Good reads

Today's Washpost has an article on the strain on the National Guard: link

Also in today's Washpost, an article by an Army Reserve captain currently serving in Iraq, titled The Military: Losing Hearts and Minds? Link

An Op-Ed on what's going to happen when the oil runs out: Link

Josh Marshall revisits the Chalabi story, and wonders why so many neo-cons continue to support him:

You've probably noticed that Richard Perle and a few others are still making regular appearances on chat shows and in quotes in newspaper articles about the Chalabi story. He, Gingrich and a few others even marched over to the White House a couple weeks ago and demanded an end to the investigations into Chalabi. And this has raised an intriguing question: with so many friends on the inside, if Chalabi were really as guilty as people say, wouldn't some of those folks go to Perle and the others and tell them to back off, if only in the interests of his own credibility?

...

It's a good question. And to some, it suggests that on the inside there's much more debate than we might imagine over whether the charges against Chalabi are true.

To try to figure out what might be going on I talked to several folks over the last few days who have a very good view into not only what folks in the intel community make of this stuff but what the prime neo-cons and/or Iraq hawks at DOD think too.

So what did I hear?

From what I can tell, they all think Chalabi is guilty as sin. They may have questions about how Chalabi got the information -- here there is some interagency skirmishing. But none seem to seriously question that he passed it on.

Yes, Chalabi still has a few diehards. I guess we might call them 'dead-enders'. Whether they're just in denial or, shall we say, more heavily invested in Chalabi than we understood, I just don't know. But as nearly as I can tell, with the exception of these few Chalabi dead-enders -- most, but not all, of whom aren't in government -- even those inclined toward sympathy to Chalabi think the charges are true.