As smoke clears, next battles are political
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The siege of Fallujah began with an expectation of weeks, if not months, of heavy fighting and worries about how that would influence
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There is an air of relief blowing in with the hot sea breeze over the Gaza Strip these days, but it's one salted with worry that factional warfare which ended in victory for Hamas two weeks ago could swiftly return.
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In a poisonous landscape, competing Shiite groups no longer look to the political system to allocate power.
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The fire chief is likely to go. The police chief is probably out, too. And the superintendent of public schools will have to pick up his pace.
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While American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting some of the most intense battles of the war against radical Islamic terrorists, our national debate on the future of the conflict has descended to platitudes of campaign rhetoric and a pathological, partisan refusal on both sides of that debate to acknowledge the harsh realities and difficult choices that confront us.
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TEMPE, Ariz. - The duel in the desert ended with clearer choices for Americans, but no clear political advantage for either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry 19 days before the election.
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Political headwinds are likely to batter this oil producer's results.
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Few campaigns in post-war American history have appeared to be as divisive as the one drawing to its still uncertain conclusion on Tuesday.
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By The Salt Lake Tribune  Dec. 19--The battleground has moved off Capitol Hill to Salt Lake  County's government center, but the war pitting rail against roads seems about  to escalate.
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War is hell on a presidency. And it plays havoc with presidential campaigns.
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In the course of three short months, the political system has come full circle: a presidential campaign, an inauguration, a State of the Union address and now this &#151; another presidential race.
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The success of the surge has blunted the force of the war in the presidential campaign, but that may change as a new assessment of troop levels is on the way.
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The ferocious battles of the last three days could open the way to wider conflicts. But there may be both more and less than meets the eye.
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It's a voluntary army vs. a professional force. Button-down Republicans vs. street-wise Democrats. It's the ground war of American politics, with allies of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry spending fortunes to find their supporters and &#151; here's the hard, final part &#151; get them to vote.
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As in war, there&#39;s plenty of fog and smoke on the political battlefield that makes it hard to see what&#39;s going on. But there is one place in particular that you can go and cut through the competing messages and find a least a kernel of truth.
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The move suggests the sides were seeking to pull back from a potential showdown in the Gaza Strip, at least for now.
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One of the two democratic campaigns will end up with a fresh sense of possibility, the other with a sense of opportunity lost.