Today’s Must Read: for muck and blunders, nobody beats former congressman, investigation subject, and unpopular Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (R).

Excellent! Attorney star Tim Griffin interviewing to run Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign.

Fred Thompson edges closer to Presidential run. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.

From Reuters …

President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

The United States has had thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea to guard against a North Korean invasion for 50 years.

Democrats in control of the U.S. Congress have been pressing Bush to agree to a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq, an idea firmly opposed by the president.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea.

“The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you’ve had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability,” Snow told reporters.

It is hard not to take this as another example that the White House is seriously out of touch with both history and reality when it comes to Iraq.

Let’s run through a few differences. First, Korea is an ethnically and culturally homogenous state. Iraq, not a culturally or ethnically homogenous state. And needless to say, that has been a point of some real difficulty. Second, Korea a democracy? Well, yes, for about fifteen years. Without going into all the details, South Korea was a military dictatorship for most of the Cold War.

A deeper acquaintance with the last half century of Korean history would suggest that a) a fifty year occupation, b) lack of democracy and c) a hostile neighbor were deeply intertwined. Remove B or C and you probably don’t have A, certainly no A if you lose both B and C.

The more telling dissimilarity is the distinction between frontline troops and troops for stability. At least notionally (and largely this was true) US troops have been in South Korea to ward off an invasion from the North. US troops aren’t in Iraq to ward off any invasion. Invasion from who? Saudi Arabia? Syria?

No, US troops are in Iraq for domestic security, in so many words, to protect it from itself, or to ensure the continued existence of an elected, pro-US government. That tells you that the US military presence in Iraq will never be as relatively bloodless as the US military presence in Korea since it has no external threat it’s counterbalancing against. In a sense that the US deployment in Korea has never quite been, it is a sustained foreign military occupation.

DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility notifies Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Attorney firing probe has been expanded to investigate politicized hiring practices.

Much to President Bush’s dismay, the US Attorney investigation doesn’t appear to be wrapping up anytime soon. We give you the rundown of what’s to come in the approaching weeks in today’s episode of TPMtv …

Late Update: For a summary of today’s episode, click here.

As we noted earlier, the Justice Department’s internal watchdogs have expanded their probe of the U.S. attorney firings. And as we detail here, it’s clear that they’re looking far beyond the firings themselves — or even just what Monica Goodling or Kyle Sampson were up to. The probe will investigate the politicization of the department in a number of other areas.

TPM Reader DS follows up on the White House’s new Korea/Iraq analogy …

I have believed, from the beginning – though I have always hoped to be proven wrong – that the Bush White House (i.e. Cheney) has had as its principal goal in Iraq the establishment of a permanent military presence in that country. The neocon dream of transforming the region (from the PNAC manifesto and elsewhere) has always envisaged such a military presence. These people see America’s long-term national interest in terms of (overwhelmingly, though not exclusively) energy security and therefore the control of energy supplies. This means control of the flow of oil from the Middle East. [Relying on a mutual-interest-between-sovereign-states approach, à la western Europe, is considered naïve when it comes to Arab countries.] Everything else – from the initial justifications for the war to the current rhetoric-of-the-day (we have to ensure stability, we have to fight them there or they’ll follow us here, etc.…) – is aimed at making such control, by means of long-term military presence, possible. When 9/11 took Saudi Arabia off the table as a viable base, some other country had to be found – but of significant size. Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, et al. are simply not big enough.

Cheney, in particular, is vicious enough to contemplate a long-term presence at the cost of a daily toll in the dozens or hundreds as well as ongoing domestic opposition. He’s convinced that the US needs to be there to keep an eye on – and always to be in a position to intervene in the affairs of the region, with particular attention to the the Arabian Sea oil fields, but also the Caspian Sea oil and gas fields. Bin Laden was the publicly accepted casus belli for the invasion of Afghanistan; but finding Bin Laden is irrelevant to the true purpose: to be on the ground, to have bases, to be able to project force in the region. [Remember that, within a month or two of 9/11, Bush and his people are known to have talked about going into Iraq in order to control the southern oil fields. This was explicit, and it has been widely reported, through seldom dwelt upon as explanatory of the whole enterprise.] Similarly with Iraq: WMD, democracy, removing a tyrant, fighting Al Qaeda,… all offered for public consumption, but none of any real importance to the White House and all irrelevant to the actual goal. When the public rationales evaporate, or when events make the achievement of any of the rationales still being offered in fact impossible of achievement, the White House will still keep troops on the ground – even when their presence makes the stated goals even harder to achieve (e.g. reconciliation between Iraq’s factions), the White House will find some other justification for staying, no matter how weak. Because staying is itself the objective.

Occam’s Razor supports me in this; the creation and maintenance of a long-term military presence is the only policy objective that unifies, aligns and makes sense of everything Bush has done. If any other goal is posited, his policies and actions are incoherent; but if this goal is posited, they all make sense.

Fred Thompson confirms it: He’s planning to run for President.

TPM Reader JM with more Asia-Middle East geopolitical speculation …

I’m not arguing for this, but I can see a scenario where the real-politic crowd may take Bush’s desire for permanent presence in Iraq.

The idea of hacking Iraq into 3 regions isn’t going anywhere, presumably because it would ignite an even bigger powder keg (although I’m not sure this administration makes such calculations anymore). Still, Bush could easily have his permanent presence in northern Iraq. We’ve essentially been there since 1991 anyway — and under western protection the region has rebuilt and thrived. I wouldn’t put it past Bush to retreat to the Kurd-dominated north, setting up a defacto 1950’s Korea/West Germany style reality.

I can easily imagine future rightwing foreign policy being hung on the frame of ‘defending secular Islam from radical extremism…’ ala Taiwan, another non-existent,defacto national entity.

If you buy into the terms that TPM Reader DS specs out below, this approach makes a certain amount of sense. With one very big exception: it’s not where the oil is, or at least not enough of it. And that’s the whole point. Close enough to menace but not to control.