CNN headline: Democrats flail on Iraq while public stews.

Edwards campaign refusing to say whether his remarks earlier today should be taken as criticism of Hillary.

Exclusive: Justice Department prosecutors and House Democrats strike a deal to turn over documents related to the Duke Cunningham investigation.

A leading antiwar figure tries to light a fire under Congressional Dems over Iraq.

The news today is that the government of Iraq is convening a regional conference to help quell the disorder in Iraq. And they’re inviting, not surprisingly, the countries in the region — including Syria and Iran, two of Iraq’s main neighbor states. And we’re going to be attending too.

This is being treated as a meaningful change in the White House’s policy of shunning Iran and Syrian and preferring to deal with them through confrontation, if not military force.

But is this such a change? It strikes me as not quite de minimis. But close to it. It’s always risky to underestimate the number of stupid things this administration can do abroad. So, certainly, it could be worse. But are we overstating the significance of this?

Fin de Marty?

According to the New York Observer, CanWest, the Canadian media conglomerate is now the 100% owner of The New Republic. Marty Peretz no longer has any ownership stake in the thing.

But he’ll still be editor-in-chief.

How long can that last?

When it comes to major funders of the Republican party who are also (alleged) financiers of al Qaeda, we make a special effort to be thorough.

So remember Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, the guy who got indicted two weeks ago for trying to fund new terrorist training camps in Pakistan (apparently it’s a growth industry at the moment). Reports at the time said Alishtari had given just over $15,000 to the Republicans. But Paul Kiel looked a bit closer. And it turns out that the true number was $35,000.

There was an extra $20,000 Alishtari contributed to the National Republican Senatorial Committee on August 9th, 2003. (It went unnoticed because his name was misspelled on the disclosure form.)

Admittedly, it ain’t the $152,000 he tried to contribute to al Qaeda. But not chump change either.

I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. But apparently the interview I did with the producers of the Frontline series ‘News War’ ran tonight in this week’s episode. From the series website, here’s a partial transcript of the interview.

Today’s Must Read: The Washington Post interviews a former detainee in one of the CIA’s “black sites.”

This is comforting: al Qaeda’s back to where they were in the summer of 2001.