The Democrats' Own Quagmire.

Fareed Zakaria analyses Howard Deanâs position.

“As a political strategy, the antiwar position is based on a bet that in six months Iraq will be at least as unstable and unsettled as it is now, and probably spiraling downward. If that is the case, the argument goes, President Bush's approval rating will keep dropping.

Perhaps. But if the situation in Iraq is scary, if instability is spreading across the country, America will be more fully and deeply engaged in a war with some very nasty enemies. In such a situation, will the average American—in, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan, states Democrats must win—look to Howard Dean to get them through the dangerous times, or to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell?”

The Story of Saddam's Capture.

The Special Forces commando had already pulled the pin. He was primed to toss the grenade into the “spider hole,” a Vietnam-era nickname for lethal hiding places. But the man cowering inside did not use the pistol resting in his lap. He raised both hands in submission and, speaking in English, announced, “I am Saddam Hussein, I am the president of Iraq and I'm willing to negotiate.”  One of the Special Forces operators looked down at the disheveled, bearded, seemingly dazed man and replied, “President Bush sends his regards.”

Chronicle: “A massive San Francisco power outage on one of the busiest shopping days of the year turned the normal chaos of the Saturday before Christmas into surreal confusion — disrupting traffic, shutting down two transit stations and disorienting thousands of suburbanites who visit the city only a few times a year.”

Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”

Bloggable campaign events today in NH. Dean, Lieberman, Clark.