Is Gen. Abizaid even remotely credible any longer? As Maureen Dowd put it in the N.Y. Times today:

"At a Senate hearing last week, Gen. John Abizaid sounded like Goldilocks meets Guernica, asserting two propositions about the war that are logically at war with each other. He said we can’t have fewer troops because the Iraqis need us, but we can’t have more because we don’t want the Iraqis to become dependent on us.

He contended that increasing the number of our troops would make the Iraqi government mad, but also asserted that decreasing the number would intensify sectarian violence."

I've thought the question of how many troops we need in Iraq has been addressed in a ridiculous way for years now.

Magically, we have ended up with not too many troops and not too few troops. The number of troops we've had in Iraq since the invasion has always been just right.

What are the odds of that? The Pentagon, under the leadership of Don Rumsfeld, came up with exactly the right number of troops off the bat, and that number has never changed other than through planned troop rotations or a few minute adjustments, such as putting a few more troops in Baghdad.

Mitt Romney basically ran in Massachusetts as a compassionate conservative, but just as with Bush, that was just empty campaign rhetoric. He's changed so many positions on social issues that it's hard to know whether he actually believes in anything, other than doing whatever it takes to get elected.

Left out in the cold

By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | November 17, 2006

Just about four years ago this week, I sat with Mitt Romney in the study of his palatial Belmont house, as the governor-elect explained to me that at the end of his term, he wanted to be viewed not as a budget slasher, but as someone who cared. He took pains to mention the state's homeless as a population he would never harm.

Let's go right to the tape. "I ran for office and want to be governor because I want to do a better job for people who need government's help," he said.

Romney again: "If I'm seen only as the mastermind of cuts, it will be very hard to say, 'Here's a guy who cares.' I will look to cut without cutting people at the edge."

One more time: "Saying it doesn't mean anything. People will see it and believe it -- or not. The proof will be in the pudding."

It ends up, four years and one term later, that's some mushy pudding. Last week, the good governor ceremoniously slashed $425 million out of the state budget, a significant portion of it undoubtedly destined for silly pet projects that would have done very little good, benefiting very few people.

But his machete also caught $410,000 in the Department of Transitional Assistance, better known as public welfare, specifically meant to fund about 333 additional beds for homeless people in the cold winter months.

Because of Romney's actions, those beds are now gone. They won't exist. The men and women who were meant to sleep in them will be destined to roam the streets on even the most frigid nights, sleeping on park benches, gathering warmth under bridges or over subway grates, subsisting on the frozen garbage they ferret out of the trash.

...

My colleague Eileen McNamara pointed out this week that Romney also slashed $28 million marked for modest raises to dismally paid social workers.

Every Democrat on Beacon Hill seems to think the governor is playing politics with this entire batch of cuts, trying to project an aura of rigid fiscal discipline on a national stage.

That may or may not be true, but I have a hard time believing the guy would so blatantly go back on his word.

I have a hard time believing he even knows these homeless funds were cut. Once he learns, I think he'll put them back.

Either I'm a fool, or our governor is a fraud.

[It turns out both are true. Brian McGrory, columnist for the Globe is a fool (just read his columns on Deval Patrick), and Mitt Romney is a fraud.]