Harry Reid: The war is lost

I wrote this months ago, Harry Reid just said it today. Either way, it's what the overwhelming majority of Americans already know in their hearts - George Bush lost the war in Iraq a long time ago. And it does no one any favors - neither our troops, their families, nor any other American who cares about the future of our country - to pretend otherwise. The far-right extremists currently in control of the Republican party don't care about doing the right thing, and certainly don't care about our troops - as we witnessed with the body armor debacle when the war started, and now the Walter Reed catastrophe. They care about saving their own behinds. This is their war, George Bush's war. And they lost this war through their utter mismanagement. Rather than admit that truth, and accept the blame and responsibility for their own mistakes, and bring our troops home, they'd rather continue lying to the American people and lying to our troops as they send tens of thousands more of them into an out of control civil war. The extremists running the Republican party would rather risk the lives of American soldiers for a cause they already know is lost, than accept responsibility for a gross mistake of their own making. Their ego is more important than the life of an American service member.

Now who hates the troops? Read More......

Bush: Stop comparing my war to Vietnam

Bush apparently hates comparing his war in Iraq to the war that he and Cheney avoided in Vietnam. Given the failure that is the Iraq war, it is, of course, an appropriate comparison. But, Bush never lets facts get in the way:

President George W. Bush and fellow Republicans struggled on Thursday with comparisons between the U.S. wars in Iraq and Vietnam as the Senate's top Democrat declared the Iraq lost.

A day after a White House meeting with lawmakers failed to resolve differences over whether to attach a troop withdrawal plan to a war funding bill, Bush and the Democrats continued their feud from afar.

Asked to compare Iraq to Vietnam, a war that still weighs on the American psyche three decades after it ended, Bush told an Ohio audience a premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could lead to chaos and death the same way war broke out between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

"After Vietnam, after we left, millions of people lost their life. My concern is there would be a parallel there," Bush said, adding that "This time around, the enemy wouldn't just be content to stay in the Middle East, they'd follow us here."

Follow us here. What a line. If Bush had spent the last five years fighting the real terrorists and building up our national security, we wouldn't have to worry that they could follow us here. But, Bush chose a political strategy instead of a security strategy. And, Iraq is actually a bigger disaster than Vietnam. Read More......

Harry Reid on Pentagon saying Bush lied about Iraq, again

From Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

Mr. President, the White House has been telling America that Democrats are doing the wrong thing by calling for a change in course in Iraq. They say holding the Iraqi government accountable is wrong. They say finding a political solution in Iraq is wrong and they say redeploying our troops out of a civil war is wrong.

They have said that even debating a strategy for changing course is dangerous and many Senate Republicans have backed that up by blocking several of our attempts to debate this issue on the Senate floor.

The American people want us to debate the war. They want us to change course. Listen to what the president’s own Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates said recently: "The debate in Congress . . . has been helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited. The strong feelings expressed in the Congress about the timetable probably have had a positive impact . . . in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment."

The President and some of my Republican colleagues are also attempting to create a false crisis by claiming that Democrats are putting the troops in danger by not sending the supplemental bill immediately.

But today, the Pentagon acknowledged what Democrats have long known – that President Bush continues to misstate the reality on the ground in Iraq to score political points. Like the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the Pentagon now acknowledges that it can pay for the Iraq war at least through June with the funds it has already been provided.

I hope that the President and my Republican colleagues in Congress will put these false claims aside so that we can get back to working toward bipartisan solutions.

Yesterday, I met with President Bush to express the will of the American people, senior military officials and a bipartisan majority of Congress that we must change course in Iraq.

I told President Bush that after five years, more than 3,300 American soldiers lost and billions depleted from the treasury, we must change course.

Conditions in Iraq get worse by the day, and now we find ourselves policing another nation’s civil war.

We are less secure from the many threats to our national security than we were when the war began.

And as long as we follow the President’s path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course – and we must change course.

No one wants us to succeed in the Middle East more than I do. Our brave men and women overseas have passed every test with flying colors. They have earned our pride and praise, more importantly, they deserve a strategy worthy of their sacrifice.

The supplemental bill we passed with bipartisan support offers just that. It includes a reasonable and attainable timeline to reduce combat missions and refocus our efforts on the real threats to our security.

It offers a new path, a new direction forward. If we put politics aside, I believe we can find a way to make America safer and stronger.

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Gonzales hearing wrap-up

I understand the thread way down below is getting a wee bit large. Feel free to discuss Gonzales' day of perjury duty here. Read More......

Pentagon: Bush lied, we can pay for war through June

I know, no one ever could have imagined that George Bush would lie about the war. But what's interesting is that the Pentagon seems to have had it with their commander in chief and his lies. From AP:

The Pentagon says it has enough money to pay for the Iraq war through June, despite warnings from the White House that troops are being harmed by Congress' failure to quickly deliver more funds.....

The Army also will delay contracts for facilities repair and environmental restoration, according to instructions issued by Army Comptroller Nelson Ford. Ford said the accounting moves are "similar to those enacted last year" when [the Republican] Congress failed to deliver a war funding bill to Bush until mid-June.

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"In the wrong place at the wrong time." That's the best Bush can do.

Your President, talking about the students and faculty killed at Virginia Tech:

They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They were in dorms and in classrooms. That's exactly where college students and professors are supposed to be. Read More......

US Defense Secretary embraces Democratic position on Iraq

From AP:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates slipped into Iraq Thursday to warn Iraqi leaders that the U.S. commitment to a military buildup there is not open-ended.

Gates said the political tumult in Washington over financing the military presence in Iraq shows that both the American public and the Bush administration are running out of patience with the war.

Several odd and newsworthy things in this story:

1. Our very own Bush-appointed Defense Secretary is publicly telling the tuhrerists exactly what Bush claims they want to hear - that if they just wait long enough, the Bush administration will lose patience, IS LOSING patience already, and will leave.

2. Contrary to Bush's assertion that it is dangerous and reckless for Democrats to demand a timetable for our eventual withdrawal from Iraq, Gates is now saying that the Democrats' approach is the best approach for getting the Iraqis to finally stand up and defend themselves. Bush is criticizing the Democrats and Gates is using their proposal to do good in Iraq. So which one is, is the Democratic proposal dangerous or helpful?

3. Even more interesting, Gates is claiming credit for the Democrats' position, claiming incredibly that the Democrats' demand that we set a timetable somehow shows that the Bush administration is "running out of patience with the war." That's an outright lie. The Democrats are losing patience, the American public is losing patience, but the tumult over funding that Gates is talking about shows that the administration isn't losing any patience at all - the administration wants (well wanted up until Gates just spoke) an open-ended commitment in Iraq.

So who is right, Bush or Gates? Are we going to stay in Iraq until the job gets done, as Bush claims, even if it takes forever, or are we going to pull out at a certain date, whether we win or not, simply because we will have lost patience, as the Secretary of Defense now claims? Read More......

McCain jokes about bombing Iran

Not very presidential. And how about the guy in the testosterone-filled audience who asks when we're going to attack Iran, dag gummit. Uh, here's a thought, oh brave man sitting in the audience rather than in Iraq - let's finish up Bush's other two wars before we start a third war with no Army, no weapons, and no plan for victory. We do not honor our troops by continually using them as cannon fodder to assuage our hormones.

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Bush administration is prying into your medical records in violation of the law

We learned yesterday that the Bush administration has created a database of every single prescription drug user/patient in the country (that would pretty much be all of us). The database was created pursuant to a 2005 law that was intended to prevent the abuse of prescription drugs. Funny that this massive new database of your private medical information is now being (ab)used for a purpose that wasn't intended in or approved by the law.

The federal database of your private medical information is now being used by federal law enforcement to investigate crimes that have nothing to do with prescription drug abuse. We know this because yesterday ABC News disclosed that the feds checked the database to see what prescription meds the Virginia Tech shooter might have been on. How does the mass murder of students and faculty at Virginia Tech have anything to do with prescription drug abuse? It doesn't.

The Bush administration has created a massive database of your private medical records and they're now abusing it. Gee, what a surprise - the Bush administration secretly prying into our private lives in violation of the law. If they wanted this power, they could have sought it from Congress. They didn't. So they took it anyway, even though the law doesn't allow it.

Your privacy is gone, and it's not terribly clear that anyone in Washington cares. Read More......

Gonzales hearing is on, now

Gonzales just started speaking. Two Republicans did introductions. One was Specter, who didn't defend Gonzales. The other was Sessions, who is a far-right Bush-loving nutjob. Sessions, who always defends the administration, had nothing good to say about Gonzales. I was shocked. He said that Gonzales should have said "no" when he saw the plan to fire the US attorneys. When Jeff Sessions refuses to defend a Bush official, that official is in serious trouble.

Watch the hearing live on C-Span 3 here.

Ooh, Gonzales just got snippy with Specter, and Specter ripped his head off. Gonzales is clearly approaching the hearing with classic Bush administration attitude - concede nothing as arrogantly as possible. That is not going to serve him well. Read More......

Gonzales talked to Bush, Rove and Domenici about David Iglesias. Will he remember any of that today?

Today's the big day for Gonzales:

Investigators have already determined that Mr. Gonzales spoke directly three times with Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, about his complaints regarding David C. Iglesias, the states former top federal prosecutor.

Administration officials have confirmed that Mr. Gonzales also spoke with President Bush and Karl Rove, the presidents chief political adviser, about the perceived lack of enthusiasm in Mr. Iglesiass office, among others, for prosecuting voting fraud cases, a top Republican Party priority. And investigators know that Mr. Iglesiass name was among the last to be added to the ouster list.

On what precise date, why and by whom was Mr. Iglesias placed on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired? asked Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, in a list of questions he has presented to Mr. Gonzales.

Judiciary Committee staff members said Wednesday that given the repeated instances in which Mr. Gonzales was directly involved in discussions related to Mr. Iglesias, it might be hard for the attorney general to refuse to testify about these discussions or any follow-up conversations or to deny any recollection of them.

It would be hard for an honest person. Might not be that hard for a liar. Read More......

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Today, the Attorney General of the United States, the nation's leading law enforcement official, will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His written testimony has already been contradicted. Lying, as we've seen over and over and over, is standard operating procedure for the Bush team.

So, what else? Read More......

Republican congressman Doolittle's house raided by FBI

He may have managed to squeak through at election time but the Abramoff-connected congressman might have to put aside his plans for re-election in 2008. TPM has the complete background history. Read More......

US and Australia to exchange refugees

Besides the legal questions, who thought this was a good idea? No wonder Howard and Bush are such good friends.

"Refugees are human beings, not products that countries can broker and trade," said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for the US-based rights group.

"The United States and Australia have signed a deal that bargains with lives and flouts international law."

The mainly Asian refugees intercepted heading for Australia would be considered for resettlement in the United States, while Cuban and Haitian asylum-seekers hoping to live there could be despatched to Australia.

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