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by Frank James

A quick guided tour of some of the morning’s most important or interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.

Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico became the third senior Republican senator in two weeks to question the effectiveness of the U.S. troop surge and call for a change in direction in Iraq.

U.S. soldiers, in a new priority for Washington and military policymakers, are attempting to make allies of Sunnis, some of them former insurgents, in the fight against extremists in Iraq.

White House aides struck back at the Clintons who criticized President Bush’s commutation of the prison sentence for perjury in the CIA leak case of former White House senior aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The aides accused the Clintons of “chutzpah” given the dubious pardons the former president issued. Speculation that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg may enter the presidential race has hurt the momentum of his predecessor and declared Republican White House candidate Rudy Giuliani.

New Orleans residents are increasingly weary of visits from presidential candidates who use the slowly recovering city as a backdrop for photo ops and make promises that have been heard before.

Health care

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as an issue has achieved a prominence in the current presidential race that is unusual, with Republican candidates addressing the issue far earlier than they usually do while Democrats have apparently gotten past their skittishness of repeating the Clinton Administration’s healthcare mistakes.

The global illegal drug war, while not won, has contained the problem, experts said.

Mitt Romney’s success in achieving frontrunner status in polls of Republican voters in New Hampshire and Iowa over the much better known Sen. John McCain of Arizona underscores the importance of raising a lot of money and spending it on media and organization.

Hurricane Katrina generated vast fraud, leaving investigators with as many as 11,000 potential cases to probe and prosecute, a caseload that could take years to whittle down.

Republican candidates and strategists are worried that they are spending money far faster than they can raise it, placing them in peril not just for the primaries, but the general election beyond.