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Bill Kristol’s second Times column is on the Dems’ surge opinions.

… When President Bush announced the surge of troops in support of a new counterinsurgency strategy a year ago, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders predicted failure. Obama, for example, told Larry King that he didn’t believe additional U.S. troops would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.” Then in April, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, asserted that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.” In September, Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus that his claims of progress in Iraq required a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.

Do Obama and Clinton and Reid now acknowledge that they were wrong? Are they willing to say the surge worked?

No. It’s apparently impermissible for leading Democrats to acknowledge — let alone celebrate — progress in Iraq. When asked recently whether she stood behind her “willing suspension of disbelief” insult to General Petraeus, Clinton said, “That’s right.” …

Financial Times interviews Christopher Hitchens.

I never thought I would say this but Christopher Hitchens has been good for my health. When we were negotiating which restaurant to choose, the famously nicotine-bitten enfant terrible of Anglo-American letters inquired whether I smoked. “I’m sorry to say that I’m almost as bad as you,” I replied and we both chuckled throatily.

And thus we meet on a sunny afternoon at the Bombay Club – a popular restaurant across Lafayette Square from the White House. We chose it not because we especially like Indian food – although Hitchens is as fond of it as I – but because we can sit outside and so sidestep Washington’s blanket ban on indoor smoking.

Plus, the staff there recognise and like Hitchens, whose bestselling books (most recently God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) bring frequent television appearances. “I’ll have my usual,” says Hitchens, meaning a Johnnie Walker. On two further occasions during the two-hour meal he holds up his empty tumbler and says: “Xerox”. The staff understand him. Not wanting to appear wimpish I order a Kingfisher beer and nurse it parsimoniously until the end.

After the drinks arrive I offer Hitchens one of my Marlboro Lights. Then something life-changing happens. Cool as a cucumber – and with no hint of remorse – Hitchens announces that he has given up smoking. “I got up yesterday morning in Madison, Wisconsin, and I just threw my pack away,” he says.

That’s wonderful I reply, without betraying a hint of my inner turmoil. But other thoughts race through my mind: “This is the writer who smokes on television,” I tell myself. “Hitchens is the last of the Mohicans.” It doesn’t take long for it to dawn on me that the Mick Jagger of modern letters is now in a healthier category than me. He is officially a non-smoker and I am not.

“I’ve tried many different methods over the last few months – everything, absolutely everything; therapy sessions, various classes and groups – none of them worked at all,” Hitchens continues, oblivious to what he has unleashed. “Then I woke up yesterday and said: ‘Enough.’ By the way, don’t let me stop you from smoking,” he adds airily. “Doesn’t bother me. I feel no temptation at all.” …

Jeff Jacoby has more on the fraud from The Lancet.

… Few journalists questioned the integrity of the study or its authors, Gilbert Burnham and Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Iraqi scientist Riyadh Lafta. NPR’s Richard Harris reported asking Burnham, “Right before the election you’re making this announcement. Is this politically motivated? And he said, no, it’s not politically motivated.” Burnham told Newsweek the same thing: “There’s no political motivation in this. I feel very confident in the numbers.”

But the truth, it turns out, is that the report was drenched with politics, and its jaw-dropping conclusions should have inspired anything but confidence.

In an extensively researched cover story last week, National Journal took a close look under the hood of the Lancet/Johns Hopkins study. Reporters Neil Munro and Carl M. Cannon found that it was marred by grave flaws, such as unsupervised Iraqi survey teams, and survey samples that were too small to be statistically valid. The study’s authors refused to release most of their underlying data so other researchers could double-check it. The single disk they finally, grudgingly, supplied contained suspicious evidence of “data-heaping” — that is, fabricated numbers. Researchers failed to gather basic demographic data from those they interviewed, a key safeguard against fraud. …

American.com reports on India’s $2,500 car.

The automotive world is abuzz about what might be the next Model T Ford or Volkswagen Beetle—an entry-level sedan to be built in India by Tata Motors Ltd. for about $2,500.

That would be about half the cost of the low­est-priced car now available in India—the bare-bones Maruti 800, which is essentially unchanged from its introduction in 1983. If Tata pulls this off, it would be one of the cheapest cars ever built, and it could have a huge impact not only on India’s growing car market but also all over the semideveloped world.

Tata hopes to begin selling the car by this fall, almost exactly 100 years after Henry Ford intro­duced the vehicle that defined “people’s car”—the world-changing Model T. And there are interest­ing parallels and lessons in what was happening in the automotive world one century ago and what might be happening in India right now.

Many have said Tata’s goal is impossible. The so-called “One Lakh” (equaling 100,000 rupees) car is a four-door compact sedan with a small luggage compartment under the front hood and a rear engine producing 33 horsepower. It will be a base model by all means, but it will not be one of those go-kart or jitney-like vehicles so com­mon throughout India and Southeast Asia. “It is not a car with plastic curtains or no roof—it’s a real car,” Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors and the dreamer behind the One Lakh, assured Forbes magazine. …