Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone

[yesman065]

I was kidding Dana, but thats really interesting to know nonetheless.

[tw]

From the Washington Post of 24 Aug 2007:

Warner Calls for Pullouts By Winter
GOP Senator Suggests Move Would Prod Iraq
Sen. John W. Warner, one of the most influential Republican voices in Congress on national security, called on President Bush yesterday to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in time for Christmas as a new intelligence report concluded that political leaders in Baghdad are "unable to govern effectively."

There is no reason to make the same Vietnam mistake all over again.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by tw

From the Washington Post of 24 Aug 2007: There is no reason to make the same Vietnam mistake all over again.

According to Bush, the Vietnam mistake is that we aren't still there.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

According to Bush, the Vietnam mistake is that we aren't still there.

Those who rewrite history are doomed to rewrite it over and over again.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

According to Bush, the Vietnam mistake is that we aren't still there.

Which means he did not even read the Pentagon Papers. Oh. He also forgot to read a memo on his desk entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike America". Funny how Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill would spend hours going through a four page memo point by point with George Jr - because George Jr did not read that 4 pages either. Amazing how he need not read because god tells him.

After all, who did he consult before authorizing 'Shock and Awe"? Cheney and god. That was it. George Jr need not read the Pentagon Papers. His grasp comes from higher authorities. Just wondering which is the higher authority - Cheney or god.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Inasmuch as "Bin Laden Determined to Strike America" was completely unspecific and had nothing actionable in it, tw is engaging in the most harebrained of spin-exes and I'm calling him on it. Reading the report or not reading the report would have made no difference.

Tw, don't you understand how well informed we are? You cannot lie like that without getting your cock in the Cuisinart. Oh, that's right, this is how you indulge your subconscious masochism -- you bring it on yourself. Not something a man of integrity or acumen would do, seems to me.

A mindless prejudice against Republican Presidents is at work here -- and an absence of thought before operating the keyboard well in evidence.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

The second agent crests the hill to see his partner prostrate and the perp fleeing. He fired once not thinking he hit anything.

Maybe not.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, we went through that. bluecuracao posted a link to the testimony at their trial. It's way different than how the story was originally reported at numerous sources.

[Happy Monkey]

The article goes through how those sources got the story. The right wing noise machine can be halfway around the world before the "mainstream media" even decides not to bother fact-checking them.

[richlevy]

Well, the war critics among the active military seem to be at a disadvantage.

The last words of the op-ed written by seven soldiers serving in Iraq were courageous and poignant.
"We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through."
Sadly, that mission came to an end for two of those soldiers just three weeks after that editorial was published in The New York Times.
Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, and Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, two of the authors of "The War as We Saw It," were killed in Baghdad Monday when the five-ton cargo truck they were riding in overturned.
Another of the authors, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Murphy, was shot in the head while the group was working on the article.
The controversial Aug. 19 editorial gained international attention for its skepticism about the American war effort: "To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched."
The news of their deaths arrived as Gen. David Petraeus was finishing his testimony to Congress about the progress of the military's surge in Iraq.

[richlevy]

I try not to post 2 in a row, but it has been 3 days since my last post on this thread.

Greenspan Book Criticizes Bush And Republicans

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.
In "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.
The book is scheduled for public release Monday. The Wall Street

Mr. Greenspan writes that when President Bush chose Dick Cheney as vice president and Paul O'Neill as treasury secretary -- both colleagues from the Gerald Ford administration, during which Mr. Greenspan was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers -- he "indulged in a bit of fantasy" that this would be the government that would have resulted if Mr. Ford hadn't lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976. But Mr. Greenspan discovered that in the Bush White House, the "political operation was far more dominant" than in Mr. Ford's. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes.

There are a lot of critics of Mr. Greenspan. He had a very important, very high profile job for a very long time. Economics is not a 'hard' science, so his decisions will be second guessed for a very long time.

He does, however, have a reputation for intelligence, honesty, and usually tactful silence. He spent decades trying to say as little as possible in public, knowing the consequences. Now that he is 'out of uniform' and being paid a healthy book advance, he is starting to talk.

A lot of respected former military and intelligence people have come out against Bush's military and intelligence decisions. Now here is one of the most well known economic policy makers in US history saying what many of us already guessed, that there was no long term thinking in the White House when it came to fiscal policy.

This should get interesting. I almost pity the talking head that tries to debate Greenspan.

[tw]

Who do you work for - the people or for a political agenda? These questions are again being asked in Washington as more people in government are found working for a political agenda rather than for America. From the Washington Post of 19 Sept 2007:

State IG Accused of Averting Probes
Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, has repeatedly thwarted investigations into contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and censored reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged yesterday in a 13-page letter.

The letter, addressed to Krongard and signed by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who released it yesterday, said the allegations were based on the testimony of seven current and former officials on Krongard's staff, including two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used, and private e-mail exchanges obtained by the committee. The letter said the allegations concerned all three major divisions of Krongard's office -- investigations, audits and inspections.

Two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used.

Waxman accused Howard Krongard of:
_ Refusing to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts.
_ Preventing his investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department probe into waste and fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
_ Using "highly irregular" procedures to personally exonerate the embassy's prime contractor of labor abuses.
_ Interfering in the investigation of a close friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove.
_ Censoring reports on embassies to prevent full disclosure to Congress.
_ Refusing to publish critical audits of State's financial statements.

[Spark]

Seemingly after numerous prognoses of carnage during “March of Peace” for “reunion of Georgia and South Ossetia” rate of Georgian president had fallen near zero. Georgian authorities couldn’t gather enough those who’d wished to take part in this great provocation. And Ossetians prepared well to meet uninvited guests. So now they’re doing away feverishly from lists of assumed participants and making contradictious statements. Thus South Ossetian minister of internal affairs says about postponing of march till September, 20th. But state minister of Georgia for conflict settlement Bakradze and head of “caretaker administration” of South Ossetia Sanakoev announced that Georgia never planned such march. But it happened so that I was writing an article about march’ preparations. And I’ve seen those lists of participants with my eyes! And I’ve seen Sanakoev himself in Georgian village of Ditsi instructing pupils of 5th form of local school how they should behave themselves during that march!
So whom should I believe? Venal politicians or my own eyes?

[DanaC]

Hi there Spark, nice to meet you.

If you've seen things with your own eyes which contradict what politicians are telling you....then I'd say believe your own eyes

[Ibby]

Cause that had a whole bunch to do with Bush...