In issuing a statement Tuesday from the Vatican to clarify church policy on other Christian faiths, Pope Benedict XVI referred to the Protestant congregations as defective and not true churches.Now if Benedict is worried about those who suffer from defects, there's plenty to choose from within his own church. Plenty. The pope should check out one of his biggest defenders in America, the bigoted, homophobe William Donohoe:
The statement said, in part, "These separated churches and communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives that fullness of grace and truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."
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In testimony before Congress this week, U.S. intelligence officials were straightforward in saying they believe Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan and freely operating there.Read More......
"It's not that we lack the ability to go into that space," said Tom Fingar of the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
"But we have chosen not to do so without the permission of the Pakistani government," Fingar told members of Congress who demanded to know why the U.S. did not take more decisive action against a known enemy.
U.S. officials say Pakistan consistently denies the U.S. military permission to go after known al Qaeda training camps.
The situation has grown even worse since February, officials say, when Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Islamabad to demand Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf take action.
"Their (al Qaeda's) situation is actually better today than it was even then," said the RAND Corporation's Jones.
"The U.S. has provided $5.6 billion in coalition support funds to Pakistan over the past five years, with zero accountability," said Congressman Patrick Murphy, D-Calif., at the hearing.
"Why is Pakistan still being paid these large sums of money, even after publicly declaring that it is significantly cutting back patrols in the most important border area?" he asked.
The New York Times this morning features a rather disorienting article by Michael Gordon and Jim Rutenberg, headlined: "Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert." ... The article is "disorienting" because, among other things, it is Gordon who has been conflating "the 9/11 Al Qaeda" with "Al Qaeda in Iraq" as aggressively as, and probably more destructively than, even the President himself. The article is equally disorienting because the eager complicity of the Times itself in helping the President to promote this deceit was the subject of a scathing column by its own Public Editor just this weekend, which targeted several articles written or co-written by Gordon -- an issue which was not referenced in this morning's article. Instead, Gordon poses today as the myth-buster, exposing the fraud behind a rhetorical practice which, up until today, found its most robust expression in his own reporting.Why this adjustment in reporting? Could be a change in the public mood, or perhaps a growing (if long overdue) realization from the press that their job is to probe and question claims from authority, or, at least in some small part, due to, well, us? As Glenn comments,
When I first began blogging back in October 2005, it was not always clear to me that the target of bloggers even heard the criticisms being voiced, let alone listened to them. Now, there is no doubt that they hear them.This is a very, very good thing. Read More......
In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”Read More......
It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.
But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.
There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.
Advocates of withdrawal would like to believe that Afghanistan is now a central front in the war on terror but that Iraq is not; believing that doesn't make it so. They would like to minimize the chances of disaster following a U.S. withdrawal: of full-blown civil war, conflicts spreading beyond Iraq's borders, or genocide. They would have us believe that someone or something will ride to the rescue: the United Nations, an Islamic peacekeeping force, an invigorated diplomatic process. They like to say that by withdrawing U.S. troops, they will "end the war."Okay, first off, I've said this before and will say it again. Those of us who think Iraq is a disaster - the majority of the American people, thank you - do not think everything is going to be okay after we leave. Quite the contrary. We're screwed, Iraq is screwed, and once we pull out all hell is likely going to break loose. But Iraq, my dear neo-con editorial page editor Mr. Hiatt, is Terri Schiavo. All the king's horses and all the king's men aren't going to be able to put Humpty Dumpty back to together again. Schiavo's life was over. Iraq is a goner. Pulling the plug sucks, we get that. But sometimes pulling the plug is the only option left.
Conditions in Iraq today are terrible, but they could become "way, way worse," as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, a career Foreign Service officer, recently told the New York Times. If American men and women were dying in July in a clearly futile cause, it would indeed be immoral to wait until September to order their retreat. But given the risks of withdrawal, the calculus cannot be so simple. The generals who have devised a new strategy believe they are making fitful progress in calming Baghdad, training the Iraqi army and encouraging anti-al-Qaeda coalitions.
In what will be seen as an assertion of the importance of multilateralism in Mr Brown's foreign policy, Mr Alexander said: "In the 20th century a country's might was too often measured in what they could destroy. In the 21st century strength should be measured by what we can build together. And so we must form new alliances, based on common values, ones not just to protect us from the world, but ones which reach out to the world." He described this as "a new alliance of opportunity".Obviously the jury is still out with Brown but it's healthy to have new and different viewpoints in this relationship. We've already seen what good a lapdog is so this is a very welcome new development. Competing ideas can only help the process which today is mired in a bubble that serves no benefit to finding a way out of some previously very bad policies. Blair was a disastrous failure with offering and standing firm on opposing points of view. He talked as though he might, but the end result was always the same. Let's see what the new PM can do to make a break with the failures of the past. Read More......
He added: "We need to demonstrate by our deeds, words and our actions that we are internationalist, not isolationist, multilateralist, not unilateralist, active and not passive, and driven by core values, consistently applied, not special interests."
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