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Tacoma the dolphin has returned. This is the story that never ends.

Seymour Hersh already took down Richard Perle, and now it looks like Donald Rumsfeld is going to be his next victim. Now that the war in Iraq has turned out not to be a cakewalk, the criticism of Rumsfeld’s insistence on using the minimum number of troops possible is mounting, and the Hersh article could be the thing that polishes him off.

Last summer, I brought up an Army Times article that discussed the resignation of Paul Van Riper from Millenium Challenge 2002, a wargame designed to test tactics that could be used in a war with Iraq. Van Riper was the leader of the simulated opposing forces, and quit because he was unhappy that the people running the game tied his hands behind his back by restricting the use of certain tactics and even forcing him to divulge the locations of his forces. Now, the other shoe has dropped. Slate’s Fred Kaplan follows up on that article with one of his own. Before September 11, 2001, I thought Donald Rumsfeld was going to be the first Bush cabinet official to lose his job. I sure wish that had been the case at this point. ...

Remember the mine-clearing dolphins I mentioned yesterday? One of them is AWOL.

You know, I cannot resist linking to this now somewhat dated interview with our old Libyan friend, Moammar al-Qaddafi, for future reference. Someday, I’ll be looking for this.

This is one way wars expand to engulf other countries. The longer this war goes on, the more risk there is of other countries becoming embroiled in the conflict. I hope Syria isn’t supplying Iraq with military equipment, and I hope that Iranian troops stay on their own side of the border. I don’t even want to think about what happens if Iraqi troops start bolting to Syrian territory and launching attacks from there. ...

The Washington Post today has a damning article on the Bush administration’s failed attempts to deploy troops in Turkey. It is pretty amazing to read that the as the US was trying to bully the Turks into accepting our troops, the Turkish prime minister was under the impression that he could leverage Turkey’s strategic position to stop the war. You can’t get much further apart than that.

Jake Tapper compares the performance of George Bush versus Tony Blair in their joint press conference. He also mentions something I hadn’t read – that the $75 billion in cash that the administration is asking for accounts for only 30 days of fighting. Does that seem realistic to you?

Apparently dolphins trained to identify underwater mines are being used to demine the shipping channel at the port of Umm Qasr. The dolphins have been trained by the US Navy to locate mines and send up floats indicating that a mine has been spotted. There are also some trained sea lions that are part of the program. I have to say that’s just about the coolest thing I’ve ever read. Hopefully the dolphins and sea lions like their jobs. ...

There are reports that members of al-Qaeda have joined the battle in Iraq. I find this completely unsurprising, and I don’t think that it means much of any thing with regard to al-Qaeda links to Iraq in the way that George Bush and Tony Blair would have us believe. al-Qaeda fighters have fought in the southern Philippines, Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, and pretty much anywhere else that Muslims are fighting westerners, or even where Muslims are fighting each other. So I have a hard time seeing this as a smoking gun of any kind. ...