Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council,is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in alengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’smemorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as40,000, were desperately needed.
It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Bremer III,then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice andStephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troopsduring a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House didnothing in response.
If you had five weeks during the summer to get your son ready for his freshman year of football in high school, who would you hire as an instructor: an NFL player or the NFL commissioner?
When you are a fighting a war in a country that has been unstable ever since the British once occupied it, maybe you should listen to the experts and not the neoconservative theorists. As much as I am obsessed with international political theory myself, it's a different game with you are at war. You trust those who are experts about war, not disconnected politicians that have no knowledge whatsoever about counterinsurgency.
The and bills were passed late yesterday, as most of you certainly know by now. I was thinking about writing a huge piece on it, and exposing what senators were influenced by whom -- and so forth. Although, you've heard all that. All that really needs to be said is that if this doesn't fire our base up for November, then we have a disorder. The fact that moderate Republicans, some of which are in close election battles, could sneak this one past us really is a testament to how radical the Republican Party has become.
With 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan, they should know that this detainee bill will put our soldiers in greater danger. The bill goes to show how disconnected the politicians in Washington are from real soldiers on the ground who are putting their lives on the line every day.
And how about those warrantless wiretaps? They should know that this power will eventually be used to smear political opponents, and has little to do with protecting the nation from terrorism.
Enough said. Want two more years of this? Want two more years of reading blogs like this one complain about the status quo? Or do you want bloggers like myself working hard each day to rally support for progressive bills that our Democratic majority needs passed? The choice is yours. But if you do want change, you have to get involved. You can't leave it to the Washington establishment Democrats to get it done. They have a record of losing, and they are good at doing just that. The grassroots needs to get its game face on, and from now until the election we need to do our part as individuals:
Calling radio shows
Holding up signs on street corners on the weekend
Passing out pins and stickers outside grocery stores
Registering students to vote
E-mailing the editor of your local newspaper
Texting your family and friends on election day, reminding them to get out to the polls
Posting comments on popular non-political blogs
In the end, it's all about people powered democracy. That is the only way we can get this done on November 7th.
The Bush White House is scared to death about the idea that the Democrats could take back Congress this November. Subpoenas would be used to find inconsistencies between Bush rhetoric and actuality. The latest report by the House Government Reform Committee might be a preview of things to come after November.
The report finds that the White House's ties to Jack Abramoff were much more than the White House originally made them out to be.
Reuters obtained an exclusive copy of the , and wrote a story on it. Here is an excerpt:
Abramoff and his lobbying team had offered dinners, drinks andconcert tickets to White House officials. It was not clear whether theyviolated lobbying laws or a ban on gifts.
According to thebilling records and e-mails, Abramoff and his team had 485 lobbyingcontacts with White House officials between January 2001 and March 2004-- 345 described as meetings or other in-person interactions, 71described as phone conversations, and 69 e-mail exchanges.
The report found that more than half of the in-person contacts involved meals or drinks with White House officials.
One e-mail discusses how often Rove visited a downtownWashington restaurant then owned by Abramoff. "I am not kidding. Karlloves the restaurant (he's been there a lot) and we could do the backroom," it said.
The report also quotes Abramoff about using RalphReed, former leader of the conservative Christian Coalition, to lobbyRove. Reed's recent bid to become lieutenant governor of Georgiafailed, in part because of his Abramoff ties.
Abramoff and his team claimed to have lobbied the White House Office of Political Affairs in 17 instances, the report says.
Insix of these instances, the documents describe a direct contact withKen Mehlman, now chairman of the Republican Party. At the time of thecontacts, he was director of the office.
I know this is a cliche by now, but their party was bought out a long time ago by special interests. This is what too much power can do to people in positions of power. They feel invincibly above the law. While the Congress was hush hush about their dealings with Abramoff, the White House did their thing as well. The two sides just agreed not to say anything. Thanks to reports such as this, the American people are finally learning the truth about what corrupt forces are lobbying our government. Maybe it's about time for a change in November.
In front of a fundrasier for Alabama Governor Bob Riley, :
"The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party ofcut and run," Bush told a convention-center audience of over 2,000people. The event put $2.5 million in the campaign accounts of AlabamaGov. Bob Riley and the state GOP.
By all means, putting it bluntly, Karl Rove and the Republican strategy team have run out of new ideas and rhetoric. Especially with the attention deficit disorder society we live in, most Americans will tune out politicians that keep repeating the same thing over and over again. The phrase "cut and run" is old, and it illustrates how the GOP believes that running on the same exact platform that they ran in 2004 will get their politicians reelected.
If they can follow the same strategy as they did two years ago, then I might as well ask the most basic question there is: knowing what you know now, are you glad that the Republicans have been running the country these last six years? Are you glad that budget surpluses have turned into budget deficits that will be passed down to children that have not even been born yet? Do you feel confident that our country has allies that respect us? Above all, are you glad we went into Iraq? Okay, that's more like four questions. But who is counting? We have a lot on our minds.
The point is that the current leadership can't think of anything new to tell us -- mainly because they have nothing new to offer. So when you listen to President Bush warning Americans that the Democrats want to "cut and run," let that be a lesson of what the next two years will be like if the Republicans maintain control of Congress and give President Bush two more years of rubber stamps. No new rhetoric means no new ideas. No new ideas means no vision. No new vision during a time of war is about as bad as you can get.
Bob Woodward is releasing his latest book, , which gives specific evidence as to why the Iraq war is worse than the Administration spins, and how a deliberate deception campaign is preventing the media from reporting the truth.
This book is huge, especially when you consider that we are less than six weeks out until the midterm election. In an exclusive interview that is scheduled to air Sunday on 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward will discuss the severity of the situation in Iraq. Here is an excerpt of the where Woodward explains that the only people removed from the violent daily reality in Iraq are the American people:
"It's getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces.
"...The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level ofviolence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The Americanpublic," Woodward tells Wallace.
So if there are four attacks each hour, then amounts to one every fifteen minutes. Yes, every fifteen minutes people around my age get attacked because of another generation's hubris. And somehow we're called weak on defense if we even question whether or not we should be sending our young men and women to die there?
Okay, now are you ready for the scariest part of the post? Well too bad it you aren't, because I'm going to throw it at you. Woodward says in his book that President Bush gets advice from Henry Kissinger almost regularly. that the worst thing he can do is leave Iraq:
Woodward also reports that the president and vice president oftenmeet with Henry Kissinger, who was President Richard Nixon’s secretaryof state, as an adviser. Says Woodward, "Now what’s Kissinger’s advice?In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exitstrategy.'" Woodward adds. "This is so fascinating. Kissinger’sfighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem inVietnam was we lost our will."
President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraqon the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on thismatter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to theWhite House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, evenif Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."
We all know that President Bush rarely listens to anybody. Then for America's sake, one has to ask why the only individual outside the Administration that Bush actually does listen to has to be someone who still believes we could have won in Vietnam? That is more sad than it is ironic.
I would not be surprised that if by counseling Bush, Kissinger feels like he is making up for the job that he believes wasn't finished in Vietnam.
At the top of this web page, you will see the slogan, "Because Objective Thinking Protects Democracy." I put a lot of thought into that quote, and I ended up with that one for a reason. And sadly, in the case of Bush, we are seeing hubris and stubbornness triumph over objective thought. The President is completely lost, and no one can convince him otherwise. The only people he agrees with are those that reinforce his own belief systems. Remember back in 2000 when people were questioning the mental competency of candidate Bush? Maybe it would have been more prudent if we took that a little more seriously. Electing presidents shouldn't be about making fun of the smart and boring one and choosing the dumb frat boy instead. We need smart presidents for a reason -- so that when the going gets tough, they can think their way out of problems by being objective.
And now there is nothing we can do -- other than elect people to Congress and the Senate that will hold Bush accountable for coming up with a genuine exit strategy.
Fiscally speaking, there are two things voters need to remember heading into November: money doesn't grow on trees, and no Republican presidential administration has balanced the budget in more than 35 years.
Progressives often get labeled as big spenders. But as government reports show, federal spending is expected to , fittingly the largest increase since under Bush Sr, the last Republican administration.
But even more significant, the National Debt has grown 33%, or , since President Bush got into office. He did this with a Republican Congress that has been running on a fiscally conservative platform ever since 1980. And they're calling Democrats fiscally irresponsible?
In responding to the , Senator Kent Conrad (D-MT) took issue with the hypocrisy:
"This Republican leadership is in total gridlock -- refusing to act,refusing to compromise, and refusing to govern," said Senate Budgetranking member Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
The worst part about all this is that when today's GOP leadership finally does get exposed for their poor fiscal policies, none of them will be around to admit it. We're talking about long-term economic consequences that will impact my generation unless Congress can enact a balanced budget amendment.
U.S. Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) could find himself in some big trouble. A 16-year-old Congressional page says he got freaked out after an :
In the series of e-mails, obtained by ABC News, between the page and Rep. Foley (R-FL), Foley asks the page how old he is, what he wants for his birthday and requests a photo of him.
The concerned page alerted congressional staffers to the e-mails. Inone e-mail, the page writes to a staffer, "Maybe it is just me beingparanoid, but seriously. This freaked me out."
Foley's office acknowledges that Foley wrote the e-mails to the pagebut says they were completely innocent and that Foley is only guilty ofbeing overly friendly.
The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal AOL account. In one, Foley writes, "did you have fun at your conference...what do you want for your birthday coming up...what stuff do you like to do."
...The page forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick."
It's nice to see that the moral majority exercising such high standards. As expected, the Foley Campaign is blaming the whole thing on his Democratic opponent. But that was expected.
You tell me whether this translates into strength on National security issues?
In December of 2001, President when the U.S. had him cornered. CNN interviewed Gary Bernstein, the leader of the U.S. paramilitary unit in charge of chasing bin Laden, and Gary Bergen, a terrorism analyst:
BERGEN: By my calculation, there were more American journalists thanAmerican soldiers at the battle of Tora Bora, and that fact kind ofspeaks for itself.
BERNTSEN: In the first two or three daysof December, I would write a message back to Washington, recommendingthe insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came.
In a Gallup Poll just released today, a majority of Americans more than Bill Clinton for not doing enough to catch Osama bin Laden (53% blame Bush, 36% blame Clinton).
Here is another statistic that might make you ask we are still in Iraq?
A majority of , according to a poll:
About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve ofattacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want theirgovernment to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, a poll finds.
The Iraqis also have negative views of Osama bin Laden, according to the early September poll of 1,150.
The poll, done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, found:
• Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.
• About 61% approved of the attacks — up from47% in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved ofthe attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly amongShiite Iraqis.
• An overwhelmingly negative opinion of terrorchief bin Laden and more than half, 57%, disapproving of IranianPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
• Three-fourths say they think the U.S. plans to keep military bases in Iraq permanently.
Meanwhile, here is the latest news roundup of stories pertaining to the Iraq situation:
The number of is the most since the war began in March of 2003.
The United Nations released a report that shows over the last year mostly because of the Iraq war. This is analogous to U.S. intelligence assessment of Iraq that was leaked last Friday.
Australian Prime Minister to President Bush, saying that a retreat from Iraq would hand terrorists a victory.
The full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq will be , officials say. Democrat Jane Harman (D-CA) is vowing to keep to release what is considered to be a bleak assessment.
The Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Iraq war will cost the National Debt . The House has just passed a for the war in Iraq.
Peter Chiarelli, the second highest ranking U.S. official in Baghdad, says that time is running out before . But what is it now?
will killed yesterday. At the moment, stand at 2,706 -- nearly the number of lives lost on 9/11.
China is on the verge of a major with the Iraqi government.
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