Swanky Conservative

Question: Have you secured these commitments from foreign leaders already? Are you going behind the president’s back and negotiating separate agreements with foreign leaders, like you tried to during the Paris peace talks?

And I think that a president who fails to admit his mistakes is a president who proves that he doesn’t know how to make the course correct.

Four words: “I don’t fall down.”

The Senate approved the measure 92-3 Thursday night less than an hour after it cleared the House by a similarly lopsided 339-65.

Democrats in both chambers joined in support of the politically popular measure even though they criticized the Republican-led Congress’ refusal to pay for the new tax relief at a time of soaring budget deficits.

“The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story,” Kerry said.

Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress that democratic elections will take place in Iraq in January as scheduled, but Kerry said that was unrealistic.

“The United States and the Iraqis have retreated from whole areas of Iraq,” Kerry told reporters outside a Columbus firehouse. “There are no-go zones in Iraq today. You can’t hold an election in a no-go zone.”

Washington, D.C. - In response to false Republican accusations regarding the CBS documents, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement:

“In today’s New York Post, Roger Stone, who became associated with political ‘dirty tricks’ while working for Nixon, refused to deny that he was the source the CBS documents.

“Will Ed Gillespie or the White House admit today what they know about Mr. Stone’s relationship with these forged documents? Will they unequivocally rule out Mr. Stone’s involvement? Or for that matter, others with a known history of dirty tricks, such as Karl Rove or Ralph Reed?”

The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather’s dubious Texas Air National Guard “memos.”

The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political “dirty tricks.”

Reached at his Florida home, Stone had no comment.

In his remarks, Kerry laid out the steps we must now take. First, the president must secure international support. Second, we must commit to a serious effort to train Iraqi security forces. Third, we must carry out a reconstruction plan that brings benefits to the Iraqi people, and fourth, we must take the necessary steps to hold elections next year.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people’s trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

Three blasts from the CBS past are worth recalling at this juncture:
1) “The Selling of the Pentagon,” 1971
2) “The Defense of the United States,” 1981
3) “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception,” 1982

As angry Vietnam veterans began calling CBS to complain about the factual inaccuracies of The Wall Within, Perry Wolff, the executive producer who wrote the documentary, claimed that “No one has attacked us on the facts.”

Sound familiar?

If John Kerry is to win this election, he will have to be much bolder about telling the American people exactly what he will do to make the country better. As a wise colleague in the House of Representatives once told me: voters don’t care so much about what you believe so long as you believe in something.

The Democrats are waking up with a hangover wondering who this guy is they went home with.