The Duke Cunningham investigation will reach well into 2007.

I’ve been waiting for someone to say this, someone who can say it not with the guide of history and logical inference but with actual knowledge of the IDF. And here it is.

In the Israeli daily Ha’aretz tonight, military affairs writer Ze’ev Schiff says that the main conclusion that will be drawn from the IDF’s disappointing performance in the Lebanon war will be that the army’s fighting capacity and edge has been blunted by years of policing duties in the territories.

Writes Schiff …

Most units, in their training and operations, followed fighting doctrines of police forces and not of standing armies. Hezbollah trains, fights and is equiped as an army, utilizing some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles and other weapons.

The character of the IDF – known for its blitzkrieg methods, encircling movements deep inside enemy territory, and the ability to bring about a quick and decisive conclusion to the fighting – has been spoiled by years of involvement in operations that tied it down, emotionally and politically.

A couple weeks into this war, long enough that it seemed clear that things weren’t going exactly according to plan for the Israelis, TPM Reader EF wrote in and put the matter more acidly but I think correctly …

The IDF’s troubles are the bitter legacy of the endless occupation. Armies engaged primarily in harassing civilians tend to perform poorly in combat. The Argentine army, which had been engaged in a dirty war against its own people, mostly powerless to fight back, suddenly found itself in a real fight in the Falklands. The British soldiers and Marines did not arrive strapped to tables with electrodes attached to their genitals, so the Argentines didn’t know how to handle them. They lost pretty quickly. Nor is this because the whole Argentine military were simply bullies and cowards; the Argentine air force, which had not been involved in rounding up and torturing helpless people, put up a good show against the Royal Navy.

Occupation duty is always bad for combat units. The American units in Korea in 1950 and those sent to Korea from occupation duty in Japan to stop the North Korean offensive performed poorly by most measures. It would take months to get them back into fighting trim, and non-occupation troops, brought in from the States, would do most of the heavy lifting in driving the North Koreans back from Pusan and Inchon.

I don’t want to get sidetracked on to the question of equivalence between the Argentine military regime and modern day Israel. I certainly don’t think they’re remotely equivalent. But that question is irrelevant to the point EF is making.

Occupation degrades a fighting force — a reality the Israelis need to confront right now and we Americans need to come to grips with as well. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is something Israel really cannot afford now as it becomes more clear that she is in renewed need of a very potent fighting army.

But, of course, this goes beyond the military sphere. Or rather the military sphere is revealing a deeper reality. The occupation itself is corrupting Israeli society just as it seems to have corrupted (remember that in its original and deep meaning, ‘corruption’ means ‘decay’, ‘rot’) the IDF. And here too, can we not see the echoes for ourselves?

As Amos Oz, the great Israeli novelist, wrote just after the Six Day War, in his first foray into public letters. “Even unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation.”

The occupation has become Israel’s weakness, not its strength. True friends of Israel realize this.

A break in the Plame scandal: a top official at the State Department met with Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003, AP confirms. Woodward is believed to be the first journalist to have discussed Plame’s identity with a Bush official. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

The tide changes? ARG has Lieberman 44%, Lamont 42%. Well within the margin of error.

You have to be really deep in the weeds to see it. But if you watch close, you can see it happening.

What am I talking about?

If you’re a political junkie like me, every cycle you know of a few dozen members of the opposite party who are never more than a handful of points ahead of their opposition. 6 or 7 points? Not that far. But of course it’s a million miles. Campaign’s can work like crazy but a member of the House who wins by 55% to 45% generally just keeps on winning by the same spread. Like I say, it’s a million miles.

But not this cycle. It’s no mystery that things aren’t looking good for the GOP this year. But I like looking at numbers in the individual races. And again and again, I’m seeing races that never quite become competitive tip on to the other side entirely.

One I noticed a few weeks ago was Rep. Chris Chocola in Indiana 2. First was a Democratic poll showing him a stunning ten points behind his Democratic opponent. Partisan polls are of course inherently suspect. But, as has happened again and again over the last six or seven weeks, that was followed by an independent poll which showed a smaller but still serious deficit. Chocola with 41% to his challengers 46%.

For an incumbent in July those are very bleak numbers.

And he’s not the only one.

I keep seeing polls showing swing district Republicans either neck and neck or behind their Democratic challengers. Lots of them are polls sponsored by Dems — which makes sense, since they’re the side that wants to preview the level of competitiveness in the race. But in most of the cases I’ve seen, those numbers have been substantially confirmed by subsequent independent polls.

And if you watch closely, the water just keeps rising.

Joe Lieberman and right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck have a chat and agree about pretty much everything. Are we in the midst of World War III? Check. WMD wasn’t why we went into Iraq? Check. Etc.

Following up on my earlier post about poll numbers, there’s one point I left implicit where I should have stated it explicitly.

I said before that partisan polls (ones commissioned by one of the candidates or the candidate’s party) are inherently suspect. The reason is not that these polls are necessarily flawed or cooked, though they can be. The problem with them is that a partisan poll only gets released when it’s good for the candidate who sponsors it.

So, hypothetically, a candidate could commission three polls, get a range of results and only release the one which shows him doing the best, a reading that’s likely an outlier and thus misleading.

Of late, we’ve been seeing lots of (D) partisan polls. And that’s, as I said, because the Dems are the ones who have an interest in showing how close a lot of these races are.

The point I didn’t mention is this: the normal response when one candidate puts out a poll favorable to him or herself is for the other side to go into the field and (if they can) and get a better number to release. And back in July they did just that. According to Roll Call (sub. req), the NRCC dropped $450,000 to conduct polls in 28 competitive districts. The article was dated July 31st. And the polls were conducted “over a two-week period this month.” In other words, the polling was almost certainly done at least a month ago.

So far as I can tell, I’ve seen few if any of those polls. And it’s not hard to figure out why.

Cricket, cricket …

The Iranian nuclear program and the ongoing diplomatic moves around it pose some serious questions. It’s also provided the opportunity for some deeply unserious commentary. Take, for example, this post on National Review‘s blog from Mario Loyola arguing that if Iran prevents IAEA inspectors from entering a certain facility “we should bomb the facilities right now” and that as legal justification for doing so we ought to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter because we “consider . . . Iranian violation of the nonproliferation treaty an act of armed aggression within Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.”

Since in times of peace conservatives usually make no bones about the fact that they don’t care about international law it’s hard for me to understand why they go in for such tortured legal rationalizations about starting them. Article 51 preserves the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” It’s right there in the text — armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations. Violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty is not an armed attack against the United States or any other country. This is pretty clear-cut. If anyone would have an Article 51 case in the event of the Loyola Plan being implemented it would obviously be Iran, the country subjected to an armed attack (veto power comes in handy here).

Now what’s more, the general idea that a state which is not in compliance with the NPT should be subject to attack by whoever feels like attacking is very much not a principle I think people are going to want to endorse. Does that rule apply to India and Pakistan? To Israel? Presumably not.

Which is all beside the point because, as I say, it’s obvious that neither Loyola nor really any of his conservative colleagues actually cares about international law the UN Charter or what have you. If they did, their commentary on the subject might evince some familiarity with what these things say or what the implications of the principles they suggest are. But since they don’t care, why bother? What’s the point?

Meanwhile, I can’t help but note that last time I was guest-blogging here at the TPM Mothership, the nation was also in the grips of Iran-related war fever. This seemed to fade away soon after Josh returned, but now it’s back. Just a coincidence, I hope.

The case for al-Jazeera as made by David Ignatius. It’s a small point he makes, but a good and important one. If you want to understand the Arab media, the Abu Aardvark blog by Marc Lynch is vital reading. His book on the subject‘s worth your time too if you’re willing to delve deep.

When telecommunications giant Qwest refused to give the NSA its subscribers’ call records, civil libertarians hailed the company. So why are those same groups booing now? That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.