BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 10:57 AM

British shed 'war on terror' language

The term is considered too simplistic, and perhaps supportive of jihadist goals.
By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

A new direction? In New York Monday, British MP Hilary Benn criticized the US-coined term, 'war on terror.'

Daniel Berehulak/Getty ImagesLONDON - Britain is rapidly backpedaling on the "war on terror." Not the global effort to subdue jihadists, but the three-word phrase, much used by President Bush, which in the British establishiment now fear is ill-defined, oversimplistic, and excessively martial and Manichaean.

Government ministers were quietly instructed several weeks ago to avoid using the term, but matters were brought into the open Monday when a senior cabinet minister rejected the phrase during a speech in America.

Hilary Benn, the Blair government's international development secretary, told a New York think tank that the concept of a war on terror sends out the wrong message on two levels: It encourages terrorists by dignifying their cause, and it suggests that only military measures could be a useful response.

"In [Britain], we do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone and because this isn't us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives," Mr. Benn told a meeting in New York organized by the Center on International Cooperation.

His remarks may hint at a subtle political shift in Britain as it prepares for Prime Minister Tony Blair to hand over the baton some time this summer. Mr. Blair's close alliance with Mr. Bush has been deeply unpopular in the Labour Party, much of which is appalled at the Iraq campaign. When Blair leaves office, Finance minister Gordon Brown is likely to be crowned his successor, but a lively race for party deputy is shaping up. Benn is one of the leading candidates.

"The more dovish people in the cabinet have probably always been uncomfortable with this" phrase, says Michael Moore, a Liberal Democrat MP, who dislikes the "war on terror" tag. "The 'war on terror' signals to the center-left in Britain an American construct which is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, as though the more we say it the more we will create these kind of enemies." ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 12:23 AM

on May 13, 1939, the St. Louis steamed from Hamburg, Germany...
...Most of these Jews refugees would eventually die after Franklin D. Roosevelt [see Amos's good guy list] also rejected them and sent them back to Europe to face the Nazis.

Roosevelt was the leader of a democracy and his rejection of these innocent people was a crime against humanity.

Roosevelt's rejection of the Jewish refugees was the result of his fear that he would antagonize enough hypocrites in this country to cost him the 1940 election.

On June 17, 1939, the St. Louis docked at Antwerp. The end of that journey was the beginning of the Jewish holocaust.

Most of the refugees perished in Nazi labor camps, some fled to Palestine, some went into hiding during the war and then ended up in refugee camps.

Franklin Roosevelt, who turned away the Jewish refugees, has yet to be criticized for this crime against humanity.

Roosevelt's policy on Jewish refugees during WWII has been swept under the rug.

Only a small percent of Americans understand that Roosevelt would not accept the hundred of thousands of Jews who sought refuge before or during the war. If Roosevelt had adopted a policy of accepting the Jews and relocating them in this country, or to another safe haven, instead of turning them away, the Jewish holocaust would not have happened and this country would have benefited by this noble action.

And we would have less reason to criticize the French, who themselves were rounded up and shot if they were found harboring a Jew or any other "undesireable" or "enemy of the state."..."
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/15/224025.xml

"On June 8th, an eleven year old wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt:

Mother of our Country. I am so sad the Jewish people have to suffer so . . .Please let them land in America . . . It hurts me so that I would give them my little bed if it was the last thing I had because I am an American let us Americans not send them back to that slater (sic) house. We have three rooms we do not use. [My] mother would be glad to let someone have them."http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=303

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 08:23 PM

One of the most fundamental criticisms of George "I know how to lead" Bush was that his administration was completely underprepared for the consequences of overthrowing Hussein's regime. They did not plan to control the army, nor its arms and munitions dumps, nor the public installations, museums, hospitals or schools, water systems or electrical systems. They made no plans to deal effectively with the deep underlying tribal and sectarian schisms that Hussein held togehter sheerly by brutal force.

One of the consequences of this almost criminal negligence in responsible planbning is the plight of thousands of Iraqi refugees troughout the Middle East:

"By Peter Popham in Rome
Published: 18 April 2007
The Independent

The Iraq war was supposed to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, but to date its most palpable result has been to spread Iraqis throughout the world.

UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, believes that up to two million have sought refuge outside the country since the war started, and 1.9 million have been forced to move within Iraq in fear of their lives.

The agency's chief, Antonio Gutteres, appealed for help yesterday at the first conference on the refugee crisis, saying: "It is time that the international community responded with genuine solidarity and aid to displaced Iraqis and to the states housing them."

The flood of refugees has put a huge and growing burden on neighbouring nations, especially Syria and Jordan, which in consequence are making it more and more difficult for Iraqis to enter their countries. Others in the Middle East are battening down the hatches: Kuwait now never admits Iraqis; Saudi Arabia is building a fortified barrier at a cost of $7bn (£3.7bn) to stop people crossing the border; and Egypt is accepting far fewer Iraqis than it used to.

The conference in Geneva is being attended by Iraq, its neighbours and dozens of other concerned countries. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has given delegates examples of the brutal reception awaiting would-be refugees from Iraq within the Middle East.

A Christian man in Baghdad received a death threat and his son was injured by a car bomb, prompting the man to flee to Jordan in June 2006 with his wife and four children. When his wife's father suffered a heart attack, the wife returned with their youngest son to visit him but when she tried to rejoin her family in Jordan, she and her child were refused entry. She tried again, this time by air, but was turned back.

A 40-year-old Sunni woman, whose husband was murdered in front of her, and who was then gang-raped by eight men, flew from Baghdad to Amman, the Jordanian capital, in July 2006. The woman was only allowed to enter Jordan because she persuaded immigration that she was on her way to Morocco.

Even the option of moving to safe regions within Iraq is becoming much harder. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that "about half" of Iraq's central and southern provincesare turning away displaced people unless they can prove they originated in the region.

And increasingly the fate of would-be refugees comes down to religious and/or ethnic affiliation. At the Jordanian border it has become common for officials to ask if the new arrival is Sunni or Shia - and to turn them back if they are the latter. Palestinians have increasing difficulties both in moving around inside Iraq and leaving the country.

Iraqi Christians, members of the oldest Christian communities in the world, are particularly vulnerable because of their religion and because they have no militia to protect them. Christian organisations in the West have done little to help them, according to an Italian film-maker who has documented their plight.

But that failure to act is mirrored in the global community. Jordan and Syria have received about two million Iraqis, Mr Guterres told the conference, "without any meaningful support from outside".

HRW said the countries behind the war had so far failed to respond meaningfully to the crisis. The US is believed to have accepted 420 Iraqi refugees to date, although it promises to take 7,000; Britain has not agreed to accept any."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 01:35 PM

from the article:

Sliming Wolfowitz
The World Bank president did nothing wrong.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at 12:35 PM ET

"We know no spectacle so ridiculous," wrote Macaulay about the vilification of Lord Byron, "as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality." Change the word "ridiculous" to "contemptible," and the words "British public" to "American press," and you have some sense of the eagerness for prurience, the readiness for slander, and the utter want of fact-checking that have characterized Paul Wolfowitz and Shaha Riza as if they were not only the equivalent of Byron seducing his half-sister, but as if they were financing their shameless lasciviousness out of the public purse and the begging bowls of the wretched of the earth.

I ought probably to say at once that I know both Wolfowitz and Riza slightly, and have known the latter for a number of years. Anyone in Washington who cares about democracy in the Muslim world is familiar with her work, at various institutions, in supporting civil-society activists in the Palestinian territories, in Iran, in the Gulf, and elsewhere. The relationship between the two of them is none of my damn business (or yours), but it has always been very discreet, even at times when Wolfowitz, regularly caricatured as a slave of the Israeli lobby, might perhaps have benefited from a strategic leak about his Arab and Muslim companion.

It is scarcely Riza's fault that she was working in a senior position at the World Bank when Wolfowitz was gazetted as its president. And quite frankly, if I were he, or indeed she, I would have challenged anyone to make anything of it. Of very few other people working there could it so obviously be said that she held her post as of right, and on merit. But we all think we know about "the appearance of a conflict of interest," and so I would like you to read what the general counsel to the bank, Robert Danino, wrote to Wolfowitz's lawyers on May 27, 2005. His letter opens like this:

First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member.

Instead of settling the matter, this disclosure and plain offer on Wolfowitz's part has become the source of all his woes. It was decided by the board of the bank and the "ethics committee" that the board established, that for no reason except a private relationship, Riza had to leave her work at the bank. Feminists and opponents of the glass ceiling should begin paying attention here.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 01:16 PM

A persuasive defense of Wolfowitz makes a good case that the "scandal" being raised around Riza's raises are not of his doing and not really a matter of public business.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 10:43 AM

I find it hypocritical that President Bush, citing respect for life, has such a moral objection to the use of human embryos (five-day-old blastocysts, or microscopic balls of cells) for scientific and medical research when he had no problem starting and supporting a war that has caused the deaths of thousands and did not voice any objection to the death penalty when 131 prisoners were executed while he was governor of Texas.

I guess that in Mr. Bush's ideological world, protecting laboratory-created cells is far more important than preserving the lives of the people who might be treated for diseases, disorders and trauma as a result of embryonic stem cell research.

Michael Hadjiargyrou

Stony Brook, N.Y., April 13, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 12:55 AM

Amos:

Your shocking exposes that you post are noting new. You get over it and see if you can find something new.

EG: "Bush quietly authorizes opening of Americans' mail"

This is old news happened decades ago to a much greater degree but you don't want anyone to bring that fact to light lest it diminish the impact of your hate Bush campaign:

"during WWII FDR [on Amos's good presidents list] gave the FBI complete authority to lntercept all transAtlantic cables and a virtual free hand when it came to domestic surveillance, wiretapping and opening mail.

A woman got a commendation and a special medal from the government for finding a bit of microfilm under the stamp of an inocuous domestic letter that sent six German spies to the gallows.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 11:32 PM

That should read "declining", of course. Sorry.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 11:31 PM

Retired General John Sheehan explains his reasoning for regretfully devlining the honor of being Bush's War Czar.

His reasons do not reflect well on the mismanagement in Washington, which is endemic and chronic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 11:23 PM

Dickey -- one of these days you're gonna have to get over blaming Clinton for the evil empite. It just doesn't work, buddy! It's NOT a causal link, an exoneration, a justification, a rationalization. It in no way lessens, explains, or palliates the evil-doing you are so happily ignoring by your Gang in Washington. Get OVER it, Dude!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 10:46 PM

White House Reports Trouble Retrieving Messages
   
By DAVID JOHNSTON New York Times
Published: June 9, 2000

The White House, under pressure to produce thousands of lost e-mail messages sought by Congress, has informed a House committee that it cannot find any backup records for messages sent to or from Vice President Al Gore's office in 1998 and part of 1999.

In a letter on Wednesday to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Steven F. Reich, a White House lawyer, said that because of a problem in the computer system, the White House had no backup tapes for e-mail messages from March 1998 to April 1999.

But a White House spokesman said today that some of the messages might still be found.

Technical consultants have been trying to reconstruct thousands of messages that were subpoenaed in Congressional investigations but were lost, apparently because of malfunctioning computer systems.

White House aides were aware of the problem in mid-1998, but have said they did not realize its scope or significance. Some Congressional investigators have said they suspect that the White House may have used the computer problem as an excuse not to search the e-mail records for evidence.

Today, Congressional investigators said it might never be known whether the vice presidential messages held information that could have served as evidence at a time when the battle to impeach President Clinton was at its height and the Justice Department was investigating possible fund-raising abuses by the Clinton-Gore campaign.

Jim Kennedy, the White House spokesman, said today that the e-mail messages had been lost in a system upgrade and that some might be recovered.

''There are several ways some e-mails may exist, on the computers of individual users, in hard copy or copies sent to other White House users,'' Mr. Kennedy said.

Some employees of Northrop Grumman Corporation, the company that maintained the e-mail system, have said at Congressional hearings that White House aides had told them to say nothing publicly when they discovered that more than two years of e-mail messages were missing.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 04:05 PM

Gozalez' credibility takes another uppercut on the chin with testimony from a Justice official who quit.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 03:57 PM

Washington Post, 4-16-07:

Tenet's Tell-All Is a Slam Dunk to Provoke Invasion's Architects

By Al Kamen
Monday, April 16, 2007; Page A15

"The drums have begun sounding for the long-awaited book by former CIA director George Tenet, in which he gives his take on pre-9/11 days and on Saddam's huge cache of weapons of mass destruction.

And the drums are saying that Tenet is not going to get too many Christmas cards from Vice President Cheney's office after they read "At the Center of the Storm." Folks from down the river at the Pentagon, including former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz-- a guy who's already going through a rough patch -- and former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, might also get some heartburn.

Former secretary of state Colin Powell comes out fine. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was President Bush's key adviser in engineering the Iraq invasion, doesn't come out so fine. Not fine at all.

The White House definitely won't be overjoyed, we're hearing. Tenet even takes some shots at himself and for the first time explains his astute assurance that "it's a slam-dunk case" when Bush asked him how solid the WMD evidence was.

Tenet has never really explained his views on that comment. The 500-page book -- or more likely his "60 Minutes" interview on April 29, the day before the book goes on sale -- will be the first time he goes over that.

Tenet, who ran the CIA from July 1997 to July 2004, did the first of two days of taping last week at Georgetown University, where he's teaching.

..."

---

Do you suppose that civy street is really safe enough to let people breathe a bit and tell the truth? This is hopeful news! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Barry Finn
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 02:31 PM

She was making it with Condi? No wonder we haven't heard much from her lately, she's finally been satisfied.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 11:49 AM

Wolfie's girlfriend was making more than Condi!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 11:35 AM

"The facts are not in dispute. When Mr. Wolfowitz was appointed he was in a personal relationship with a woman employed there. Since working under Mr. Wolfowitz's supervision would violate the bank's conflict-of-interest rules, she was reassigned to the State Department, where she initially worked under Liz Cheney, the vice president's daughter.

She remained on the bank's payroll, and it now turns out that Mr. Wolfowitz helped arrange for her to receive a whopping $60,000 raise. Mr. Wolfowitz has launched a full rearguard action, apologizing to the staff, pledging full cooperation with any investigation, and appealing to staff members not to hold his "previous job" against him.

The issue isn't his previous job. Mr. Wolfowitz had already created enough turmoil in his current job to raise serious questions about his stewardship. The directors and the staff were especially incensed about the cavalier way in which he pursued his anticorruption agenda, paying little heed to anyone save a tight circle of advisers he brought in with him. What might Mr. Wolfowitz himself say if he discovered that a government receiving World Bank loans was making similar sweet arrangements for the personal friends of its president? There is no way Mr. Wolfowitz can recover his credibility and continue to be effective at the bank. "...

(From today's NY Times.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 10:34 AM

"..In the poll, 67 percent said they believed the prosecutors were fired by the Justice Department for political reasons, not on the basis of their performance. About eight in 10 Democrats and two-thirds of independents said they saw political motivations behind the firings of the U.S. attorneys, an attitude shared by 53 percent of all Republicans surveyed.

Overall, nearly six in 10 Americans disapproved of the way Gonzales has handled the issue. Among Republicans, 47 percent expressed disapproval of how the Republican attorney general has handled the matter, with 35 percent approving and 18 percent having no opinion.

With widespread public skepticism about the firings and low approval of how the attorney general has handled the matter -- 24 percent approved in this poll -- 45 percent of Americans said the attorney general should lose his job over the issue. Fewer, 39 percent, said he should remain in place; 16 percent expressed no opinion...."

Washington Post, 4-16-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 07 - 09:31 AM

Paul Krugman makes some interesting points about party dynamics in this editorial (Times subscription):

..."But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party's base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party's leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions.

Iraq is the most dramatic example. Strange as it may seem, Democratic strategists were initially reluctant to make Iraq a central issue in the midterm election. Even after their stunning victory, which demonstrated that the G.O.P.'s smear-and-fear tactics have stopped working, they were afraid that any attempt to rein in the Bush administration's expansion of the war would be successfully portrayed as a betrayal of the troops and/or a treasonous undermining of the commander in chief.

Beltway insiders, who still don't seem to realize how overwhelmingly the public has turned against President Bush, fed that fear. For example, as Democrats began, nervously, to confront the administration over Iraq war funding, David Broder declared that Mr. Bush was "poised for a political comeback."

It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn't mean to suggest that the president be given "carte blanche.")

But the public hates this war, no longer has any trust in Mr. Bush's leadership and doesn't believe anything the administration says. Iraq was a big factor in the Democrats' midterm victory. And far from being a risky political move, the confrontation over funding has overwhelming popular support: according to a new CBS News poll, only 29 percent of voters believe Congress should allow war funding without a time limit, while 67 percent either want to cut off funding or impose a time limit.

Health care is another example of the base being more in touch with what the country wants than the politicians. Except for John Edwards, who has explicitly called for a universal health insurance system financed with a rollback of high-income tax cuts, most leading Democratic politicians, still intimidated by the failure of the Clinton health care plan, have been cautious and cagey about presenting plans to cover the uninsured.

But the Democratic presidential candidates — Mr. Obama in particular — have been facing a lot of pressure from the base to get specific about what they're proposing. And the base is doing them a favor.

The fact is that a long time has passed since the defeat of the Clinton plan, and the public is now demanding that something be done. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed overwhelming support for a government guarantee of health insurance for all, even if that guarantee required higher taxes. Even self-identified Republicans were almost evenly split on the question!

If all this sounds like a setting in which Democrats could win big victories in the years ahead, that's because it is. ..."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 07 - 03:04 PM

What we need is a party like Superma -- interested only in using their powers to supprt Truth, Justice, and what was once called The American Way, back when there at least an imaginary moral code for kids to learn about. Post modernism has turned the American Way into the Barbarian Way, and we are thrashing about trying to find some Civilized Folk to hammer down the gates. But it is a tough row to hoe, no matter whose job it is. Infested with metastasized greed and a kind of ethical scleroderma, making the nation into a flexible, positive-oriented political whole is a daunting proposiiton. Some kind of explosive revival of spiritual earnestness without the luggage imposed by the neo-Con charade is in order, but God only knows where such an impetus could come from.

But you never know -- a new kind of lollipop, a sudden rise to fame of a single op song, a single movie with the right subtext, can swing a nation the way The Wizard of Oz and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" seemed to do back in the 30's. Seventy years seems like an awfully long time, though.
A lot of ruinous politics under the bridge since then....

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Apr 07 - 01:57 PM

I see that others feel pretty much the way I do about the state of the State. Just plain weary with it all. I think the next election is going to make or break this country. If the Repubs win again, I'll figure that there is no informed electorate, save for a few pockets of rationality here and there, and we can just write the whole thing off. If the Dems win, it's still not a slam-dunk, but there might be a chance.

Isn't there some other planet out there that we could get to and see if we can do it right this time?

One thing that I'm beginning to find either amusing or disgusting (a little of both, actually) is that when the current administration comes under criticism, the Bush apologists' knee-jerk reaction is to try to drag Clinton back into the discussion.

Hell, that's all they've got!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 07 - 11:30 AM

Thee Times opines:

...The more we learn about the White House's purge of United States attorneys, the more a single thread runs through it: the Bush administration's campaign to transform the minor problem of voter fraud into a supposed national scourge.

When the public first learned about the firing of eight United States attorneys, administration officials piously declared that many of the prosecutors had ill served the public by failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud cases (against Democrats, naturally). But the more we examine this issue, the more ludicrous those claims seem.

Last week, we learned that the administration edited a government-ordered report on voter fraud to support its fantasy. The original version concluded that among experts "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud." But the publicly released version said, "There is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud." It's hard to see that as anything but a deliberate effort to mislead the public.

Sound familiar? In President Bush's first term, a White House official, who had been the oil industry's front man in trying to discredit the science of global warming, repeatedly edited government reports to play down links between climate change and greenhouse gases. And then there was the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which turned reports on old, dubious and false tales about weapons of mass destruction into warnings of clear, present and supposedly mortal dangers.

It's obvious why the Bush administration would edit those documents, but why the voting report? Because charges of voter fraud are a key component of the Republican electoral strategy. If the public believes there are rampant efforts to vote fraudulently, or to register voters improperly, it increases support for measures like special voter ID's, which work against the poor, the elderly, minorities and other disenfranchised groups that tend to support Democrats. Claims of rampant voter fraud also give the administration an excuse to cut back prosecutions of the real problem: officials who block voters' access to the polls.

There is one big catch, as Eric Lipton and Ian Urbina reported in The Times last week. After a five-year crackdown, the Justice Department has not turned up any evidence that voter fraud actually is a problem. Only 86 people were convicted of voter fraud crimes as of last year — most of them Democrats and many on trivial, trumped-up charges.

The Bush administration was so determined to pursue this phantom scourge that it deported a legal Florida resident back to his native Pakistan for mistakenly filling out a voter registration card when he renewed his driver's license. And it may well have decided to fire most of the eight federal prosecutors because they would not play along.

It is vital that Congress get to the truth about these firings. Last week, the Republican National Committee threw up another roadblock, claiming it had lost four years' worth of e-mail messages by Karl Rove that were sent on a Republican Party account. Those messages, officials admitted, could include some about the United States attorneys. It is virtually impossible to erase e-mail messages fully, and the claims that they are gone are not credible.

The only solution is to get these issues out into the open. It is good that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will finally testify in the Senate this week. But Mr. Rove, who seems to be at the heart of this affair, should also be required to testify under oath — and in public. Even the Wizard of Oz eventually came out from behind the curtain....

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 07 - 01:10 AM

Wow--a critical piece on Clinton from 6 years ago. Of course! Just the thing to examine the Bush Administration.

Clinton was a very political animal, but he was not a tenth as corrupt as the current gang of tombraiders and scalawags.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 15 Apr 07 - 12:21 AM

Crooks in the Whitehouse?

Published on Sunday, March 11, 2001 in the Baltimore Sun
Democrats, Who Needs Them?
Oligarchy: The Marc Rich scandal shows how Clinton and his followers raked in big bucks from the rich and dumped working people, the poor and grass-roots activists.
by Jeff Cohen

THE conventional wisdom is that Bill Clinton's fall from grace over the pardon hysteria has hurt the Democratic Party. In fact, Clinton's disgrace is a blessing in disguise for Democrats, at least for those who want the party to stand for social justice and economic fairness. Had Clinton exited the White House cleanly, his continued leadership would have enriched the party financially but burdened it politically and morally.

When Clinton pardoned a fugitive financier on his last day in office, he appeared to end his administration in the manner he had governed for eight years - by obliging the well-heeled and well-connected, and by figuring that his rhetorical gifts and charisma would obscure the absence of principle. (There were only a few pardons for the thousands of nonviolent drug offenders, largely poor and minority, who fill America's prisons.)

In assessing Clinton's impact on his party, it's worth remembering that when he entered the White House, Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate 57-43, the U.S. House 258-176 and the country's governorships 30-18. Under his leadership, the party has gone from majority to minority status.

Another legacy for the Democrats is money-saturated politics that values party donors more than activists, weighing policy in terms of fund-raising potential. Clintonism is a zig-zagging ideology that seeks the votes of liberals and racial minorities while borrowing Republican policies in an effort to hew to "the center," seldom straying far from the interests of corporate America.

Since corporate dollars flow more naturally toward Republicans, the grubbing of the Clintonites for this same cash has caused not only ethical lapses but corruption of Democratic positions. In 1993-94, when they controlled the White House and Congress, it was the Democrats who blocked campaign finance reform. In 1996, it was the Clinton-Gore campaign that widened the soft-money loophole into a canyon that obliterated campaign finance laws.

Give the Clintonites credit for achieving the seemingly impossible: They've allowed Republicans to pose as the party of campaign finance rectitude.

The sad truth about the Marc Rich pardon is that it was not atypical for Clinton to succumb to the entreaties of major donors and their high-powered lawyers and lobbyists. Indeed, it was business as usual in the Clinton-Gore administration, like the corporate-drafted trade deals the White House championed and the 1996 giveaway to media conglomerates known as Telecommunications Deregulation. (Al Gore bragged about supporting media deregulation on his presidential campaign Web site.)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 09:23 PM

Glad it ain't juts me who is weary of corruption.... I mean, I almost hate to buy yet another newspaper and find yet more lies and more stuff tthat makes Watergate look like someone forgettin' to put the salad fork to the left of the dinner fork...

I feel like a prisoner on one hand and an observer to an exection on the other and don't much like either...

It's like the nightmare that just won't end... Every day thers are more lies discovered... More corruption... Hey, the old me would have started a thread about Wolfowitz's girlfriend but...

...why???

I kinda think of it as a coach who is winning a football game 64-0 with two minutes left to go and on the opponent's 5 yard line with 30 seconds left to play... I don't want to score again... I'm tired of scoring thou Bush and his cronnies are such patsies that I know if I call any play I'm going to score...

But, hey, I guess I'd rather be on my side than the poor losing side... Yeah, I feel for the folks here in Mudvilles who have so valiently defended Bush and his folks... No, I commend them but it's time for all of us to just let some of this corruption slip on by, let the historians sort it out and start countin' the days until Bush and his guys (and gals) are history...

But, hey, it's painfull to watch and it's painfull to wait for these crooks to get outta power...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 08:24 PM

I concur, amigo, but I am dubious that the cure will be quick. They have rattled the bones of th einfrastructure and rotted the timbers of the ship of State. There will needs be replanking, some kind of copper bottom laid on, and rewiring thrughout. The canvas is rotten in places and will need replacing. The spars have been abused and torqued and may need the same.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 05:28 PM

You know, Amos... I believe that the American people are in ***over-load*** with just how currupt the Bush administration is... I must confess that I am no longer surprised by anything that comes out... Yeah, I still don't like it but, geeze Louse...

...I have become weary with the new revelations...

This is like Watergate X 100...

And, just a thought, if I can become weary with new news of more corruption I'm wondering just how folks who aren't as passionate are feeling???

Too bad we don't have those folks to ask here in Mudville... I'd be real curious...

I mean, there does come a time when everyone knows the game is won ot lost, the last punch has been thrown and folks just go on with the rest of their lives... Everyone, with the exception of the "true believers", knows that Bush and his buds are as corrupt as America has ever seen and I kinda get the feeling that manybe a fan gets in the 4th quarter when his team is up or behind by 100 points...

Yeah, I slog away at Bush on the war but (horrors) I am getting bored with the corruption...

Maybe I just need a short vacation...

Maybe I'll fell different tomorrow...

Right now, Jan. 21, 2009 can't come fast enough...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 05:25 PM

WASHINGTON -- The fight over documents has gone to red alert. The White House acknowledges it cannot find four years' worth of e-mails from chief political strategist Karl Rove. The admission has thrust the Democrats' nemesis back into the center of attention and poses a fresh political challenge for President Bush.

The administration has acknowledged that some e-mails missing from Rove's Republican party account may relate to the firing of eight U.S. prosecutors last year. The Democratic-run Congress is investigating whether the firings resulted from political pressure by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the White House.

For Democrats, the missing Rove e-mails is one more chance to pound away at their favorite target, the architect of Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential victories and all-around White House political fixer.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 02:58 PM

An email from former Alberto Gonzales staffer D. Kyle Sampson, sent last January, may blow holes in the White House's claim that most of last year's U.S. attorney firings went through with no specific replacements in mind ... or at least that's what all the papers are saying. The email names five of the attorneys who were later fired and mentions possible replacements. Justice staffers previously acknowledged favoring replacing Arkansas U.S. attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins III with Karl Rove staffer Timothy Griffin, but claimed the other attorneys were removed without specific replacements lined up. None of the other four attorneys mentioned in the email was replaced by a name on the list. Administration critics claim the email shows the Justice Department planned to replace certain U.S. attorneys with department insiders. Sampson's defenders say that the email is just an initial list of possible candidates, not pre-selected replacements. The documents also contain evidence that staffers kept track of attorneys' GOP bonafides, including tracking memberships in the Federalist Society. Perhaps most interestingly, the later emails give a rare window into how a modern White House spins a scandal, with aides discussing ever evolving rationales for the firings.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 01:36 PM

Well, Amos is correct in his observations that the policies of Clinton, who BTW, I didn't like much more than Bush, weren't those of the pre-9/11 Bush administrations...

Richard Clark's testimoney before the 9/11 Commission painted a Bush administration that didn't take "terrorism" as serious as the former administration...

Revisting his testimoney (in it's entirity) will shed light on the specifics transitional actions he tried to get the new Bush team involved with that weren't acted upon...

Hisotians will get this one right though I fully understand why pure partisans will make every attempt to gloss over Clark's testimony because it doesn't jive with their never ending attempt to revise a story that is painfully clear to everyone else...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 01:22 PM

Maybe "attack the correct target?" or "get someone with brains to run the response team....".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 12:19 PM

Amos: How big, how widespread, what is the likelihood?

Has anything been learned from 9/11?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 11:31 AM

Sure there is. The question is, how big, how widespread, what lielihood.

This is nothing new -- there has been a terrorist threat in this country since the 1800's.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 11:22 AM

So there is a terrorist threat or did it go away after 9/11?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 11:19 AM

We will not allow terrorism to succeed and that the pursuit, arrest, and prosecution of terrorists is of the highest priority. Our goals include the disruption of terrorist-sponsored activity including termination of financial support, arrest and punishment of terrorists as criminals, application of U.S. laws and new legislation to prevent terrorist groups from operating in the United States, and application of extraterritorial statutes to counter acts of terrorism and apprehend terrorists outside of the United States...

is not a policy which "lead to 9-11". And the implication itself is despicable.   

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 10:07 AM

U.S. POLICY ON COMBATING TERRORISM
Combating Terrorism: Federal Agencies' Efforts to Implement National Policy and Strategy
(Chapter Report, 09/26/97, GAO/NSIAD-97-254).
Appendix I

      This unclassified abstract of Presidential Decision Directive 39 (PDD 39) is reproduced verbatim. The National Security Council (NSC) reviewed and approved it for distribution to federal, state, and local emergency response and consequence management personnel.

      1. General. Terrorism is both a threat to our national security as well as a criminal act. The Administration has stated that it is the policy of the United States to use all appropriate means to deter, defeat and respond to all terrorist attacks on our territory and resources, both people and facilities, wherever they occur. In support of these efforts, the United States will:

          o Employ efforts to deter, preempt, apprehend and prosecute terrorists.
          o Work closely with other governments to carry our counterterrorism policy and combat terrorist threats against them.
          o Identify sponsors of terrorists, isolate them, and ensure they pay for their actions.
          o Make no concessions to terrorists.

      2. Measures to Combat Terrorism. To ensure that the United States is prepared to combat terrorism in all its forms, a number of measures have been directed. These include reducing vulnerabilities to terrorism, deterring and responding to terrorist acts, and having capabilities to prevent and manage the consequences of terrorist use of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons, including those of mass destruction.

            a. Reduce Vulnerabilities. In order to reduce our vulnerabilities to terrorism, both at home and abroad, all department/agency heads have been directed to ensure that their personnel and facilities are fully protected against terrorism. Specific efforts that will be conducted to ensure our security against terrorist acts include the following:

                + Review the vulnerability of government facilities and critical national infrastructure.
                + Expand the program of counterterrorism.
                + Reduce vulnerabilities affecting civilian personnel/facilities abroad and military personnel/facilities.
                + Reduce vulnerabilities affecting U.S. airports, aircraft/passengers and shipping, and provide appropriate security measures for other modes of transportation.
                + Exclude/deport persons who pose a terrorist threat.
                + Prevent unlawful traffic in firearms and explosives, and protect the President and other officials against terrorist attack.
                + Reduce U.S. vulnerabilities to international terrorism through intelligence collection/analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action.

            b. Deter. To deter terrorism, it is necessary to provide a clear public position that our policies will not be affected by terrorist acts and we will vigorously deal with terrorist/sponsors to reduce terrorist capabilities and support. In this regard, we must make it clear that we will not allow terrorism to succeed and that the pursuit, arrest, and prosecution of terrorists is of the highest priority. Our goals include the disruption of terrorist-sponsored activity including termination of financial support, arrest and punishment of terrorists as criminals, application of U.S. laws and new legislation to prevent terrorist groups from operating in the United States, and application of extraterritorial statutes to counter acts of terrorism and apprehend terrorists outside of the United States. Return of terrorists overseas, who are wanted for violation of U.S. law, is of the highest priority and a central issue in bilateral relations with any state that harbors or assists them...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 08:35 AM

"The policies that led to 9-11 were not Clinton's"

Really? Care to give any idea how you justify that statement????

I guess all that training and planning before Bush took office was just in case he won.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 01:34 AM

You are a pure party dweeb if you think that, Dickdock. The policies that led to 9-11 were not Clinton's.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 01:05 AM

"The terrorism shtick should be vigorously prosecuted as acts of crime. They should not be elevated into melodramatic causes by being dignfiied as grounds for war. But they should be traced to source and individual prosecutions of the severest sort pursued."

That was the Clinton policy that lead to 9/11. Not prevention but prosecution after the fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Apr 07 - 12:50 AM

Well, Molly Ivins, who knew him personally, said that he was a lot of fun at a barbeque.

What a lovely thought! I keep thinking of him with an apple in his mouth. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 11:44 PM

Ummmm....

Hmm.

This is a tough one.

Hmmm.

Really tough.

Give me till tomorrow...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: dianavan
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 11:42 PM

Hello America really made me think.

Can someone please tell me one good thing that George Bush has contributed to the World or to America?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 08:40 PM

Hello, America!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 08:27 PM

Dear Mister President/


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 02:42 PM

ok

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 02:38 PM

Wolfowitz Apologizes for 'Mistake'
At World Bank, Jeers Over Pay for Girlfriend

By Karen DeYoung, Al Kamen and Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 13, 2007; 12:44 PM

World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz publicly apologized on Thursday for the "mistake" of personally orchestrating a high-paying job and guaranteed promotions for a bank employee with whom he is romantically involved, as new details of his role in the arrangement emerged and staff members angrily demanded his resignation.

The bank's board said in a statement released Friday morning that it was examining "all relevant governance implications" of Wolfowitz's involvement in a $50,000 a year raise and career advancement plan established for his longtime companion, Shaha Riza.

Bank executive directors spent Thursday reviewing the matter, and said this morning that the governing board is "continuing to investigate the facts concerning a staff member closely associated with the President." They are expected to consult with finance ministers, arriving from around the world for the bank meeting, before reaching a conclusion.

The bank, which is charged with alleviating global poverty, also released documents today related to Riza's promotion and salary increase. The documents included a memo from Wolfowitz outlining pay and career plans for his companion -- but also expressing "deep unhappiness" that he had not been allowed, as requested, to recuse himself from discussions about Riza's future.

Questions surrounding Riza's salary and career advancement have added to already tense relations between Wolfowitz and staff at the bank.

Wolfowitz, a former Pentagon official, attempted to address about 200 staffers gathered in the bank's central atrium on Thursday but left after some began hissing, booing, and chanting "Resign. . . . Resign." He had approached the gathering after holding a news conference in which he said, "I made a mistake for which I am sorry."

Bank insiders confirmed reports from the bank's staff association that Wolfowitz directed personnel officials to give Riza an automatic "outstanding" rating and the highest possible pay raises during an indefinite posting at the State Department, as well as a promotion upon her return to the bank. The Financial Times had previously reported portions of the agreement.

When he took over as bank president in June 2005, Wolfowitz insisted not only that Riza -- then a senior communications officer at the bank -- retain her job but also that he maintain "ongoing professional contact" with her, according to a knowledgeable source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal issues involved.

But the bank ethics committee, citing conflict of interest regulations, ruled that she had to leave the institution. It agreed to give her a pre-departure promotion to compensate for the career disruption. Until yesterday, Wolfowitz and his aides had insisted that "all arrangements concerning Shaha Riza were made at the direction of the bank's board of directors."

In its statement, however, the bank board said that a group appointed to examine the incident concluded that neither the bank's ethics committee, the bank's chairman or members of its board had "commented on, reviewed or approved" Riza's employment plan.

On Thursday, Wolfowitz said "I take full responsibility for the details of the agreement and did not attempt to hide my actions or to make anyone else responsible." He said that he had found himself in a "painful personal dilemma . . . trying to navigate in uncharted waters."

Riza left the State Department last year for a position at the U.S. government-funded Foundation for the Future. She remains on the bank payroll with a net salary of $193,590. Although the relationship between Wolfowitz and Riza -- a Tunisian-born British citizen -- and her eventual State Department posting were publicly known in 2005, the current controversy arose late last month after The Washington Post reported on her compensation package.

Page 2 of 2   < Back      

Wolfowitz Apologizes for 'Mistake'

During a meeting Thursday morning with the board, Wolfowitz said: "I proposed to them that they establish some mechanism to judge whether the agreement reached was a reasonable outcome. I will accept any remedies they propose."

After meeting with Wolfowitz, the board spent the day considering the report of a committee investigating his actions and considering his future. One bank source said that Ana Palacio, the former Spanish foreign minister Wolfowitz appointed as general counsel after her predecessor resigned in late 2005 over the Riza issue, was asked to leave the room during the panel's deliberations.

As its discussions continued Thursday night, the board received a letter from Wolfowitz asking, "in the interest of transparency," for the "immediate public release of all documents related to the Board's current review of the case involving myself and Ms. Riza," according to a senior bank official. The official said Wolfowitz believes that the documents support his statement in a news conference that he was the one who first raised the conflict of interest issue on his arrival at the bank two years ago and that he had also asked to be recused from consideration of the issue.

Wolfowitz said he had presented the question to the ethics committee and then taken its advice to "promote and relocate Ms. Shaha Riza."

Although few bank insiders suggested that Wolfowitz's job is in jeopardy, several speculated that his future will depend largely on continued support from the bank's leading contributor, the United States.

"Of course President Wolfowitz has our full confidence," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "His leadership is helping the bank accomplish its mission of raising living standards for poor people throughout the world. In dealing with this issue, he has taken full responsibility and is working with the executive board to resolve it."

But the Bush administration's point man on World Bank matters on Thursday did not offer similar backing. "There is a mechanism in place, and I am going to allow that mechanism to work rather than inject myself into the middle of it," said Timothy D. Adams, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.

One administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that other governments have remained publicly silent. "They're looking to see if it gets any worse and if we're going to really fight hard for him or let him fight for himself," the official said. But "his relationship with the staff is really bad, and I don't know if it's recoverable."

Wolfowitz bemoaned that the controversy threatens to overshadow the official agenda of the bank's annual spring meeting opening here today -- including ratification of a global anti-corruption strategy and funding to reduce poverty in Africa.

"In the larger scheme of things," he said, "we have much more important things to focus on." But as revelations and rumors swept the bank's corridors and the board remained huddled behind closed doors, there was little talk at the bank of anything else.

Bank staffers called to the atrium by the staff association -- which represents most of the World Bank's 7,000 Washington employees -- said that Wolfowitz appeared shaken when he stood before them. "There was not a warm and fuzzy feeling in the crowd," reported one staff member, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

Wolfowitz was passing near the gathering after his news conference as the association's president, Alison Cave, was reading a statement demanding that he "act honorably and resign."

Cave invited Wolfowitz to the microphone. He repeated his apology and said he would abide by the board's decision, and he left as staff members began hissing and chanting. Hundreds of comments criticizing Wolfowitz, posted on the organization's internal Web site, were released by the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower organization.

Cave asked that the board release all documents related to the issue, the same step that Wolfowitz requested last night. Among the documents, Cave said, is a 2005 memo from Wolfowitz to the vice president for human resources detailing the terms of Riza's outside assignment, including promotion upon her return to the bank from an upper-middle position to a level equal to bank vice president, "depending on the length of her external service." The agreement said the promotion would be subject to a performance review by a "panel whose membership would be mutually agreed" by human resources officials and Riza.

Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 02:29 PM

bruce, are you up on the Wolfowitz scandel in which he gave a girlfriend a special salary from the World Bank??

Employees of the WB had a meeting and verbally scorned Wolfowitz in one of the most heated and shouting meetings the World Bank has seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 02:28 PM

Barry:

"Victory will never be ours" You do not want victory.

"we don't know who we're fighting nor why we're fighting" Speak for your self.

Amos:

"I don't think the terrorist threat in this country has any of the dimensions that you think it has, in scale or power. "

How do you know what the scale is? Is Bush guilty of underestimating the power and scale before 9/11 and now guilty of overestimatimng the power and scale?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 01:55 PM

The Surge: First Fruits

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 13, 2007; Page A17

By the day, the debate at home about Iraq becomes increasingly disconnected from the realities of the war on the ground. The Democrats in Congress are so consumed with negotiating among their factions the most clever linguistic device to legislatively ensure the failure of the administration's current military strategy -- while not appearing to do so -- that they speak almost not at all about the first visible results of that strategy.

And preliminary results are visible. The landscape is shifting in the two fronts of the current troop surge: Anbar province and Baghdad.


The World Bank,
Stuck In the Mud
» Sebastian Mallaby | There is no moral clarity emanating from the World Bank right now. Instead, there is demoralizing scandal.
Robinson: Why Imus Had to Go
Ignatius: Bush's Power Outage
Dionne: Saying No to Fox


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The news from Anbar is the most promising. Only last fall, the Marines' leading intelligence officer there concluded that the United States had essentially lost the fight to al-Qaeda. Yet just this week, the Marine commandant, Gen. James Conway, returned from a four-day visit to the province and reported that we "have turned the corner."

Why? Because, as Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, the Australian counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, has written, 14 of the 18 tribal leaders in Anbar have turned against al-Qaeda. As a result, thousands of Sunni recruits are turning up at police stations where none could be seen before. For the first time, former insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi have a Sunni police force fighting essentially on our side.

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a major critic of the Bush war policy, reports that in Anbar, al-Qaeda is facing "a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition." And that "this is a crucial struggle, and it is going our way -- for now."

The situation in Baghdad is more mixed. Yesterday's bridge and Green Zone attacks show the insurgents' ability to bomb sensitive sites. On the other hand, pacification is proceeding. "Nowhere is safe for Westerners to linger," ABC's Terry McCarthy reported on April 3. "But over the past week we visited five different neighborhoods where the locals told us life is slowly coming back to normal." He reported from Jadriyah, Karrada, Zayouna, Zawra Park and the notorious Haifa Street, previously known as "sniper alley." He found that "children have come out to play again. Shoppers are back in markets," and he concluded that "nobody knows if this small safe zone will expand or get swallowed up again by violence. For the time being though, people here are happy to enjoy a life that looks almost normal."

Fouad Ajami, just returned from his seventh trip to Iraq, is similarly guardedly optimistic and explains the change this way: Fundamentally, the Sunnis have lost the battle of Baghdad. They initiated it with an indiscriminate terror campaign they assumed would cow the Shiites, whom they view with contempt as congenitally quiescent, lower-class former subjects. They learned otherwise after the Samarra bombing in February 2006 kindled Shiite fury -- a savage militia campaign of kidnapping, indiscriminate murder and ethnic cleansing that has made Baghdad a largely Shiite city.

Petraeus is trying now to complete the defeat of the Sunni insurgents in Baghdad -- without the barbarism of the Shiite militias, whom his forces are simultaneously pursuing and suppressing.

How at this point -- with only about half of the additional surge troops yet deployed -- can Democrats be trying to force the United States to give up? The Democrats say they are carrying out their electoral mandate from the November election. But winning a single-vote Senate majority as a result of razor-thin victories in Montana and Virginia is hardly a landslide.

Second, if the electorate was sending an unconflicted message about withdrawal, how did the most uncompromising supporter of the war, Sen. Joe Lieberman, win handily in one of the most liberal states in the country?

And third, where was the mandate for withdrawal? Almost no Democratic candidates campaigned on that. They campaigned for changing the course the administration was on last November.

Which the president has done. He changed the civilian leadership at the Defense Department, replaced the head of Central Command and, most critically, replaced the Iraq commander with Petraeus -- unanimously approved by the Democratic Senate -- to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy.

John McCain has had no illusions about the difficulty of this war. Nor does he now. In his bold and courageous speech at the Virginia Military Institute defending the war effort, he described the improvements in Iraq while acknowledging the enormous difficulties ahead. Insisting that success in Iraq is both possible and necessary, McCain made clear that he is willing to stake his presidential ambitions, indeed his entire political career, on a war policy that is unpopular but that he believes must be pursued for the sake of the country. How many other presidential candidates -- beginning with, say, Hillary Clinton-- do you think are acting in the same spirit?

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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 01:33 PM

Bush will not talk with Iran. Bush will not talk with North Korea. Bush will talk with Congress, but he will not negotiate.

He doesn't want to govern. He wants to rule.

Someone has to try diplomacy.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 07 - 01:11 PM

Regarding what is humorously referred to as "The Don Imus and Nancy Pelosi Show" -- two concurrent flaps involving the characterization of women -- in an interesting essay from The Globalist:

..."The Imus saga is as deplorable as it is over-covered by now. The man belongs into a corner of the museum of radio history, like an old and tired and outdated steam engine past its last economically useful puff.

While ostensibly clad in pure foreign policy reasons, Republican criticisms of Speaker Pelosi are soaked with sex-based type-casting.



The more interesting saga concerns Nancy Pelosi, a woman who rose all the way from sitting at her father's lap in her days as a young girl (when he served as mayor of Baltimore, then a significant U.S. city) to Speaker of the House — in her own right and not on any quasi-inherited track.


Outwardly, her critics describe the outing to Damascus where she sat down to talk with Bashar Assad to discuss bilateral issues alternatively as an act of impertinence, amateurism — and, yes, treason.


Going where no woman has gone before


As those fierce critics have it, she was stabbing the sitting President of the United States in the back. She was undermining his chosen course of foreign policy.


After all, legend has it, the debate over the course of U.S. foreign policy stops at the water's edge. Once abroad, all U.S. policymakers are supposed to sing from the same songbook — lest they risk misrepresenting the United States.


Representing the people


The doctrine about the water's edge is not part of the world of a modern democracy. Rather, it is part and parcel of a constitutional monarchy. And that is the real debate worth having soon.


Trouble is, Speaker Pelosi was hardly claiming to represent the President of the United States. But she certainly represents the majority of the American people — and, as her luck would have it given the report of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, U.S. elites.


The latter had argued in favor of a foreign policy strategy stressing dialogues — rather than empty, or desperate, threats of bombs.


Certainly, for an administration such as Mr. Bush's, it is curious to want to muzzle the Speaker of the primary U.S. parliamentary body at a time when the Bush team so ardently fervors bringing democracy and the right to free political speech to the oppressed peoples of the Middle East.


Going against Pelosi


It is no less surprising to read those same arguments muzzling — if not mugging — Speaker Pelosi on the very editorial pages which have stood with Mr. Bush's grand designs all along.


Truth be told, Mrs. Pelosi may not be the greatest of all diplomats — but it is surely disgraceful to the image and ideals of the United States to treat her in such a high-handed way.


Bad foreign policy


Pelosi was hardly claiming to represent the President of the United States. But she certainly represents the majority of the American people.


After all, most Americans — not to mention the rest of the world — by now believes that President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's foreign policy has been an outright fiasco.


At such a pivotal moment in time, it is key for the American people to show to the outside world in a hands-on fashion that there is a diversity of opinion at home.


And given the fact that Mr. Bush and his entire team are showing themselves completely inflexible and unwilling to talk with Syria, there is no law or rule that makes this disdainful course wise "...