Jeff Jacoby writes this morning about the crumbling GOP base. If you want to know why the base is crumbling, go no farther than Robert Samuelson's article in the Washington Post detailing what you don't know about the Senate immigration bill. In it you will find that the bill, should it become law, would nearly DOUBLE the amount of legal immigration into the country, as well as providing amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. For this we need a GOP Senate, House and President?

Fareed Zakaria says we need a political solution in Iraq, which cannot be obtained through the use of military force or simply building a larger Iraqi security force. I am convinced that he is right. The only way to obtain peace is for the Iraqis to agree on a settlement between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The seating of a permanent government is only the first step. However, only the presence of American troops can prevent the outbreak of a civil war or the prospect of a demagogue murdering his way to power (Moqtada al Sadr, anyone?).

The possibility that Marines murdered civilians in cold blood in Haditha is being investigated by NCIS, and the possibility that there were cover-up efforts after the fact. Mackubin Thomas Owens explains the laws of war in these matters, and Michelle Malkin decries the rush to judgment. I find it hard to believe, but not impossible to believe, that American Marines would do something like this. If they did, they should be dealt with severely, for to brush this aside would be to dishonor the thousands of soldiers and Marines who have faced equally difficult circumstances and behaved within the boundaries of law and military regulations.

Michael Ledeen provides some excerpts from a recent interview by a German magazine of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Ledeen takes a dim view of the interviewers efforts, and the ability of our leaders here in America as well as Europe to deal with him.

In the wake of the deaths of two CBS employees and the critically wounding of another in Iraq, Dotty Lynch wonders why there are so few protests about Iraq. She says she cannot believe it is because, unlike Vietnam, there is no draft and, thus, very little prospect that our college-age youths will ever have to go to war unless they choose to do so. Then she proceeds to prove that point exactly. Check it out.