2008 - %3, January

Just a day after some western and Georgian observers feared that Russia was on the verge of cutting Georgia in half, and may even try to take the Georgian capital Tblisi and demand the country's surrender, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev has agreed to a European-backed cease-fire. But news reports indicate the situation is still volatile and much unclear about how the cease-fire would be implemented, and explosions and violence continue in places including in the Georgian port city of Poti.

"The outcome the West is seeking, will not return things to the [pre-war] status quo," said Russia specialist Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations in a conference call yesterday. "A ceasefire under these circumstances offers a sitution in which Georgia could be occupied by Russian forces, and Georgia could be cut in two, dismembered."

"Is this a game changer?" asked Council on Foreign Relations' Charles Kupchan. "Is it possible to think about the US-Russian relationship moving forward looking somewhat like it's done in the past, where there were good days and bad days, but it was basically respectful and trying to make the best of a difficult situation? I can't answer that. It's too soon. But it's safe to say from here on out, the US and allies will look at Russia more warily."

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Dana Goldstein over at the Prospect applauds the newly released Democratic platform.

The draft of the Democratic Party platform, principally written by Obama's Senate policy director, the estimable Karen Kornbluh, is a remarkably feminist document, one befitting of a political party that, this year, came exceedingly close to nominating a woman. In the summer of 2006, I heard Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York speak on the Hill, lamenting that the chicken livered John Kerry team had, for the first time in decades, removed support for the Equal Rights Amendment from the party platform. Well, this year the ERA is back, alongside a truly unequivocal statement of support for reproductive rights, an unprecedented statement in opposition to sexism, and new sections on equal pay, women's economic struggles, work-family balance, and violence against women...

It's clear that care was taken to involve members of Hillary Clinton's circle in the document's drafting (perhaps Dana Singiser), or to at least take their concerns to heart. Clinton's run is presented in the document as a feminist historical feat, and in the foreign policy section, the draft borrows the language of Clinton's celebrated 1995 speech to the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing: "Our policies will recognize that human rights are women's rights and that women's rights are human rights." Reflecting Obama's own long-standing interest in international development, the documented continues, "Women make up the majority of the poor in the world. So we will expand access to women's' economic development opportunities and seek to expand microcredit."

Goldstein also takes a look at how the language on abortion has changed since 2004 and says the party has gotten even more strongly pro-choice. Take a look.

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It's the article everyone's talking about today: Josh Green of the Atlantic gets reams of internal Clinton campaign memos, emails, and other documents from former staffers and runs down the most important parts. Take a gander.

I'll highlight just two things. First, Clinton emerges as a terrible executive. She is unable to hire people who work well together or people who, though at odds, create a useful tension. She is unable to settle disputes after they arise or provide direction that keeps them from arising in the first place. A pattern emerges from Green's documents: Clinton first lets a problem fester, then explodes at her staff for not addressing it, then provides little guidance on how to solve it going forward, and ultimately gets bitten by the problem down the road.

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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will release a report later today showing that the federal government has paid private contractors $100 billion since the 2003 Iraq invasion. The report will place "the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq and [raise] troubling questions about the degree to which the war has been privatized," according to the New York Times. Between 2003 and 2007, the U.S. government awarded $85 billion in contracts for services ranging from security to construction to food preparation to translation. At the current pace, contracts will exceed $100 billion by year's end, a figure that might be low, given the chaotic state of contracting during the Iraq War's early years. There are currently at least 180,000 contractors working in Iraq, far outnumbering U.S. troops in theater.

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