Dobbs 3K

Link found on Drudge: Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president Ewen MacAskill in Washington Thursday August 23, 2007 The Guardian President George Bush sought to buy more time for his Iraq "surge" strategy yesterday by making a risky comparison for the first time with the bloodshed and chaos that followed the US pullout from Vietnam. Making it clear he will resist congressional pressure next month for an early withdrawal, he signalled that US troops, whom he hailed as the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known", will be in Iraq as long as he is president. He also said the consequences of leaving "without getting the job done would be devastating", and "the enemy would follow us home". Mr Bush's speech came on the day that the US suffered one of its highest daily death tolls since the 2003 invasion, with 14 troops killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed. In a speech to army veterans in Kansas City, Mr Bush invoked one of the US's biggest military disasters in support of keeping troops in Iraq: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people', 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'." The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the "Defeatocrats", the Democratic congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal. The issue is set to come to a head next month when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, gives a progress report to Congress. Gen Petraeus is expected to say that the surge has produced military successes but that there has only been limited progress on the political front. In relation to the latter, Mr Bush was forced yesterday to backtrack after 24 hours earlier expressing frustration with the Iraqi prime minister, Nour al-Maliki. Alarmed by the harsh reaction of Mr Maliki, Mr Bush hurriedly rewrote his speech to praise him: "Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him." The speech overall reflected the White House belief that it is shifting American public opinion behind the surge - the injection of 30,000 extra US troops into Iraq that has brought the total US force in the country to its highest level, 165,000. The Bush administration wants to keep the surge going until at least next April, at which point the overstretched military will be forced to begin reducing troop numbers anyway. Although Gen Petraeus has not yet completed his report, a Pentagon source said the US presence could be down to 110,000 by the end of next year. The army, as of yesterday, had no plans to replace five brigades, each consisting of 3,400 to 4,000 soldiers, when their 15-month tours expire next summer. Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, yesterday launched a $15m (£7.5m) advertising campaign in 20 states saying: "It's no time to quit. It's no time for politics." Mr Bush's former White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, who works for the group, said: "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective." The White House has been emboldened by a Gallup poll published yesterday showing approval ratings for the Democratic-led Congress had dropped to 18%, the lowest since the survey of the public views of the legislature began in 1974, and an earlier Gallup poll showing support for the surge had jumped in a month from 22% to 31%. Two of the most influential senators on military affairs, the Democratic chairman of the armed services committee, Carl Levin, an advocate of an early withdrawal, and John Warner, a veteran Republican who recently broke ranks with Mr Bush over the war, issued a statement this week lauding the surge's "tangible results". Mr Bush, until yesterday, had strenuously avoided making explicit references to Vietnam. It is a gamble, risking reminding Americans that Vietnam was a military quagmire and reminding them of the shambolic retreat from the embassy rooftop in Saigon on the day that a Black Hawk crashed in Iraq killing 14 US soldiers. But Mr Bush tried to turn the argument around as he made a series of contentious political parallels. He argued that US involvement in the far east had turned it from a continent in 1939 with only two democracies - Australia and New Zealand - into one where democracy was the norm: he mentioned Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. "In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule, in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution," Mr Bush said. Some historians argue that it was the US covert bombing of Cambodia that produced the Khmer Rouge rather than US withdrawal from Vietnam. Mr Bush added: "In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousand perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea." He said that there had been lots of critics of US involvement in Vietnam at the time. But he quoted from Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, the words "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused", implying that, with the benefit of hindsight, they were wrong, just as critics of the Iraq war will later seen to be misguided. He will expand on that in a speech next week in which he will say he has not abandoned his ambitious idea that Iraq could be in the vanguard of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Since the British government hinted recently that it planned an early pullout from Iraq, it has come under increasing pressure from the White House. US general Jack Keane yesterday became the latest American to criticise the proposed British move. He told the BBC that the situation in Basra was deteriorating. "From a military perspective I know what the [uS] commanders are trying to avoid is having to send reinforcements to the south from forces that are needed in the central part of Iraq. That situation could arise if the situation gets worse in Basra if and when British troops leave," he said.

Brock Lesnar.

Triple H is almost certainly going to beat Booker, the question is, how badly?

Any NFL team that dares to sign Vick after this will immediately have several hundred animal rights activists protesting outside their stadium, along with tons of negative news stories and commentaries. It's not going to be worth it to any team, when they can just draft the next hot star QB, if their record is that bad to even consider bringing on Vick.

I think I'd enlist for that one. I hate those damn Rhodies.

I didn't see the interview, but from what I understand, Carolla didn't ask him one serious question the entire time. I'm guessing Braun was just joking with him as a response. I have heard Braun labeled "confident", but hadn't heard these allegations of cockiness. I suppose the two can be easily confused. And yes, his defense isn't that great, but he's made some amazing plays he should have no business making. He just occasionally misses a routine one...but when he's hitting the way he's been, I don't think it really matters.

I always figured in kayfabe terms, that was because they were trying to wear the opponent down to make the finisher more effective.

I wonder if a new China-Tibet war wouldn't be in US interests. It might slow down their economy and cause civil unrest for a while, at the least.

This reminds me of a few years ago, way up north where my in-laws live, there was a pirated copy of a movie circulating around, which had been recorded in a theater off of a handheld camera. It was "Passion of the Christ." How wrong is that?

I'm kicking myself for falling asleep in the middle of the Brewers-Diamondbacks game last night...Jeff Cirillo, a career infielder, pitched in the ninth inning for the D-backs, and got a strikeout against Craig Counsell, apparently.

The big problem with ECW is that it's going to be hard to book any remotely long term feuds or storylines if their guys keep going to RAW.

So, will Lacey Von Erich use the iron claw like the rest of her kin?

How long before some Hollywood celebrity goes over and meets the new communist Dalai Lama?

WCW ruined a lot of their guys by booking them badly, especially the younger guys. I remember thinking back in 2000 that if there had been a WWF vs WCW showdown then, the WCW guys would've been laughed out of the arena because their roster had gotten so lame after the likes of Benoit and Co. had left.

To be honest, I'm not a gigantic Flair fan either. There are other guys from the '80s I'd rather watch. That said, I still found his book very entertaining. He explains a lot about what went on in WCW in the late '80s and early '90s that I wasn't that familiar with.

Flair's book is really good. There's a lot of stuff I never knew in it.

It doesn't matter because it's not going to change anything either way. Hey, waitaminute, here's the story I was looking for: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/16/...iref=newssearch BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The death toll in this week's suicide bombings in northern Iraq has risen to at least 500, local officials in Nineveh province said Wednesday. Iraqi Army and Mosul police sources earlier put the number at 260, but said it was likely to rise; 320 were reported wounded. The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday. The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to "break the will" of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation -- the "surge" -- is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said. The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop. In another blast Thursday morning, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a busy shopping center in central Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, Iraq's Ministry of Information said. Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called "night letters," telling them "to leave because they are infidels." "This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will -- almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point," Mixon said. Sunni militants, including members of al Qaeda in Iraq, have targeted Yazidis in the area before. Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed. Khalaf said the carnage looks like the aftermath of a "mini-nuclear explosion." More bodies are expected to be found. See a timeline of deadliest attacks in Iraq » The U.S. military said there were five bombings -- four at a crowded bus station in Qahtaniya and a fifth in al-Jazeera. The massacre comes ahead of next month's report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on progress in Iraq. Yazidi Approximately 100,000 Yazidis live in isolated communities in Iraq. A few members of the sect also reside in Syria, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. Ancient group worships a supreme god and seven angels in the form of peacocks. Religion blends elements of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Traditions are very secretive. Many rituals focus on the religion's chief saint, Sheik Adi, a 12th-century Sufi Arab who lived in northern Iraq. "We still have a great deal of work to do against al Qaeda in Iraq, and we have great deal of work to do against al Qaeda networks in northern Iraq," Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, said Wednesday. The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni extremists for the "monstrous crime." He said a committee has been formed to investigate. Ashraf Qazi, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, called the attack an "abominable crime aimed at widening the sectarian and ethnic divide in Iraq." Qazi urged Iraqi authorities to bolster their efforts to protect minorities. The Yazidi sect is a mainly Kurdish minority, an ancient group that worships seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe. A couple of related incidents in the spring highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis. In April, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities said was an "honor killing" after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him or converted, her attackers believed she had. The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another faith. That killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, according to a provincial official.

I doubt Mero actually ever wrestled Link, unless I'm forgetting something, so your thread title is inaccurate.

They could probably do about 10 volumes of the "Best Matches of WCW" or something like that, chronicling 1985-2001. I think they don't want to acknowledge WCW that much, though.

I understand that some of those guys are good workers, but TNA is flush with good workers. That's not the problem. If they aren't being booked well, they're probably better off in the indys or trying to get back into WWE.

I thought I saw something about 500 last night on CNN...I couldn't find a link. It's not like it really matters at this point anymore, either way.

Heard something about 500 people dying in Iraq yesterday in some bombings, or something. *shrug*

Bah, I don't know why people are upset about any of them leaving. None of them are a draw of any kind.

I do agree that it shouldn't cost thousands upon thousands of dollars to become a citizen, and shouldn't take years. But there still has to be a process. We can't just have anyone waltzing in when they feel like. It would be like saying "I need a way to commute to work, but I can't afford a car, so I'm just going to steal one off a dealer's lot." It's not a valid argument.

Fucking stupid. That has nothing to do with what I said. Let's cater to the lowest common denominator, though. Them dying in the heat isn't anyone's fault but the Mexican government's, for encouraging them to cross in the first place.