Call It the Abu Ghraib Memo

"[I]t was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field that in carefully couched terms -- I'll give you that -- that to a soldier in the field meant two things: We're not getting enough good intelligence and you need to get that evidence, and, oh, by the way, here's some ways you probably can get it."

The Addington Factor

As I wrote in my Sept. 5, 2007, column, Addington is the man at the center of the Bush White House's most extreme overreaches -- its assertions of unfettered executive power in wartime, its backing of brutal treatment of detainees, its bulldozing of legal limits on government eavesdropping.

And John Yoo was perhaps Addington's most consistent and reliable tool.

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer described Addington's tactics in July 2005. And in her May 2006 profile of Addington, Chitra Ragavan wrote in U.S News about how Yoo was one of the "small, trusted circle" of lawyers who Addington counted on to advance his radical legal view.

Iraq Watch

Sudarsan Raghavan writes in The Washington Post: "Attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces soared across Baghdad in the last week of March to the highest levels since the deployment of additional U.S. troops here reached full strength last June, according to U.S. military data and analysis.

"The sharp spike in attacks, in response to an ill-prepared Iraqi government offensive in the southern city of Basra last week, underscores the fragility of the U.S. military's hard-won security gains in Iraq and how easily those gains can be erased....

"The figures and analysis offer more evidence of how swiftly U.S. forces were drawn into a power struggle unfolding between Sadr and rival Shiite groups that lead Iraq's government, mainly Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz-Hakim. . . .

"U.S. forces bore the brunt of those attacks last week, suggesting that they were taking the lead combat role in many areas or were perceived by Mahdi Army fighters to be taking the lead. The data square with on-the-ground reports that American soldiers were involved in battles and were being targeted with roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons in many Shiite enclaves of Baghdad."

Aamer Madhani blogs for Tribune: "Last week's inconclusive battle for Basra is raising new questions about the viability of U.S. military strategy in Iraq as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker head to Capitol Hill next week to give Congress their assessment of the U.S. troop surge.

"President Bush billed the struggle between Shiite militiamen and the Iraqi army as a 'defining moment' for Iraq. But [that] the fighting left hundreds dead from Basra to Baghdad without causing any serious damage to the Mahdi Army militia demonstrates how ineffectual the Iraqi army is five years into the war and underscores that Iraqi politics remains more complicated than ever, military experts said. . . .

"The point of the current troop buildup, as laid out by Bush when he announced it in early 2007, was to give the Iraqi government the opportunity to build its security apparatus and to provide Iraqi officials with the breathing space to reach political accommodation among various factions.

"From a tactical standpoint, the escalation has had some success; the overall violence has gone down dramatically.