Should We Close Our Service Academies And War Colleges?

Thomas Ricks believes that we should shutter West Point and the other service academies because they’re expensive and, as far as he can tell, they produce no better officers than ROTC.  Plus, their instructors don’t have PhDs, making them essentially

Welcome, dear reader, to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere: Bitsblog’s Nightly Ramble.

Lots going on.

• So, Ol’ Gaffe-O-Matic Biden and, one assumes, B. O. both think John McCain is wrong on security? Is that why they both

• YetAnotherJOhn gets second place, and the boss gets an honorable mention in today’s OTB Caption Contest.
•  McQ  points up today the idea that the thing Stan kurtz was chasing about Obama nad Ayers is still in play
  

  Until they are

Me at OTB just now:

 

Oh? What claims then do you think you can honestly make about the success of the surge other than tactical?

Well, the number of provinces now being fully controlled by Iraqi forces leaps to

• A second place at the OTB Sheep Off caption contest.

• So, the Democrats are almost to a man, includng Obama, claiming that the Surge didn’t work. So why, then, is Obama proposing another surge, this time in Afghanistan?

• Oil is

• I managed to catch a first place this week at OTB’s Caption Contest.
• for the last week or so, we’ve brought up John Edwards and his scandal. Kaus has been watching this for a while too, all credit to

As always, Professor Althouse is elequent:

I guess we’re not supposed to think about how Obama wanted and still wants to give up on the Iraq war. Surely, if he’d been there in 1948, he would have said the Berlin

(CNN) — A German magazine quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as saying that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama

From the GateWay Pundit:

New information reveals that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was indirectly sending messages to the FARC. The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is designated as a terrorist group by the US government. Speaker Pelosi was

Hume, last night:

If you had any doubt that insurgents in Iraq are aware of the political seasons here in the U.S., consider this: New data from the Defense Intelligence Agency shows that enemy initiated attacks during the entire course

MSNBC is saying:

BAGHDAD – Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a

The more the US wins in IRaq, the less the news covers it. That’s long been the supposition, and now Rich Noyes at NewsBusters confirms it, saying in part…

…the President’s surge strategy is well on its way to succeeding.

I know me and Bit already shed our crocodile tears for the departed Philip Agee.   However a like item caught my eye in the morning fish wrapper, from the Associated Press:

His wife, Giselle Roberge Agee, told the Associated

From Jawa:

As the Surge continues to work as planned desperate lunatic fringe lefties get more and more idiotic.

From CNN:

A group in Brattleboro is petitioning to put an item on a town meeting agenda in March that

James Taranto, the other day(Via mail) speaks about Murtha admitting there’s serious progress in Iraq, and that the surge IS working….

Murtha does make the obligatory complaint about lack of political progress in Iraq, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that