The cracks appear

Iran hoped its nuclear proposal would split the six-nation group that is attempting to tame Iran's nuclear program.

Looks like it might have succeeded.

Russia rejected talk for now of sanctions against
Iran and France warned on Friday against conflict with Tehran, raising doubts whether it will face swift penalties if nuclear work is not halted by an August 31 deadline.

Spain and some other European countries expressed reservations on that score, as well.

If it all works out in the end, then no harm, no foul. And we still have plenty of time to let negotiations work. But failure to enforce a self-imposed deadline only weakens the credibility of the six-nation coalition, and encourages Iran to play even more diplomatic games. Unless something emerges in the next few days to justify backing off from the deadline, this round will go down as an Iranian victory.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Lebanon roundup

Lots of stuff happening in Lebanon now.

The French agreed to contribute 2,000 troops to the new, beefed-up UN peacekeeping force, breaking a logjam that had threatened to derail the deployment. European countries eventually pledged to provide a little less than half of the 15,000-man force -- 6,900 troops, including 3,000 Italians and an undisclosed number from other parts of Europe. Another meeting is scheduled for Monday to flesh out the committments.

The bulk of those troops won't arrive for weeks or months, but a small French force of 150 engineers arrived today, and more are expected to trickle in over the coming days.

Israel, meanwhile, is maintaining its blockade of Lebanese ports to prevent resupply of Hezbollah, and wants UN forces to patrol Lebanon's border with Syria for the same reason -- something that Syria objects to. The Lebanese Army, meanwhile, has already deployed troops to that end, trying to close smuggling routes across the Syrian border.

Delays and such aside, the situation continues to look promising. The ceasefire is holding, Lebanon is taking responsibility for its borders, the UN force is developing. ... so far, so good.

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, politics, midtopia

Iranian proposal draws more fire

The West looks likely to reject the recent Iranian nuclear proposal because it doesn't mention suspending uranium enrichment.

The diplomats variously described the reaction to the Iranian reply in the capitals of the six powers as disappointed and even angry because of the lack of response to the main demand — a freeze on enrichment, which can be used to generate energy but also to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

The Iranians had to know that would be the response from the four Western powers. What remains to be seen is whether they will retain support from Russia and China -- or whether those two countries are sufficiently disappointed to let sanctions or some other censure proceed.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Not 12 planets; just 8

Speaking of numbers, the members of the International Astronomical Union have rejected a proposal by the union's leadership to expand the definition of planet, and instead have decided to kick Pluto out of the "planet" class, reducing the official number of planets in our solar system to eight.

Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of “dwarf planets,” similar to what long have been termed “minor planets.” The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — “small solar system bodies,” a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

At least we have a definition. And while it would be neat to have more planets, I mentioned in my previous post that the leadership's proposed definition was pretty loose -- covering objects as small as 250 miles in diameter -- and would probably cover all sorts of as-yet-undiscovered space debris. So this more exacting standard does a nice job of keeping things manageable.

My only regret is that the old system would have designated Pluto-Charon as a double-planet -- two planets orbiting each other. That would have been cool.

solar system, Pluto, planets, politics, midtopia

A nice round number

In the next few minutes Midtopia should record its 10,000th visitor. Not too bad for a blog that launched less than 6 months ago. I've enjoyed publishing it, and thanks to everyone who makes Midtopia a part of their day.

politics, midtopia

U.S. unimpressed by Iranian proposal

Only scant details of the Iranian nuke proposal are emerging, but there don't appear to be any real surprises. Iran refuses to give up its enrichment capability, The U.S. is unimpressed, and Russia and China are pushing for further negotiations.

The real test is whether Iran will successfully split the six-nation coalition, a question that will be answered on Aug. 31. Expect negotiations to be extended in one form or the other, as Europe and the United States try to keep pressure on Iran while keeping Russia and China on board.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Gutknecht gets on the ballot

Rep. Gil Gutknecht will be on the ballot after all, avoiding what would have been an embarassing way to lose re-election.

That's good for him -- although his race has just been upgraded to one of the most competitive in the country. He's got his work cut out for him.

But what about Brian Smith, the Independence Party candidate I wrote about in the same post? He's petitioned the court to be allowed on the ballot, but there's been no decision yet.

They both deserve to get on. Bureaucratic snafus are not sufficient reason to deny voters a choice at the polls.

Brian Smith, Gutknecht, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Marines to recall troops to active duty

Up to 2,500 of them, the first such callback in the Iraq war.

Anyone out there still claim that our military isn't being stretched thin by Iraq?

Anyone out there still think it was a good idea to reject proposals to expand the Army by a couple of divisions?

Anyone out there think it's a good idea that Bush's budget proposal calls for cutting 30,000 Army soldiers next year?

Anyone out there think this administration is handling this in a responsible manner?

Because I don't.

military, Iraq, Bush, politics, midtopia

Iran finally responds....

And we'll have to wait and see what they said, because the parties involved aren't saying.

But since Iran has publicly vowed not to give up its enrichment program -- the main purpose of the six-nation proposal -- it doesn't seem likely that their offer, whatever it is, will be acceptable.

Iran recently prevented UN inspectors from examining its main nuclear site at Natanz, a violation of its Nonproliferation Treaty responsibilities. Which would suggest that it is not seriously interested in compromising on the program.

And given that it has taken them weeks and weeks to reply to the Western proposal, it seems apparent that they're content to simply stall and play for time and put off a confrontation as long as possible. It plays well domestically and in certain world quarters, and it lets them pursue the program as far as possible before they have to make a hard decision or face retaliation.

Luckily they're a long ways away from having the bomb. So, irritating as stalling tactics can be, patience is called for. We need to make clear that we prefer to resolve this diplomatically -- but we will take military steps if that is what the situation requires.

And we should identify interim steps to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, like targeted sanctions and inspection demands.

The first decision facing the six-nation coalition is what to do when Aug. 31 rolls around -- the deadline the group gave for Iran to agree to the proposal or face sanctions. Iran clearly is betting that either the coalition is bluffing, or that its proposal will split the coalition and prevent it from acting if the deadline passes.

What they do, and whether I agree with it, will depend on the content of the Iranian proposal. So, once again, we wait.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

I swear, conspiracy theorists are dumb as posts

Here's the latest one: Did you know that the actual U.S. military death toll in Iraq is 12,000?

We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The actual death toll is in excess of 10,000. (See the official records at the end of this piece.)... When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources

Yeah, I'm holding my breath.

The government gets away with these huge lies because they claim, falsely, that only soldiers actually killed on the ground in Iraq are reported. The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. Anyone who dies just as the transport takes off from the Baghdad airport is not listed and neither are those who die in the US military hospitals.

This claim is itself false.

It's true that injuries and deaths caused by non-hostile action -- a soldier getting run over by a truck in his convoy, for instance -- aren't counted as combat casualties.

The reasoning for that is that accidents happen, war or no war, and it's wrong to attribute a death to a given war simply because it happened to occur during that war.

That rationale isn't perfect: Operations in a war zone are probably inherently more risky than the same operation in peacetime, in a well-controlled domestic environment. So there are likely to be more accidents in Iraq than the unit would have experienced back home.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, and the overall reasoning is sound. Accidents are a separate category from KIA and WIA.

And even though they're not counted as combat deaths, they are counted. Noncombat deaths are listed on the weekly report under a separate column.

The only category that isn't reported in any coherent way is soldiers who are injured in non-combat situations. Estimates put that number at around 15,000, for what it's worth.

Another category that isn't counted is psychiatric issues that manifest themselves after a soldier leaves Iraq. So a soldier that kills himself after arriving back home doesn't count against the Iraq total. That will tend to understate the total human toll of Iraq, but again the basis is reasonable: how is the military supposed to determine that an action taken after leaving Iraq is related to Iraq? And to what degree? How much time and effort should it put into such classifications?

So one can plausibly argue that the true human toll of Iraq is not reflected in the official casualty figures. But to claim the Pentagon is hiding 8,000 deaths is ludicrous. It doesn't matter what you think about what Bush would be willing to do; it's physically impossible.

If there were 8,000 uncounted deaths, that would mean an average of 160 families per state wondering why their kid's name never appeared in the newspaper as a war casualty.

In addition, these soldiers come from units. The soldiers live together at home as well as fight together abroad. They know each other; the families hang out. They talk. If a given unit lost 20 people but only 5 were listed as official casualties, everyone would know. For your conspiracy to work, EVERYONE in the unit, their families, friends and up and down the chain of command would have to be in on the secret. Which just isn't going to happen.

When constructing conspiracy theories, maybe these folks should construct ones that are actually plausible.

casualties, conspiracy theories, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Are large sums of cash illegal?

Apparently, yes.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

Clearly, the details are important here. But shouldn't the money -- or at least the owner -- be actually connected to a crime before police can seize his property?

crime, midtopia

More excessive secrecy

In example #2,912 of how the Bush administration has a heard time learning:

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

Aargh! Stop it!

National Security Archive, Bush, secrecy, politics, midtopia

As the pundits turn, insiders seek to sway Bush

A couple of interesting developments.

Publicly, conservative pundits are rounding on Bush with increasing ferocity.

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, James Baker leads a rescue effort:

Amid the highly charged political infighting in Washington over what to do in Iraq, you might be excused for not noticing that a bipartisan commission quietly started work last spring with a mandate to help the Bush administration rethink its policy toward the war. Of course, anything labeled "bipartisan commission" seems almost guaranteed to be ignored by a highly partisan White House that is notoriously hostile to outside advice and famously devoted to "staying the course." But what makes this particular commission hard to dismiss is that it is led by perhaps the one man who might be able to break through the tight phalanx of senior officials who advise the president and filter his information. That person is the former secretary of state, Republican insider, and consigliere of the Bush family, James A. Baker III.

Since March, Baker, backed by a team of experienced national-security hands, has been busily at work trying to devise a fresh set of policies to help the president chart a new course in--or, perhaps, to get the hell out of--Iraq. But as with all things involving James Baker, there's a deeper political agenda at work as well. "Baker is primarily motivated by his desire to avoid a war at home--that things will fall apart not on the battlefield but at home. So he wants a ceasefire in American politics," a member of one of the commission's working groups told me. Specifically, he said, if the Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress in November, they would unleash a series of investigative hearings on Iraq, the war on terrorism, and civil liberties that could fatally weaken the administration and remove the last props of political support for the war, setting the stage for a potential Republican electoral disaster in 2008. "I guess there are people in the [Republican] party, on the Hill and in the White House, who see a political train wreck coming, and they've called in Baker to try to reroute the train."

I wish Baker well; I respect the deft foreign-policy hand of Bush the Elder, and Lord knows someone needs to break through the barriers surrounding this administration and convince them that their chosen strategy isn't working.

If Bush persists on his current course, it would seem to be only a matter of time before the Republican-led Congress tosses him overboard in order to save their own skins in November -- while non-Congressional conservatives and other party operatives throw him overboard in order to strengthen their hand for 2008. The next two years may feature Bush being used as a whipping boy not just by the left but also by the right, as they look past him and try to figure out a way to detach the anchors of his presence from their political ambitions.

Iraq, Baker, Bush, politics, midtopia

Relearning expensive lessons

One thing that bothered me about the Israeli campaign in Lebanon was the clear belief that they could win largely through the use of airpower. I'd end up talking to myself or yelling at the television: "Don't you guys read history books?!?"

I'm an ex-tanker, and some of my best friends were groundpounders, so maybe I'm biased. But if there's one thing that's clear from reading military history, it's that airpower alone does not win wars -- however often the Air Force commanders make that argument, and however enticing the idea is to a casualty-wary politician.

I missed this article when it first came out, but it sums up the situation very nicely.

Military historians have a name for the logic behind Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. It's called the "strategic bombing fallacy." Almost since the dawn of the age of military air power, strategists have been tempted by the prospect that the bombing of "strategic" targets such as infrastructure and transportation hubs could inflict such pain on a population that it would turn against its leaders and get them to surrender or compromise.

Unfortunately -- as the United States itself discovered during World War II and Vietnam, to cite just two examples -- strategic bombing has almost never worked. Far from bringing about the intended softening of the opposition, bombing tends to rally people behind their own leaders and cause them to dig in against outsiders who, whatever the justification, are destroying their homeland.

What's surprising is that the above fallacy is very well known -- or should be to anyone who pays attention to military history. It astonishes me that an organization as practical and experienced as the Israeli military would fall for such a thing.

Is it me, or is the entire world suffering from a giant case of the ignorant stupids?

airpower, Lebanon, Israel, politics, midtopia

A troubled Experiment

One of my earliest posts, back in March, was about the troubles at the Center for the American Experiment here in the Twin Cities. Basically, switching from "conservative think tank" to "partisan propaganda-spewing electoral machine" was a hugely expensive failure.

Now Minnesota Monthly magazine has an in-depth exploration of what happened, and where the Center is going now -- mostly, adopting a less-strident tone and seeking to rebuild its mindshare as it tries to pay off more than $300,000 in debts.

I respected the previous incarnation of the CAE. I despised the Meeks version. Let's hope the Center's founder, Mitch Pearlstein, can resurrect the good and leave the partisan toxic waste behind.

Meeks, Pearlstein, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Iraq and Vietnam

An entire cottage industry of blogs has sprung up that try to compare Iraq to Vietnam, from any number of political perspectives. Iraq is another quagmire; Iraq, like Vietnam, will be lost by the antiwar protesters; Iraq isn't even close to being Vietnam because we've had far fewer troops killed so far.

Most of it is noise. There are ways in which the two wars are comparable, but it's not the common ones you keep hearing.

Quagmire
While there is a rational argument to be made that Iraq is an unwinnable mess given our current resource allocation, the fundamentals of the situation bear little resemblance to Vietnam, where South Vietnam faced an insurgency/invasion backed by a dedicated nation state that was itself supported and protected by the Soviets and Chinese. That's far more resources and force than this insurgency will ever be able to apply.

Losing the war at home
This is a common trope, but it ignores two things.

1. Coverage of antiwar protesters tends to increase support for any given war, since many people are turned off by the often anarchic tactics of such protesters.

2. Policy and opinion shape each other. If a war is going well, antiwar protesters would be marginalized. If a war is going poorly, they gain credibility. The protesters themselves don't sway opinion very much; they are more a symptom than a cause of falling support.

Casualty rates
Comparing casualty rates is silly, as if every conflict carries the same geopolitical interest, or as if it's not worth complaining until we've flushed X number of lives down the rathole.

The only calculation that matters is this: Are our objectives achievable at an acceptable cost. That calculation is different for each conflict, turning as it does on the importance of the conflict and the scope and achievability of the objectives.

"They will have died in vain"
The silliest argument of all for reinforcing failure. We've already had people die in this war; if we pull out now we'll be saying they "died in vain."

In Vietnam we lost 58,000 soldiers -- not to mention the million or so dead Vietnamese combatants on both sides -- and lost. In the simplest analysis, we could have achieved the exact same result at far lower cost had we pulled out after the first advisor was killed back in the 50s. Arguably the result would have actually been better, because we would not have staked our national prestige on the conflict and not have had to endure the disintegration of our armed forces that followed Vietnam.

I'm not saying we should pull out every time the going gets rough. I'm merely trying to point out the absurdity of casualty comparisons or the "died in vain" argument. Using that logic, 58,000 people died in vain in Vietnam. Had we pulled out earlier, tens of thousands of people *wouldn't* have died in vain.

So what are the parallels to Vietnam? This: Both wars had at best a murky connection to any compelling national interest, were entered into without building and sustaining public support, undertaken with inadequate planning and fought with a flawed strategy.

As Churchill learned in the Dardanelles campaign during World War I, reinforcing failure merely creates an even bigger and bloodier failure. The relevant question here isn't "have we bled enough". It's "is our objective achievable at acceptable cost."

Given our refusal to sent sufficient troops to actually achieve our objectives, I think the first question is more relevant than the second. We have already decided there is a cost we are not willing to pay; and given that, our objective is not achievable.

And you can't blame the Dems for this one.

Vietnam, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Some home truths about our Iraq strategy

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine had an excellent piece on the progress of the Iraqi army, from a reporter who traveled to Anbar province to see them in action.

Some excerpts:

Anbar has long been what the military calls an “economy of force” operation, which is a polite way of saying that troop requirements elsewhere in Iraq have led American commanders to employ fewer forces in the province than the situation warrants. As a consequence, counterinsurgency operations have taken on the quality of a whack-a-mole arcade game. Every time the Americans have massed force to put out one fire, they have created a vacuum elsewhere that the insurgents have rushed to fill. When the Marines gathered forces to clear Falluja in 2004, they drew troops from the Haditha area, where the insurgents promptly moved in and executed the defenseless local police near the town’s soccer field. The Marines returned in strength to Haditha and established several forward bases, including the one at Barwana, but then many of the troops were sent to the far west when commanders decided to clear Al Qaim, near the Syrian border. And the insurgents filtered back to Haditha.

Gosh. How surprising. Been saying that for years.

Some of the Marine officers I talked with were frank about the need for more American troops. Lt. Col. Ronald Gridley, executive officer with Regimental Combat Team 7, which has responsibility for a major swath of the province, told me during a visit to the unit’s headquarters at Al Asad that the regiment has recommended that additional troops be allocated to its section of Anbar. A battalion or two, he said, would help a great deal. “What we recommend and what we get is going to be two different things,” Colonel Gridley said. “In our perfect world, we could use some more infantrymen to be able to patrol the streets and partner with the Iraqi Army.”

But wait. I thought the commanders were getting all the troops they needed?

Officially, the Bush administration’s strategy is: Clear, hold and build. But with limited American forces to do any clearing, the war in western Iraq looks much more like hang on and hand over. Hang on against an insurgency that seems to be laying roadside bombs as quickly as they are discovered, and hand over to an Iraqi military that is still a work in progress.

Yep. We have refused to commit the resources necessary to execute our stated strategy. Not sure what you would call that, but it sure isn't "success."

The Iraqi Army itself, while all-volunteer and reasonably well motivated, is hobbled by corruption, bureaucracy and a society lacking in some basic infrastructure.

Greenwood explained that the pay issues in Haditha were quite common. In the Anbar region, about 550 Iraqi soldiers received no pay for June, while another 2,200 were receiving less pay than they were entitled to by rank. During one of his many trips to Baghdad to wrestle with the Iraqi bureaucracy, Greenwood was told that 19 men who were owed back pay had mysteriously vanished from the rolls of trained soldiers — and the only way they could get back on the payroll was to go through boot camp all over again.

Logistics was another of Greenwood’s worries. American commanders in Baghdad had pushed the Iraqis to take over responsibility for their own logistics, but that led to cases in which Iraqi soldiers had received spoiled meat and rotten vegetables. ...

Each month, Iraqi soldiers are granted about a week’s leave to deliver their pay to their families, who may live hundreds of miles away, a tradition that reflects the lack of an effective banking system in Iraq. With all the dangers, hardships and problems in receiving pay, the soldiers do not always come back.

The article notes that the people on the ground are professional, capable and motivated. But the problems appear to be endemic and pervasive -- and getting worse rather than better.

This is not winning. This is hanging on -- while the insurgency gets stronger.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The reviews are getting worse

As we march toward the November elections, the reviews of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq are getting worse.

Joe Lieberman turns around and bites the GOP hand that was wooing him, joining Hillary Clinton in saying Donald Rumsfeld should resign.

"With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Lieberman said the Bush administration should have sent more troops into Iraq "to secure the country."

"We had a naive vision that the Iraqis were going to embrace us and then go on and live happily ever after," he said.

It's kind of sad when it takes a senior senator three years to reach the same conclusion many of us reached soon after the invasion.

Meanwhile, Chuck Hagel says the GOP has lost its way.

"First time I voted was in 1968 on top of a tank in the Mekong Delta," said Hagel, a Vietnam veteran. "I voted a straight Republican ticket. The reason I did is because I believe in the Republican philosophy of governance. It's not what it used to be. I don't think it's the same today."

Hagel asked: "Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in '68? Where is the international engagement of the party I joined _ fair, free trade, individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a smaller government?"

His frustration does not lead him to think Democrats offer a better alternative. But Hagel wants to see the GOP return to its basic beliefs.

"I think we've lost our way," Hagel said. "And I think the Republicans are going to be in some jeopardy for that and will be held accountable."

Besides opinion polls showing sagging support for our strategy in Iraq, there might be a couple of other explanations for the increasingly pessimistic views.

One is a NYT Magazine piece from this Sunday, which I'll blog about next.

The other is the increasing opinion among security experts that we're losing. Foreign Policy magazine surveyed 100 experts -- conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat. A whopping 84 percent said we're not winning the fight against terror. Most were critical of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, our overreliance on force, and many other aspects of our antiterror strategy.

The list of respondents is here.

Administration supporters like to criticize their opponents for not having an alternative plan. That's false on the face of it: Lots of plans exist, from "send more troops" to "pull out now." But the argument skips over the real issue. A basic military maxim is "don't reinforce failure." Continuing to tout a failing strategy -- and that's essentially what "stay the course" means -- is a worse failure. You may not like the alternative options, but if the choice is between a failed plan and trying something else, you try something else.

Hagel, Lieberman, terrorism, Rumsfeld, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Bush signs pension bill

Back in May I lauded a Bush administration proposal on pension reform.

Today, Bush signed the pension bill into law.

It doesn't mirror the president's proposals exactly, but the big stuff is there: stricter funding rules and greater disclosure. Most of the noise and criticism surrounding the bill have focused on Congressional provisions, such as special treatment for airlines and defense contractors and legislation covering cash-balance plans.

Overall it appears to be a decent bill that will force companies to make good on the promises they make their workers -- and hopefully prompt them to make more realistic promises in the future.

pensions, Bush, politics, midtopia

GOP losing support in the heartland

David Broder lays it out:

What I heard here -- and in subsequent interviews at the National Governors Association convention in Charleston, S.C. -- from one Republican after another signaled serious trouble for the GOP across a broad swath of states from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma in key midterm election contests for House, Senate and governor.

The impression these Republicans had is that support for GOP candidates had nose-dived this summer -- in part because of the chaos conveyed by the daily televised scenes of destruction in Iraq and Lebanon and in part because of the dismal reputation built by the Republican Congress that is home to many of the endangered GOP candidates.

Remember, this is Republicans saying the GOP will lose big.

He even touches on Minnesota, noting that Mark Kennedy badly trails Amy Klobuchar in the Senate race.

It's only August, and never underestimate the ability of Democrats to fumble away a sure thing. But the signs increasingly point to a GOP massacre in November.

Mark Kennedy, Klobuchar, Minnesota, Ohio, politics, midtopia