Just when it seemed Joe Lieberman’s neocon qualities couldn’t get any more offensive, he manages to kick things up a notch.

This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) strongly advocated preparing for a strike against Iran.

“I think we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. Host Bob Schieffer followed-up: “Let’s just stop right there. Because I think you probably made some news here, Senator Lieberman. You’re saying that if the Iranians don’t let up, that the United States should take military action?” “I am,” Lieberman responded.

Lieberman added that “if there’s any hope” of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, “we can’t just talk to them…. We’ve got to use our force and to me that would include taking military action.”

When John McCain sang about bombing Iran, he was kidding. Regrettably, Lieberman wasn’t.

About two weeks ago, Steve Clemons raised eyebrows with a report on the “race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.” As Clemons described it, Cheney’s team is actively circumventing the president’s team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran.

Clemons’ report was bolstered by comments from the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, who told BBC Radio last week that a war with Iran is a serious possibility because of “new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran.’” He didn’t identify the “crazies,” but warned of those who “have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force.”

The “crazies” with “extreme views” unfortunately aren’t limited to the administration.

A Tennessee newspaper digs into Fred Thompson’s past tolerance towards abortion. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Sunday Roundup.

I foolishly believed David Broder’s analysis of the Plame scandal bottomed out last fall, when the “dean” of the DC media establishment dismissed the entire controversy as an “overblown…conspiracy theory,” insisted that Valerie Plame had not actually been “outed” as a covert CIA official, criticized Patrick Fitzgerald for nothing in particular, and argued that journalists “owe Karl Rove an apology.”

Of course, that was written in September 2006. Perhaps Broder would consider the evidence presented at Scooter Libby’s trial and change his mind. Perhaps he would begin to appreciate the seriousness of the controversy. Perhaps he could reflect on what he wrote nine months ago and realize his misjudgment.

Or perhaps not.

Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine — a further provocation to conservatives.

I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.

Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.

Broder’s been having a really bad year, but regurgitating GOP talking points like this is just beneath him.

Oddly enough, Broder’s column ran on page B7 of today’s Washington Post. Readers found a more accurate appraisal of the scandal four pages earlier, on page B3, from Carol Leonnig, who covers the federal courts for the Post, and who debunked some of the “myths” surrounding the Plame controversy.

One can only hope Broder reads it.

Update: On a related note, Rick Perlstein reminds me that Broder’s recollection on the moral equivalence between Nixon and McGovern in 1972 is equally odd.

It was odd enough when Mark McKinnon, a senior media adviser to John McCain who also led George W. Bush’s ad efforts in 2000 and 2004, said he’d back Barack Obama if he got the Democratic nomination. It’s even odder that Bush’s Secretary of State has advised Obama on foreign policy and is open to voting Democratic in 2008.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has sought out former Secretary of State Colin Powell for advice on foreign policy matters. […]

Powell said he has met twice with Obama, the Illinois senator.

Asked about how he plans to vote in 2008, the lifelong Republican would not commit to supporting the GOP nominee. “I’m going to support the best person that I can find who will lead this country for the eight years beginning in January of 2009,” Powell said.

It’s not exactly a vote of confidence in the Republican field, now is it?

Joel Achenbach has an interesting item today arguing that the extended presidential primary season has led the candidates in both parties to pander shamelessly, in order to offer more “red meat” to their respective bases. I think Achenbach is only half right.

We’re already deep into Red Meat Season…. It’s no secret that candidates play to the base during the primary season, and that nominees drift toward the center for the general election. But the center has become a killing ground. […]

Only partisans are paying attention, and partisans aren’t political vegans. So anyone seeking the party’s nomination must know how to serve up the big slabs of flesh.

Maybe, but has the pandering to the parties’ bases really been that bad? In looking at the Democrats’ leading candidates, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama have practically been the models for restraint.

During one campaign event not too long ago, a voter in Iowa noted the record budget deficits generated by Bush’s fiscal recklessness and asked Edwards to respond. An easy one for red-meat politics, right? Wrong. Edwards said domestic programs, not deficit reduction, would be his top priority. He insisted that politicians should be “honest” about the “common sense in the math.”

Hillary Clinton is routinely offered opportunities to denounce her 2002 vote on the Iraq war resolution. Under Achenbach’s model, the senator would quickly pander, telling progressive audiences what they want to hear. She hasn’t. Obama seems to reflexively reject pandering altogether. Said one constituent, “Obama tells you the hard truths, and other politicians, particularly from Chicago, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear.”

So where’s all the red-meat pandering bothering Achenbach? He quotes one example from one Democratic candidate: Mike Gravel. That’s hardly persuasive evidence.

Indeed, Achenbach’s piece is filled with notable examples, but they’re all from Republicans trying to placate the far-right GOP base. Said Ron Paul of his rivals, “They’re worried about the immediate next election, which is the Republican primary, and anything they can do to pander, they’ll do it, and they’ll forget about what they believe in, they’ll forget about the Constitution, they’ll forget about building coalitions.”

I’m afraid Achenbach put a pox on both houses, when only one deserves it.

For all the talk about the administration embracing the “Korean model” for a long-term presence in Iraq, Thomas Ricks looks at the future from the military’s perspective.

U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a “post-occupation” troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years.

This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials’ assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose.

This comes on the heels of a report two weeks ago that the White House is “developing what are described as concepts for reducing American combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year.” It’d be more encouraging if we haven’t been hearing similar rhetoric for years.

Indeed, the same problem exists here. As publius noted today, we’ve seen reports just like Ricks’ for a long while, and none came to fruition.

But just as importantly, what would this “post-occupation” force look like? There’d be 20,000 U.S. troops for security, 10,000 to train Iraqi security forces, at least 10,000 for logistics, and a “small but significant” deployment for counter-terrorism.

This doesn’t exactly sound like an effective way to end an occupation. As Matthew Yglesias noted, “[I]t’s precisely the widespread — and, crucially, accurate — Iraqi perception that US forces aren’t there just to help them out and aren’t planning on leaving that drives the appeal of both Sunni and Shiite nationalist groups that are opposing us.”

The now-infamous K Street Project, created by congressional Republicans to dominate Washington’s powerful lobbying industry, is obviously long gone. It started unraveling a bit last year, but the election of a Democratic House and Senate sealed the deal.

Roll Call reported the other day that the “legacy” of the Project, of course, lives on. Democrats aren’t creating their own parallel initiative (indeed, the Dems’ lobbying reform proposals explicitly ban any similar effort), but after years of hardball tactics, K Street is the only part of Washington in which Republicans maintain a majority.

The result is an awkward environment — Republican lobbyists are completely lost in trying to figure out how to function in a Democratic Congress. Their perspective provides a good illustration of why having Dems run Congress actually makes a difference.

Several Democratic and Republican lobbyists agreed GOP consultants often get it wrong with Democrats because their corporate pitch is such an easy sell in Republican offices, which already are ideologically sympathetic to businesses’ concerns.

Meeting with Democrats, some Republicans neglect to factor in a much wider array of constituencies that hold sway with the new majority, including labor, environmental and consumer groups.

“Republican lobbyists are used to walking into an office and just saying, ‘I’d like you to do this,'” said one Republican operative who regularly lobbies across the aisle. “With Democrats, you really have to hone your arguments, and you really have to sell them on policy.” (emphasis added)

In previous years, in Tom DeLay’s Congress, corporate lobbyists had it easy. Their clients had a wish list, and the GOP majority was anxious to deliver.

Now these lobbyists are finding that when they ask the Democratic majority to do something, those darned liberals want reasons and stuff. They ask pesky questions, such as, “Why?”

No matter how frustrated rank-and-file Dems get with Dems on the Hill, it’s worth remembering that when it comes to running Congress, there is a difference between a Democratic majority and a Republican one.

As Kevin Drum noted, Colin Powell’s description of what should be the U.S. policy towards Guantanamo Bay was clear, concise, and right.

“If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I’d close it,” he said.

“And I would not let any of those people go,” he said. “I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system is all about?”

He added, “[E]very morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds,” Powell said. “[W]e have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open… We don’t need it, and it’s causing us far more damage than any good we get for it.”

Now, was that so hard?

Over at TPMmuckraker, Spencer Ackerman has gotten a copy of the Council of Europe’s report on the CIA’s secret detention facilities (aka “black sites”, “secret prisons” …) and he’s sharing his findings here.

We’ve posted the actual report here.

New February 5th glut of primaries upends the strategies of the GOP Presidential candidates. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.