Zogby stands by prediction of Kerry victory

From the NY Daily News. Read More......

"Our soldiers shouldn't be sent out looking like the Beverly Hillbillies"

...said the mother of a soldier on Iraq. Halliburton swims in its billion-dollar slush fund of taxpayer handouts and US soldiers are still relying on mom and dad to send over GPS, body armor, Humvee armor, secure radios, etc. Hell, I even recall Rummy wearing some special fancy boots on his last visit over to Iraq but guys in the field from the National Guard in particular, get whatever is left over from years gone by.

This president has the nerve to attack John Kerry when our troops - HIS TROOPS - still don't have the equipment they need, and apparently aren't getting it for a while. WTF? How can any service member or their family in good conscience vote to re-elect the man who sent our troops to battle with insufficient equipment, and who to this day is still failing them? Republicans are better friends of the military, my ass. Let's not forget that it was Dick Cheney and George Bush 41 who reduced the military from 2.2 million servicemembers to to 1.6 million (per DOD's own Web site) over their four years in office. Why do the Bushes and the Cheneys hate our military?

Here's the rest of the Beverly Hillbillies horror story from the NYT:

...many of the company's trucks still have no armor, soldiers and relatives said, despite running some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq and incurring the highest rate of injuries and deaths among the Illinois units deployed there....

Though soldiers of all types have complained about equipment in Iraq, part-timers in the National Guard and Reserve say that they have a particular disadvantage because they start off with outdated or insufficient gear. They have been deployed with faulty radios, unreliable trucks and, most alarmingly for many, a shortage of soundly armored vehicles in a land regularly convulsed by roadside attacks, according to soldiers, relatives and outside military experts....

Before the 103rd Armor Regiment of the Pennsylvania National Guard left in late February, some relatives bought those soldiers new body armor to supplant the Vietnam-era flak jackets that had been issued. The mother of Sgt. Sherwood Baker, a member of the regiment who was killed in April, bought a global positioning device after being told that the Army said his truck should have one but would not supply it.

And before Karma Kumlin's husband left with his Minnesota National Guard unit in February, the soldiers spent about $200 each on radios that they say have turned out to be more reliable - although less secure - than the Army's. Only recently, Ms. Kumlin said, has her husband gotten a metal shield for the gunner's turret he regularly mans, after months of asking.

"This just points to an extreme lack of planning ," said Ms. Kumlin, who is 31 and a student. "My husband is part of the second wave that went to Iraq."....

According to figures compiled by the House Armed Services Committee and previously reported in The Seattle Times, there are plans to produce armor kits for at least 2,806 medium-weight trucks, but as of Sept. 17, only 385 of the kits had been produced and sent to Iraq. Armor kits were also planned for at least 1,600 heavyweight trucks, but as of mid-September just 446 of these kits were in Iraq.

Then there's this little gem:

The Army says it is on schedule to armor all its Humvees in Iraq by April 2005, despite the fact that only one factory in the United States puts armor on the vehicles.

April 2005? We've had Humvees in Iraq that haven't had sufficient armor for 18 months now, and they'll finally get the armor 2 years after the invasion? And that's a good thing? Read More......

Jon Stewart on those 380 tons of explosives

As always, absoulutely hyserical. Read More......

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Osama is a "good" "gift," GOP & Bush campaign say

The Bush campaign has called it a "good" thing that Osama bin Laden is still alive and kicking and threatening to make American blood fill the streets our our country, according to a story in today's NY Daily News. And a senior GOP strategist has called Osama's reappearance and threats to kill thousands more Americans "a little gift."

This election is over, folks.

George Bush's campaign thinks Osama being alive and threatening to kill even more Americans is "good." A top GOP strategist thinks Osama planning to launch an even-bigger-September-11 is "a little gift." I'm glad the 3,000 who died on September 11 were able to give this good gift to the Bush campaign, after all, without their deaths Bush wouldn't have this good gift to enjoy only 3 days before the election.

How serious a matter is this? Imagine if John Kerry's people had called Osama plotting to kill thousands of Americans "good"? Imagine if a top Democratic strategist had called Osama bin Laden "a little gift"?

This needs to be the talk of the Internet. Make George Bush explain to the American people why Osama's threats to make blook run in American streets are "good" "gifts". Read More......

REWIND: April 2002 - U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight

I'm so tired of seeing Bush lie every time he opens his mouth. He's now criticizing Kerry for talking about Tora Bora. Thanks to Atrios for getting me thinking about this. He pointed out this front page article from the Washington Post from April 17, 2002:

The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.

After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader.

Why is Kerry talking about Tora Bora George? Well, if you bothered to read a newspaper you might have learned that YOUR OWN ADMINISTRATION concluded that we missed Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Are you so out of touch Mr. President that you don't even know what your own administration knows to be true? I know it's "hard work" George, but try and keep up. (Why do I think that he heard that an awful lot in school growing up?)

I'm ready for a fresh start, how about you? Read More......

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida -- The Big Three Leaning Towards...

KERRY!! For the first time in the entire election, the LA Times electoral college map shows Kerry leading Bush in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. For months, we've been told that whichever candidate wins two out of three of them will be tough to beat. I check the map almost every day -- it's really addictive fun to play around with the possibilities, since you can give any state to either candidate and thus toy with all sorts of possibilities -- and while it's been trending towards Kerry for a while, this is the FIRST TIME the latest polls that the LA Times use all give Kerry the edge. In Ohio, it's a six point lead, in Pennsylvania it's a five point lead, and in Florida it's only a one point lead (well within the margin of error, of course), but still -- Kerry is leading in all three.
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Bush Fails 9-11...Again

It's official: Bush has failed on 9-11 every step of the way. Bush failed to prevent the biggest attack on US soil since World War II. Bush failed to hold ANYONE in his administration responsible for the single greatest intelligence failure in decades if not our entire history. Bush failed to hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden. Bush failed to support a serious inquiry into the failures of our government by the 9-11 commisson. Bush failed to cooperate with that commission every step of the way. Bush lied by claiming he supported the commission's recommendations but has now failed again in getting those reforms put into action. Yep, everyone now agrees that the desperately needed reform of our intelligence agencies (and of Congress's oversight of those agencies) is NOT going to happen before the election.
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Why My Pet Goat Matters

So I've taken a little time to review Bin Laden's speech in full. Three years after 9/11 this guy is mocking the American President in front of the entire world. This guy is still alive and making the United States look the fool. Why must I hear this about my nation's leader? Who is at fault? From the transcript:

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.

And for the record, we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa, Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration notice.

It never occurred to us that the Commander in Chief of the armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great horrors alone at a time when they most needed him.

But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers we were given three times the period required to execute the operations. All praise is due to Allah.

So, Al Qaeda knew that once the sleeping giant was wakened, the United States would stop them. What message did Bush send to the world? Hey, we're a sleeping giant slow to wake. Talk about weakness! This all leaves me with just one question:

Whose fault is it that Bin Laden is on my TV today?

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US increasing troop presence in Iraq

Now they're extending tours of duty (again) because the Iraqi army is lagging behind in preparations and training. Blair has also been sneaking in additional troops and playing the same game but don't worry, we have plenty of troops over there and saying otherwise is flat out wrong and un-patriotic. Whether it is for maintaining control of Iraq or for guarding weapons depots Rummy planned this so perfectly that saying otherwise is just a lie. Don't even think for a minute that just because the DoD is making plans to enable the rapid deployment of an additional 15,000 troops, it will even happen.

All Bush voters can get ahead of the rush and send either themselves of their children to Iraq right away. Don't get caught lagging because we know how much you support the war and now you can prove it.
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Bush is in trouble with evangelicals - explains why he went squishy on gay civil unions this week

I'd been arguing that Bush more-or-less endorsed gay civil unions this past week - and his campaign brought up the Mary Cheney thing two weeks ago - because they've decided the evangelicals aren't going to win it for them. They now need the middle instead. This new poll suggests I may be right:

A poll published last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 70% of self-described evangelicals or born-again Christians planned to vote for the president, down from 74% in the same survey three weeks earlier. That was not only a slight decline, but lower than the 80% to 90% support that Bush campaign officials had been forecasting.

More important than the drop in the past few weeks (which could simply be margin of error stuff) is the fact that they're polling at 74% in the religious right communities rather than the 80% or 90% they expected. That's bad. And the irony is that to win more evangelicals they need to tick off the moderates, and to win more moderates they need to tick off the evangelicals.

Oh what a tangled web we weave... Read More......

Pentagon was warned on Halliburton

Why do I get the feeling that we're going to be flooded (even more) over the next few months with ugly stories about corruption and abuse of power from the Bushies? The Pentagon good ol' boys seemed to have delivered a delightful impression of crying babies who hold their hands over there ears while yelling "I can't hear you" to contracting officer Bunnatine Greenhouse.

The Pentagon extended a Halliburton Co. contract for 11 months beyond its expiration despite warnings that the company was "out of control" in its work providing troop support in the Balkans, government memos showed.

"There is little or no incentive for the contractor to reduce or keep cost down," senior Army contracting officer Bunnatine Greenhouse wrote her bosses in January 2002 after a review of Halliburton's performance.

Nearly three years later, Greenhouse wrote her superior this month that it was inappropriate for the government to extend the $2 billion contract for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

...when Greenhouse challenged the justification and sought an explanation of the emergency, Corps officials changed their reasoning. The new explanation was that Halliburton subsidiary KBR was the "one and only" company that could do the job.

Greenhouse, who has said she was frozen out of decisions on Halliburton, went public last weekend with allegations that Army officials showed favoritism to the company.

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More bad news from Iraq - 8 Marines Dead

From AP:

In a bloody day in Iraq, eight American Marines were killed in fighting west of Baghdad on Saturday, and a car bomb killed at least seven people in attack on an Arab television bureau in the capital. Iraqi troops fired wildly on civilian vehicles, killing at least 14 people, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The U.S. military said nine Marines were also wounded in the fighting in Anbar province west of the capital which includes the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The statement gave no further on how or where they were killed.

More signs of the "catastrophic" success Bush is creating in Iraq. I'm ready for a fresh start. Read More......

UK Serious Fraud Office now investigating Halliburton as well

So now Halliburton is under investigation in the US, UK, France and Nigeria but of course, there's nothing to see so keep moving.

The Nigerian investigation centres on $180m in payments allegedly made by a consortium led by Halliburton to secure the contract to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria.

The cash was allegedly channelled through a US-owned oil engineering firm in London called MW Kellogg and was handled by a company executive based in Berkshire. The funds were said to have been paid into a Swiss bank by a British lawyer.

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GO VOTE: CNN poll

Vote here -- bottom right of page.: How will the bin Laden videotape affect the U.S. election? No influence, Boost for Bush, Boost for Kerry. Read More......

GO VOTE - MSNBC Poll

VOTE AT MSNBC HERE - President Bush or Senator Kerry? Who will hunt for bin Laden more aggressively? Read More......

Zogby: KERRY AHEAD BY 1

That's right folks. Like any reelection an incumbent faces, you have to be over 50% pretty regularly to win. If you're not, it's not likely that after four years in office you'll be able to bring people back to you in the last few days of a campaign. Why? They've seen you for four years and don't want you back. What can you possibly do in the closing days of a campaign to change their mind?

As a result, in the last few days of an election undecideds generaly break to the challenger. That's what's happening right now. From Reuters:

Democratic Sen. John Kerry moved into a one-point lead over President Bush three days before the presidential election, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Saturday.

Kerry led Bush 47-46 percent, well within the margin of error, in the latest three-day national tracking poll. Bush and Kerry were tied at 47 percent on Friday.

If anything, this shows that former Bush supporters are actually moving AWAY from him while Kerry's support is firm. Read More......

Early Morning (in Paris) Open Thread

For Chris in Paris - we don't honor him enough, and he has great croissants.

Talk amongst yourselves. Read More......

GOP Senate candidate in Oklahoma says blacks are genetically inferior

That's why they don't live as long as us white folk. Yes, GOP pride at its finest.

A Republican Senate candidate from Oklahoma who has run into trouble over verbal gaffes was drawing fire again on Friday for saying black men have a "genetic predisposition" for a lower life expectancy than whites.

Of course, I understand the candidate, Tom Coburn, has a genetic predisposition for asshole. Read More......

Excellent Eleanor Clift article

The entire piece is excellent. Here are a few tidbits:

The Bush team’s response [to Al Qaqaa] is also emblematic. First, they deny a charge that is undeniably true, that they went into Iraq with insufficient forces. Second, they slime the person telling the truth. Kerry wasn’t faulting U.S. troops for not finding and securing the missing weapons, as Bush asserted. Kerry was attacking the chicken-hawk civilians who brushed aside pleas from the military for more manpower. Third, Bush falls back on the tried and true, pointing to evidence of a cache of deadly explosives to say this proves Saddam really was dangerous. It’s still heresy to say it, but Americans were safer when Saddam was in power. He guarded his high-grade-weapons sites, and just days before the U.S. invasion, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency had monitored the site, warning the Bush administration about the potential danger....

The story that broke late Thursday about the Bush campaign using a doctored photo in an ad should help drive home Kerry’s message in the final days. The image used is reminiscent of Bush’s parading on an aircraft carrier flight deck to declare major combat operations over in Iraq. Here he stands as the commander in chief before cheering troops, except on close examination, the same faces are repeated over and over in the crowd. The ad uses troops as props and manipulates the scene to create a Hollywood computer-generated picture of a war president. Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart issued a statement demanding that the Bush campaign pull the ad, saying, “Now we know why this ad is named, ‘Whatever it takes'.”

The White House has spent four years creating a fantasy world around Bush. Win or lose on Tuesday, the mistakes Bush has made in Iraq have caught up with him.

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Gay congressman whores for Bush

Great article from Slate about a Bush campaign event in Florida in which the audience is required to recite "the Bush pledge." Sieg Heil! And then how gay Republican congressman Mark Foley, one of Bush's biggest boosters even though Bush wants to make Foley a second-class citizen, came out and made an ass of himself lying, repeatedly, about Kerry and about Bush.

Some great points in this piece:

The main target of Foley's attack was Kerry's criticism of the president for allowing the al-Qaqaa weapons dump to be looted, presumably by terrorists, during a war that was designed precisely to prevent such an event from occurring. "The senator from Massachusetts immediately grabbed onto that without doing any checking, any fact-checking. He didn't even call Dan Rather," Foley said. But "NBC News followed up saying, oh-ho, not so fast. We don't have all the facts yet. Yet he went on national TV and announced, with reckless disregard for the facts, that somehow during George Bush's administration, these weapons were stolen."

Foley's right in one sense, that we still don't have all the facts. But here's a fact that emerged after Foley's speech: Former weapons inspector David Kay said on CNN after viewing the footage of the site filmed by ABC News, "There was HMX, RDX in there. The seal was broken. And quite frankly, to me the most frightening thing is not only was the seal broken, lock broken, but the soldiers left after opening it up. I mean, to rephrase the so-called Pottery Barn rule. If you open an arms bunker, you own it. You have to provide security."

Foley continued, "Well, folks, one thing it does prove: There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we went there." Well, um, there were weapons. The explosives weren't biological, chemical, or nuclear. And they were locked up by the international weapons inspectors derided by the administration, and they were "liberated" by the president's war. But instead of concluding that the war was a mistake, or at least that it should have been conducted differently, Foley declared, "The other thing it proves is that Saddam Hussein was the most important weapon of mass destruction to remove, and this president took him down." If we invaded North Korea and that country's nuclear weapons ended up in the hands of al-Qaida, would that prove that the invasion was a success?

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