Monday morning reading: Coleman/Franken, and a debate at the Pentagon
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Some interesting Monday morning reading for you.
The Washington Post reports on a controversy raging at the Pentagon over Israel’s 2006 war in southern Lebanon. Do the difficulties the IDF faced in fighting Hezbollah forces contain important lessons for the U.S. military, officials are asking?
Well, duh. But it seems there’s a lot of debate about the issue.
“Some want to change the U.S. military so that it is better prepared for wars like the ones it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, while others worry that such a shift would leave the United States vulnerable to a more conventional foe,” reporter Greg Jaffe writes.
One wonders: are those opposed to a change still thinking the Soviets are going to march across Europe in a kind of reprise of the Battle of the Bulge?
But never mind; the Defense Department has “dispatched as many as a dozen teams to interview Israeli officers who fought against Hezbollah,” the Post reports, seeking to learn what Israel learned during a war widely regarded as less than fully successful for the IDF.
Read the Post story here .
Over at the Politico, there’s a report that the Norm Coleman-Al Franken war of attrition now threatens to go on for months, “perhaps for years” – and while that’s bad news for the people of Minnesota, who now have only one Senator, and for Senate Democrats, who could really use another vote, it’s great news for some others. (Read it here )
The “epic Senate recount battle” is “turning out to be an incomparable gravy train, lining the pockets not just of the lawyers who are making a small fortune off the case but also of groups ranging from Republican Jewish Coalition to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,” Kenneth Vogel writes.
Franken and Coleman have raised more than $12 million since the election in November, mostly to cover their legal bills, “but they aren’t the only ones raising money off their fight—it’s also viewed as a potential cash cow by non-combatants who are trying to milk it for everything it’s worth.”
Democrats are raising big bucks by portraying the ongoing fight as an “opportunity to ease congressional obstacles to President Obama’s bold agenda and a chance for payback on another post-election power grab –Bush v. Gore.”
Republican groups see the ongoing battle as a matter of “drawing a line in the sand after taking a brutal Election Day beating and claiming the moral high ground on voter-protection efforts—an argument typically associated with Democrats.”
Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering: why haven’t we seen polls on the race today, five months after Minnesota voters supposedly made their decision? A while back, Coleman forces were demanding a new election. How would the weary candidates fare if he were to get his wish?
Tags: Coleman, Franken, Lebanon war, Pentagon