . government meddling in the political affairs of other nations can come to no good. The current invasion and regime change in Iraq is no exception: war supporters are loathe to admit it, but the possibility of Iraq deteriorating into a full-scale civil war is becoming more likely day by day.

Someone didn’t like that statement too much, and in a “Letter to the Editor” the following issue, this person claimed that the above statement was purely “opinion.” Furthermore, he stated:

It is the media’s view, not eyewitness, objective observations from Iraq. What we’re seeing is an attempt to get those insurgents to find that they can have a voice in a democratic nation. In that way, they will decrease in number, and violence will decrease.”

Obviously violence hasn’t decreased, so that’s strike one. Strikes two and three are the latest news reports coming out of Iraq that indicate the country is nearing the brink of civil war:

The negotiations had been mired in sectarian differences, prompting the U.S. ambassador to warn that Washington had spent too much tax-payers’ money in Iraq to tolerate sectarianism and militias in government.

Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a summit Thursday morning to calm sectarian tension after the bombing.

“This new ugly crime comes as a warning that there is a conspiracy against the Iraqi people to spark a war among brothers,” Talabani said. “We must cooperate and work together against this danger, the danger of civil war. This is the fiercest danger because it threatens our unity and our country with a devastating civil war.”

Read the news reports. It’s becoming painfully clear that events are not going well, and all the spin and whitewashing war supporters will undoubtedly try to engage in won’t change what’s actually happening in Iraq.

From the U.K. Independent:

In a number of respects civil war in Iraq has already begun. Many of the thousand bodies a month arriving in the morgues in Baghdad are of people killed for sectarian reasons. It is no longer safe for members of the three main communities ­ the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds ­ to visit each other’s parts of the country.

“Iraq is in a Weimar period like Germany in the 1920s which will either end with the country disintegrating or in an authoritarian government taking power,” said Ghassan Atiyyah, an Iraqi political commentator.

The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in my town’s newspaper today:

I am weary of hearing every Tom, Dick and Harry criticize the president of the United States and trying to convict him of lies and other dastardly deeds. Most of the Democrats ought to be convicted of lying or misrepresenting the laws and what the president is doing. They are traitors to our country and should be treated like traitors. How can the president conduct a war successfully if he has no authority to find out what the enemy is planning? All other presidents beginning with George Washington have had these powers by virtue of being commander-in-chief and president. The USA cannot take these constitutional rights away.

I think many or all people of our country should rise up and demand that the president should be allowed all the powers and privileges he needs to conduct the war, and all people in the media or Congress be convicted of treason if they try to take these powers away. All through our history eavesdropping and other devices were used. If our privacy is hamstrung, so be it.

During World War II people couldn’t say or write one word against the war without being punished or investigated. Let us go back to that.

Unbelievable. The sad thing is, I have a feeling a lot of war supporters would agree with this sentiment, even while they have the audacity to call themselves “conservatives.” I don’t think this woman deserves to live in America; she seems better suited to living in the Soviet Union—circa 1945.

A little fun with past State of the Union addresses:

“Let this be our national goal: At the end of this decade, in the year [fill in the blank!], the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving.”

“[Saddam Hussein’s] war machine is crushed. His ability to threaten mass destruction is itself destroyed.”

“We will defend our security wherever we are threatened, as we did this summer when we struck at Usama bin Ladin’s network of terror.”

(Thanks to Cultural Revolutions Online at the Chronicles Magazine website.)

A new Pentagon report says that the U.S. Army has become a “thin green line” that is in danger of breaking if no help comes soon.

How thin, how dangerous, and how soon?

It is likely, the study says, that the army literally won’t be able to outlast the insurgency in Iraq:

Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who wrote the report under a Pentagon contract, concluded that the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency. He also suggested that the Pentagon’s decision, announced in December, to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven in part by a realization that the Army was overextended.

Interestingly enough, on Monday Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno asserted that U.S. forces must prepare for a long war spanning a minimum of two decades:

“This generation of servicemembers will be in what we’re calling the Long War,” the general said. “Our estimate is that for at least the next 20 years, part of our focus will be on how do we deal with the extremist networks that will continue to threaten the United States and its allies.”

It’s difficult to keep up with all the updates about the confrontation between Iran, the U.S., and the rest of the world over Iran’s decision to go ahead with a nuclear program, but by all accounts it appears as though the situation is quickly deteriorating. The latest Associate Press article reports that Iran’s president has “denounced” Western nations for threatening to refer Iran to the United Nations’ Security Council for possible sanctions:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran’s president said his country has not violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows signatories to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

“There is no evidence to prove Iran’s diversion (toward nuclear weapons),” Ahmadinejad said at a news conference.

His comments came a day after Iran threatened to end surprise inspections and other cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency if it is referred to the Security Council. Europe and the United States have been trying to build support for such a move, saying more two years of acrimonious negotiations have reached a dead end. But they faced resistance from China, which warned the move could only escalate the confrontation.

Iran insists its program is peaceful, intended only to produce electricity, but the U.S. and others believe it is seeking to develop atomic weapons…

It is interesting to note Iran’s brazen—bordering on downright stupid?—defiance of U.S. demands. We know that one result of the war in Iraq has been to further unify Muslims against the U.S., and as one friend suggested to me, it almost appears as though Iran is trying to goad America into attacking for perhaps the same purpose.

During a speech yesterday, Congressman John Murtha revealed for the first time that the Pentagon is planning to ask for an additional $100 billion for the war in Iraq next year:

MURTHA: Twenty years it’s going to take to settle this thing. The American people is not going to put up with it; can’t afford it. We have spent $277 billion. That’s what’s been appropriated for this operation. We have $50 billion sitting on the table right now in our supplemental, or bridge fund we call it, in the Appropriations Committee. They’re going to ask for another $100 billion next year.

…

QUESTION: Can we come back to the $100 billion? You said that you expect the military to ask for $100 billion. Where are you getting that figure?

MURTHA: Where I get all my figures: the military.

Murtha is a ranking member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, so he probably knows what he’s talking about here.

The 100 billion would raise the current projected military cost to over $350 billion dollars.

The Christian Science Monitor recently wrote an article about the cost of the war, and included this statement:

If the war lasts another five years, it will cost nearly $1.4 trillion, calculates Linda Bilmes, who teaches budgeting at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. That’s nearly $4,745 per capita. Her estimate is thorough. She includes not only the military cost but also such things as veterans’ benefits and additional interest on the federal debt.

Remember this?

WASHINGTON (CNN)—The White House is downplaying published reports of an estimated $50 billion to $60 billion price tag for a war with Iraq, saying it is “impossible” to estimate the cost at this time.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that such a conflict could cost $50 billion to $60 billion—the price tag of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

How many total people has Osama bin Laden killed? And what percent were Americans? Muslim? Jew?

Does anyone know?