Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research....Read More......
Comedy Central also touted a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey, which said young viewers of "The Daily Show" were more likely to answer questions about politics correctly than those who don't.
Most Iraqis, I am told, believe that they are "better off" becoming violently ill from drinking filthy water while dodging bullets under the elusive promise of shifting democracy and inevitable specter of bloody civil war than they were being victimized by the clean water and electricity Saddam Hussein ruthlessly used to curry favor.Read More......
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by linguists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and computer problems may have led the bureau to systematically erase some Qaeda recordings, according to a declassified summary of a Justice Department investigation that was released on Monday.Yeah, I don't think so. Read More......
The report, released in edited form on Monday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, found that the F.B.I. still does not have the capacity to translate all the terrorism-related material from wiretaps and other intelligence sources and that the influx of new material has outpaced the bureau's resources.
Overhauling the government's translation capabilities has been a top priority for the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism.
The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday.An apt analogy, except that George Bush is the doctor and we-the-people woke up from our hernia operation with a sex change. I don't care what warnings we were given, the doc messed up and it's his fault. Read More......
The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.
One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said.
The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House had tried to minimize the council's latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month....
A senior administration official likened Mr. Bush's decision to a patient's decision to have risky surgery, even if doctors warn that there could be serious side effects. "We couldn't live with the status quo," the official said, "because as a result of the status quo in the Middle East, we were dying, and we saw the evidence of that on Sept. 11."
And Iraq is why the O'Reilly finger is increasingly being pointed at the Bush White House. "A huge mistake was made in underestimating the aftermath of Saddam," says O'Reilly.Read More......
"I think Rumsfeld has to take the responsibility there, because he's the defense secretary and it looks like he didn't have a clue that this was gonna happen. But, just like a baseball manager, I think he should take one for the team."
Iraq is far too unsafe to hold elections as scheduled in January and extremists would do well in the poll if Baghdad tried to hold it, Jordan's King Abdullah said in an interview to be published on Tuesday.Read More......
Excluding troubled areas from the nationwide poll would only isolate Iraq's Sunnis and create deeper divisions in the country, he told the Paris daily Le Figaro according to a text distributed in advance....
"It seems impossible to me to organize indisputable elections in the chaos we see today," said the king, who was due to meet French President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday.
"Only if the situation improved could an election be organized on schedule," he said.
"If the elections take place in the current disorder, the best-organized faction will be that of the extremists and the result will reflect that advantage.
"With such a scenario, there is no chance the situation will improve," he said. Asked if partial elections would isolate the Sunnis, he said: "That's exactly our worry."
Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says.Read More......
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A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.Yeah, the CIA bureaucracy wants a license to talk to reporters off-the-record in order to slip them information? Oh my God. I'm glad that Bob Novak has never used information given him by an un-named source. Oops... Read More......
Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.)
For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is without precedent....
Pillar told him that the fact I knew his name meant somebody had violated the off-the-record nature of his remarks. In other words, the CIA bureaucracy wants a license to criticize the president and the former DCI without being held accountable.
"It's gross, it's disgusting, it's the grossest bar ever, you would never go there if you weren't either wasted or stupid. The place is like a crawling Republican hangout - they all look like Tucker Carlson, it's like a bad frat boy party. The guys that hang out there are reeking of money, it smells like puke and looks like a basement."Ok then, sounds like a place ready-made for the Bush family.
"I was standing by the back bar, standing a couple feet away from the bar, and this guy with a Bush/Cheney trucker hat comes by. I noticed him dragging the hand of some girl, and thought 'holy shit' that's Jenna Bush. It was obvious it was her, I knew it was her the minute she walked by. She looked just like she looks on TV, she had on jeans and a tank top."
"She was drinking Budweiser and smoking Marlboro Reds. She was incoherent, that's how drunk she was. She was holding court in back, trying to be inconspicuous. She was so drunk she couldn't even sit up, her friend dragged her to the back of the bar stumbling because she couldn't' walk on her own. She then proceeded to take more shots because, like, that's what this girl really needed at this point was more liquor."Read More......
"Later, we walked out through the back and her friend with the bad trucker hat, he was kind of like shielding her from everyone, by this point people had realized it was her. Jenna starts shoving her hand in her face to kind of cover it up, meanwhile she's so disheveled cuz she's wasted."
"She definitely liked the firewater."
When he first ran for president, George W. Bush talked tough on Russia. He threatened to cut off international aid if Moscow continued "killing women and children, leaving orphans and refugees" in its war in Chechnya.Read More......
This year, as president, Bush casts Russia not as an oppressor, but as a victim of terror — even as fighting continues in Chechnya and President Vladimir Putin moves to consolidate power in ways seen as threatening the country's fledgling democracy.
Two U.S. soldiers have been charged with murder in the death of an Iraqi civilian, the 1st Cavalry Division announced Monday.These soldiers are on their SECOND tour of duty and the strain is obvious. What kind of experience are these soldiers having that there have been three sets of murder charges in two weeks? What is this President doing to our troops? More importantly, how long do we think that we can last with our current level of troops? Read More......
Approximately 800 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry are serving their second tour in Iraq. Post spokeswoman Sam Robinson said last week the unit, which is part of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, is temporarily serving with the 1st Cavalry while in Iraq.
Monday's charges were the third set of murder charges filed in just over two weeks against soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry.
The enemy wants to break our will. They are experts at manipulating the media. They have yet to win a single military engagement in that country. They have yet to win a single military engagement against the forces of the new Iraq armed forces that are standing up.Three problems here:
Fearing a sharp decline in recruiting and troop retention, the Army is considering cutting the length of its 12-month combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, senior Army officials say.Read More......
Senior Army personnel officers, as well as top Army Reserve and National Guard officials, say the Army's ability to recruit and retain soldiers will steadily erode unless combat tours are shortened, to some length between six and nine months, roughly equivalent to the seven-month tours that are the norm in the Marine Corps.
But other Army officials responsible for combat operations and war planning have significant concerns that the Army - at its current size and as now configured - cannot meet projected requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan unless active duty and reserve troops spend 12 months on the ground in those combat zones....
The prospect of lengthy combat tours already appears to be affecting recruitment. For example, the Guard had set a goal of 56,000 recruits for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, but is likely to end up with about 51,000, he said. It would be the first time since 1994 that the Guard has missed its signup goal.
I am happy to see you, an so are the long-suffering people of Iraq. America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.Even more important, the White House tried to say, and has continued to say, that what was meant by "Mission Accomplished" was that THE SHIP BUSH WAS ON HAD ACCOMPLISHED ITS MISSION, not that the war in Iraq at large had accomplished its mission. From a July 1, 2003 White House briefing:
SCOTT MCLELLAN: ...as far as the crew of the Abraham Lincoln was concerned, as they were about to arrive with their families after the longest deployment ever, Mission Accomplished was a great way to summarize what they did.But that's not what the president said in June when he was talking to the troops in Qatar. Bush said the OVERALL mission was accomplished, and in particular: "America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished."
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