The Next President

Defending its decision not to commit forces to the Tora Bora campaign, members of the Bush administration - including the president, the vice president and Gen. Tommy Franks - have continued to insist, as recently as the last presidential campaign, that there was no definitive information that bin Laden was even in Tora Bora in December 2001. "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora," Franks wrote in an Oct. 19, 2004, Op-Ed article in The New York Times. Intelligence assessments on the Qaeda leader's location varied, Franks continued, and bin Laden was "never within our grasp." It was not until this spring that the Pentagon, after a Freedom of Information Act request, released a document to The Associated Press that says Pentagon investigators believed that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and that he escaped.

-The New York Times

You should all remember this: Tommy Franks will at the very least run for the GOP nomination for President in 2008. I feel very confident making this prediction. He's put out a book, he spoke at the last GOP convention, and he's got oodles of name recognition. And as the above passage demonstrates, he has already demonstrated the needed qualification for a Republican - the ability to lie with ease and frequency to the American people, especially if it hurts Democrats.

Unless Iraq and Afghanistan both turn in to even more gigantic clusterfucks than they already have, and maybe even then, Tommy Franks will run for President. And I'd be surprised if he didn't win.

In any case, the GOP will never, ever run anyone who isn't a kool-aid drinking Iraq hawk. So how do the Dems win? You can't out-hawk the GOP. This is why the Dems need - not should, not I want, but need - to run an anti-war candidate. It's the only alternative. Besides, Iraq and possibly even Afghanistan are likely to collapse on the US. But 2008 can only work is the Dems start running against the war now.