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Today marks a very important milestone in Iraq: U.S. troops officially withdrew from the nation's city and towns, clustering on forward operating bases where they'll be available if called upon. Day-to-day security now rests with the Iraqi military and police force.

It's a huge step forward for Iraqis who want to take charge of their own destiny. But it's also a dangerous time, both for Iraqis and U.S. troops, as the withdrawal may embolden insurgents, who have been ratcheting up violence in recent weeks.

We'll discuss all this in an editorial we're working on for tomorrow.

Sunday, we'll have an editorial on the leaked GAO report that reveals poor coordination among U.S. agencies trying to stop the flow of guns purchased in the States and smuggled across the Mexican border to arm drug cartels. Agencies need to treat the threat as an urgent one. The extreme violence of these cartels presents a danger not only to an ally and neighbor, but internally as the cartels seek control of illegal drug distribution networks in the U.S.

Obama's reaction to Iran's election and its aftermath have prompted some criticism from predictable corners for its mildness.

Sen. John McCain (you know, the guy who sang, "Bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" - oh, yeah, and the guy who lost in November), in a Twitter (?!) interview with ABC's Jack Trapper, said Obama should be calling for a new election in Iran. "USA always stands for freedom and democracy!! ... [I]f we are steadfast eventually the Iranian people will prevail," McCain twittered.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) also thinks Obama isn't doing enough to declare solidarity with Iranian voters upset at the outcome of the election. He put out a statement saying, "The Administration's silence in the face of Iran's brutal suppression of democratic rights represents a step backwards for homegrown democracy in the Middle East. President Obama must take a strong public position in the face of violence and human rights abuses. We have a moral responsibility to lead the world in opposition to Iran's extreme response to peaceful protests."

As Washington Monthly's Steve Benen noted, though, "The more the United States intervenes in support of those Iranians sympathetic to the West, the less it helps those Iranians sympathetic to the West. Indeed, Cantor may have noticed -- or then again, may[be] he hasn't -- that we haven't heard an outcry from reformers in Iran, imploring the Obama administration to speak out in support of their efforts.

"There's a reason: it's their fight and they don't want to look like U.S. stooges."

In fact, as the Bush administrator's top negotiator with Iran, Ambassador Nicholas Burns, said, Obama has been playing his response almost perfectly.

In an interview with NPR, Burns said,

“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see a very aggressive series of statements by the United States that would try to put the U.S. in the center of this. And I think President Obama is avoiding that quite rightly. ... This is not a dispute for the U.S. to be the center of ... It’s up to Iranians to decide who Iran’s future leaders will be. He said he respects Iran’s sovereignty. I think it was important to do that.”

McCain and Cantor, by demonstrating its opposite, are doing a good job of proving the value of the kind of nuanced approach to foreign policy this nation hasn't seen in a good, long time.

We're working on an editorial for later in the week about the deplorable waste of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the result of shifting support services for U.S. military operations to private contractors on an unprecedented scale. The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting will release its first report to Congress Wednesday, but The Associated Press got a copy and broke a story over the weekend. Examples of costly but shoddy or unneeded work in Iraq make a pressing case for fewer private contracts and more government oversight of those that are let as the military steps down operations in Iraq and builds up U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Sunday, we'll have an editorial praising President Obama's remarkable Cairo speech, an appeal to reset the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world by looking beyond stereotypes on both sides and recognizing common principles that should allow a mutually beneficial alliance. Obama offered no new policy initiatives. What he offered instead was a new attitude of trust and respect, and a challenge to the countries of the Middle East to approach old, intractable problems in the same spirit - to, in a word, "change."

In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Gen. David Petraeus supported President Obama's moves to ban torture and close Gitmo:

"I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines."

Closing Gitmo, he said, "sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."

So many wrong, immoral, illegal or idiotic things happened under the Bush administration it could lead to a kind of scandal fatigue. But the latest revelation is eye-popping on many levels.

During the early days of the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave classified daily briefings to President Bush. Rumsfeld would deliver the printed briefing by hand to the president. According to GQ magazine, Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense, decided it would be a good idea to come up with cover sheets for these briefings featuring photographs of the military in action combined with stirring Bible quotations.

For instance, the March 19, 2003, briefing featured a photograph of a fighter jet preparing to launch from an aircraft carrier. The accompanying quote said, ""If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast, O LORD." Interestingly, the "O Lord" is not in the original Bible verse. Apparently, Shaffer felt the need to gin up the religious nature of the quote.

You can see the GQ slide show here.

How stupid is it to do something like this at the same time the administration was going to great pains to ensure that the invasion of a Muslim nation was not cast as some sort of Christian religious war (once they got President Bush to quit referring to it as a crusade, that is)?

What were these people thinking? Five Democratic members of Congress were arrested Monday during a protest in front of the Sudanese embassy. They were there to protest the deplorable conditions in the Darfur region.

A Secret Service spokesman said the five Democrats, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia, Donna Edwards of Maryland, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Lynn Woolsey of California, were charged with crossing a police line, a misdemeanor.

Darfur is a terrible situation, but once you're in Congress there are much more effective ways for you to press for change than violating your duty to uphold the laws of the nation.

For Tuesday: President Obama is taking a risky but realistic approach to the continuing threat presented by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and by al-Qaida, still enjoying a safe haven just across the border in western Pakistan while plotting attacks on the U.S. Critics of his commitment of more U.S. troops to Afghanistan fear a new military quagmire. But Obama can neither concede the area to the architects of 9/11, nor allow its security and political and economic viability continue toward utter chaos. WIth lessons learned from Iraq, he's trying to strengthen Afghanistan as a self-governing nation, and encourage Pakistan to exert control over its lawless tribal regions.

We're writing our Sunday NRV Current editorial today about the Radford budget. The city plans to make some deep cuts. The proposed budget came in $2 million less than last year and with 16 fewer employees.  Yet more might be required.

In that environment, everything must remain on the table, including the mayor's proposed furlough days for city employees.