Francis Fukuyama: "The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe.
A final lesson that should have been drawn from the Iraq war is that the current US government has demonstrated great incompetence in its day-to-day management of policy. One of the striking things about the performance of the Bush administration is how poorly it has followed through in accomplishing the ambitious objectives it set for itself. In Iraq, the administration has acted like a patient with attention-deficit disorder."
Zbigniew Brzezinski: "It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:
1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.
2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions."
NYTimes: "In the most serious legal challenge yet to the Central Intelligence Agency's secret transfers of terrorism suspects, a German court has issued an arrest warrant for 13 people in connection with the mistaken kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen of Lebanese descent."
3:40:35 PM
NewStatesman: "The conflation of two tawdry stories on the same day has become a habit for this administration. It happened again shortly before Christmas - Blair was questioned in the loans-for-honours inquiry; on the same day came the hideous announcement that the government had stopped the Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribes involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia."
BBC: "Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned for a second time by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations, it has emerged."
3:27:26 PM
