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It's been a while since I've spoken to your group but I think I can safely say that I am still the only person ever elected to statewide office in Virginia with a union card, two Purple Hearts, and three tattoos.
This is really just a program note, to state that there will be no column today.
I went looking for a Memorial Day column to re-run today, and found two that are still worth pondering: the first one I think I ever wrote and the one dedicated to all the second-class soldiers and sailors who served [...]
Jeb Bush certainly had a bad week last week, as he struggled to come up with a clear answer to a question he really should have been expecting in the first place. Other Republicans also struggled to admit that the Iraq War was indeed a mistake (which is somewhat understandable, because by doing so they are criticizing a former Republican president). But while the spectacle of Republicans having to admit a big Republican mistake certainly is amusing, there's an even bigger question which so far has remained unasked: "Knowing all the things we've learned in the past decade and a half, what would it take for you to send American troops to fight an overseas war?" This is the real question the voters deserve an answer to. To put it more bluntly: "How many more wars can we expect if you are elected?"
Jeb Bush gave a speech this week that was supposed to lay out his foreign policy ideas. The speech itself fell far short of this goal, according to most who bothered to listen to it. Bush did announce his foreign policy advisory team -- which looks a whole lot like his brother's, with a sprinkling of his father's advisors added into the mix. But the entire exercise left many questions unanswered.
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Senator Dianne Feinstein, we now have an official record of what, exactly, was done in all our names in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. As President Obama has already admitted, this can be summed up as: "We tortured some folks." We can't pretend it wasn't torture anymore, because the facts weren't swept under a historical rug this time.
President Barack Obama's poll numbers took a serious downturn in June, which essentially wiped out the progress he's made in the public's opinion since the beginning of the year. There's no real way to sugarcoat it: Obama had a bad month last month. About the only positive thing that can be said is that it wasn't his worst month ever -- but that's not really saying much, is it?
Today, we're going to have a special edition of the talking points, where we get to know a Montana politician who seems to be seriously considering taking on Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. But before we do so, it was a busy week otherwise, so let's just dive right into it. First, a look at what's going with Republicans.
This week was notable in many respects in the political world, but one subject overwhelmed almost everything else. We're going to address the prisoner swap and Bowe Bergdahl in an unusual way this week, in lieu of our regular talking points at the end of the column. But first, we're going to take a very quick look at what else happened this week, and then hand out the weekly awards.
When one usually speaks of the "fog of war," the term is generally understood to mean the disorganization of combat. When battles are fought, it is often unclear as to what is going on, whether you're a private in the trenches or a rear-echelon officer trying to keep on top of a developing situation under your command. What is also understood is that after a while, the fog usually clears somewhat. Things which aren't immediately apparent become clarified when enough time has passed for accurate reports of the situation to come in.