This is an open thread, but it also features four stories in the news at 4 o’clock. It’s like trying to dunk a donut by grasping it by the ears.

1. The Independent is reporting that General David Petraeus has presidential ambitions. “Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq’s Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05. ‘I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, ‘No, that would be too soon’,’ Mr Khadim… said… ¶ Petraeus went to Iraq during the invasion of 2003 as commander of the 101st Airborne Division and had not previously seen combat.” His “critics hold him at least partly responsible for three debacles” —

   Although Mosul remained quiet for some months after, the US suffered one of its worse setbacks of the war in November 2004 when insurgents captured most of the city. The 7,000 police recruited by General Petraeus either changed sides or went home. Thirty police stations were captured, 11,000 assault rifles were lost and $41m (£20m) worth of military equipment disappeared. Iraqi army units abandoned their bases.

   The general’s next job was to oversee the training of a new Iraqi army. As head of the Multinational Security Transition Command, General Petraeus claimed that his efforts were proving successful. In an article in the Washington Post in September 2004, he wrote: “Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being re-established.” This optimism turned out be misleading; three years later the Iraqi army is notoriously ineffective and corrupt.

   General Petraeus was in charge of the Security Transition Command at the time that the Iraqi procurement budget of $1.2bn was stolen. “It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history,” Iraq’s Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, said. “Huge amounts of money disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal.”

   Khadim doubts the “surge” is successful. “Commenting on the US military alliance with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, he said: ‘They will take your money, but when the money runs out they will change sides again.'”

2. More news from Iraq from The New York Times reporting that the compromise on the Oil Law in Iraq seems to be collapsing. I know, try not to be too shocked. “A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed… ¶ Contributing to the dispute is the decision by the Kurds to begin signing contracts with international oil companies before the federal law is passed. The most recent instance, announced last week on a Kurdish government Web site, was an oil exploration contract with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas… ¶ Some members of one of the main Sunni parties, Tawafiq, which insists on federal control of contracts and exclusive state ownership of the fields, bolted when it became convinced that the Kurds had no intention of following those guidelines. ¶ But the prime minister’s office believes there is a simpler reason the Sunnis abandoned or at least held off on the deal: signing it would have given Mr. Maliki a political success that they did not want him to have.”

3. The Financial Times has more on the Strategic Survey 2007 put out by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. FT reports the US sufffers a decline in prestige. “The report says the US failure in Iraq had meant the Bush administration suffered from a much-reduced ability to hold sway in both domestic and international affairs.”

   But a more fundamental loss of clout occurred at a strategic level. “It was evident that exercise of military power – in which, on paper, America dominated the world – had not secured its goal,” the survey says. The failings in Iraq created a sense around the world of American power “diminished and demystified”, with adversaries believing they will prevail if they manage to draw the US into a prolonged engagement.

   Washington’s ability to act as an honest broker in the world had declined; and Iraq had meant the US had failed to pay as much attention as it should have to other parts of the world.

   America’s standing in the world has gotten so bad under Bush, that simply having a new president will not make things magically better. “The report concludes that the ‘the restoration of American strategic authority seemed bound to take much longer than the mere installation of a new president’.” “Installation” as opposed to election — a very telling choice of words.

4. Lastly, some potentially good news on addressing global warming. According to The New York Times, a U.S. court ruled States can set their own measures to cut greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles and light trucks. “Ruling in a lawsuit against Vermont’s standards on those heat-trapping gases, the judge, William K. Sessions III, rejected a variety of challenges from auto manufacturers, including their contention that the states were usurping federal authority.” The ruling “explicitly endorses the idea” that States have the right to set their own regulations on the greenhouse gases. The judge wrote such regulations do not hurt the economy or undermine safety. “The judge also rejected a claim that Vermont’s standards would intrude into the sphere of foreign policy, which is the unique province of the federal government.” Vermont and other states rules on emissions hinge on California being granted a waiver from the Bush administrations’ Environmental Protection Agency. Am EPA decision is promised by the end of the year.

One more story below the fold…

5. A new theory about Neanderthal extinction suggests climate changed played less of a role. The Washington Post reports of a new research in Nature that humans are once again the prime suspect. “Contrary to a popular hypothesis that Neanderthals succumbed to a suddenly colder climate, the new research indicates that southwestern Europe… enjoyed relatively mild weather” withe only a lot more rain.

   The new work relies on a unique resource: a nearly 50-foot-long, oxygen-depleted sample of marine sediment drilled from Venezuela’s Cariaco Basin. Studies by Konrad Hughen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have shown that layers of that core — undisturbed for millennia because the lack of oxygen kept worms and bugs from reaching them — can tell with uncanny resolution what the climate was like in the Northern Hemisphere.

   Hughen, [Chronis Tzedakis of the University of Leeds,] and colleagues used the core to determine the climate in Gibraltar, where the most recent remnants of Neanderthal culture have been found. They focused on three time periods: 28,000 and 32,000 years ago (when, according to the best evidence, Neanderthals died out) and 24,000 years ago (when, according to one controversial estimate, the last Neanderthals died).

   Climate was moderate during all three of those periods, they found, with extreme cold not arriving until about 21,000 years ago.

   A gradual cooling of northern Europe may have played a role by pushing modern humans south, but from there either warfare or competition for resources must have been key, Hughen said.

   “They survived 20,000 years of very unstable climate. Then when you add humans to the mix, they are gone within 10,000 years,” Hughen said. “You tell me what the most parsimonious explanation is.”

Let’s go out and be excellent to each other.