White House to Warner: Give us Some Love.
Warner to White House: No Love.
So which DC lobbying firms have been hired by what different Iraqi militia and factions? Here’s the scoop.
The other Democratic candidates are piling on Hillary Clinton over her remarks about the GOP benefitting from a hypothetical new terrorist attack. That and other news in today’s Happy Hour Roundup.
Mailbag …
Soooo tired of bloggers jumping on the bash Clinton bandwagon.
A loser…?
If you’d stop for a moment, you would be exposed to the reality that Clinton is dominating the debates, dominating the polls. On the ground here in California, she has in place a growing organization that I guarantee you will crush any opposition – Democratic primary, or general election against the Repugs.
It’s time the blogosphere, and people like you, began to clean up your act. Stop acting so reactively. And perhaps realize that your unique hits aren’t necessarily a measure of your credibility.
And there’s more …
I am one of your very early contributor and I kicked in a buck here and there whenever I can but you disgusted me today.
Calling Hillary Clinton a loser ? The woman has been through the RW grinder for years and she is still thriving. I understand your opposition to have another Clinton in the WH but you should have looked at your actions and words carefully.
From today on, your site is off my fav links and I will make sure that my friends will do the same.
You are pathetic and despicable.
Didn’t actually realize that I’d called anybody a loser. But I will try harder to censor inappropriate thoughts.
By any reasonable measure, Sen. John Warner’s (R-Va.) call this week for a slight reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq was pretty weak tea. Warner “suggested” to the White House — he opposes any congressional mandates — that the president bring home 5,000 troops by Christmas. As withdrawal plans go, Warner’s recommendation was little more than a symbolic gesture — he’s talking about a 2% drawdown.
But that didn’t stop former Bush aide Bradley Blakeman, president and CEO of Freedom’s Watch (a far-right MoveOn.org knockoff), from blasting Warner last night on PBS. (Transcript, Video)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Does something like the announcement by Senator John Warner yesterday, the veteran Republican senator, urging the president to begin to pull troops out this fall, does that hurt your cause?
BRADLEY BLAKEMAN: Well, it hurts the cause of freedom and giving the Iraqis the opportunity to stand on their feet.
Blakeman went on to accuse war critics of using “scare tactics.” (Freedom Watch’s ads argue that we have to stay in Iraq because “they attacked us,” and insist withdrawal will lead to another 9/11.)
I’m curious; if Blakeman and other GOP attack dogs are going to blast Warner for “hurting the cause of freedom,” what are they going to do about Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, who are expected to urge the president to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq by almost half?
Let me guess; they’re enemies of freedom, too.
The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill had a good piece the other day about the president’s VFW speech, and included an anecdote in passing that caught my eye.
The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the “defeatocrats”, the Democratic Congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal.
In private, presidential aides walk around the White House referring to “defeatocrats”? Seriously? West Wing conversations now resemble Free Republic threads?
I vaguely recall a time in which the political establishment perceived Bush’s election as the return of the “grown ups.” It’s rather amusing, in retrospect.
Last weekend, the NYT published an op-ed from seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who will soon be returning home frustrated and jaded. The piece, “The War as We Saw It,” was a sweeping condemnation of everything we’ve heard of late from the Kristol-McCain-Lieberman-O’Hanlon-Pollack crowd. For reasons that I still don’t understand, most news outlets treated the striking op-ed with a collective yawn.
Among those war supporters who deigned to respond to the piece, the most common refrain was that these seven troops are unusual in their discontent. Most of the men and women serving in Iraq, conservatives said, are committed to the still-vague mission and are filled with confidence.
There are ample reasons to believe otherwise.
In the dining hall of a U.S. Army post south of Baghdad, President Bush was on the wide-screen TV, giving a speech about the war in Iraq. The soldiers didn’t look up from their chicken and mashed potatoes.
As military and political leaders prepare to deliver a progress report on the conflict to Congress next month, many soldiers are increasingly disdainful of the happy talk that they say commanders on the ground and White House officials are using in their discussions about the war.
And they’re becoming vocal about their frustration over longer deployments and a taxing mission that keeps many living in dangerous and uncomfortably austere conditions. Some say two wars are being fought here: the one the enlisted men see, and the one that senior officers and politicians want the world to see.
“I don’t see any progress. Just us getting killed,” said Spc. Yvenson Tertulien, one of those in the dining hall in Yousifiya, 10 miles south of Baghdad, as Bush’s speech aired last month. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
The problem becomes even more painful when one considers that the Army’s suicide rate is now at its highest level in 23 years. What’s more, in a series of mental health surveys, released in May, 45% of troops ranked morale in their unit as low or very low, as compared to seven percent who ranked it high or very high.
One of the principal flaws in Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign is that he’s running, counter intuitively, on a platform based on subjects he knows nothing about — foreign policy and national security.
But just as importantly, Giuliani keeps undermining his own credibility on all policy issues by exaggerating to the point of comedy. He can’t just say he spent time at Ground Zero; he has to exaggerate to say he spent as much time (if not more) than the rescue, recovery, and cleanup workers who spent a year sifting through human remains and rubble. He can’t just say he’s interested in counter-terrorism; he has to exaggerate to say he’s been “studying Islamic terrorism for 30 years.” He can’t just say he’s committed to promoting adoption over abortion; he has to exaggerate his record as mayor. He can’t just he cut taxes in NYC; he has to exaggerate his record to include tax cuts he opposed (he even counted one cut twice). The guy can’t even release a list of congressional endorsements without exaggerating the numbers.
When it comes to Giuliani’s record on budget surpluses, it’s more of the same.
Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.”
The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
“He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor,” Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. “The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do.”
In an amusing response, the Giuliani campaign told the NYT that the former mayor’s claims are technically true because he claims to have created a surplus, not that he was able to maintain one.
Reporters labeled Al Gore a “serial exaggerator” in 2000 on a whole lot less than this.
Let the games begin! Candidates scramble to position themselves for runs at seats being vacated by retiring House Republicans in Arizona and Illinois. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Saturday Roundup.