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Dem Leaders to Bush: Escalation of Troops in Iraq Won’t Work

Jon Ponder

Here’s an excerpt from a letter sent to Pres. Bush today by the Democratic leaders of the Congress:

We believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It’s easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future. ”

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid, Majority Leader

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker

The ‘Secular Fundamentalists’ Are Coming!

Buck Banks

God knockers: I suppose it was bound to happen. There are a bunch of pissed-off atheists and nontheists out there who have finally had enough of George W. Bush and the Christian Coalition’s attempts to create an American theocracy. They are fighting back with overheated rhetoric that sounds a lot like the Bible thumpers who think Jesus is their co-pilot and anyone who thinks differently from them is a hell-bound sinner. Well, seems the hell-bound sinners are fed up with the Christian Right’s antics and are responding in a movement some say has morphed from “secular humanism” to “secular fundamentalism.”

Apparently, the athesists and nontheists are mad as heck and they are not going to take the babble from the Bible Belt anymore.

That’s the gist of an article that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday. Apparently, the athesists and nontheists are mad as heck and they are not going to take the babble from the Bible Belt anymore. They’ve formed a lobbying group.

Now I’m no believer in God or Jesus, heaven or hell. I don’t even believe in the Pope, though I admire his tailor. And I can sympathize with the other nonbelievers who are tired of those who feel they need to have a friend in Jesus or rest in the bosom of the Lord insinuating their beliefs into the political and social structure of America. From opposition to stem-cell research that could save millions of lives to promotion of the teaching of intelligent design in public schools to having the Ten Commandments displayed in public buildings, the religious right has hijacked what originally was conceived as a deistic, nonreligious country. It’s the intolerance of difference, stupid.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they would just believe what they believe, sing their hymns and tithe in their churches, but they insist on inflicting what I consider to be childish superstitions on the rest of us. If you want to believe that there’s a paternalistic white guy who made everything in the universe in six days sitting up there in the clouds, I’m fully prepared to allow you to believe that and not invoke the Baker Act (as it’s called in Florida) to commit you to an asylum where you can receive treatment for your delusions. I think that’s pretty Christian of me, don’t you?

Used to be, if you had folks claiming to be speaking directly to God, you’d either hail them as a prophet, burn them at the stake or send them to the loony bin. Today, you give them their own TV show and the mainstream media dutifully reports their absurd predictions, and not ironically, either.

But if you’re an unbeliever like me, you are treated as if there’s something wrong with you because you believe a woman should have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, people of the same gender should be allowed and encouraged to enter into long-term relationships under the rubric of marriage and that Muslims have as much right to fly on an airline as a knuckle-dragging snake-handling evangelical Christian.

So I’m joining the Secular Coalition for America today. You can join too, by going here and signing up. You don’t have to believe anything except that you should be able to not believe anything you don’t want to believe without having the sims and the pod people shoving their Christian tenets down your throat via the U.S. gubmint.

Meanwhile, I look forward to watching the secular fundamentalists kick some Christian butt.

Biden: Bush Knows Iraq Is Lost, ‘Surge’ Goal Is to Delay Collapse Until ’08

Jon Ponder
Nothing can stop Bush’s war escalation except public outrage at the obscenity of a president sending troops to die for no other purposes than to burnish his epitaph.

Operation Save My Legacy: As we have been saying in these pages (here and here, for starters), the “surge” President Bush will announce next week has nothing to do with “winning” in Iraq and everything to do with tamping down the violence sufficiently so that Bush and Rove can create a false reality of “victory” before they leave office. Ever the coward, Bush plans to hand off the inevitable U.S. retreat from Iraq, and the bloodbath that will ensue, to the next president.

While this president’s objectives are nakedly obvious from where I sit, 3,000 miles from Capitol Hill, Beltway media and political insiders have been playing dumb about Bush’s audacious double-down in American blood and treasure. That is, until today, when Sen. Joe Biden spoke up:

[Biden]said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,” in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

“I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost,” Biden said. “They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy — literally, not figuratively

Biden’s senatorial hemming and hawing is maddening — he has reached a “tentative conclusion” that the Bushies know they have screwed up the war? “Tentative” conclusions can be withdrawn later. Sounds like wiggle room to me.

Even the Republican were occasionally criticial of Bush’s war when they held power. They never took action, of course — and the question now is, what will Joe Biden and the Democrats do to force the president to end the worst military operation in American history, if not in the history of the world.

The answer is, probably not much — not unless the American middle class finally becomes as outraged as they should be that the same president who started this war for no reason other than aristocratic whim is now planning to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more American troops for no other purpose than to burnish his epitaph.

Democratic Senate’s Top 10 Action Items

Jon Ponder

Bob Geiger has the complete list but here are the bullet points:

1. Ethics reform.

2. Raising the minimum wage.

3. Reform the Medicare Prescription Drug program.

4. Acting on the 9/11 Commission Recommendations.

5. Funding stem cell research.

6. Energy reform.

7. Easing the financial burden of college tuition.

8. Strengthening and rebuilding America’s military.

9. Comprehensive immigration reform.

10. Pay-as-you-go legislation.

Sounds like a pretty good start.

If Obama’s Past Drug Use Is Fair Game So Is Bush’s

Jon Ponder

The issue is no longer simply how and why Bush has successfully dodged the topic for his entire political career. The story now should be why the press has treated him with kid gloves for so long.
— John Seery

The folks at Fox News were discussing Barack Obama’s admission in a book 11 years ago that he’d used drugs in his youth when the show’s hostess went off script and brought up Pres. Bush’s use of cocaine in his youth:

Their conversation took an unusual turn, however, when Fox reporter Kirian Chetry said President Bush had also admitted to using cocaine.

Obama “talks very candidly, as did our current president, who admitted to using cocaine, correct? [Others demur] Well, who wrote, somebody wrote in a book — well, he admitted that he had an alcoholic, he had a drinking problem. Who was it who said they witnessed him using cocaine? It was somebody who wrote a book…”

As her colleagues tried to talk her down from the line of discussion, Chetry responded, “Okay, okay, fine, but there were questions about the current president and whether he used cocaine or not as a young guy, but there’s something about turning your life around…that people can accept.”

John Seery, who wrote about Bush’s cocaine-abusing past back in the 2000 election, has this take on the Fox segment in the Huffington Post:

Whew, that was a close one! Fox News surely didn’t want to open that door into Bush’s creepy closet, and they tried to slam it shut. Maybe the stress of the Iraq War, compounded by the growing abundance of Afghani poppy plants, is triggering memory flashbacks. Whatever the reason, the “cocaine issue” is back in the news–it just won’t go away.

What amazes me is that here we are, six years into Bush’s presidency, and the press still refuses to treat the longstanding stories about Bush’s cocaine use with the severity and scrutiny that such charges surely deserve, given the high level stakes involved. The issue is no longer simply how and why Bush has successfully dodged the topic for his entire political career. The story now should be why the press has treated him with kid gloves for so long.

The cocaine story came up in August 1999. Here’s a CNN article from the time that sums up events around Bush’s non-admission:

[…]

Bush Illegally Gives Himself Power to Open Your Mail

Jon Ponder

First, he admitted to listening to phone calls illegally. Now this:

“Despite the president’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant.”
— Rep. Henry Waxman (D-West Hollywood), Chair of Oversight committee

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the New York Daily News has learned.

The president asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Bush’s move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

“Despite the president’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

Pat the Predictor Has Been Talking to God Again

Buck Banks

Obnoxious prognosticator: Pat Robertson and God were chewing the fat the other day, you know, jaw-jacking, and God told Pat that terrorists are going to attack the United States in 2007, causing a “mass killing.” But “I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” Robertson told the audience of The 700 Club, his television platform for launching his nutty announcements on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

The Associated Press looked at some of Pat’s other God-given predictions and outrageous statements from the past:

Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians.

The broadcaster predicted in January 2004 that President Bush would easily win re-election.

Bush won 51 percent of the vote that fall, beating Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In 2005, Robertson predicted that Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts.

Lawmakers confirmed Bush’s 2005 nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. But the president’s Social Security initiative was stalled.

In May, Robertson said God told him that storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America’s coastline in 2006.

Even though the U.S. was not hit with a tsunami, Robertson on Tuesday cited last spring’s heavy rains and flooding in New England as partly fulfilling the prediction.

And don’t forget Pat’s call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Regarding the accuracy of his prophecy, Robertson said, “I have a relatively good track record. Sometimes I miss.”

Gee, Pat, I thought God was making the predictions and just telling you about them. Are you insinuating that God is not infallible? Or do you need to have your hearing checked?

First Muslim U.S. Rep Will Take Oath On Thomas Jefferson’s Koran

Jon Ponder

This ought to shut up Rep. Virgil Goode, the bigot from the Virginia mountains:

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Pick Up the Phone, Give Us a Call

Buck Banks

Dial tone: The merger of our two all-time least favorite media companies — Bell South and AT&T — has created what is likely to be the all-time worst media company, but has also created the world’s largest politcal action committee donor to federal elections, according the Congressional Quarterly.

The combined contributions to federal candidates totals $2,740,883 for the 2005-2006 election cycle through 11/27/06. The total may go higher when activity is reported for the 11/28-12/31 period.

The combination of the two corporation’s federal PAC giving totals $3,911,758. This includes the $2,740,883 to federal candidates; an additional $784,125 being given in the same period to leadership PACs; $260,000 more given to national party committees, and $126,750 more to other party committees.

With these two PACs becoming affiliated they will share a common contribution limit to specific candidates. This may affect the future amount contributed.

Here’s CQ’s ranking of top corporate PAC givers. Trish, please note that United Parcel Service gave more than twice as much to Republicans as it did to Dems. But then, so did FedEx.