Belgravia Dispatch marks the one year anniversary of Dick Cheney’s “[the insurgency] is in the last throes” statement with a rundown of casualties over time along with a rundown of the types of things that are happening.

He also has a very good rundown of the state of the war in Iraq. He discusses the perils of both troop withdrawal as well as the perils of having more troops in theater. He remains, of course, a proponent of increasing troop levels in strategic ways. My overall impression from the article could be summed up as “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” The complexity of the interrelationships between the various groups committing violence in Iraq is daunting for an non-specialist like me. Greg Djerejian, who authors and owns Belgravia Dispatch, on the other hand, was a term CFR member and actually has some foreign service experience. Go read both posts.

I’m working on a new system to pass on interesting links that will fold into the regular site as a regular post. I didn’t like the del.icio.us daily blog post came at a fixed time of day, didn’t like the sidebar, so I’m doing it manually for now. The new system will allow all the writers here to post into it with one click just like del.icio.us.

So, here are the links:

• Here is the crime in outing of CIA agent — an editorial by Gary Hart in the Denver Post. Get to the end, or read Atrios’s summary.
• Bank of America: Keep the Change — an interesting program to help you save money while helping you use your debit card more. Cool. (via kottke.org)
• News.com.com.com.com: Razr to Nano, when design matters — News.com has photos of some of the cool gadgets out this year.

Just rumors or maybe some reality: From Political Wire:

Meanwhile, Sportsbook.com notes bettors now think Cheney might run for president in 2008, despite previous denials. The odds started to change after journalist Bob Woodward made a similar prediction a few weeks ago.

Click through to PW for more.

Is it too early to open up the Election 2008 category?