Buchanan slam neocons for mideast warmongering

From Raw Story.com VIDEO - Matthews, Buchanan slam neocons for Mideast 'warmongering' 07/20/2006 @ 12:45 pmFiled by David Edwards Appearing on MSNBC, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan -- along with MSNBC host Chris Matthews -- slammed neoconservatives for what Buchanan described as Mideast 'warmongering' surrounding the crisis in Lebanon. Advertisement rnum=Math.round(Math.random() * 100000); document.write(''); target="_top"> In his latest column, Buchanan also said that the Bush administration's unwavering support for Israel, as it imposes "deliberate suffering on civilians" and "collective punishment on innocent people" through its attacks on Lebanon, is "un-American and un-Christian." RUSH transcript follows video. MATTHEWS: Let's go through the politics of this situation. The neocons are out there complaining that this president isn't tough enough. I have no idea what they mean. Fifty-thousand dead in Iraq. It was supposed to be a cakewalk. Ken Adleman is out there today saying we should go other places. You got guys like Ledeen who want to blow up every Arab country on the list. What is going on in their complaint and why is the president paying 5 seconds of attention to them? BUCHANAN: I don't know why he pays attention to them, Chris. What they want, Chris, is a wider war. Especially in the Middle East. They want The United State to fight Israel's war against Hezbollah, Syria and especially Iran. And the Israelis want us to fight Iran as well. But it's not in the interest of The United States. None of those countries, even Hezbollah and Hamas, have no attacked The United States of America. I don't think the country is listening to the neocons anymore. I think their discredited. The question is, "Is Bush listening to them." Because he was going for a while, up to his second Inaugural, very much according to a script they wrote. MATTHES: Literally. BUCHANAN: Yes. MATTHEWS: ...[Bob Shrum], are you willing to agree with Pat that there is a subculture now of the conservative movement that is extremely hawkish. They are, of course, pro-Israeli. Many Americans are pro-Israeli. But [the neocons] are very hawkish on every front. Not just the Middle East but China, they want to take on North Korea. When we had that EP3 incident early in the administration, they wanted to go to war with China. Do they have the ear of the president? SHRUM: The root of the problem here is that The United States is tied down in Iraq. 130,000 troops there. I don't know whether Bill Krystal and the neocons have thought of it but if we were to bomb Iran, we essentially have, right now, 130,000 hostages in the middle of Iraq who could be surrounded by hostile Shi'ites. It's a very very difficult situation. MATTHEWS: I just wonder, Pat, about just the simple history. We know from looking at the Arab world as we've come to understand it, that there is this division there among the Shia who are on the outs and are becoming to be the ins, of course, in Iraq and certainly already control Iran. Taking on the Sunnis that's a world we are only vaguely understanding. That's a thousand year old war. Do you think we are creating another thousand year war by killing so many Arabs? I've been afraid of this war from day one because I've always felt, based on history, every time you kill somebody, you've got his brother, his mother, his family coming back to get you. We've killed 50,000 Iraqi's in a war that was supposed to be a two-day wonder. When are we going to notice that the neocons don't know what they're talking about. They're not looking at this country's long term interest. They're bound up in regional and global ideology and they have had no experience, I'll say it again, in even a school yard fight. They don't know what physical fighting is all about. They went to school and were intellectuals but they want our government to be their big brother. I don't get it. I don't know why we keep falling for it. And the president, you say, is he free of these guys or not? BUCHANAN: Well, the president, he fell for it after 9/11 when they put that little pre-cooked meal in front of him, after they knocked down Afghanistan. And so they said, "Let's do Iraq now." And Wolfowitz and all the rest of them. But let me say this, Chris. I think the president realizes now, that we went into Iraq to pursue weapons that did not exist, a country that did not attack us, did not threaten us, and now we have created a great base camp for terrorism in the Anbar providence that did not exist. In response to Mr Shrum, you attack Iran, Hezbollah will retaliate against the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon. You will have massive hostage taking and killings. Are these people nuts? You've got to ask yourself. I certainly hope the president is not listening to them because I really question whether they've got America's national interest at heart. They're calling for wars against people that never attacked us. I don't care how bad they are. There are wicked people all over this world but you don't go after people unless they come after you.

Bush states what we black people already know

From Yahoo News from Yahoo.com Bush knows many blacks distrust GOP By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 16 minutes ago President Bush, addressing the NAACP after skipping its convention for five years, said Thursday he knows racism exists in America and that many black voters distrust his Republican Party. Bush lamented the GOP's rocky relations with blacks. He pledged to improve that relationship and work with the NAACP's new leader to achieve common goals. "I understand that racism still lingers in America," Bush told more than 2,200 people at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual gathering. "It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party." That line generated boisterous applause and cheers from the audience, which generally gave the president a polite, reserved reception. "I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historical ties with the African-American community," Bush said. "For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party." Black support for Republicans in elections has hovered around 10 percent for more than a decade. In 2004, Bush drew 11 percent of the black vote against Democrat John Kerry. Most of the president's talk generated a smattering of applause. But many in the convention center stood and clapped when he urged the Senate to renew a landmark civil rights law passed in the 1960s to end racist voting practices, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, in Southern states. The Senate passed the bill later Thursday and sent it to the White House. For five years in a row, Bush had declined invitations to address the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the nation. This year, he said yes, knowing that he would be facing a tough crowd. According to AP-Ipsos polling conducted in June and July, 86 percent of blacks disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, compared with 56 percent of whites who disapprove. While the audience was cordial, some NAACP members were disappointed that the president did not mention the war in Iraq. During Bush's speech, two NAACP members from Louisiana held their hands in the air to display the two-fingered, "V" peace symbol. Others expressed dismay that Bush did not offer more substantive remarks about issues such as education and the economy. The unemployment rate for blacks was 9 percent in June — nearly twice the national jobless rate of 4.6 percent "There was an amazing gap between the aspirations of his speech and the policy behind it. It was so vague," said Barbara Arnwine of the Washington-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "He doesn't have enough contact with this community," said Arnwine. The group was set up in 1963, at the request of President Kennedy, to get private lawyers to provide legal services to address racial discrimination. Bush talked about his No Child Left Behind education program, but did not mention that it has been underfunded, said Madie Robinson of Florence, S.C., a member of the NAACP national board of directors. "He raised many issues," she said, "but didn't offer solutions." The administration's relations with the NAACP have been sketchy at best. The organization's former president, Kweisi Mfume, once described Bush's black supporters as "ventriloquists' dummies" and said the president's decision not to speak at the NAACP conventions was an insult. The chairman, Julian Bond, urged members to oust Bush and condemned the administration's policies on education, the economy and the war in Iraq. In 2004, then White House press secretary Scott McClellan said NAACP leaders, through their "hostile rhetoric," have shown no interest in working with Bush. Relations have improved under the leadership of current NAACP president, Bruce Gordon. Gordon, who introduced Bush at the convention, has met with him three times in the year that he has headed the civil rights group. That compares with one meeting Bush had with Mfume, Gordon's predecessor. "Bruce is a polite guy," Bush said. "I thought what he was going to say, `It's about time you showed up.' And I'm glad I did." The White House denied that Bush's appearance was a way of atoning for the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and some black elected officials alleged that indifference to black suffering and racial injustice was to blame for the sluggish reaction to the disaster. Bush said he and Gordon have had frank talks about the challenges blacks face following the hurricane. "We found areas where we share common purpose, and we have resolved to work together in practical ways," Bush said. "I don't expect Bruce to become a Republican — and neither do you. But I do want to work with him, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about." Toward the end of his remarks, two protesters interrupted the president, shouting inquiries about Vice President Dick Cheney and the situation in the Middle East. "Stop being a Stepin Fetchit for Dick Cheney!" one shouted in a reference to a black actor known for stereotypical portrayals of black minstrel characters. Bond approached the microphone, but Bush told him not to bother trying to quell the disturbance. "Don't worry," Bush told Bond. "I'm almost done." "I know you can handle it," Bond replied. ___ Associated Press writers Erin Texeira and Natasha Metzler contributed to this report. I bet ole George W. felt like a fish out of water because it's not everyday Bush give speeches in front of people that's well informed and where people heckler him weren't take out while the zombies in the crowd chanted four more years but allow to voice their opinions or displeasure about his policies. Bush is very used to those zombies that don't question a thing he says and will cheer and clap no matter how bad the thing is. Bush look like he wanted no part of the event and he look like once the speech was done he wanted to run off the stage like when a comic stinks up the place and he wanted to crawl into a small hole. Everyone knew Bush didn't want to be there the only person in this country that actually believes he did want to be there is that 36% that would walk off a cliff if he asked them to do so. As for the Republican reaching out to the black community if the Republicans really want to reach out to the black community how about this stop giving us a choice between Democrat and venomous right wing Republicans who pander to racist and social regressive people and maybe black people would take a second look at Republicans.

DeVos Hitler ad connection!!!

All of Dick DeVos’ Men: Hitler Ad-gateStonewall Ensnares DeVos, Mongo Connections grow between Hitler ad and DeVos campaign: Anuzis admits meeting with Mongo LANSING- Today the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) presented new evidence of the connection between Hitler ad creator Adolph Mongo and GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. On Thursday, July 13, Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis publicly admitted that he has met with Mongo. This is just the latest connection between DeVos and Mongo in a scandal filled with contradictions and inaccuracies. Mongo recently created and placed an ad comparing Adolf Hitler to several former Democratic Presidents and Governor Granholm. “Why were Saul Anuzis and Adolph Mongo meeting in the first place? Did they make any arrangements, reach agreements or discuss strategy?” asked MDP Recording Secretary Rosa Holliday. “It is time for Anuzis to answer whether or not the Michigan Republican Party or any of its supporters have an agreement with Mongo and if his party has been directed to avoid working with Mongo.” Immediately following the taping of WWJ-TV’s “Michigan Matters” with MDP Chair Mark Mark Brewer on July 13, 2006, Saul Anuzis was asked by Brewer if he had met with Adolph Mongo. He replied, “Yes I have.” “Like President Nixon’s Watergate scandal in ‘All the President's Men’, we now have Dick DeVos’ Hitler Ad-gate scandal in ‘All of DeVos’ Men’,” said Brewer. “Saul Anuzis publicly admitting that he met with Adolf Mongo is just the latest revelation in the connection between DeVos and Mongo. DeVos should stop the cover-up and admit that Mongo is working on his and his party’s behalf. As more contradictions are made and people begin to come forward with new information, I’m certain this is not the last DeVos/Mongo connection we will see in this scandal.” Anuzis’ admission comes after he failed to denounce the Hitler ad. Tim Skubick: Why didn’t you comment at the time, everybody else commented? Anuzis: (long pause) You didn’t call me. Video at http://www.michigandems.com/anuziscomment.wmv.(Anuzis with Skubick at MIGOP press conference, July 11, 2006) Adolph Mongo and DeVos spokesman John Truscott have contradicted themselves several times when asked about Mongo’s connection to DeVos: Who paid for the Hitler ad?: Flip Adolph Mongo: Donations. Frank Beckman: From? Adolph Mongo: From people that support voice the vote. Audio at: http://www.michigandems.com/MongoWJRdonations.mp3 (Mongo with Frank Beckman, WJR, July 7, 2006) Flop Tim Skubick: Who paid for the ad? Adolph Mongo: Who paid for the ad? Well you know I had a credit. Tim Skubick: It’s a simple question. Who paid for the ad? Adolph Mongo: Me. Tim Skubick: You? Adolph Mongo: Me. I work for a living. I had a credit with the Michigan Chronicle. Video at: http://wkar.org/offtherecord/program.php?num=2007-02 Adolph Mongo with Tim Skubick, Off the Record, July 14, 2006 Did DeVos meet Mongo?: Flip For his part, Mr. Mongo said he is not on the DeVos payroll, nor have any DeVos supporters contributed to Voice the Vote. … “He doesn't know me, and I've never met him," Mr. Mongo said. (Gongwer, July 7, 2006) “There was a pancake event Thursday sponsored by Crain's," Truscott said. "It was a public event that you paid to get in to. If he (Mongo) was there, it had nothing to do with us. I wouldn't even know him if I saw him. We had a table of people at the event. I'd say there were about 200 to 250 people there. If he was there, he wasn't part of our table.” (MIRS Capitol Capsule, July 7, 2006) Flop Peter Luke: So you’ve never met him Adolph Mongo: I met him over at pancake and politic [sic] at the DAC one time….I met him and I wanted to meet him... Video at: http://wkar.org/offtherecord/program.php?num=2007-02 (Adolph Mongo with Peter Luke, Off the Record, July 14, 2006) As for allegations that a Mongo-DeVos connection is supported by the encounter at the Pancakes and Politics event, Mr. Truscott said it is plausible the two introduced themselves to each other when Mr. DeVos sat down "for three minutes" prior to speaking. (Gongwer, July 14, 2006)

Conservative lie of the day part II

More from Conservatives who lie their asses off for a living from media matters.org the most important site on the net... Media Matters it shut up dumb conservatives. Cavuto guest compared stem cell research to Nazi genocide http://mediamatters.org/items/200607200007 Discussing President Bush's decision to veto legislation that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research during the July 19 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto asked Human Life International president Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer if "we are dooming a lot of people who might look at promising technologies for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's" by "dismissing" embryonic stem cell research. Euteneuer replied: "Well, anybody who knows a little bit of the history of World War II knows that that was kind of the logic that was used and came up in the Nuremberg war trials. The Nazi prison guards said these people were just going to be killed anyway, whether we did it or somebody else did it." From the July 19 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto: CAVUTO: Well, the president was surrounded by members of Congress and a large number of young families during today's historic veto. Also in the room was Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. He is now with us. Father, good to have you. EUTENEUER: Hi Neil, how are you? CAVUTO: I'm fine, sir. What do you make, Father, of this argument espoused by the [former first lady] Nancy Reagans and the [actor] Michael J. Foxes out there that these are discarded embryos and by dismissing tapping this, we are dooming a lot of people who might look at promising technologies for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's? EUTENEUER: Well, anybody who knows a little bit of the history of World War II knows that that was kind of the logic that was used and came up in the Nuremberg war trials. The Nazi prison guards said these people were just going to be killed anyway, whether we did it or somebody else did it.

Conservative lie of the day part one

Since I'm going back to Oakland U in a couple of weeks I will start adding Campus Conservatives to conservative lie of the day.... But here's part of one of conservatives that get paid to lie from Media Matters.org Limbaugh claimed "you need abortions to get" embryonic stem cells, "we need to re-examine" notion of "scientist" because "science has been so wrong about so many things" http://mediamatters.org/items/200607200011 On the July 19 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed that "the militant pro-abortion crowd" is "behind" efforts to legalize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, "because you need abortions to get these [embryos]." In fact, as the National Institutes of Health webpage points out, embryonic stem cells "are derived from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro -- in an in vitro fertilization clinic -- and then donated for research purposes with informed consent of the donors. They are not derived from eggs fertilized in a woman's body [emphasis original]." Additionally, Limbaugh claimed that, in light of scientists' belief that embryonic stem cells could be useful in medicine, "we need to re-examine this whole term 'scientist,' " because "[s]cience is all about politics, and science has been so wrong about so many things." During a discussion of President Bush's July 19 veto of a bill authorizing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, Limbaugh stated that White House senior adviser Karl Rove "got in trouble the other day for telling the truth," when he told the editorial board of The Denver Post that research has shown "far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells." Noting that a July 19 Chicago Tribune article had cited "a dozen" stem cell research scientists calling Rove's statement "inaccurate," Limbaugh stated that "we need to re-examine this whole term 'scientist.' " He complained that "certain things in our culture ... are never questioned" and that "if a scientist says anything ... it's gotta be true" because "[s]cientists have this aura." He further stated that "global warming has become a scientific thing" merely because "nobody can question science." He added: "Science is all about politics, and science has been so wrong about so many things." Media Matters for America has previously noted numerous examples of Limbaugh denying that humans have contributed to global warming, despite broad scientific consensus on the issue. From the July 19 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show: LIMBAUGH: Myself, I personally hope Bush enjoys this. And I hope he makes the veto more of a habit with some of the asinine legislation that comes to his desk. Now, the controversy is not over. This stem cell research business and -- and using embryonic stem cells, there is so much demagoguery about this. There is no evidence of any of these claims. And the claims are that embryonic stem cells will cure everything -- Parkinson's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, even protect you from carrots. But we are not -- we're not even years within human clinical trials on this. This is all nothing but speculation. I'm telling you, and I have from the get-go, who is behind this -- is the -- the militant pro-abortion crowd, because you need abortions to get these. There are plenty of other stem cells that research is being done on -- umbilical cord stem cells, adult stem cells. Karl Rove got in trouble the other day for telling the truth. "When White House political adviser Karl Rove signaled last week that President Bush planned to veto the stem cell bill, the reasons he gave went beyond the president's moral qualms with research on human embryos. In fact, Rove waded into deeply contentious scientific territory, telling The Denver Post's editorial board that researchers have found far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells. Rove's negative appraisal of embryonic stem cell research, echoed by many opponents of funding for such research, is inaccurate, according to most stem cell research scientists, including dozens contact -- a dozen contacted for this story." The story is by Jeremy Manier -- or Manier, maybe -- and Judith Graham. It's in the Chicago Tribune. There's a great piece at National Review Online today by Michael Fumento called "Science's Stem-Cell Scam. It should change its name to Pseudoscience." I'm not gonna read his whole story. I gotta take a break here anyway. But it's at National Review Online, and you should go read it. We'll link to it later at RushLimbaugh.com. Oh, by the way, we put -- did I -- did I mention we got the picture of the people cruising -- lounging on a cruise ship? OK, it's there. Did mention that. This -- the -- I think we need to re-examine this whole term "scientist." You know, there are certain things in our culture that are never questioned. They have instant credibility. If a scientist says anything, [gasp] it's gotta be true. Scientists have this aura. Another one is law enforcement: "Sources close to the investigation say." They're never doubted. Law enforcement is always believed. It's never questioned, particularly by the media, and by most of us. And this is not a political bias; it's just the way it is. It is why global warming has become a scientific thing, because nobody can question science. Why, scientists, smarter than everybody else. And science is science. Science is not politics -- well, it's absolutely BS. Science is all about politics, and science has been so wrong about so many things. They're not infallible, and this is the context of Fumento's piece, because there is so much demagoguery about embryonic stem cells and how they're the only ones that will provide miraculous cures for all of these dreaded diseases that wipe us out.

From Media Matters: if it's Sunday it's right wing

Third time's not the charm: Sunday-morning talk shows still imbalanced http://mediamatters.org/items/200607200006 On February 14, Media Matters for America released a comprehensive study analyzing the guest appearances on ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and NBC's Meet the Press from 1997 through 2005. In April, Media Matters released an update to that study, analyzing the shows for the first quarter of 2006. In both reports, the results demonstrated that Republicans and conservatives dominated on all three Sunday shows. Media Matters has now completed an analysis of the second quarter of 2006, April through June, and the key conclusions reached in the first two studies remain unchanged. Republicans and conservatives outnumber Democrats and progressives. More conservative journalists appear than progressive journalists. Panels are more likely to be imbalanced toward the right than toward the left. Republicans and conservatives are given more solo interviews. In short, the title we gave to our original study -- "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative" -- remains true. In the second quarter, the Sunday-morning programs continued to host more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. Across all three shows, Republicans and conservatives made 66 appearances, compared with 48 appearances by Democrats and progressives. First-quarter results: Second-quarter results: On each show, Republicans and conservatives outnumbered Democrats and progressives in total guest appearances. Face the Nation featured nearly twice as many Republicans and conservatives as Democrats and progressives during the second quarter. That disparity was in line with the findings from the first quarter, which showed that 47 percent of the show's guests were Republicans and conservatives, while only 32 percent were Democrats and progressives. Compared with the first quarter, Meet the Press showed improvement in the second quarter; however, the program still hosted more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. Elected officials and members of the Bush administration The discrepancy between the number of appearances by elected Democrats and the number of appearances by elected Republicans or members of the Bush administration has stayed roughly the same since the release of Media Matters' initial study, although there was variation between the shows. While former administration officials of either party are not included in the charts below, an imbalance would exist even if we included only the three former Clinton administration officials who each made one appearance during this period (John Podesta on Face the Nation, Dee Dee Myers on Meet the Press, and Al Gore on This Week). Overall, elected and administration Republicans outnumbered elected Democrats by a considerable margin in the second quarter. Again, Face the Nation displayed an increase from the first-quarter findings. Meanwhile, This Week's results stayed roughly the same from the previous quarter. Meet the Press made strides toward greater balance in this category, closing the gap somewhat compared with its poor first-quarter performance. First-quarter results: Second-quarter results: Journalists For guest appearances by journalists, the split between neutrals, progressives, and conservatives was roughly the same as in the previous quarter. First-quarter results: Second-quarter results: This Week had the same proportion of conservative to progressive journalists as in the first quarter of 2006 -- a ratio of 2-to-1. Meet the Press hosted more neutral journalists during the second quarter, while hosting three conservatives and two progressives (compared with four conservatives and two progressives in the first quarter). As in the first quarter, Face the Nation hosted one more conservative than progressive (one to zero in the first quarter, and two to one in the second). As was the case in our previous studies, This Week showed some of the greatest disparities, in large part because conservative columnist George F. Will participates in every panel discussion and is often joined by another conservative. But in every case -- as in the first quarter of 2006 and our original study covering 1997-2005 -- progressive journalists lose out. Panel composition During the second quarter of 2006, more panels skewed to the right than to the left overall than in the previous quarter. First-quarter results: Second-quarter results: Meet the Press, in particular, took a step backward; the disparity between right-leaning panels and left-leaning panels nearly doubled from the first quarter, from 21 percent to 14 percent in favor of Republicans/conservatives, to 38 percent to 8 percent. This Week had roughly the same proportion of right-leaning panels to left-leaning panels as during the first quarter. Face the Nation improved from its first-quarter showing, this time having all panels balanced. Solo interviews During the first quarter of 2006, Meet the Press showed a large disparity between Republicans/conservatives and Democrats/progressives in solo interviews -- 75 percent to 17 percent. During the second quarter of 2006, Meet the Press reversed that showing, interviewing twice as many Democrats/progressives (six) as Republicans/conservatives (three). While the Meet the Press' first- and second-quarter results taken together still favor Republicans/conservatives (52 percent Republican/conservative, 35 percent Democratic/progressive, and 13 percent neutral), the second-quarter results appear to be a step in the direction of balanced guest appearances over longer periods of time. Once again, This Week's results were similar to the previous quarter's. Face the Nation, on the other hand, showed a large increase in disparity, again favoring Republicans and conservatives. In the previous quarter, Republicans/conservatives were given 50 percent of solo interviews, while Democrats/progressives were given 32 percent. During the second quarter, the disparity increased -- 60 percent of solo interviews went to Republicans/conservatives, while only 7 percent went to Democrats/progressives. First-quarter results: Second-quarter results: Conclusion The results we have presented here demonstrate that the three major networks' Sunday-morning talk shows continue to favor Republican and conservative voices over Democratic and progressive ones. They also suggest that the three programs in question have done little to address the overt imbalance in guest appearances. While Meet the Press had better results during the second quarter, Face the Nation showed increases in pro-Republican disparities in a number of categories, including overall guests, elected and administration officials, and solo interviews. This Week displayed little improvement, showing roughly the same results from the first quarter of 2006. The question still stands, and the networks have yet to answer it: Media Matters asks these networks whether a significant Republican/conservative tilt in the guest lists of Meet the Press, This Week, and Face the Nation serves the public interest of balanced political discourse.

My take: on stem cells and the 28 days later crowd

What amazes me about the pro life crowd or as I call them the 28 Days Later crowd because they remind me of the monsters in that movie they attack, they have a lust of blood and try to convert other like them. First they want to control women bodies by trying to ban abortion and now they're cheering for a veto that tells thousands or maybe millions of sick people screw you because they want to control. And I'm pissed about this and I hope millions of Americans are also because stem cell research maybe in time can help someone with cancer, diabetes and maybe AIDS but no a small group of foaming at the mouth base of human like people say no because our twisted version of the bible says so. They preach the word of god but tell a little kid with diabetes sorry son a group of cells is more important than you but pray and maybe one just one day you'll be healed, the same people who protest abortion clinics, nash their teeth about stem cells will preach about the importance of life but in the same breath will tell you the values of war in Iraq and why is important for us being there. I just hope the American people are not fooled by the Republicans vote for stem cells because we know if this been early 2005 you have to beg most of the Republicans to join in.. All this vote was to show sane Americans see we support this too so don't vote us out in 2006. For six years of this bum term the wing nuts in the country have done nothing more then try to take this country back decades how many? My guess the 1900's America you got to ask yourselves something do you want a country where everyone got a equal shot getting ahead but do you want the loons like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and freaks like Jerry Farewell to run the country with their insane verison of the bible? Becuase if you don't show up in numbers and allow the Republicans to either keep the majority or build it up futher the Republicans in D.C. have no problem pandering to these 28 Days Later people as long it keeps them in power.

Stem cell issue a problem for Republicans

From Yahoo News. From Yahoo.com Stem cell issue a problem for Republicans By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago Stem cell research packs the emotional punch of abortion and assisted suicide for people engaged on both sides but with this difference: So far, most people are on one side of the debate. That's a complication for Republicans, who like to say their "big tent" makes room for differing views. President Bush's veto of legislation Wednesday that sought to ease his restrictions on federal financing of stem cell research shakes that tent in ways other ethical issues have not. The issue splits the field of presidential prospects, divides even those Republicans who share anti-abortion views and comes on top of a roiling debate testing party unity over immigration. So why the veto, the first of his presidency, and in the middle of a tough GOP campaign to keep control of Congress? Personal conviction is part of it but nothing comes out of the White House without political calculation. "The salience of this issue to a small, intensely motivated portion of his base has something to do with his decision to veto the bill," said Bruce Buchanan, political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a longtime Bush watcher. Buchanan said Bush obviously sees the potential for motivating conservative voters crucial in a low-turnout midterm election and is willing to court them at the risk of driving other voters from his party in the fall. "I think it's a close call," he said of that gamble. Democrats have been quick to seize the power of the personal, bringing forward stories of suffering and casting the issue as one of compassion versus rigid ideology. In a competitive House race outside Philadelphia, Democrat Joe Sestak says his experience with his daughter, who has a malignant brain tumor now in remission, and the health care system led him to enter the race, and to promote steps opposed by Republican Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record) on stem cell research. "I believe that stem cells open the promise of life for so many people," Sestak said in an interview Wednesday. "I happened to have the opportunity to see people in a cancer ward, children, it breaks your heart. How can you not explore the possibility that they will be there to be an adult?" Those who believe destroying a human embryo is akin to murder cannot illustrate their case with the same visual impact. Still, when Bush announced his veto, he surrounded himself with "snowflake" families, those with children born through embryo donation. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research," Bush said. "They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals." As political fodder, stem cell research is as latent as the science. Just as potential treatments for spinal cord and other devastating disorders based on stem cell research are considered years from being tested in people, the issue has not matured for voters, polls suggest. Terrorism, the Iraq war and the economy routinely dominate voter concerns. The number of people who say defending the country and the economy are the priorities is very high — sometimes two-thirds or more. Yet public opinion sides strongly with giving scientists an opportunity to explore the possibilities. A recent Gallup poll found Americans considered stem cell research using human embryos to be morally acceptable by a 2-to-1 margin, and other measures have found majority support for putting federal dollars behind the effort. "The president is sticking to his principles and Americans do respect that," said David Rebovich, a political science professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., a state where the stem cell debate has surfaced in a close Senate campaign. "However, with President Bush's approval ratings so low and many incumbent Republicans nervous about re-election, the veto of the stem cell bill causes yet another problem for many of those Republicans who have to explain to constituents why it makes sense to support the party if the titular head is against such a popular initiative." In New Jersey, Republican Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr., is taking heat despite supporting the legislation struck down by Bush. Essentially, the knock against him from Democrats is that he hasn't supported it with sufficient enthusiasm — having voted in the past against paying for a state-financed stem cell research institute. Bush drew a line on federal financing in 2001 and hasn't budged since, even as the science has inched forward and prominent figures in his party have urged him to ease restrictions. Supporters of the research tap into the personal experiences and hopes of anyone who has a sick relative who may or may not be within reach of a cure from stem cell science someday. These figures have included Nancy Reagan, who spent years tending to her husband Ronald in an old age ravaged by Alzheimer's, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a surgeon. Frist and Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., both abortion opponents and potential presidential candidates, broke with Bush on the issue and crossed social conservatives in the process. Embryonic stem cell research is solidly supported in polls in ways other issues are not. With abortion and the right to die, support varies widely depending on the specific circumstances. Majorities oppose a return to the days before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal, but substantial support exists for abortion limits. In the right to die debate, four in five Americans agree with laws that let terminally ill people decide if they want medical treatment, according to a Pew poll this year. But people are split on whether doctors should prescribe drugs to help a terminally ill patient commit suicide. And support for the right to die differs depending on how the question is framed. ___ Associated Press Writers Kimberly Hefling, Darlene Superville and Will Lester contributed to this report. The good thing about this whole mess the Republicans are boxed in nationally regarding Sterm cells and abortion a majority of Americans believe in Stem Cell research and majority of Americans believe we shouldn't go back on a woman right to chose but the Republicans have spent all their time pandering to the 28 days later crowd on the hard right on these issues and now the Republicans are trying to catch up with sane America.. But they're on the tight rope between sane Americans and those nuts they pander to.

Boy Blunder uses first veto

From Yahoo News from Yahoo.com Bush vetoes stem cell bill as promised By MARY DALRYMPLE, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 23 minutes ago President Bush cast the first veto of his presidency Wednesday, saying legislation easing limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research "crosses a moral boundary." "This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children. "Each of these children was still adopted while still an embryo and has been blessed with a chance to grow, to grow up in a loving family. These boys and girls are not spare parts," he said. The veto came a day after the Senate defied Bush and approved the legislation, 63-37, four votes short of the two-thirds margin needed to override. White House officials and Republican congressional leaders claimed it was unlikely that Congress could override the veto. Bush's support was the strongest in the House, which was expected to take up the veto as early as later Wednesday. "We will go back and sustain his veto this afternoon," veto supporter Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., told reporters at the White House after the event. "We had 52 votes to spare when it passed and I predict the House will sustain that veto." Bush has supported federally funded research on only those stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, the date of his speech to the nation on the subject. The president vetoed the measure shortly after it came to his desk. His position was politically popular among conservative Republicans, and it was sure to be an issue in the midterm congressional elections. Announcing the veto, Bush was surrounded in the East Room by so-called "snowflake" families, those with children born through embryo donation. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. The remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals," Bush said. He said the bill would have crossed a line and "once crossed, we would find it impossible to turn back." At the same time, Bush announced he had signed another bill, passed unanimously in the House and Senate, that would pre-emptively ban "fetal farming," the prospect of raising and aborting fetuses for scientific research. Moments after Bush spoke, the vetoed legislation was returned to Congress. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was quick to criticize the president's veto. "I am pro-life, but I disagree with the president's decision to veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act," said Frist. "Given the potential of this research and the limitations of the existing lines eligible for federally funded research, I think additional lines should be made available." Said Bush: "As science brings us every closer to unlocking the secrets of human biology, it also offers temptations to manipulate human life and violate human dignity. Our conscience in history as a nation demand that we resist this temptation. "America was founded on the principle that we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with the right to life," he added. "We can advance the cause of science while upholding this founding promise. We can harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology. And we can ensure that science serves the cause of humanity, instead of the other way around." Pleadings from celebrities, a former first lady and fellow Republicans had failed to t move Bush. He acted after two days of often wrenching emotional debate in Congress, punctuated by stories of personal and family suffering, that had cast lawmakers into the intersection of politics, morality and science. Strong majorities in the House and Senate joined sentiments with most Americans in passing the bill, which would have lifted restriction currently limiting federally funded research to stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001. "I expect that the House will sustain the president's veto," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in advance of Bush's action. Disappointed lawmakers said they intended to keep pushing to lift the restrictions. Sen. Orrin Hatch (news, bio, voting record), R-Utah said in advance that the veto "sets back embryonic stem cell research another year or so." The Senate voted 63-37 on Tuesday, four votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto. The House last year fell 50 votes short of a veto-proof margin when it passed the same bill, 238-194. Bush had made 141 veto threats during his time in office, and the Republicans controlling Congress typically respond by changing bills to his liking. Bush's stand against embryonic stem cell research is popular among conservative Republicans whom the party will rely on in the congressional elections this fall. Many of those opponents are the same voters who have felt alienated by Bush's actions to increase legal immigration, and the veto could bring them back into the fold. Although many in the religious right are passionately opposed to embryonic stem cell research, most Americans support it, and Bush risks alienating that majority in the critical midterm year. ___ On the Net: Information on the bills, H.R. 810, S. 3504 and S. 2754, may be found at http://thomas.loc.gov This is pandering on the worst scale, while this research can benefit thousands of people living with different health problems Bush once again bows down to the very insane, the very unbalance 28 days Later creatures of the Christian right wingers that took over the Republican party. These people run around talking about how they support life and show those nasty pictures of dead fetus yet they support the war in Iraq where Iraqi childern die everyday and these Christians don't support social programs that will help these women and their kids. So you guys realize how important it is to kick the Republicans asses out of office in 2006.

Bush agrees Bin-Laden helped in '04

Bush Agrees Bin-Laden Helped in '04 By Robert ParryJuly 14, 2006 After Election 2004, George W. Bush recognized that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden had helped him to victory by releasing a videotape denouncing Bush just four days before Americans went to the polls, a move the CIA has concluded was a bin-Laden ploy to ensure the U.S. President a second term. In a post-election interview with Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon, Bush said he judged that bin-Laden’s harsh denunciation of him in a videotape released on Oct. 29, 2004, had rallied voters to the Republican banner. “I thought it was going to help,” Bush said. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin-Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush.” Bin-Laden’s diatribe – after nearly a year of silence – indeed did give Bush a crucial late boost with one national poll recording a six-percentage-point bounce in Bush’s favor. Bush supporters and many neutral voters apparently took bin-Laden’s words at face value, assuming that bin-Laden really wanted Bush to be defeated. But CIA analysts concluded that bin-Laden was actually playing a double game, pretending to want Bush out when he really hoped Bush would stay in. Bin-Laden was cagy enough to realize that his well-timed denunciation of Bush would have a predictable boomerang effect and thus help Bush gain a second term. Bin-Laden’s thinking apparently was that Bush’s highly aggressive “war on terror,” especially the bloody occupation of Iraq, would continue creating thousands of new extremists to swell the ranks of al-Qaeda while also enhancing bin-Laden’s personal status in the Islamic world. CIA Analysis This CIA assessment was disclosed in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their troubling judgment on classified information. According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. … “Their [the CIA’s] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection. “At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.’” McLaughlin’s comment drew nods from CIA officers at the table. Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, suggested that the al-Qaeda founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt threatened by the rise in Iraq of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; bin-Laden might have thought his leadership would be diminished if Bush lost the White House and their “eye-to-eye struggle” ended. But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have recognized how Bush’s policies – including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the war in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists. “Certainly,” the CIA’s Miscik said, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,” according to Suskind’s account of the meeting. As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. “An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched,” Suskind wrote. ‘Strategery’ Bush enthusiasts, however, have continued to cite bin-Laden’s videotape as proof that the terrorist leader genuinely feared George W. Bush and favored John Kerry. In a fawningly pro-Bush book entitled Strategery: How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media, right-wing journalist Sammon devoted several pages to bin-Laden’s videotape, portraying it as an attempt by the terrorist leader to persuade Americans to vote for Kerry. “Bin-Laden stopped short of overtly endorsing Kerry,” Sammon wrote, “but the terrorist offered a polemic against reelecting Bush. … Unfortunately for Kerry, bin-Laden then proceeded to parrot the Democrat’s litany of complaints against Bush, right down to the Michael Moore-inspired canard about My Pet Goat.” It’s not clear why Sammon uses the word “canard,” which means an unfounded or false story, since it’s a well-established fact that Bush did sit paralyzed for about seven minutes in a Florida classroom reading My Pet Goat after being told on Sept. 11, 2001, that “America is under attack.” But Sammon, like many Bush acolytes, appears to live in a world where facts and logic have no particular relevance. So, not surprisingly, Sammon didn’t weigh the possibility that bin-Laden might have understood that his “endorsement” of one candidate over another would achieve the opposite effect. Indeed, many right-wing pundits appear to have played into bin-Laden’s hands by promoting his anti-Bush diatribe in just the way he wanted it, as a de facto recommendation that Americans vote for Kerry – and as a sure way to generate votes for Bush. In Strategery, Sammon also quotes Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman as agreeing that bin-Laden’s videotape helped Bush. “It reminded people of the stakes,” Mehlman said. “It reinforced an issue on which Bush had a big lead over Kerry.” Brer Rabbit So how hard is it to figure out that bin-Laden – a longtime student of American politics – would have understood exactly the same point? Many American baby-boomers grew up watching Walt Disney’s “Song of the South,” featuring Uncle Remus tales describing how the clever Brer Rabbit escaped one famously tight spot by pretending that what he feared most was to be hurled into the briar patch – when that was exactly where he wanted to go. Indeed, the evidence is now clear that al-Qaeda strategists have long operated in much the same way, trying to goad the U.S. government into an overreaction that would put them in an environment where they could be most successful. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Osama’s Briar Patch” or “Is Bush al-Qaeda's 'Useful Idiot?'”] By the end of the Clinton administration, al-Qaeda’s leaders had been chased to the farthest corners of the planet, the mountains of Afghanistan. They were exiles from across the Islamic world, largely because they had lost battle after battle against their respective governments. Al-Qaeda’s brand of Islamic fundamentalism had been rejected in Muslim societies from Algeria and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Bin-Laden and his lieutenants had even been expelled from the Sudan. At this critical juncture, al-Qaeda’s brain trust decided that their best hope was to strike at the United States and count on a clumsy reaction that would offend the Islamic world and rally angry young Muslims to al-Qaeda’s banner. The Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole had failed to elicit a sufficient reaction, so al-Qaeda planned something bigger. By early summer 2001, as 19 al-Qaeda operatives positioned themselves inside the United States, U.S. intelligence analysts picked up evidence of al-Qaeda’s plans by sifting through the “chatter” of electronic intercepts. The U.S. warning system was “blinking red.” Over the July Fourth 2001 holiday, a well-placed U.S. intelligence source passed on a disturbing piece of information to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who later recounted the incident in an interview with Alternet. “The person told me that there was some concern about an intercept that had been picked up,” Miller said. “The incident that had gotten everyone’s attention was a conversation between two members of al-Qaeda. And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the Cole. “And one al-Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.’” In the Alternet interview, published in May 2006 after Miller resigned from the Times, the reporter expressed regret that she had not been able to nail down enough details about the intercept to get the story into the newspaper. But the significance of her recollection is that more than two months before the 9/11 attacks, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack with the intent of provoking a U.S. military reaction – or in this case, an overreaction. Unheeded Warning The CIA tried to warn Bush about the threat with the hope that presidential action could energize government agencies and head off the attack. On Aug. 6, 2001, the CIA sent analysts to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to brief him and deliver a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” Bush was not pleased by the intrusion. He glared at the CIA briefer and snapped, “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” according to Suskind’s book. Then, ordering no special response, Bush returned to a vacation of fishing, clearing brush and working on a speech about stem-cell research. For its part, al-Qaeda was running a risk that the United States might strike a precise and devastating blow against the terrorist organization, eliminating it as an effective force without alienating much of the Muslim world. If that happened, the cause of Islamic extremism could have been set back years, without eliciting much sympathy from most Muslims for a band of killers who wantonly murdered innocent civilians. After the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s gamble almost failed as the CIA, backed by U.S. Special Forces, ousted bin-Laden’s Taliban allies in Afghanistan and cornered much of the al-Qaeda leadership in the mountains of Tora Bora near the Pakistani border. But instead of using U.S. ground troops to seal the border, Bush relied on the Pakistani army. The Pakistani military, which included many Taliban sympathizers, moved too slowly, allowing bin-Laden and other leaders to escape. Then, instead of staying focused on bin-Laden and his fellow fugitives, Bush shifted U.S. Special Forces toward Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Many U.S. terrorism experts, including White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were shocked since the intelligence community didn’t believe that Hussein’s secular dictatorship had any working relationship with al-Qaeda – and had no role in the 9/11 attacks. Mayhem Nevertheless, Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, ousting Hussein from power but also unleashing mayhem across Iraqi society. Soon, the Iraq War along with the controversies over torture and mistreatment of Muslim detainees were serving as recruitment posters for al-Qaeda. Under Jordanian exile Zarqawi, al-Qaeda set up terrorist cells in central Iraq, taking root amid the weeds of sectarian violence and the nation’s general anarchy. Instead of an obscure group of misfits, al-Qaeda was achieving legendary status among many Muslims as the defenders of the Islamic holy lands, battling the new “crusaders” led by Bush. Meanwhile, back in the United States, the 9/11 attacks had allowed Bush to reinvent himself as the “war president” who operated almost without oversight. He saw his approval ratings surge from the 50s to the 90s – and watched as the Republican Party consolidated its control of the U.S. Congress in 2002. Though the worsening bloodshed in Iraq eroded Bush’s popularity in 2004, political adviser Karl Rove still framed the election around Bush’s aggressive moves to defend the United States and to punish American enemies. Whereas Bush was supposedly resolute, Democrat Kerry was portrayed as weak and indecisive, a “flip-flopper.” Kerry, however, scored some political points in the presidential debates by citing the debacle at Tora Bora that enabled bin-Laden to escape. The race was considered neck-and-neck as it turned toward the final weekend of campaigning. Then, the shimmering image of Osama bin-Laden appeared on American televisions, speaking directly to the American people, mocking Bush and offering a kind of truce if U.S. forces withdrew from the Middle East. “He [Bush] was more interested in listening to the child’s story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the [twin] towers,” bin-Laden said. “So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events.” Over the final weekend of the campaign, right-wing pundits, bloggers and talk-show hosts portrayed bin-Laden’s videotape as an effort to hurt Bush and help Kerry – which understandably prompted the opposite reaction among many Americans. Behind the walls of secrecy at Langley, Virginia, however, U.S. intelligence experts reviewed the evidence and concluded that bin-Laden had achieved exactly what he wanted, a stampede of voters to Bush and a continuation of his clumsy “war on terror.” Now as the Mid-East conflagration spreads to Gaza and Lebanon – and threatens to draw in Syria and Iran – the larger Islamic world is beginning to look more and more like the briar patch where Osama bin-Laden and other violent extremists feel most comfortable.

From Media Matters: Coulter prefer a firing squad for NYtimes Keller

Coulter: "I prefer a firing squad" for NY Times' Keller Responding to radio host Melanie Morgan's assertion that if New York Times executive editor Bill Keller were convicted of treason she "would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," right-wing pundit Ann Coulter wrote in her July 12 nationally syndicated column: "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution." Coulter claimed that the Times should be charged with treason for publishing stories on the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program and the Treasury Department's program to monitor international bank transactions, and concluded that "[a] conviction for treason would be assured under any sensible legal system." From Coulter's July 12 column: In 1985, Times columnist Anthony Lewis accused the Reagan administration of trying to "intimidate the press." Channeling Anthony Lewis this week, Frank Rich claims the Bush administration has "manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year." Rich's evidence of the brutal crackdown on the press was the statement of San Francisco radio host Melanie Morgan -- who, by the way, is part of the press -- proposing the gas chamber for the editor of the Times if he were found guilty of treason, which happens to be the punishment prescribed by law. (Once again Frank Rich finds himself in over his head when not writing about gay cowboy movies.) I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution. A conviction for treason would be assured under any sensible legal system.

Graham's faux debate

Graham's faux debate Supreme Court dismissed senator's fabricated exchange BY SCHUYLER KROPF The Post and Courier U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham may have a future as a fiction writer. He's being accused of fabricating a Senate debate and sending it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which didn't think much of the work. The high court dismissed it. At issue is an account of an exchange that Sens. Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote last year to be inserted into the Congressional Record. It details what the two lawmakers purported was part of the Senate's debate over why terror detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be tried in civilian U.S. courts. The actual discussion Graham and Kyl inserted in the Record never took place. But their comments, written more than a month after the actual debate, became part of the terror case filing that went to the Supreme Court. Reached Tuesday in Washington, Graham said he did nothing improper, contending that senators file amended speeches in debates all the time. "That's what you do," he said. "You enter it on the record as if it were part of the debate." Critics, meanwhile, called the Graham-Kyl account unethical. John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, writing in the online legal journal FindLaw last week, said he had not seen "so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon's reign." He called their effort "a bogus colloquy." Others have said it's not so much that the record was amended but that it was done so in such an ornate fashion. The Graham-Kyl script supported the Bush administration's legal contention that terror suspects should not be afforded courtroom rights under U.S. law. That stance was rejected last month after the Supreme Court invalidated the government's system of military trials and, instead, ruled that the detainees must be treated according to international standards. The case was known as the "Hamdan decision," named for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, and a Guantanamo detainee. Graham and Kyl submitted their Senate account in a "friend of the court" brief, in which the two lawmakers wanted to back the White House on keeping the military trial option. The two attempted to make the dialogue - added to the Dec. 21, 2005, record - appear real. Kyl, is quoted at one point as saying, "Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time." In another instance, Graham and Kyl inserted Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas in the fabricated Senate floor discussion, saying "If I might interrupt," according to published accounts of the comments. The issue at hand was the Bush administration's contention that the Detainee Treatment Act disallowed the federal courts oversight of detainees attempting to challenge the government. The Bush position, and that advanced by Graham and Kyl's comments, was to show that the law passed by Congress was meant to apply to all detainees held by the United States, retroactively. Democrats, meanwhile, said that wasn't the case. The insertion of the added comments was noted and rejected by the court. Graham said the criticism of his addition was overblown and that senators often insert scripted remarks. "I know what I've done. I've done it before and I'll do it again," he said. As for Dean's criticism: "John Dean speaks for himself in terms of his character and his ethics," Graham said. Web extrasRead the U. S. Supreme Court ruling, a transcript of arguments and briefs filed in the detainee case at www.charleston.net/webextras Reach Schuyler Kropf at skropf@postandcourier.com or 937-5551.

Plame-Wilson plan to sue over the leak

Press Release Source: Proskauer Rose LLP Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Their Counsel to Hold News Conference Announcing Lawsuit against I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, Vice-President Cheney and Karl RoveThursday July 13, 2:22 pm ET WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 2006--Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and their counsel, Christopher Wolf of Proskauer Rose LLP, will hold a news conference at 10 AM EDT on Friday, July 14 at 10:00 AM at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045, to announce the filing of a civil lawsuit against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Richard Cheney and Karl Rove. WHO: Valerie Plame Wilson Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV Christopher Wolf, Esq. WHAT: News conference to announce filing of civil lawsuit WHEN: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:00 AM WHERE: National Press Club 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor Washington, DC 20045 ADDITIONAL CONTACT FOR INTERVIEW FOLLOWING PRESS CONFERENCE: Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, who is Of Counsel in the Wilson lawsuit, will be available for interviews following the news conference at (323) 931-8612 or by leaving a message at (919) 613-7173. For any technical or logistical questions about the news conference, contact George Arfken at the National Press Club, (202) 662-7597. Contact:National Press Club George Arfken, 202-662-7597

Dick DeVos and his supporters

The rally cry from Dick DeVos, the racists that make up the Michigan Republican party and DeVos supporters in the media is that Michigan is in bad shape and it's Jennifer Granholm fault but I have a wet blanket to dump on their little rally... If you wanna trace back why Michigan is in the bad shape you have to follow the red line to two places one to the Bush White House and two where ever John Engler is hiding out. Six years of Bush's budget which has bled states of resources and on top of that Bush and the Republicans green light the policy of shipping American jobs overseas for cheap labor... And you gotta go back to three terms of John Engler as governor where he expanded three things 1. The wallet of the corporation via bad contracts 2. His wallet when he got two million as he ran off the sinking ship from the corporation and 3 his waistline. John Engler was damn well close to bankrupt the state and these clowns that support Engler are now critics of Jennifer Granholm citing the debt and job lost. What truly amazes me about the Michigan Republicans and hacks like Nolan Finley of the Detroit "News" they didn't mind running around touting the likes of John Engler and George W. Bush for their runs of office nevermind these two clowns racked up more debt and job lost these guys deserved another chance but Jennifer Granholm you gotta run her ass out of town right away. As for the Michigan Republican golden boy Dick DeVos a guy who's running around saying he should be elected because he can create jobs... the problem is the jobs Dick DeVos created are in China at even cheaper wages and Dick DeVos hasn't run a business most of the places he claimed he ran was ran by his father, Dicky just sat in daddy's lap.... Dicky DeVos in his ads has painted himself as a moderate Republican he's far from that supporting taking money from public schools via the voucher program and Dicky is back by the likes of Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and George W. Bush. Dick DeVos has no plans, no vision, no goals for Michigan unless you count giving himself and his buddies a nice tax cut so say no to Dick DeVos.

More good news from Iraq: oh wait

Sectarian violence kills about 60 in Iraq By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press WriterTue Jul 11, 8:08 PM ET Suicide bombers struck Tuesday across the street from the heavily guarded Green Zone, killing up to 16 people — the deadliest attack in a wave of bombings and shootings that threatened to shatter confidence in Iraq's new government. In all, about 60 people died in more than a dozen bombings, shootings and ambushes — mostly in the Baghdad area, according to police reports. The dead included 10 Shiites slain by gunmen who fired on their bus as it left the capital for a funeral in southern Iraq, police said. Lawmakers summoned the defense and interior ministers to explain the failure of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's security plan for the capital — where most of the recent violence has occurred. The attack near the Green Zone occurred at midmorning when two suicide bombers detonated explosives at a restaurant frequented by police, the U.S. military and witnesses said. Sixteen other people were killed in the blast, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police put the casualty figure at 12 dead and 13 wounded. Blue-uniformed Iraqi police hauled the dead from the wreckage in body bags as heavily armed American soldiers stood guard. A statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Israeli military operations in Gaza and the alleged rape-slaying by U.S. soldiers of a young Iraqi woman south of Baghdad. The Islamic Army is a major insurgent group but authenticity of the statement could not be determined. Much of the violence Tuesday appeared sectarian, part of a surge in tit-for-tat killings that began Sunday when Shiite gunmen rampaged through a mostly Sunni area of west Baghdad, killing 41 people, according to police. Throughout Tuesday, car bombs detonated and mortar shells exploded in Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods across the sprawling capital. Most caused few deaths and injuries but collectively the toll was high, suggesting that U.S. and Iraqi forces are powerless to stop the violence soon. As night fell, police reported explosions and gunfire in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amariyah. Bursts of heavy machine-gun fire could be heard intermittently late Tuesday from along the Tigris River that flows through the center of the city. The United States had hoped that a national unity government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds could calm sectarian tensions and convince insurgents to lay down their arms so that U.S. and its coalition partners could begin withdrawing troops starting this year. But more than 1,607 Iraqis have been killed and nearly 2,500 wounded since al-Maliki's government took office May 20, according to an Associated Press count. Alarmed by the crisis, Iraq's parliament summoned Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani and Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi to appear Thursday to discuss the "deteriorating security situation," deputy speaker Khaled al-Attiyah said. Al-Maliki's government unveiled a sweeping plan last month to restore security in Baghdad, putting tens of thousands Iraqi and U.S. troops on the streets, increasing the number of checkpoints and stepping up patrols in selected neighborhoods. Many Iraqi lawmakers and media commentators have complained that the plan has done little except tie up traffic at checkpoints, forcing people to sit for hours in their cars in the sweltering summer sun. "The security plan did not succeed. There must be solutions found for this situation, which is out of control," Kurdish legislator Mahmoud Othman told reporters. The Shiite head of parliament's security committee, Hadi al-Amiri, said the security plan will be reviewed as soon as possible because the situation in Baghdad is "the worst in three years." But al-Maliki, on a tour of northern Iraq, played down fears of civil war, telling reporters in the Kurdish city of Irbil that "the people of Iraq will not allow that to happen." In a rare sign of accommodation, Sunni legislators agreed Tuesday to end their boycott of parliament following a call for reconciliation by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and promises that a kidnapped colleague would be released. The Iraqi Accordance Front suspended its participation in parliament this month after one of its members, Tayseer al-Mashhadani, was kidnapped in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. Many Sunnis blamed Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, although the organization has denied any involvement. "We have decided to attend the meetings as of tomorrow in response to the call by Muqtada al-Sadr," lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi told The Associated Press. Two of al-Mashhadani's guards were released last week. In other violence Tuesday: _Gunmen killed five Iraqi employees of a Saudi import-export company in the Mansour neighborhood. _An Iraqi diplomat on leave from his post in Iran was kidnapped from his west Baghdad home, police said. Iraq's Foreign Ministry said Wissam Jabr al-Awadi was a consul in the Iranian city of Kermanshah. _Gunmen killed 10 members of a special force protecting oil installations near Sharqat, 45 miles south of Mosul, police said. In Baqouba, gunmen in a speeding car fired randomly at textile shops, killing two shop owners and wounding four, police said. __ Associated Press reporters Kim Gamel, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Bassem Mroue, Qais al-Bashir and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.

Question hover over loon in GA

Questions hover over Reed campaign in Ga. By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press WriterTue Jul 11, 2:32 PM ET Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, whose campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor has been clouded by questions over his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is promoting himself as the candidate with "stronger values." His opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle, has responded by calling Reed's campaign ads the "height of hypocrisy" and questioning publicly whether Reed could be charged with wrongdoing during the run-up to the November general election. Reed seemed unstoppable last year when he first announced his intention to run for the seat. In his first campaign for elected office, he broke early fundraising records and scared other would-be Republican contenders out of running in the July 18 primary. Cagle, though, has gained momentum and name recognition since concerns over Reed's ties with Abramoff have grabbed headlines across the state. An investigation by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Senate committee last month found that two Indian tribes, which were both Abramoff clients, sent $5.3 million to Reed, sometimes using non-profits as intermediaries, to battle gambling initiatives that would have hurt their business. Reed has not been charged with a crime and has said repeatedly that he regrets the work he did with Abramoff. His campaign said the committee's two-year probe vindicated Reed and confirms he has not been accused of wrongdoing. At a recent debate, Reed reprimanded Cagle for implying he should be charged. "It's a low blow to suggest that somebody's committed a crime. As far as I'm concerned, you should be ashamed of yourself," he said, adding that voters will reject a "guilt by association" strategy. Cagle, meanwhile, questions whether a Reed victory could hurt the rest of the Republican field in the state's general election. "It raises serious issues for Georgia Republicans. Whether or not he's indicted is a matter for the criminal justice system to decide," Cagle said in an interview. "But I believe what he did should be against the law." Recent polls show the two running neck-and-neck and the latest finance reports show similar parity, with both candidates raising roughly $2.5 million. Cagle, though, is encouraged that the latest report showed his campaign tripled Reed's fundraising over a three-month period. To keep pace, Reed lent himself $500,000 last month to finance the campaign. Both have used the funds to fill the airwaves with ads. Reed's campaign has spent roughly $400,000 on media buys, while the report shows Cagle has spent more than $600,000 on advertising. Reed, who took the helm of the Christian Coalition in 1989 and led the conservative organization to national prominence before he stepped down in 1997, has been endorsed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (news, bio, voting record) — a conservative Democrat who has made a recent practice of endorsing Republicans. After returning to the Atlanta suburbs, Reed served as chairman of the state GOP during the 2002 elections, when the party pulled off upset victories to elect the state's first Republican governor since 1872 and gained control of the state Senate. Cagle, whose banking and real estate companies have made him a millionaire, has the support of former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes and state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who pulled out of the race for lieutenant governor shortly after Reed entered. Perdue, Georgia's governor, has remained neutral. The field of Democrats in the race likely face a tough challenge regardless of who wins, because of Georgia's recent Republican tilt. But that hasn't stopped Bobby Kahn, chairman of Georgia's Democratic Party, from attacking Reed's work with a "superlobbyist" and Cagle's pro-banking voting record. The Democratic candidates include former state Sen. Greg Hecht, state Sen. Steen Miles and former state Department of Human Resources Commissioner Jim Martin. Reed's campaign platform focuses on returning state surpluses to taxpayers, combining boot camps with classrooms to reform troubled students, and instilling more fiscal discipline by requiring lawmakers to write a new state budget every two years instead of annually. He also supports eliminating income taxes for seniors and restricting annual property-tax assessment increases. Cagle promises to hand school districts more local control, offer grants to encourage more parental involvement and choice between schools, and play a larger role in jobs creation. If elected, he hopes to grant the lieutenant governor a permanent seat on the state's economic development board and create a "jobs czar" within his office to encourage job-enticing legislation. ___ On the Net: Ralph Reed: http://www.ralphreed.com Casey Cagle: http://www.caseycagle.com

Novak: Rove was the souce for Plame outing

Novak: Rove was a source in outing Plame By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 54 minutes ago Columnist Robert Novak said publicly for the first time Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove was a source for his story outing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. In a column, Novak also says his recollection of his conversation with Rove differs from what the Rove camp has said. "I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection," Novak wrote. Novak did not elaborate. A spokesman for Rove's legal team, Mark Corallo, said that Rove did not even know Plame's name at the time he spoke with Novak, that the columnist called Rove, not the other way around, and that Rove simply said he had heard the same information that Novak passed along to him regarding Plame. "There was not much of a difference" between the recollections of Rove and Novak, said Corallo. Novak said he is talking now because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told the columnist's lawyer that after 2 1/2 years his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to Novak has been concluded. Triggering the criminal investigation, Novak revealed Plame's CIA employment on July 14, 2003, eight days after her husband, White House critic and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction. Novak's secret cooperation with prosecutors while maintaining a public silence about his role kept him out of legal danger and had the effect of providing protection for the Bush White House during the 2004 presidential campaign. The White House denied Rove played any role in the leak of Plame's CIA identity and Novak, with his decision to talk to prosecutors, steered clear of potentially being held in contempt of court and jailed. Novak said he had declined to go public at Fitzgerald's request. In a syndicated column to be released Wednesday, Novak says he told Fitzgerald in early 2004 that Rove and then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had confirmed information about Plame. Contacted Tuesday night, Harlow declined to comment. But a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter denied that Harlow had been a confirming source for Novak on the story. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Harlow repeatedly tried to talk Novak out of running the information about Plame and that Harlow's efforts did not in any way constitute confirming Plame's CIA identity. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Harlow may end up being a witness in a separate part of Fitzgerald's investigation, the upcoming criminal trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, on charges of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. In his column, Novak said he also told Fitzgerald about another senior administration official who originally provided him with information about Plame. Novak said he cannot publicly reveal the identity of that source even now. "I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves," Novak said in his statement. "I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue." Rove's role in the scandal wasn't revealed until last summer when Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper disclosed that Rove had leaked him the CIA identity of Wilson's wife. Cooper cooperated with prosecutors only after all his legal appeals were exhausted and he faced jail. While Rove escaped indictment, Libby has been charged with lying about how he learned of the covert CIA officer's identity and what he told reporters about it. ___ On the Net: Chicago Sun-Times report: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-leak11.html

The Enduring Logic of Withdrawal

The Enduring Logic of Withdrawal By Robert ParryJuly 10, 2006 Predicting the future is never an exact science, but one technique is to establish an arc of past events that points toward what is likely to happen next. If one were to apply that approach to Iraq now, alarmed U.S. policymakers might be speeding to pull American troops out as fast as possible. Another way to judge whether a policy is heading in the right direction is to go back to earlier milestones and ask whether a change of course then would have been a smart idea. If the answer is yes, it’s fair to assume that the wrong direction before won’t suddenly transform itself into the right one. Except for die-hard neoconservatives and George W. Bush’s staunchest followers, most Americans – if allowed to turn back the clock to March 2003 – would happily agree to give the United Nations weapons inspectors more time to complete their search for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Though it’s a bitter pill for the Bush team to swallow, even with a swig of fine Bordeaux, the French were right. If their advice had been taken, more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis might be alive today – and the United States might have averted a strategic disaster. Even looking back at post-invasion high points, like Saddam Hussein’s capture, many Americans might wish the Bush administration had opted for a “declare victory and leave” approach. But Bush saw each positive development as encouragement to press on toward a more total victory. In retrospect, Bush’s policy might be summed up by the slogan, “Who knows? We might get lucky.” Grim and Grimmer But, as the Iraq news grows grim and grimmer, the U.S. occupation of Iraq shows no sign of getting lucky. Sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites continues to inflict widespread bloodshed, while some U.S. troops have been fingered as trigger-happy participants in the slaughter of Iraqis. It also doesn’t help that the Bush administration – by lowering standards to meet U.S. military recruitment goals – has been sending unfit soldiers and even sociopaths into the baking-hot tinderbox that is today’s Iraq. In 2004, many military strategists shook their heads at the notion of putting the likes of Lynndie England and Charles Graner in positions of authority over detainees inside Abu Ghraib prison. But now the U.S. military is grappling with even worse scandals, the alleged murders of Iraqi civilians by out-of-control soldiers and Marines. On July 9, the U.S command accused five soldiers of complicity in the rape/murder of an Iraqi girl and the slaying of three members of her family in Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The atrocity allegedly was carried out on March 12 after the girl had complained about advances from U.S. soldiers at local checkpoints. A sixth American, Steven D. Green, was arrested in North Carolina on June 30 and accused in civilian court as the leader of the rape-murder. The former private first-class had been discharged from the Army over an unspecified “personality disorder.” U.S. officials initially said the rape victim was 20 years old, but relatives identified the victim as Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, whose passport put her age at 14. The rape-murder case, which has further stoked anti-Americanism in Iraq, comes on the heels of an alleged massacre of 24 Iraqi men, women and children at Haditha and a spate of other accusations against U.S. forces. Neo-Nazis The Mahmudiya case also coincides with reports that pressure to relax enlistment standards has opened the door to the U.S. military for white supremacists, “skinheads,” neo-Nazis and a variety of other misfits. In a report entitled “A Few Bad Men,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long kept an eye on violent right-wing extremists, said “military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way” as white supremacists enter the military. The report, written by David Holthouse, quoted Defense Department gang detective Scott Barfield as saying that neo-Nazis “stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across branches once they’re inside, and they are hard-core. … We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad. That’s a problem.” Indeed. Violence-prone white racists might not be the best envoys of American values to send into the 100-plus temperatures of Iraq where U.S. forces must deal daily with a myriad of complex and lethal threats. Even the best of the U.S. troops must cope with language difficulties and a foreign culture divided by centuries of hostilities between Shiites and Sunnis. The fighting in Iraq also has become multi-sided. In recent days, the U.S. military has hit both Sunni and Shiite factions, a development that recalls the bloody fighting in 2004 when American casualties spiked amid street battles that sometimes pitted Sunnis and Shiites against Americans. Like then, the U.S. military is mounting operations against the powerful Mahdi Army, allied with militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. On July 7, Iraqi government and U.S. forces captured two Mahdi Army leaders and launched a raid on a militia bastions on July 8. [NYT, July 10, 2006] The arc of recent events is clearly pointing in a troubling direction. Washington View Yet, while the Iraq military situation seems to be swirling into a downward spiral, U.S. policymakers in Washington appear relatively safe from the consequences. Republicans even believe they can use the war, again, as a partisan club for beating back any Democratic challenge to Bush’s authority in Election 2006. Any talk of a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is confronted with charges of “cut and run,” cowardice or treason. Republican political strategists also believe they have succeeded in stabilizing Bush’s political decline by sharpening the rhetoric against Democrats, the New York Times and other critics of the President. Both Democratic and Republican strategists have told me in recent days that they see GOP prospects for Election 2006 brightening, largely because the Democrats have failed to offer a coherent alternative on Iraq and the Republicans have swung onto the offensive. Reinforcing that point, Democratic strategists offered me two diametrically opposed views of why the Democrats were floundering and what they should do on Iraq. One school held that Democrats needed to tilt more to the right and select more conservative candidates; the other faction blamed Democratic leaders for demoralizing their base with mealy-mouthed positions on Bush’s abuse of constitutional power at home and the Iraq War abroad. In official Washington, the notion of an Iraq withdrawal is still not supported by many policymakers or opinion-leaders. The exceptions are mostly Democrats, such as Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. But Republicans and their right-wing allies remain eager to pound anyone who advocates an Iraq pullout. Meanwhile, most centrist Democrats and many mainstream pundits argue that while the invasion may have been a mistake, the U.S. now has a moral obligation to stay in Iraq until the violence settles down. There’s also the question of the United States losing face if a withdrawal is seen around the world as a defeat. Bush and other war defenders argue, too, that a U.S. pullout would turn Iraq into a base for international terrorism. Some war critics counter that the war’s supporters should have thought of those possibilities before plunging into the quicksand of Iraq. At Consortiumnews.com, in 2002, we questioned Bush’s “preemptive war” strategy [“Bush’s Grim Vision”] and his specific case for invading Iraq [“Misleading the Nation to War”]. In the days after the March 19, 2003, invasion, we cited ominous signs from tougher-than-expected Iraqi resistance [“Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down”]. Withdrawal Logic Almost a year ago, in August 2005, we laid out the arguments for a prompt U.S. military withdrawal [“Iraq & the Logic of Withdrawal”]. That article noted that Washington has yet to conduct a clear-headed examination of the worsening military situation, with Bush supporters simply saying “stay the course” and former war critics intoning “we must get it right.” “But,” the article stated, “there is a case to be made for U.S. withdrawal as the best option for both resolving the conflict and neutralizing the foreign Islamic extremists in Iraq. A corollary of this thinking holds that the continued U.S. military presence does more harm than good.” Basically, the logic behind withdrawal was that the removal of U.S. troops would undercut the al-Qaeda-connected foreign jihadists who represent a small but violent part of the Iraqi insurgency. An American pullout would remove the incentive for many young Muslims to go to Iraq and for those already there to stay. Meanwhile, the Sunni resistance might lose any tolerance for the outside extremists. With the U.S. occupation ended, the usefulness of the jihadists would be diminished. Plus, many Iraqi Sunnis, like Iraqi Shiites, are deeply offended by the horrific brutality of the al-Qaeda faction. So, rather than Iraq becoming an al-Qaeda base if U.S. forces withdrew, there is an argument for the exact opposite – and for the belief that the longer U.S. troops stay in Iraq, the more likely al-Qaeda operatives will put down roots and will be harder to weed out. There is also recent evidence that al-Qaeda shares that analysis. The terrorist group sees its goals advanced by Bush’s interventionist strategies and threatened by a prompt U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Overreaction As far back as summer 2001, U.S. intelligence knew that al-Qaeda was disappointed by the restrained U.S. reaction to its bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and was determined that the next attack – the one on Sept. 11, 2001 – would compel a much more aggressive U.S. response. If it were clumsy enough, that would help al-Qaeda. This al-Qaeda strategy was revealed by New York Times reporter Judith Miller in a 2006 interview with Alternet. Miller said a well-placed CIA official briefed her on an al-Qaeda intercept over the July Fourth holiday in 2001. “The person told me that there was some concern about an intercept that had been picked up,” Miller said. “The incident that had gotten everyone’s attention was a conversation between two members of al-Qaeda. And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the [destroyer USS] Cole [which was bombed on Oct. 12, 2000]. “And one al-Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.’” In the Alternet interview, published in May 2006 after Miller resigned from the Times, the reporter expressed regret that she had not been able to nail down enough details about the intercept to get the story into the newspaper. But the significance of her recollection is that more than two months before the 9/11 attacks, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack with the intent of provoking a U.S. military reaction – or overreaction. The CIA tried to warn Bush about the threat on Aug. 6, 2001, with the hope that presidential action could energize government agencies and head off the attack. The CIA sent analysts to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, to brief him and deliver a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” Bush was not pleased by the intrusion. He glared at the CIA briefer and snapped, “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” according to Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine. Bush then returned to a vacation of fishing, clearing brush and working on a speech about stem-cell research. The 9/11 Attacks When the 9/11 attacks occurred, the United States did hit back against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But after Osama bin-Laden and other leaders escaped, Bush quickly turned the U.S. military’s attention to the Iraq invasion, which followed in March 2003. After the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein in April 2003, al-Qaeda operatives, including Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, flooded into central Iraq bringing along a generation of new recruits. Soon, the group’s signature suicide-bombings were killing Iraqis and Americans alike. Though al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism appeared to be making a comeback in Iraq, bin-Laden apparently saw a danger in fall 2004 – the potential defeat of George W. Bush and the possible start of U.S. withdrawal under John Kerry. So, according to CIA analysts, bin-Laden timed his release of a videotape denouncing Bush to the Friday before the Nov. 2, 2004, election. CIA analysts concluded that bin-Laden’s tirade had the desired effect, giving the Bush campaign a last-minute boost and ensuring the continuation of Bush’s policies. [As reported in Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, or see Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA: Osama Helped Bush in ‘04.”] By summer 2005, despite Bush’s victory over Kerry, al-Qaeda leaders were still fretting about the dangers of a prompt U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. A 6,000-word letter purportedly written by bin-Laden’s deputy Ayman Zawahiri on July 9, 2005, to Zarqawi suggested tactics for keeping the jihadists from quitting if the U.S. forces did pull out. “The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal,” the “Zawahiri letter” said. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al-Qaeda Letter Belies Bush’s Iraq Claims.”] Compromise Another argument for American withdrawal is that it could push the Shiites and their Kurdish allies into compromising with the Sunni minority on an overall settlement and rewriting the constitution to grant the Sunnis a larger share of the oil revenues. Throughout the U.S. occupation, the Shiites and Kurds have had little reason to make significant concessions to the Sunnis because the American military tilted the power balance in favor of the Shiite-Kurdish side. As for the issue of whether a U.S. withdrawal would strengthen American enemies, Bush has argued that a U.S. pullout from Iraq would open the way to Islamic extremists controlling a vast empire from Spain to Indonesia. The claims are reminiscent of the Vietnam War, when U.S. policymakers warned of a “domino effect” of country after country falling to communism and when Richard Nixon said the United States would be viewed as a “pitiful, helpless giant” if it caved on Vietnam. In reality, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam did not have the dire consequences that were predicted. With an Iraq withdrawal, Washington also might be able to capitalize on a resurgence of Muslim good will, especially if a pullout is followed by a renewed commitment to seek a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and to support political reform in repressive Arab states. On a more tactical level, a U.S. withdrawal also would free up Special Forces to concentrate on tracking down and eliminating al-Qaeda’s leadership, an operation that was disrupted by Bush’s hasty decision to focus on Iraq in 2002. Without doubt, there are serious risks from whatever course of action the United States follows in Iraq. A bloody civil war could occur whether the U.S. military is present or not; U.S. enemies might be emboldened whether the United States is bogged down in Iraq or has repositioned its troops outside the country. One reading of the intransigence from Iran and North Korea is that those other “axis of evil” countries learned a lesson from Iraq, which stopped developing WMD and trusted that the U.N. could fend off a U.S. invasion. Hussein’s defeat demonstrated that only fearsome weapons could give pause to Bush’s “preemptive war” strategies. Neither Iran nor North Korea senses any great benefit from compromising on matters of their own national security. Plus, with U.S. forces tied down in Iraq, Washington’s ability to enforce any ultimatums is much weaker than it normally would be. Iran knows, too, that it can retaliate against any U.S. attack simply by unleashing its Iraqi Shiite allies against vulnerable U.S. troops in Iraq. So, there remains a compelling logic for withdrawal. But it is a complicated argument to make, while the other side can simply yell, “cut and run.”