Of interest on the state of the nation today

In The Nation: Cuba. What's Next? Several articles on this topic, including Miami Vise by Max Castro, about the anti-Castro hardliners:

...meanwhile, the hard-liners have been accumulating power and driving US Cuba policy further right, with a major assist from a President who believes in using US power to change regimes and export democracy. While the Cuban-American community as a whole is slowly drifting toward moderation, its hard-line political elite has become entrenched in the most powerful American institutions.

The Times Online reports on Carl Bernstein's upcoming book on Hillary Clinton: Watergate reporter demolishes Hillary’s career story.

In The Neiman Watchdog: 'The Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL', transcript of a radio talk by Retired Gen. William Odom.

We cannot 'win' a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

In Armed Forces Journal, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling analyses A failure in generalship, in Vietnam and Iraq.

Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle.

Also on the war, from Talking Points Memo: Washington Post Scrapes Bottom Of Barrel To Find People Who Think War Isn't "Lost"

By David Neiwert, in Orcinus: about The other kind of terror that showed up on American soil again last week, and which is ignored because

this administration is being run by people who don't consider bombings and arson against abortion clinics to be terrorism.

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington reports, after studying records of post-Katrina assistance, they found U.S. failed to utilize foreign assistance for Katrina, CREW reveals.

Administration officials acknowledged in February 2006 that they were ill prepared to coordinate and distribute foreign aid and that only about half the $126 million received had been put to use. Now, 20 months after Katrina, newly released documents and interviews make clear the magnitude of the troubles.