4,000 dead Americans

[snuffbox 0]

G. Gordon Liddy?

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

yup

[snuffbox 0]

I'm surprised Ambassador Marney hasn't yet cited that dumbass.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

G. Gordon Liddy is like a living, breathing Ralph Steadman cartoon.

[snuffbox 0]

http://seattlest.com/2008/05/01/seattle_longsho.php

[Atticus Chaos 0]

McCain slips up....

 

"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East," McCain said.

 

 

Although he backtracked and claimed he was talking about the gulf war not iraq: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iNxTApa...bEXw7gD90E0V2G0

 

 

 

[Firestarter 0]

McCain is a jackass.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Four marines dead on Friday.

[NoCalMike 0]

Former US official claims Iraq corruption sham

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

You know, I was watching Red Dawn the other day and thinking: thank God Iraq doesn't have high school football!

[SuperJerk 0]

Good news.

 

U.S. deaths in Iraq lowest since '04

Fatality figure dips to lowest in 4 years; civilian causalities also drop

 

BAGHDAD - U.S. military deaths in Iraq have fallen in May to the lowest monthly level in more than four years.

 

Officials said 21 American troops have been killed this month, four of them in non-hostile incidents. That's one more than the lowest monthly figure of the war, set in February 2004.

 

Civilian casualties were down sharply, too. At least 522 Iraqi civilians and security troopers were killed this month, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from Iraqi police and military reports. That's down sharply from April's figure of 1,080 and the lowest monthly total this year.

 

The improvement came as Iraqi forces assumed the lead in offensives in three cities and a truce with Shiite extremists took hold.

 

But U.S. commanders warned that the relative peace was fragile because no lasting political agreements have been reached.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24907569/

 

 

[snuffbox 0]

They're not deaths, they're just the end of a Romantic Adventure.

 

And only 21 this month!

[SuperJerk 0]

Nearby Firing Ranges Complicate Soldiers' Recovery From Stress

 

FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Army Sgt. Jonathan Strickland sits in his room at noon with the blinds drawn, seeking the sleep that has eluded him since he was knocked out by the blast of a Baghdad car bomb.

 

Like many of the wounded soldiers living in the newly built "warrior transition" barracks here, the soft-spoken 25-year-old suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But even as Strickland and his comrades struggle with nightmares, anxiety and flashbacks from their wartime experiences, the sounds of gunfire have followed them here, just outside their windows.

 

Across the street from their assigned housing, about 200 yards away, are some of the Army infantry's main firing ranges, and day and night, several days each week, barrages from rifles and machine guns echo around Strickland's building. The noise makes the wounded cringe, startle in their formations, and stay awake and on edge, according to several soldiers interviewed at the barracks last month. The gunfire recently sent one soldier to the emergency room with an anxiety attack, they said.

 

"You hear a lot of shots, it puts you in a defensive mode," said Strickland, who spent a year with an infantry platoon in Baghdad and has since received a diagnosis of PTSD from the military. He now takes medicine for anxiety and insomnia. "My heart starts racing and I get all excited and irritable," he said, adding that the adrenaline surge "puts me back in that mind frame that I am actually there."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ST2008060203019

 

[snuffbox 0]

Three more.

[SuperJerk 0]

Yet another round of finger pointing...

 

Posted on Thu, Jun. 05, 2008

Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel

By PAMELA HESS

Associated Press Writer

A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

 

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

 

None was borne out by intelligence.

 

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, has staked his campaign on his consistent opposition to the Iraq war. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, has trumpeted his unflagging support for the war, if not how it was waged.

 

The report released Thursday follows, by years, an earlier committee effort that assessed the quality of pre-war intelligence on Iraq and found it severely lacking. This report is known as "phase II" and spawned a nasty partisan fight in the committee. It plows well-tread political ground by contrasting what Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said between October 2002 and March 2003, when the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began, with intelligence reports that since have been released.

 

"These reports are about holding the government accountable and making sure these mistakes never happen again," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

 

According to Rockefeller, the problem was the Bush administration concealed information that would have undermined the case for war. "We might have avoided this catastrophe," he said.

 

Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said the problem was flawed intelligence heading into the war. "We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. And we certainly regret that," she said.

 

The Senate report, however, found that intelligence supported most of the administration's statements about Iraq before the war. But officials often did not mention the level of dissension or uncertainty in the intelligence agencies about the information they were presenting.

 

Two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, endorsed the report.

 

The committee's five other Republicans, however, assailed it as a partisan exercise. They accused Democrats of covering for their own members, including Rockefeller and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who made similar statements about Iraq based on the same intelligence the Bush administration used.

 

"It is ironic that the Democrats would knowingly distort and misrepresent the committee's findings and the intelligence in an effort to prove that the administration distorted and mischaracterized the intelligence," said Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the committee's top Republican.

 

A second report issued by the committee Thursday says Pentagon officials concealed from U.S. intelligence agencies potentially useful tips from Iranian agents in 2001, including that Tehran allegedly sent hit teams to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

 

The Iranians also told Pentagon employees at a December 2001 meeting in Rome of a purported tunnel complex used to store weapons and covertly move personnel out of Iran after Sept. 11, 2001, according to the committee report. In addition, the Iranians told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the growth of anti-government sentiment inside Iran.

 

The information was questionable, the report suggests, citing the sources: a discredited former arms dealer who was peddling a plan to overthrow the Iranian government and a former U.S. official whose leads had failed to yield any substance for the CIA.

 

Nonetheless, the report sheds new light on the mistrust and lack of cooperation by Cheney and Rumsfeld with the CIA and the State Department after 9/11.

 

Committee Republicans, in a dissent, said the report had nothing to do with the original scope of the review - prewar intelligence on Iraq. They said it would be a "disappointment" for people looking for evidence of Pentagon wrongdoing.

 

The report focuses on the series of meetings in Rome held over three days in December 2001. The U.S. was fighting in Afghanistan and working on initial planning for the Iraq war.

 

Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley authorized the meetings. Two Pentagon employees, one of whom worked for then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, went to Rome to meet with two Iranians - one a current member of the security service, the second a former member. Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian middleman already dismissed by the CIA as untrustworthy, also attended, as did a representative from an unspecified foreign government's intelligence service. Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon official and an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, arranged the meeting and attended.

 

In one meeting, Ghorbanifar pressed for a change of government in Iran and, on a napkin, outlined a plan to do that, saying he would need $5 million to set it in motion, according to the report.

 

The report said Hadley failed to fully inform then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about the meeting. But Hadley and the Pentagon were within their rights to conduct the meeting, the report said.

 

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Hadley notified all parties concerned appropriately.

 

The report said Defense Department officials refused to allow "potentially useful and actionable intelligence" to be shared with intelligence agencies. The head of the DIA was briefed on the meeting but was not authorized to keep a written summary or it or to discuss it on the orders of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

 

Ledeen said Thursday that the meetings were not kept secret from U.S. intelligence, and said he had briefed the U.S. ambassador to Italy twice about them.

 

"Any time the CIA wanted to find out what was going on all they had to do was ask," he said.

 

One of the two Pentagon representatives, Larry Franklin, now faces jail time after pleading guilty to espionage-related charges unrelated to the Rome meeting. Franklin told the committee he believed the intelligence gathered at the meetings "saved American lives." He passed word of the alleged hit teams to a special operations forces commander in Afghanistan.

http://www.kansascity.com/449/v-print/story/650665.html

 

 

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Nice report, but it doesn't matter. It's not like Bush or any of his upper level cronies will ever get punished for this war.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

From Drudge: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle4107327.ece

 

This is fascinating.

 

I do think Bush is probably a well meaning man who is either incompetent, or has simply made horrible choices (maybe both), and this sort of confirms it, if he is sincere.

[SuperJerk 0]

Here's a link to the report I referenced earlier...

 

http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf

[Atticus Chaos 0]

From Drudge: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle4107327.ece

 

This is fascinating.

 

I do think Bush is probably a well meaning man who is either incompetent, or has simply made horrible choices (maybe both), and this sort of confirms it, if he is sincere.

 

 

I think he was a good- but arrogant- man who had good intentions and did want to help people, only he's now beginning to realize history is not going to be kind to him and he'll probably be remembered as a monster. He knows he's screwed and its too late to do anything about it.

 

I can't quite bring myself to feel sorry for him, though. The amount of pain and hurt him and his cronies have caused can never be calculated.

[EricMM 0]

I suppose it is in response to this and ancilliary war related issues that Kucinich is reading his articles of Impeachment to the House.

 

I wish it would go forward...

[NoCalMike 0]

I suppose it is in response to this and ancilliary war related issues that Kucinich is reading his articles of Impeachment to the House.

 

I wish it would go forward...

 

It'd be nice if he had any support from his party.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

Wouldn't they need the support of 16 or 17 republican senators to convict? I know Bush isn't exactly popular in his party nowadays, but I can't see that many of them turning on him.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Pelosi isn't going to bother supporting that. It's all largely symbolic, anyways and I don't really see the point in doing this, NOW, in Bush's last year. He's got 7 months and 9 days left.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I don't really see the point in doing this, NOW

 

Dennis Kucinich's name hasn't been in the papers for like three months. Dude had to do something.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Want a good laugh? I present Ann Coulter's latest commentary:

In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

 

I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

 

Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from "Great" to "Really Good."

 

Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: "We're the Rape Room People!") constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did -- and I'm including remembering Monica's name on the sixth sexual encounter.

 

But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.

 

It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That's 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK -- or a landmark building, for that matter.

 

We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan -- the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.

 

The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is "standing up" (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr --the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism -- has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.

 

The Iraqis have a democracy -- a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq's democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change."

 

(Guess what Bill Clinton's campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: "bringing dignity back to the White House." It was "change." In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton's "constant talk of change.")

 

Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.

 

Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

 

It's almost as if there's been some sort of "surge" going on, as strange as that sounds.

 

Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.

 

But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we'd all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a "wannabe" terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.

 

We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good -- another day without a terrorist attack.

 

But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush -- and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of béarnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.

 

The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

 

...wow.

[EricMM 0]

As an aside, impeaching Bush would merely lead to President Cheney.

 

Yeah...

[Atticus Chaos 0]

There's something quite cultish about Ann Coulter's admiration of Bush. The man has a 28% approval rating because he's doing too good a job? Al Qaieda is virtually destroyed? The Iraq war is a stunning success?

 

That was actually quite a frightening thing to read.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I've often wondered if people like Coulter, Hannity, and Limbaugh are on some secret GOP payroll.

[Atticus Chaos 0]

I've often wondered if people like Coulter, Hannity, and Limbaugh are on some secret GOP payroll.

 

 

Stephen Colbert said once he thought Coulter was playing a character (similar to him). But reading that commentary...I think she believes it all 100%. That's why there's something creepy about it.

 

I doubt she's on any payroll because even the most desperate republican trying to sell the war to people would never go so far as to call it 'a stunning success'. It's crazy.

[Jingus 0]

Sure they're on payroll... just not the Republican's. Her rantings often have a "Russo was secretly sent to destroy WCW" sort of feeling to them.

 

I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

 

will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

 

We invaded Iraq to protect America.

 

The Iraq war has been a stunning success.

 

Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith.

 

But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen.

 

There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end,

 

John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

Yeah. I hope there isn't a sane person on earth who could write all that and actually mean it.

 

According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.

Hard numbers, plz. I would be really surprised if Iraq's daily death toll, for the whole country, is lower than that of either Detriot or Chicago as she's claiming here. And just the troop deaths isn't enough, you have to count civilians, terrorists, insurgents, everyone. Detroit and Chicago's numbers certainly don't just count the number of cops killed and ignore everyone else.

 

the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.

This is the thing which particularly pisses me off about the sort of pundit, regardless of party affiliation or ideaology. The aggressively hostile manner in which Coulter makes her claims has the general effect of making me not listen to a damn thing she's saying, period. She goes out of her way to insult and harass her opponents. She says right there that her entire mission is to continually shout the same shit until the other side goes crazy. And other stuff, like the fat jokes about Muqtada al-Sadr; what? Why these childish insults? You can't find enough in the man's words and actions to attack him, your main weapon is lousy cracks about his weight? And her absolute unwillingness to be the tiniest bit introspective, to admit the possibility that she ever has doubts like every other human being, her blind refusal to ever admit that she might've been wrong about anything... christ, even Marney eventually turned on Bush. (Not for anything to do with Iraq, but still, she doesn't consider him a friend.)