Month: July 2007

Fred Kagan wants you to have faith in the Iraq “surge” strategy.  You might expect that he would.  Kagan is, after all, the strategy’s chief architect.  A darling of the neoconservative elite, Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and was associated with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) which his brother Robert co-founded with Weekly Standard editor and Fox News pundit Bill Kristol.  

Amid talk that the so-called surge has failed, Kagan went before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in late June to defend the strategy.  Kagan’s prepared remarks not only make one cringe at the knowledge that the Great Decider not only listens to his advice, he follows it.  

Plucking Bulls

Early in his speech to the Committee, Kagan said, “It is now beyond question that the Bush Administration pursued a flawed approach to the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2007.”  That was pretty much the only accurate statement he made during the course of his presentation.  

The old approach failed, according to Kagan, because it “relied on keeping the American troop presence in Iraq as small as possible, pushing unprepared Iraqi Security Forces into the lead too rapidly, and using political progress as the principal means of bringing the violence under control.”  He also stated, “For all of these reasons, the president changed his strategy profoundly in January 2007, and appointed a new commander in General Petraeus and a new Ambassador in Ryan Crocker to oversee the new approach.”

What a sack of pro-war poppycock!

We can’t say for certain whether our woes in Iraq came about because of inadequate troop presence.  Keep in mind that at one point we had a half million troops deployed to Vietnam, and a fat lot of good that did us.  But we can be darn sure that a major factor in our multi-faceted failures in Iraq was the total lack of planning for the post- major hostilities phase.  Now retired Brigadier General Mark E. Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in September 2006 that during the run up to the Iraq invasion, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a postwar plan.  All the king’s horses and men couldn’t have kept Iraq from falling apart without a plan.  That wasn’t Saddam Hussein’s statue you saw taking a great fall into the main square in Baghdad.  It was Humpty Dumpty.  

When exactly did Iraqi Security Forces take the lead in a security operation?  We’re lucky if we even can get them to show up in the numbers they promised to provide.  At what point were we pushing them to “stand up” too rapidly?  Was it during the first year of the occupation?  They second year?  The third year?  The fourth?  And why, after four years, are they still unprepared?  Could that have something to do with the fact that one of the officers in charge of training them was none other than the boy genius currently in charge of U.S. forces in Iraq, David Petraeus?

Of political solutions, Kagan told the Committee “Political progress is something that follows the establishment of security, not something that causes it.”  Anyone familiar with political philosophy is aware of Thomas Hobbes and his almost universally accepted assertion that order can only be achieved by a social compact that recognizes the authority of a sovereign political entity.  Lack of violence doesn’t produce stable political institutions.  It’s the other way around.  In the case of Iraq, the insurgent groups at war with each other are controlled by the very members of Parliament who can’t arrive at a political solution, and as long as the politicians can’t agree on anything, the insurgents will keep fighting.  

And nobody in his right mind or otherwise believes that Bush changed his strategy and commanders for the reasons Kagan gave.  Bush canned his old strategy and commanders because the people of the United States voted his party out of power.  

In arguing that it is too soon to give up on the surge strategy, Kagan said that “great commanders in history” have understood “that it is best to delay decisions until the last possible moment to ensure that they are made on the basis of the most recent and accurate understanding of the situation, rather than on preconceptions formed in different circumstances.”

It’s difficult to believe that Kagan actually taught military history at West Point for ten years.  Great commanders in history have understood the deadly evils of both hasty decisions and procrastination. As George S. Patton famously said, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”  History’s biggest losers have been political and military leaders who fell victim to “victory disease” when they persisted in pursuing an inferior course of action until the “most recent and accurate understanding of the situation” proved it to be and abject failure.  Think of Lee at Gettysburg.  Think of Hitler’s invasion of Russia.  Think about George W. Bush’s three years of “stand-up, stand-down.”

When he proposed the escalation strategy in January 2007, Kagan claimed that all other competing plans would fail, including the ones suggested by the Iraq Study Group.  In his presentation to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs, Kagan said that his strategy might fail too, but that it is too early to judge it or project probable results.  It would be “a very grave error indeed to rush now to abandon the first strategy that offers some real prospect for success.”

One is hard pressed to find anyone other than the administration and its cheerleading team who thinks Kagan’s strategy has shown “some real prospect for success.”  Attacks in Iraq during June 2007 reached the highest daily average seen since the end of “major hostilities” in May 2003.  According to Petraeus’s latest latest projections, “sustainable security” won’t be established in Iraq until summer of 2009, and the 2009 target date may be overly optimistic.  Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace recently suggested that we may want to increase troop levels in Iraq even further.  That would be in keeping with that fine military tradition that says if we can’t prove that what we’re doing is working, we should try doing more of it.

Which brings us back to Fred Kagan.  How much longer should we give his “Plan for Victory” a chance to prove it won’t fail?  How long do we wait until it’s “beyond question” that we once again “pursued a flawed approach?”

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.

I know, this is not exactly new news to many of us, but it bears repeating. The more scientists study the effects of man-made global warming on Hurricanes, the more they reach the same conclusion: climate change, and in particular the warming of the oceans, is fueling an increase in the number of hurricanes and tropical storms. Here’s the latest study by two American scientists, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology:

The new study, published online in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, said the increased numbers of tropical storms and hurricanes in the last 100 years is closely related to a 1.3-degree Fahrenheit rise in sea surface temperatures. […]

From 1900 to 1930, Atlantic hurricane seasons saw six storms on average, with four hurricanes and two tropical storms. From 1930 to 1940, the annual average rose to ten, including five hurricanes.

From 1995 to 2005, the average rose to 15, with eight hurricanes and seven tropical storms, the researchers said.

Changes in sea surface temperatures occurred before the periods of increased cyclones, with a rise of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit before the 1930 period and a similar increase before the 1995 period, they said.

“These numbers are a strong indication that climate change is a major factor in the increasing number of Atlantic hurricanes,” Holland said in a statement. […]

“We are led to the confident conclusion that the recent upsurge in the tropical cyclone frequency is due in part to greenhouse warming, and this is most likely the dominant effect,” the authors wrote.

In 2004, four powerful hurricanes, Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, hit Florida. All four placed in the top ten costliest storms in U.S. history.

The record-shattering 2005 season produced 28 storms, 15 of which became hurricanes including Katrina, which caused $80 billion damage and killed 1,500 people. The 2006 season was relatively mild, with ten storms.

My recently deceased father-in-law, who worked at both NCAR and at the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA in Miami, would not have been surprised by this study’s conclusions. He had long believed that global warming would be shown to be a factor related to the increase in the number of hurricanes over time. He was a physicist by training before he became a meteorological researcher and theorist, and to him it was a matter of simple physics.

When you add energy to any system you are bound to see an increase in activity related to that system. When the oceans are heated up, and even after considering all of the other variables related to the production of tropical storms, over time you will observe an increase in the number of storms. The reason: any increase in the energy stored in the ocean’s surface water has to go somewhere. In the Atlantic, already prone to generate tropical storms and hurricanes, that is where the increased energy will eventually go. The number of storms will vary year to year, but over time the average number of storms will continue to rise so long as ocean temperatures continue to rise.

When scientists look at the evidence it is becoming increasingly clear to them that the link between hotter oceans and tropical storms is real. The hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 were just the beginning. Expect to see even worse in the years to come as the surface temperatures of the oceans continue to heat up due to global warming generated by man made emissions of green house gases.

The Bush administration has expanded its’ powers greatly under the “Unitary Executive” theory. As President, what specific steps would you take, how would you take them, and when would you take them, in order to roll back these unnecessary and unprecedented powers that the Executive Branch now claims to have?

That was the question I submitted to the YearlyKos President’s Forum, and will hopefully get the chance to ask one or more of the candidates (or Congressional officials) this question if it is not chosen for the Forum. Actually, this was also discussed in some detail in my diary yesterday – kicked off by a comment made by Mad Kossack. Mad Kossack indicated that those on the right should consider how happy they would be if a President Hillary Clinton has the same powers that Bush and his administration have so generously given to themselves.

And it goes much deeper than just Clinton, obviously. This issue was touched on a week or two back when Digby, thereisnospoon and I talked about impeachment. While the frame that Mad Kossack mentioned yesterday (and is linked above) is a great one to use when talking about this to our “counterparts”, it is a question that should be fully addressed by all Presidential candidates, Democratic and republican.

We have a right to know if a President Romney or Giuliani (gasp) would continue to assert Executive Privilege over questionably legal and national security matters. Whether signing statements will become the norm. What will happen to all of the laws that Bush issued a signing statement for. The Executive Orders that were signed allowing the Vice President to declassify information, or for the President to declassify information at will and without using the historically proper channels. To continue conducting itself in secrecy. And so on, and so on.

We also have a right to know whether a President Edwards, Obama, Clinton (or Richardson or Biden or anyone else) would repeal these Orders and other interpretations of the law. Would President Clinton defer to the judiciary or the legislature in matters that prior Presidents have? Would President Obama issue a signing statement for a law that would be passed by a republican controlled Congress if he didn’t agree with it? Would President Edwards have the US abide by the International Criminal Court?

I would hope that the answers to all of that are ones that run contrary to what this administration has asserted. I would think that the Democratic candidates would roll back these provisions. I would hope that the republican candidates would as well.

All that being said, I would expect the Democratic candidates to disavow the “Unitary Executive” principle and talk about how they would roll back this theory. Doing it with personal actions (i.e., not abusing the power) only is not nearly enough, as it will still keep these provisions in place. What we need to know is when and how they will roll back these provisions. We need to know what specific things they will do. We need to know what they find the most odious of the Unitary Executive principles and why. And we certainly need to know which of these principles they find acceptable, as well as why they are acceptable.

This country was founded and has functioned with checks and balances – with each branch being co-equal. This is obvious to us, and to many others in this country. Just because there is a Democratic President does NOT mean that it is in any way ok for the Executive Branch to have this amount of unchecked power – regardless of whether this power is used. The “Unitary Executive” theory was a prominent part of two administrations – both of them will (or have) gone down in history as a black eye for this country as well as a major overreach and rife with criminal behavior.

It has no place in our Government, regardless of whether it will be asserted. Many of these powers are now a part of the Executive Branch until they are repealed. Democrats should not have these powers available to them any more than the republicans should – even if this particular cast of Democrats will be more responsible with such powers. I don’t think that many around here will disagree with that sentiment.

Certainly, a vocal stance by the Democratic candidates on this matter can go a long way towards gaining the upper hand in the discourse as well as to show the seriousness of restoring the Constitution as rule of law in America. But it is more than an issue of framing. It is a matter of this country’s guiding principles.

Any future administration should roll back these powers. We have a right to know when and how they will be rolled back. Any candidate that firmly, specifically and comprehensively addresses this issue will go a long way towards getting my (and most likely many others’) vote.

Not to do so would be doing a disservice to the American people, and more importantly, the Constitution.

SIGIR Quarterly + Semi-Annual Report to Congress – July 2007

“To date, SIGIR has completed 95 project assessments, 96 limited on-site inspections, and 342 aerial assessments. In three of the four sustainment reviews completed this quarter, SIGIR found that projects were not being sustained properly.” [Image from the Report Pictures page.].

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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

click to enlarge
I read Booman’s story on Bush’s new secret plan to fight Iraqis from Turkey. Turkey is all bent out of shape over the 4000 members of Kurdistan Workers Party militia that are staging attacks against Turks. Bush prefers this instead of using the regular Kurdistan army that numbers about a quarter of a million troops.

After finishing Booman’s post on this, it sounded a whole lot like the Mongols and the Silk Road. From Wikipedia…

The Mongol expansion throughout the Asian continent from around 1215 to 1360 helped bring political stability and re-establish the Silk Road vis-à-vis Karakorum. With rare exceptions such as Marco Polo or Christian missionaries such as William of Rubruck, few Europeans traveled the entire length of the Silk Road. Instead traders moved products much like a bucket brigade, with luxury goods being traded from one middleman to another, from China to the West, and resulting in extravagant prices for the trade goods.

The disintegration of the Mongol Empire led to the collapse of the Silk Road’s political unity. Also falling victim were the cultural and economic aspects of its unity. Turkic tribes seized the western end of the Silk Road from the decaying Byzantine Empire, and sowed the seeds of a Turkic culture that would later crystallize into the Ottoman Empire under the Sunni faith. Turkic-Mongol military bands in Iran, after some years of chaos were united under the Saffavid tribe, under whom the modern Iranian nation took shape under the Shiite faith. Meanwhile Mongol princes in Central Asia were content with Sunni orthodoxy with decentralized princedoms of the Chagatay, Timurid and Uzbek houses. In the Kypchak-Tatar zone, Mongol khanates all but crumbled under the assaults of the Black Death and the rising power of Muscovy. In the east end, the Chinese Ming Dynasty overthrew the Mongol yoke and pursued a policy of economic isolationism. Yet another force, the Kalmyk-Oyrats pushed out of the Baikal area in central Siberia, but failed to deliver much impact beyond Turkestan. Some Kalmyk tribes did manage to migrate into the Volga-North Caucasus region, but their impact was limited.

The parallels are spectacular. Just swap the silk with oil and you have Operation Enduring Freedom minus another Chinese revolution. But it could happen, it is only Monday and Bush is still in office.

The Politico has outdone themselves in the category of ostentatious self-congratulation. Just by way of mockery, some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Each morning in Philadelphia, PA, around dawn, three men wake up and concoct their versions of conventional wisdom for an audience of Beltway political professionals and junkies around the country.

They are Duncan Black, the author of Eschaton’s pioneering tipsheet; Open Left political editor Chris Bowers; and Martin Longman, who writes for this publication. As in many heated competitions (see also, presidential primaries) each of the three denies he sees the others as rivals.

“We’re all longtime friends and mutual admirers, and have joked about getting together to eat breakfast as we type away,” Longman said in an e-mail.

But to their overlapping sets of readers and to other political journalists, they are struggling for the dominance in shaping conventional political wisdom for this presidential cycle — a title held by Eschaton in the run-up to the 2004 election.

Their obstacles are both one another and a changed, crowded landscape in which the notion of uncontested, unified conventional wisdom filtering from the capital to the provinces may be a thing of the past.

“Longman, Bowers, Black — it is like choosing between Harvard, Yale and Princeton. You really can’t go wrong, but there nonetheless is an intense competition,” said Chris Lehane, a political consultant who was Al Gore’s campaign press secretary.

How much more self-important can they get? Rick Klein, Chuck Todd, and Mike Allen have waning influence precisely because political junkies no longer give a damn what they think. They go to blogs. Insofar as the Beltway is still reading The Note they’re walking around with their heads up their asses.

Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged woman in US history. Attorney General John Ashcroft twice invoked the rarely used States Secrets Privilege in her case under the guise of classified secrets and protecting national security.

In a recent speech, Sibel again emphasized that the reason that she has been gagged is not for reasons of national security, but rather to cover-up criminality, treason, by high level US officials.

As evidence for this claim, Sibel explained that for the three months prior to Ashcroft blanket-gagging her case, the FBI was conducting unclassified briefings for Congress on the case.

In other words, from the beginning, neither Congress, nor the FBI, even considered that this information might be classified, let alone a ‘national security’ issue.

As Michael Ostrolenk, National Director of the Liberty Coalition, said: “The excuse of protecting national security is fallacious.”

(grfx love to One Pissed Off Liberal )
During the Q&A session after the speech, Sibel was asked where we should draw the line between disclosure and national security. Sibel responded thusly (mp3 – 3 mins)”

I can tell you, just from my case (and from other whistleblower cases that I’ve represented) it almost doesn’t deal with any classified information at all. That’s why they went and retroactively classified the information.

Even with Congress, one important thing that I have tried to emphasize – and unfortunately the mainstream media is not there really as far as these real issues are concerned… When I went to Congress, I didn’t know which Congressmen, Congresswomen, Senators to go to! Because part of my case dealt with our representatives, (and this was based on some counter-intelligence operations) were getting cash bribery from foreign governments. And when I internally started reporting this, and it was not getting anywhere, this great agent that I worked with… said:

“Well, let’s say you go to Congress. How are you going to determine who is clean to go to?”

And to me that was really sobering, because he told me:

Just based on Turkish counter-intelligence operations, you know of FOUR corrupt congressional people. Take a look at this room (of translators), we have the Chinese Department, we have, you know, the Arabic, including Saudi Arabia and everything. How many (other corrupt Congressfolk) do you think they have come across?

[snip]
When the two Senators, Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley, one Democrat and one Republican, they heard this information, the FBI discussed the entire case with them during an unclassified meeting – meaning the staff members present during that meeting, none – or most – of them didn’t have clearances. So the FBI had decided in the beginning that this was not classified. What happened later? 3 months later? when the Attorney General says ‘Oops, this is really going to hurt us’ – meaning those who were guilty – ‘so we’re going to decide to classify it’

I’m a bit of a dunce, and I’d never fully appreciated this. Sibel has repeatedly mentioned that she often had to suggest that certain hearings be held inside SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) but I had presumed that was simply because the Senate Judiciary Committee staffers didn’t really know what they were doing. But here we have the FBI – presumably Counter-Intelligence agents who likely know a thing or two about classification, secrecy and national security – confirming Sibel’s allegations in unclassified sessions with Congress.

As I said, I’m a dunce. The ACLU timeline on Sibel’s case reads:

“JUNE 2002: Senators Grassley and Leahy write the Justice Department Inspector General a letter asking specific questions about Edmonds’ allegations and write that the FBI has confirmed many of her allegations in unclassified briefings. This letter is later retroactively classified in May 2004.”

You’d think that I’d have understood this already.  That’s the beauty of the Sibel Edmonds case – there’s always something ‘new’ to learn. And this week I learnt that even the FBI didn’t think that the information in Sibel’s case deserved to be classified, even as a precaution.

(The 75 min video of Sibel’s recent ALA speech is available here (500meg) )

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Waxman. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

For Robert Novak disclosing national security secrets has become a part-time second job. Today’s is a doozy.

Turkey has a well-trained, well-equipped army of 250,000 near the [Iraqi] border, facing some 4,000 PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq. But significant cross-border operations surely would bring to the PKK’s side the military forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the best U.S. ally in Iraq. What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq?

The surprising answer was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S. Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Cheney who is now undersecretary of defense for policy. Edelman, a Foreign Service officer who once was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, revealed to lawmakers plans for a covert operation of U.S. Special Forces to help the Turks neutralize the PKK. They would behead the guerrilla organization by helping Turkey get rid of PKK leaders that they have targeted for years.

Edelman’s listeners were stunned. Wasn’t this risky? He responded that he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied.

So, why is Novak going public with this information from a secret briefing? It’s because key congressional Republicans think Bush is unhinged.

The Bush administration is trying to prevent another front from opening in Iraq, which would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure.

The Turkish initiative reflects the temperament and personality of George W. Bush. Even faithful congressional supporters of his Iraq policy have been stunned by the president’s upbeat mood, which makes him appear oblivious to the loss of his political base. Despite the failing effort to impose a military solution in Iraq, he is willing to try imposing arms — though clandestinely — on Turkey’s ancient problems with its Kurdish minority, who comprise one-fifth of the country’s population.

In other words, certain GOP members think the President is crazy. Who leaked this highly sensitive information to Novak? Let’s take a guess.

The plan shows that hard experience has not dissuaded President Bush from attempting difficult ventures employing the use of force. On the contrary, two of the most intrepid supporters of the Iraq intervention — John McCain and Lindsey Graham– were surprised by Bush during a recent meeting with him. When they shared their impressions with colleagues, they commented on how unconcerned the president seemed. That may explain his willingness to embark on such a questionable venture against the Kurds.

The fact that Novak decided to do this story is pretty telling about how far Bush’s star has fallen. I guess Novak enjoyed being the subject of a leak investigation for over four years. He’s probably about to get another visit from the FBI.

Meanwhile, the actual underlying policy is hard to critique. Certainly, whatever prevents a Turkish invasion, or a total rupture of U.S./Turkish relations, is worth considering. But, knowing Bush’s track record, why would anyone trust him to ’embark on such a questionable venture against the Kurds’?

BAGHDAD, July 9 — The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, warned today that an early American withdrawal from Iraq could bring on an all-out civil war and regional conflict, pointedly telling the United States that it had responsibilities to continue lending support to the Baghdad government.

Mr. Zebari also asserted that Iraq’s neighbor Turkey had massed 140,000 troops near his country’s northern border and urged it to resolve differences with dialogue, not through force.

Mr. Zebari, who is a Kurd, said Iraq was ready “to address all Turkish legitimate security concerns over the P.K.K. or any terrorist activities,” but he warned that Turkey should not use force, and that the Iraqi government was “definitely opposed to any military incursion or any violations of Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

He insisted his government was not “running away from our responsibilities” in Iraqi Kurdistan, but he pleaded for patience, saying that Iraq’s security forces were already overstretched “fighting terrorism here in the streets and neighborhoods of Baghdad.” He urged the revival of a security and military commission to bring together the United States, Iraq and Turkey “to agree on practical measures” to resolve the situation. NY Times

    As the level of support quickly vanishes from the “surge” strategy, the administration and its Iraqi frontmen are already starting to sound the alarm. This is the final card left to play in an attempt to resurrect this failed war. How can you scare people when there have already been well over 150,000 people killed with the threat of more deaths. This is akin to going down to hell and threatening to turn up the heat, it’s already a little warm here.

    The chorus will continue to build as the US ambassador to Iraq, the President, and of course the ever truthful Tony Snow will began blowing the trumpet of impending doom should we decide to finally take our toys and go home. Of course the difficulty of the situation is that no one involved has a lick of credibility left. This administration has forfeited any “political capital” and credibility it had throughout the prosecution of this war.

    The next question is, “Are we responsible for what happens in Iraq after we withdrawal?” And should our withdrawal policy be based on the possible outcomes in Iraq. Are we still under the, you broke it doctrine? Can we completely leave Iraq in the state it is in and not look back. Have we created a hornet’s nest of terrorism that we can just walk away from and not expect it to follow us home, stinging us all the way? What if anything do we owe the Iraqi people?

    Today we have many more questions than answers and while no one really knows what will happen in Iraq when we leave despite all the dire predictions. We don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but we do know what has happened and what is happening today and that is that we are not making Iraq more secure and we are not helping the Iraqis have a better life. It appears that our only purpose now is to allow the Shai and the Kurds to cement their power structures and in the end propagate continued strife and bloodshed as they exert their dominance and settle scores of the past. It will be another Middle East country stuck in the viscous cycle of senseless violence and retaliation.

    I do believe in our absence there will be a spike in violence, but not to the Armageddon level that these people are projecting. There will be efforts to quell the insurgency and the terrorist activities and these are going to require an upswing in violence. In the end the violence will subside and the Iraqis will either go about the business of rebuilding their country together or separate, it will be their choice. How they resolve the decisions that affect their future will, as it always has been, by their choice. It is the height of arrogance to believe that we are controlling that debate or the outcome. As I have stated many times, democracy cannot be exported at the end of a gun. The Iraqis will either embrace democracy or they won’t; our presence there will not force them into it. As we have seen, our pressure on the new government has backfired; the Iraqi government has yet to make substantial progress on any of the so-called benchmarks given by the President. And despite this evidence you still have the die-hards wanting to stay the course.

But Connecticut independent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, continued his longtime support of Bush’s war strategy on the Senate floor Tuesday, saying that “American and Iraqi security forces are winning.” The 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate accused lawmakers of bowing to opinion polls and upcoming elections. CNN

    Do they drug test these guys? If not I think we should make it mandatory. This guy has to be on drugs to say some of things he says. No rational person could see what is happening in Iraq and claim victory. Let’s try something new and different, let’s allow the people of a country to decide their own future…Oooooo pretty scary stuff!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Disputed Truth