U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad writes in the WSJ's OpinionJournal of seven points that the US and Iraq have agreed to:

1. Iraq needs a "national compact" enshrined in its constitution.

2. The Iraqi government and the coalition will work together to isolate and defeat the terrorists and Baathists who want the restoration of the old regime.

3. The U.S. and the Iraqi government are seeking to encourage the region's leaders to address problems in a new cooperative spirit and to pressure those who continue to foment instability.

4. The U.S. will work with the Iraqi government to improve the capacity of Iraqi ministries.

5. We will seek to increase economic opportunity. Not enough emphasis has been placed on developing the private sector.

6. The U.S. will work with the Iraqi government to set the conditions for a successful election--with full participation of all communities.

7. I will be engaging across the board to assist the Iraqi government to achieve our common objectives and mobilize more support by other countries.

Go read the full op-ed, which lays out The Plan (and, incidentally, the "exit strategy") for Iraq.

News item via Yahoo News.

Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah, president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said in remarks carried by the Kuwait News Agency on Friday that the market had begun returning to normal and "prices (have) started to fall, especially after the smooth transition of power," in Saudi Arabia.

The 9/11 Commission (yes, the 9/11 Commission) throws a hissy fit when Administration tells them that the material they're asking for is already out there, go find it yourselves.

The requests came not from the disbanded commission, which was created by Congress and had subpoena powers, but from its shadow group, which the members call the 9/11 Public Discourse Project. It was established by the members of the Sept. 11 commission when the panel formally went out of business last August, shortly after releasing a unanimous report that called for an overhaul of the nation's counterterrorism agencies.

These folks acted like bozos during the Commission hearings, but want to continue to pretend that they're "bipartisan."

They would like to do so by reaching out, in bipartisan pairs, to communities around the country, encouraging a national conversation on these critical issues. In the absence of such an effort, they are concerned that there will be insufficient public examination of how the lessons learned from the terrorist attacks can be used to shape public policy.

And a special hello to partisan hacks Richard Ben-Veniste and Jamie S. "Intelligence Wall" Gorelick.

Sometimes, it takes a Mark Steyn to say what needs to be said.

The DNC's Bush-is-the-reason-your-kid-is-fat press release is a convenient precis of the party's problem: While he runs rings around them, the Dems lounge about getting flabbier by the week and telling themselves it's all his fault they can barely move except to complain about Bush's Supreme Court nominee's kid being overly cute. What's the betting for 2006? The Dems will have a few more "nearly the biggest political upsets," while the Republicans will have the actual political upsets -- a couple more Senate seats? Including Robert C. Byrd's venerable perch in West Virginia?

At this point, I'm almost desperate for a rational and reasoned voice to emerge from the left. I assume that this is possible, but current evidence does not seem to support that assumption.

Point: leftie blog Fables of the Reconstruction offers a taxonomy of right-wing blogs:

Calling Glenn Reynolds intellectually lazy would be to praise him. He doesn't write, he grunts. Has gained prominence by posting a lot and never making his audience think; has done those things by never thinking too much himself. Never met a Democrat he couldn't casually accuse of treason.

Heh. Indeed.

In retaliation, Right Wing Nut House offers a Moonbat taxonomy. He offers this explanatory comment:

I discovered that the more forcefully the denizens of these sites bragged about being a member of the “Reality Based Community” the farther they actually were from existing on the same plane of the universe as the rest of us. Some maintain a passing familiarity with reality – as if reality were like walking past a beautiful woman and getting a tantalizing whiff of an exotic perfume. Others have had reality slap them upside the head and still deny the evidence of it with their own eyes and ears.

For a view into the leftie-righie food fight, both articles are highly recommended.

The shuttle is packed up and ready to return to Earth.

Discovery's seven astronauts spent a day longer than originally planned aboard the station to bring over additional supplies -- such as paper, laptop computers and surplus food and batteries. Discovery is the first shuttle to visit the station since 2002.

The U.S. economy keeps chugging along.

The pickup in job growth last month pushed this year's average monthly payroll gain to 191,000, a pace economists see as strong enough to slowly tighten the labor market.

Jan Helder was charged in state court after being acquitted by a Federal judge for Internet enticement of a law enforcement officer posing as a minor.

Helder is expected to surrender to Platte County authorities. His bond was set at $7,500, with a stipulation that he have no access to the Internet. If convicted, the maximum sentence in Missouri is seven years.

The rules of the game change in Britain.

In a significant shift away from the human rights policies championed by Labour since 1997, Mr Blair indicated that he was no longer prepared to allow Britain to be a haven for Muslim extremists whose presence in London has resulted in its being dubbed "Londonistan".

The balance of rights vs. security is difficult in the best of times. One of the truly despicable things about terrorism is that it causes good people to choose security over liberty. This is why terrorists must be mercilessly hunted down and destroyed--not excused, coddled, compared to regular armed forces or political opponents, or otherwise allowed any space in civilized society. Any cause that the terrorists claim to champion is irreparably stained by association. The analogy of terrorism to cancer is apt. It must be quickly excised, lest its foul effects spread throughout all of society.

Joint US-Iraqi operation begins in northwestern Iraq.

About 800 U.S. Marines and 180 Iraqi soldiers moved into Haqlaniyah, one of a cluster of western towns in Anbar province around the Haditha Dam that is thought to be a stronghold of Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters.