I'd just like to thank you all, especially those who recently stumbled upon this site, for making April the most successful month since I started the blog back in 2004. Site traffic in April was 100% higher than in March. We work our tails off every day to uncover the truth. Tony, Erick and I really think that we are making a positive difference, and will keep at it for months and hopefully years to come.
The energy and enthusiasm that drives blogs such as this one represent a dramatic shift away from cooperate-run media, and towards news that is people-powered. This site isn't about Tony, Erick or myself -- it's about all of you. We are just the worker bees.
If you have any suggestions for how we can better improve The Blue State, never hesitate to drop us an .
The Iraqi parliament is taking a recess, a 2 month recess! And as " And we thought the 109th Congress was the "do-nothing" champion." The transcripts of the CNN interview is .
This is commendable and worth mentioning. in a combat capacity. Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt (the head of the Britisharmy) said "The decision has been taken by myself that he will deploy indue course", which may be true, but let's not forget what the
“There’s no way I’m going to put myself through and then siton my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country . . . Thatmay sound very patriotic but it’s true.â€
Its a shameWashington's Elite can't tout this type of bravery of their own. If they could, maybethe spin would be saying "The decision has been taken by myself that he willNOT deploy indue course"
This is a brave stance by the Prince,especially after the commander of the said ofthe possibility of the Prince serving i Iraq:
"One of our aims is to capture Harry, we have people inside the Britishbases to inform us on when he will arrive," commander Abu Mujtaba is quotedas saying.
What is wrong with this guy and his administration of jackasses? In referenceto Rice bumping into the foreign minister of Iran, Bush actually had totell us , and will be firm about policy. Why would he feelthe need to tell us that? Oh, maybe because he thinks she's incompetenttoo.
"Should the foreign minister of Iran bump into Condi Rice, Condi won'tbe rude; she's not a rude person. I'm sure she'll be polite," Bush said ata news conference after meeting with European Union leaders.
"She'll also be firm in reminding the representative of the Iraniangovernment that there's a better way forward for the Iranian people thanisolation," Bush said.
Bush has been quietly interviewing candidates for a that will help micro-manage the war and help control what the President does and doesn't hear:
Mr. Hadley is interviewing candidates, including military generals, fora new high-profile job that people in Washington are calling the warczar. The official (Mr. Hadley, ever cautious, prefers “implementationand execution managerâ€) would brief Mr. Bush every morning on Iraq andAfghanistan, then prod cabinet secretaries into carrying out WhiteHouse orders.
This is quite unprecedented. Back when our nation was founded, George Washington had a -- but that is otherwise known as the Defense Secretary.
Bush's establishment of the War Czar position makes me wonder whether the President is not on good terms with Robert Gates. Let me put it this way: if Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were still around in the Pentagon, do you really think Bush would be pushing for this war czar position?
I would say probably not.
Robert Gates, like him or not, is from the realist school of thought. Comparatively speaking, he is as non-ideological as they come -- a complete clash with people like Cheney. The Pentagon is supposed to run the war. So why would the White House ask the Pentagon to relinquish some of its powers to a new cabinet level position unless Bush was not on good terms with Gates and the generals? This War Czar will put restraints on the Pentagon's access to the President. Maybe restraining Gates' influence is something that Dick Cheney wants.
A new shows that only one in five U.S. soldiers in Iraq want troops to stay in the country "as long as they are needed." out within the next year, which is pretty much what the Democrats are proposing:
Seventy two percent of U.S. troops in Iraq believe the United Statesshould pull out within one year, a column by Nicholas Kristof inTuesday's New York Times reveals. The poll was conducted by ZogbyInternational and is the first poll to examine the attitudes of thosecurrently serving in the wartorn nation.
Speaking of polls, even , the home of Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, back withdrawing all U.S. troops by next year.
On the Republican side, Republicans like Ron Paul, Chuck Hagel and others understand that Americans in both parties are sick of Iraq, and therefore will campaign in 2008 on an anti-war platform. After all, the public thinks facing this country. Second is the economy, which percentage-wise is one-third as important to voters.
A year after the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Gen.Stuart Bowen Jr.) was a failure, where 150 health carecenters were supposed to be completed and only 6 had been, and the exposure that(Kellog, Brown & Root) Styrofoam dining plate for our troops, now more ofour ?
A severe lack of maintenance appears to be threatening the future usefulness ofsome of the facilities renovated during the effort to rebuild Iraq, says a newreport from the U.S. inspector general monitoring reconstruction.
Inspectors from the Office of the Special Inspector General for IraqReconstruction, which is charged with reviewing Iraqi reconstruction projectsthat are financed by the U.S., visited eight facilities throughout the country,to determine whether the buildings were operating at full capacity.
What the inspectors discovered is that, even though those facilities had beencompleted and declared to be successes, and subsequently met the stated"objectives" of reconstruction, they were not functioning properly.
Sites suffered from deterioration, poor or no maintenance, or were not evenbeing used by the people for whom they were built, at a cost to U.S. taxpayersof approximately $150 million.
And these were sites that the United States had previously declared to besigns of Iraq's rebirth: police stations, a military base, a maternityhospital, a recruiting center.
I was wondering what "successes" , (with video)
It is not encouraging coverage for sure. There’s no doubt about it. But I doknow that there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren’tcovered. And I think that the drum beat in the country from the media, from theonly way people know what is happening unless they happened to have a loved onedeployed there, is discouraging.
And this was at the same timethe ISG (Iraq Study Group) Report stated the Bush administration is "." And now theadministration isn't including the .
This always brings me back to the White House's , and the
Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages
Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.
Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential.
Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.
I don't understand the reasoning behind the continued support for this war bythe few "holdouts"
In Iraq, more than is wasted due to corruption . But according to a new report by the U.S. inspector general, slated for release this week, none of that will change anytime soon because the Iraqi government is into its own behavior:
A large part of the problem, according to the report, is that Iraq'sprime minister's office is using a law dating back to the 1970s to stopongoing investigations in their tracks. The law says that no case cango forward without the approval of the minister of the affected agency.So far, the report says that various agency ministers have stopped theprosecution and investigation of 102 individuals involved in 48 cases.
There is much more to a democracy than just the right to vote. Government agencies are supposed to accept the fact that they are under the microscope, and cooperate fully with internal audits. In the case of Iraq, that is obviously not happening.
And it gets worse:
The prime minister's office has also ordered that any case involving aminister or former minister must have the approval of the primeminister before it can be recommended to an investigative court.
In a nut-shell, this grants the prime minister unyielding power over all internal investigations. Think of how a future Iraqi prime minister could use that power to wipe out all dissent in the government.
And the most hypocritical part about all this is even though people claim that Iraq is now a democracy, the Iraqi government is using a Saddam-era law as an excuse to suppress these audits.
From a corruption standpoint, this is extremely unhealthy for Iraq's future.
As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:
There is a giddy sense of optimism inside Democratic circles about new private polling data that has just been released, which shows Democrats picking up between in 2008.
Four more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, the early Monday. That brings April's death toll to above 100.
Hillary Clinton will officially , Rodham, as a candidate for president.
John Murtha said on Sunday that as a way of pressuring the President to end the Iraq war, the Democrats could . "What I’m saying, there’s four ways to influence a president. And one of them’s impeachment," Murtha said.
After a five week absence while battling cancer, today as White House Press Secretary.
If elected president, in order to pay for his universal health care program, John Edwards would on those making $200,000 per year or more, and would impose an excess profits tax on oil companies.
The Alliance for Climate Protection -- an advocacy group headed by Al Gore -- has hired , one of the best pollsters, who has had a considerable amount of experience during the last two election cycles.
the U.S. at a regional summit on the issue of Iraq. It raises the prospects that the Bush Administration will engage in bilateral diplomacy with the Iranians. If you might recall, having a regional summit was an idea that three years ago, but was rejected by Republicans.
According to a column in the , a growing number of military experts consider Iraq an even larger failure than Vietnam.
If we left anything out, feel free to add any new stories in the commentbox.
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