Wow, a lotta news

Well, there are a lot of things to talk about happening all at once right now.

Personally, I have just spent two days in Ventura County Jail.

Nationally, Hillary Clinton has stumbled quite ostentatiously, and undercut her argument that she is the toughest candidate.

But more important than any of that: in Iraq, the Iraqi army, in its first major independent offensive, are moving against the Al Mahdi Militia! I'm surprised, actually, and I think Muqtada al Sadr and his organization might be surprised as well, meaning they might be vulnerable.

No one is really paying attention to what is happening in Iraq, now anymore than usual, but the Iraqi army is moving into strategic positions in Basra and, from what I hear, Sadr City, the neighborhood in Baghdad that has been the real nucleus of the violence coming from the Shi'a side of the sectarian divide.

In the past six months, the so called "surge" has, I must tell my Liberal friends, worked to reduce violence perpetrated by the advantaged, minority class, the Sunnis. But for the much more populous, much lower wealth Shi'a population, the driving factor behind the violence has been untouchable politically and, probably, militarily.

It is clear that the American Army cannot move into Sadr City at acceptable casualty rates. It says something about the state of the Iraqi Army if it is constituted to take on friendly threats to stability. The Mahdi army is ostensibly friendly to the regime in power in Iraq now. But it is fundamentalist and hostile to elements of the population of the Nation, and therefore a threat to the larger nation that the regime controls. If the Iraqi army takes and holds Sadr City and Basra, they will be well on the way to having a strategic advantage in maintaining peace independent of the American Army.

I don't want to be labeled an optimist, but I feel like this could be a decisive battle in actually pervading democratic government throughout the country of Iraq. I have said it before though, General David Petraeus knows the difference between winning engagements and winning wars. I think the war could be won and the democrats could win a huge majority in the congress and the presidency and America will really cement a pretty bright future.