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The war in Iraq continues to tarnish the approval ratings of President Bush. Evaluations of the way Mr. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, how he is handling foreign policy, and how he is handling his job overall are now at their lowest levels ever in his presidency.
Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating has continued to decline. Forty-one percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 52 percent disapprove — the lowest overall job rating of his presidency. Two weeks ago, 44 percent approved. A year ago, two-thirds did.
Sixty-one percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while just 34 percent approve.
As concern about the situation in Iraq grows, 65 percent now say the country is on the wrong track — matching the highest number ever recorded in CBS News Polls, which began asking this question in the mid-1980's. Only 30 percent currently say things in this country are headed in the right direction. One year ago, in April 2003, 56 percent of Americans said the country was headed in the right direction.
The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was back in November 1994. Then, Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades.
Majorities disapprove of the way Mr. Bush is handling foreign policy and the economy. Terrorism remains the only positive area for the president — a majority of 51 percent approve of the way he is handling the campaign against terrorism. But that number matches his lowest rating ever on terrorism.
Went to a fundraiser for Joe Hoeffel this evening. Here's a picture of Governor Dean and Mrs. Atrios. Sadly, it appears my thumb accidentally got in the way of the photograph.
Serious: Thanks all! About 1350 of you donated, which is really incredible. I'm bad at writing gushing thank yous, but I'm more than grateful for the support.
Now, back to business. Let's get back to work on the trifecta - President Kerry, Majority Leader Daschle, and Speaker Pelosi.
In other news, winter has officially arrived here. The rain has started and all the sand and dust has turned to mud. My pants are perpetually dirty- splattered with mud- and my boots are looking very rough indeed! War is hell.
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Hillary Clinton is coming here tomorrow. For her sake I hope I don’t see her. I might do something crazy like spit in her direction. Actually, General Tant, right before the President came onto the podium, had a funny line. When Bremer said ‘someone more senior,’ Tant turned to me and commented: ‘If Hillary Clinton shows up I am leaving.’ I heard that tonight in Afghanistan, where she is making a stop, the troops were more interested in the food than her. Go figure.
Reader m writes in to say that the story from Newsday linked below, which was a piece by Knut Royce regarding Chalabi, has been replaced by a more innocuous AP story.
The Royce story still exists at this link, so I'm not sure what the deal is.
Anything amusing on the Sunday talk shows this week? I Tivo most of them, but I can't stand to watch them anymore unless someone brings something fun to my attention.
McCain was bitching about this various places on Friday but it didn't seem to get much attention. So many anonymous white house officials to interview about how manly president codpiece is. Time finally picks it up:
Another big stack of pages is causing concern over at the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is investigating abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Committee aides discovered belatedly that their copy of the 6,000-page report on prison abuses produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba might not be complete. The copy they got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes, and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages were missing. "We'd certainly like to know why they're missing," said Republican Senator John McCain. Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita insisted, "If there is some shortfall in what was provided, it was an oversight." Committee staff members haven't actually counted the pages. Chairman John Warner will investigate this week to see what is missing.
It's not even funny to say anymore, but Jeebus...imagine if Clinton were pulling this shit?
Iraq is being run by a bunch of fucking Young Republicans. Read the whole thing, but just to give you an idea:
For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.
And while the Pentagon's assumptions of an ecstatic, sweets-and-flowers-bearing populace that would welcome the occupiers as liberators may have been understandable in February 2003, Feith continued to let ideology rule his decisions long after the "major combat operations" ended. Last September, Knight Ridder reported that Paul Bremer's request for more than 220 employees for the occupation had yet to be approved. Guess who was to blame? "It is taking forever because Feith only wants true believers to get through the gate," a senior administration official said."
More such "help" may be on the way in the person of Rich Galen, veteran GOP-spin meister, former spokesman for Vice President Dan Quayle and onetime head of Newt Gingrich's GOPAC. In late October, Galen received the call to serve his country in Iraq as yet another of Bremer's Senior Advisors. His gig? Adding more artillery to the Iraq War spin operation. "My job," Galen told The New York Post before shipping off, "will be to help reporters on the ground find interesting stories that they can use. If there's a civil-affairs unit out of Manhattan that rebuilt a school, it might be of interest to Channel 5 but not to a network."
CPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. "Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats," said one CPA official. "It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk."
"They are all on the campaign trail," said another official. "They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration." "I don't always know if they are Republicans," said yet another senior CPAer. "But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies." They're trying to do the right thing, this official adds, "but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create."
It's also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam's marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: "They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing."
A military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case testified that a captain at the Baghdad prison said the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Iraq was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse," according to a recording of a military hearing obtained by The Washington Post.
The lawyer said he was told that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, also said a sergeant at the prison was prepared to testify that intelligence officers told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do."
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A Defense Department spokesman today referred questions about Sanchez to U.S. military officials in the Middle East, cautioning that statements by defense lawyers or their clients should be treated with "appropriate caution." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq, said Sanchez was unavailable for comment last night but would "enjoy the opportunity" to respond later.
At the April hearing, Shuck also said Reese would testify that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, who supervised the military intelligence operation at Abu Ghraib, was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure, what the accused was doing," Shuck said in the hearing, which was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad. The Post obtained a transcript of the hearing today.
In the transcript, Shuck said Reese was disturbed by the military intelligence techniques.
"They said that there were some strange (inaudible) by the MI [military intelligence]," Shuck said. "They said, 'What's all this nudity about, this posturing, positioning, withholding food and water? Where's the Geneva Conventions being followed
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"We intend to seek immunity for a myriad of officers who are unwilling to participate in the search for the truth without protecting themselves," Myers said today.
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) President Bush suffered cuts and bruises early Saturday afternoon while mountain biking on his ranch. He was on the 16th mile of a 17-mile ride when he fell, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
Bush suffered minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, upper lip, nose, right hand, and both knees, Duffy said. The accident occurred while he was riding with members of the Secret Service and his personal physician, Dr. Richard Tubbs.
Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" and assume political power from the U.S.-led coalition, President George W. Bush said Thursday as his administration began to roll out a rough plan for the June 30 transition of authority.
I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for.
...here's the full speech and here's how the usual suspects reacted to it at the time (note, Neal Pollack's response was satire, though it was hard to tell...)
Lugar just isn't enough. We really need one of the real knuckledraggers to do something like this, not just one of the old guard types. But, I guess it's a start.
In response to September 11, 2001, the United States has created a new Department of Homeland Security, improved airport and seaport security, reconfigured our military weapons and tactics, and scrutinized the efficiency of our intelligence services. All of these steps may help to make us safer. But taking military action against terrorists and their supporters and improving homeland defense are not the same as executing a global strategy designed to overcome terrorism. Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security. But the war on terrorism will not be won through attrition - particularly since military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States. Nor is the threat or use of military force likely to achieve national realignments that mitigate the extreme danger posed by terrorism in an age when weapons and materials of mass destruction are increasingly available.
Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
The United States, as a nation, simply has not made this commitment. We are worried about terrorism, but the evolution of national security policy has not kept up with the threat. We have relied heavily on military options and unilateral approaches that weakened our alliances. We have engaged in self-flagellation over the September 11 tragedy rather than executing affirmative global strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of terrorism.
He even used that dreaded phrase "root causes" just to explode the brains of the freepi.
WASHINGTON, May 22 — Presented last fall with a detailed catalog of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the American military responded on Dec. 24 with a confidential letter asserting that many Iraqi prisoners were not entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The letter, drafted by military lawyers and signed by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, emphasized the "military necessity" of isolating some inmates at the prison for interrogation because of their "significant intelligence value," and said that prisoners held as security risks could legally be treated differently from prisoners of war or ordinary criminals.
But the military insisted that there were "clear procedures governing interrogation to ensure approaches do not amount to inhumane treatment."
In recent public statements, Bush administration officials have said that the Geneva Conventions were "fully applicable" in Iraq. That has put American-run prisons in Iraq in a different category from those in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been declared unlawful combatants not eligible for protection. However, the Dec. 24 letter appears to undermine administration assertions of the conventions' broad application in Iraq.
Yglesias is right that someone in the GOP, and not one of the usual "mavericks" like McCain, but someone, as he says, "awful" like the Senate's evil little troll Jeff Sessions, is going to have to come right out and say that the Iraq is FUBAR and it's all the Bushies' fault.
Sadly, I just can't see it happening. Over the past 4 years the GOP has transformed itself from the party of "anti-Clinton" to the party of George W. Bush. He has become the personification of the party - it's become rather personality cult-like. Members of Congress are motivated by some combination of a desire to "do good" (as defined by them personally - this could include all kinds of bad stuff) and "get re-elected," with the latter one having a rather heavy weight. If they push Bush over a cliff, he'll bring them all down with him.
If the calendar said 2003 that scenario would be possible. But, I don't see it happening.
The Bush administration has refused to answer repeated requests from the Sept. 11 commission about who authorized flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of 2001.
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the independent, bipartisan commission, disclosed the administration’s refusal to answer questions on the sensitive subject during a recent closed-door meeting with a group of Democratic senators, according to several Democratic sources.
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Democrats suspect President Bush, who met privately with the Saudi Arabian ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, on the morning of Sept. 13, 2001, may have personally authorized the controversial flights, several of which took place when all other U.S. commercial air travel had been halted.
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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she asked Hamilton and Lehman if they were able to find out who in the administration authorized the Saudi Arabian flights. “Who did this? Why would the Saudis want to get out of the country? They said [those questions have] been part of their inquiry and they haven’t received satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing,” Boxer said.
Another Democrat in the meeting who confirmed Boxer’s account reported that Hamilton said, “We don’t know who authorized it. We’ve asked that question 50 times.”
Boxer said she obtained a commitment from Hamilton that the commission will state in its final report if the White House refused to answer questions about who authorized the Saudi flights after the 2001 attacks.
Gotta love'em. Briefing Room gives us an ad transcript from the Republican primary in NC-5.
HOST: This episode of Congressional Jeopardy is paid for by Vernon Robinson for Congress . Today's topic -- homosexual rights! This feminist voted to create special rights for homosexuals and took money from the radical gayPACs.
CONTESTANT 1: [Rings in] Alright, it's a, who is Senator Hillary Clinton?
[BUZZER] HOST: Oh no, I'm sorry. We were looking for Senator Virginia Foxx. Virginia Foxx did that. As a Wake Forest Trustee, this bankrupt businessman let two lesbians get married in broad daylight in the campus church.
CONTESTANT 2: [Rings in] That's Jay Helvey. Who is Jay Helvey?
HOST: You are correct! This other bankrupt businessman brags that he's a tolerant Republican - a code word for gay-friendly. As an Appalachian State Trustee, he let the school sponsor a transvestite drag show.
CONTESTANT 3: [Rings in] Ugh. Who is Ed Broyhill?
HOST: That's right! When the United Way attacked the Boy Scouts for their ban on gay scoutmasters, this courageous conservative successfully defended the Boy Scouts.
CONTESTANT 4: [Rings in] Vernon Robinson. Everybody knows that. Who is City Councilman Vernon Robinson?
[BELL] HOST: Yes, the real conservative! Vernon Robinson: I'm Vernon Robinson and I approved this message because I will fight for our conservative values in Congress just as I have at City Hall.
Since Zell Miller recently called John Kerry an ultraliberal from "Taxachusetts," let's compare the tax situations of Massachusetts and Georgia.
According to the Tax Foundation, Georgia's state and local tax burden ranks 18th in the nation; Massachusetts ranks 36th. Strike one to Georgia.
Also, Georgia has a tax code that is so complicated that the state ranks 25th for business friendliness; Massachusetts ranks 12th. Strike two to Georgia.
By Miller's two-strikes-and-you're-out law, Georgia should be warming the bench. However, we'll give it one more at-bat.
For every dollar that Georgia sends to Washington, it gets back $1.01; for every dollar Massachusetts sends, it loses a quarter, which is redistributed to freeloaders such as Georgia.
So, if Chalabi's group really is a front for Iranians why isn't he standing hooded in a dark room with wires hooked up to his genitals instead of, you know, being on every Sunday news show tomorrow?
