drlogic

lol...Don't think so,,,maybe they're cousins..... I think Obby knows Mursa, so I doubt it.....But I hear ya'!

Can't disagree one bit! Aweful job of relaying the realities. By not giving daily briefing as Gen Norman Schwarzkopf did during the Gulf war and as was done at the begining of this war in Iraq, Bush left himself open to his critics. The bad things are ALWAYS easier to believe. The Bush admin made a bad move in deciding to let it go unchallenged. As for the demz and repz on the fence, that's just pathetic. There's no middle ground on this Iraq issue (in my view). You're either invested in Americas success or it's defeat. Success in Iraq means catastrophic implosion for most of the demz and some repz in D.C. Mistakes during a war are not unique, rather the reality. Failed tactics do not equate to mission failure for anyone w/ an ounce of common sense as far as war is concerned. The mission is to win. Struggling in a fight/battle does not mean losing the war. The almost giddy attitude by some who eagerly rush to prove UBL and his "paper tiger" reference right rather than determination to succeed is offensive. Especially given the plethora of success which the critics either bury, ignore, mis-respresent or dismantle. The good news greatly outweighs the bad but you have to dig deep to learn it. Inflating the negative is nothing new, but I do agree that more speeches like Bush's last one must be expanded upon. I agree w/ the pro-active approach to the war on terror, but it needs to be implemented both abroad and domestically. Abroad via intel, diplomacy and war (if needed). At home, by pounding the successes along w/ the stuggles. Doing so would leave the critics even farther out on their island of defeatism.

Good stuff Igloo.

Well, first I disagree w/ the premise of the argument. Do you really think I'm gonna change your mind? You're going w/ your gut and to hell w/ any explanation that nukes the angle you've invested your emotions in. In a nutshell: The seriousnes of the charge or implication made by blatantly bias outlets is not something which merits rebutal. I've heard nothing but acusations and implications from today's democratic leaders in Washington in direct contrast w/ their own previously stated public statements. Go fig'r?? I think the burden of proof lies w/ the critics making the acusations, not in the accused to prove the charges false(that's probably where you and I part ways). They've yet to be right. As soon as one lie is nuked, they move on to another. They just keep tossing lies around like one would toss wet toilet paper to see what sticks. Igloo has nuked tons of posts in these brds only to be called a sheepboy, nazi, racist, etc....Sometimes, when common sense is unable to break through the self-imposed barrier of Democrat talking points, the only thing one is left w/ is pure amusement. If/when Igloo or anyone else lays out the realities which lend perspective via public and historical record, are you willing to say "Okay, that makes sense" or will you just leap frog to the next lilypad of anti-American conispiracy? I know you're not in the destruction camp, but I will continue to hope common sense will prevail and shed light on whatever you don't yet understand.

Igloo,, Stright up........There's no way destruction is this man in his late 40's...NO F'ING WAY BRO! His posts are more consistent w/ that of a teenage child of a 40 year old. Don't ya' think? I don't know any adult passed 40 who's even remotely close this character, do you? Destruction sure is a gem!

How inclusive and tolerant of you, Scooter? If we have to put up w/ you, then you've got to tolerate us...Right? God................Bless................America................

How do I get one of those pointy tin-foil hats you're wearing? Demz use baseless attacks... Repz counter w/ history and record.... So, it must be a Rove plot? Hold on a second............. Okay, let me regain my composure here...hang on.....

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005 1:14 p.m. EST David Kay Flashback: Iraqi Documents Showed WMD What happened to the internal Iraqi government documents that top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said had convinced him that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? In January 2004, Kay told Congress that the U.S. was "almost all wrong" in believing that Saddam had WMDs. But six months earlier in July 2003, Kay said he was sure Iraq had the banned weapons - based on millions of pages of internal government documents recovered from Saddam's regime. "I've already seen enough to convince me," Kay told then-NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw. "You cannot believe how many cases we have of documents and equipment that are stored in private residences," he added. Brokaw sounded convinced as well, telling his audience: "For David Kay, this is a motherlode, an estimated seven and a half miles of documents, many of them collected by US military from official buildings, but many others handed over by Iraqi civilians." Kay explained: "We're finding progress reports. They also got financial rewards from Saddam Hussein by breakthroughs, indicating breakthroughs. They actually took - went to Saddam and said 'We have made this progress.' There are records, there are audiotapes of those interviews which give us that." More than two years later, the documents that convinced Mr. Kay that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction remain a closely guarded secret, with a team of 200 Pentagon analysts reportedly still sifting through their contents. But thanks to the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, we know a little bit about what persuaded Kay that Saddam's banned weapons were a slam dunk. As Hayes reported two weeks ago, some of the titles on the Iraqi documents were quite explicit: • Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment • Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001) • Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals • Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam • Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs • Ricin research and improvement • Memo from the [iraqi Intelligence Service] to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997) Of course, the Iraqi documents never led Kay's search team to the actual banned weapons themselves. But the fact that the documents exist means that only two explanations are possible. 1] Saddam Hussein was able to spirit his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq in the nearly year-long run-up to the war. Or . . . 2] Saddam had his government forge, literally, millions of pages of documents falsely indicating that he not only had WMDs, but had made extensive plans to hide them. Only one of the above options makes any sense at all. In the meantime, the Bush administration needs to stop the Pentagon's dithering and order the immediate release of the evidence described by Kay - including the "audiotapes" and "equipment" he mentioned to Brokaw.

BBC? C'mon???? They're just as much invested in the defeat of America as are today's modern Democratic leaders. Might as well ask Zarqawi what he thinks.

Leaking At All Costs What the CIA is willing to do to hurt the Bush administration. by John Hinderaker 11/30/2005 12:00:00 AM THE CIA'S WAR against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years. It is, perhaps, the agency's most successful covert action of recent times. The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the administration by former Democratic officeholders. The agency allowed an employee, Michael Scheuer, to publish and promote a book containing classified information, as long as, in Scheuer's words, "the book was being used to bash the president." However, the agency's preferred weapon has been the leak. In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CIA officials have sought to undermine America's foreign policy. Usually this is done by leaking reports or memos critical of administration policies or skeptical of their prospects. Through it all, our principal news outlets, which share the agency's agenda and profit from its torrent of leaks, have maintained a discreet silence about what should be a major scandal. Recent events indicate that the CIA might even be willing to compromise the effectiveness of its own covert operations, if by doing so it can damage the Bush administration. The story began last May, when the New York Times outed an undercover CIA operation by identifying private companies that operated airlines for the agency. The Times fingered Aero Contractors Ltd., Pegasus Technologies, and Tepper Aviation as CIA-controlled entities. It described their aircraft and charted the routes they fly. Most significantly, the Times revealed one of the most secret uses to which these airlines were put: When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. The Times went on to trace specific flights by the airlines it unmasked, which corresponded to the capture of key al Qaeda leaders: Flight logs show a C.I.A. plane left Dulles within 48 hours of the capture of several Al Qaeda leaders, flying to airports near the place of arrest. They included Abu Zubaida, a close aide to Osama bin Laden, captured on March 28, 2002; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who helped plan 9/11 from Hamburg, Germany, on Sept. 10, 2002; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashri, the Qaeda operational chief in the Persian Gulf region, on Nov. 8, 2002; and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, on March 1, 2003. A jet also arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from Dulles on May 31, 2003, after the killing in Saudi Arabia of Yusuf Bin-Salih al-Ayiri, a propagandist and former close associate of Mr. bin Laden, and the capture of Mr. Ayiri's deputy, Abdullah al-Shabrani. Flight records sometimes lend support to otherwise unsubstantiated reports. Omar Deghayes, a Libyan-born prisoner in the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has said through his lawyer that four Libyan intelligence service officers appeared in September in an interrogation cell. Aviation records cannot corroborate his claim that the men questioned him and threatened his life. But they do show that a Gulfstream V registered to one of the C.I.A. shell companies flew from Tripoli, Libya, to Guantánamo on Sept. 8, the day before Mr. Deghayes reported first meeting the Libyan agents. The plane stopped in Jamaica and at Dulles before returning to the Johnston County Airport, flight records show. The Times reported that its sources included "interviews with former C.I.A. officers and pilots." It seems difficult to believe that the information conveyed in those interviews was unclassified. But if the agency made any objection to the Times's disclosure, it has not been publicly recorded. And the agency's flood of leaks to the Times continued. The other shoe dropped on November 2, when the Washington Post revealed, in a front-page story, the destinations to which many terrorists were transported by the CIA's formerly-secret airlines--a covert network of detention centers in Europe and Thailand: The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents. The Post's story caused a sensation, as the "current and former intelligence officials" who leaked the classified information to the newspaper must have expected it would. The leakers evidently included officials from the highest levels of the CIA; the Post noted that the facilities' existence and location "are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country." Further, the paper said that it "is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials." So this top-secret leak was apparently not a rogue operation. On the contrary, it appears to have been consistent with the agency's longstanding campaign against the Bush administration, which plainly has been sanctioned (if not perpetrated) by officials at the agency's highest levels. Both the Post and the leaking officials knew that publication of the secret-prisons leak would damage American interests: [T]he CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad. The damage foreseen by CIA leakers quickly came to pass. Anti-American elements in a number of European countries demanded investigations into the use of their countries' airports and air space by civilian airlines that are known or suspected CIA fronts. In Spain, the foreign minister testified before a parliamentary committee that no laws were broken in what allegedly were CIA-linked civilian landings in Majorca. But that site will be closed to the agency in the future: [H]e said the government would immediately step up checks on civilian aircraft that flew over or stopped in Spanish territory to make sure they were civilian flights. If necessary, the government would implement more exhaustive checks inside aircraft, he said. Similar outcries and investigations occurred in the Canary Islands, Portugal, Norway, and Sweden. The twin leaks to the Times and the Post have severely impaired the agency's ability to carry out renditions, transport prisoners, and maintain secret detention facilities. It is striking that top-level CIA officials are evidently willing to do serious damage to their own agency's capabilities and operations for the sake of harming the Bush administration and impeding administration policies with which they disagree. The CIA is an agency in crisis. Perhaps, though, there is a ray of hope: the agency has referred the secret-prison leak to the Post to the Justice Department for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. It is a bitter irony that until now, the only one out of dozens of CIA-related leaks known to have resulted in a criminal investigation was the Valerie Plame disclosure, which was trivial in security terms, but unique in that it helped, rather than hurt, the Bush administration. John Hinderaker is a contributing writer to THE DAILY STANDARD and a contributor to the blog Power Line.

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005 11:28 a.m. EST Dems Keep Carping Despite Troop Morale Poll Democratic Senators who say they support the troops continue to undermine their mission with harsh attacks on the Iraq war - even after a poll released over the weekend showed that more than two-thirds of Americans believe they're hurting troop morale. "What's happening [in Iraq] is not working; it's a disaster," Sen. Barbara Boxer complained Tuesday - oblivious to the damage her comments would do. "Right now, there's an endless war," she declared. Reacting to President Bush's Iraq war speech Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid griped that all he heard was the "recycled [and] tired rhetoric of ‘stay the course.’ "Simply staying the course is no longer an option, we must change the course. We can do better," Reid groused. Hours earlier, Sen. Hillary Clinton complained that she was tricked into voting to authorize the Iraq war when the White House gave her "false" intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. "Based on the information that we have today, Congress never would have been asked to give the President authority to use force against Iraq," she chided. The anti-war showboating by top Democrats continues despite the findings of an RT Strategies poll released over the weekend, which showed that 70 percent of Americans believe that Iraq war criticism by Democratic Senators is hurting troop morale. A full 44 percent said the Senatorial complainers had hurt the troops "a lot." Even self-identified Democrats agreed that their Senators were damaging the war effort, with 55 percent saying their criticism hurts the troops - and just 21 percent saying it helps.

He gets it. I may disagree w/ his domestic agenda, but as far as the this war on terror, specifically, the importance of this war in Iraq, HE GET'S IT! I agree on the class part! He's never been one of these opportunist democratic politirixta' like the Nancy Pelosi's, Hillary Clinton's and Chuck Schumer's of the world.

Gutsy Joe Lieberman Makes Iraq Case November 29, 2005 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. Joe Lieberman, great, great piece today in the Wall Street Journal, saying we have to stay in Iraq; we cannot pull out. The man has got guts. This position is what doomed his chances in the Democratic primaries in 2004. He never had a prayer. He was the first Democrat voted out in the in the whole primary process. He's written this piece today. When I saw, this I said, "Hmm, I wonder if he'll be paraded all over television the next two days like John Murtha was? I wonder if they'll go talk to Lieberman as though he's some kind of a seer, some kind of a truth-teller." By the way, the Murtha business, anybody wonder like I do about the timing of that? Whatever it was he said, "We've gotta get out of there. We can't win." The timing of this, three weeks before the December 15th elections, that's what suspicious about Murtha doing this to me. But nevertheless that's a sidetrack issue for now. Lieberman did get invited to CNN today, the American Morning show. Soledad O'Brien interviewed him. He's bucking his party and he's making sense on Iraq, and she said, "You've made four visits to Iraq over the last 18 months. You sound encouraged upon your return. Why?" you idiot? She didn't say that, but you can imagine it's in her heart LIEBERMAN: Well, I did see progress. It's not perfect, obviously, but I saw progress economically, militarily, and politically. I mean, some of the kind of practical common interest stuff that I saw was just more cars on the streets in Baghdad and the other cities I was in, almost every roof seems to have a satellite dish. The economy is beginning to move. Politically there's a full-fledged campaign going on in Iraq now for the national assembly elections in December, and there's an independent -- a large number of independent televisions and newspapers covering it. Militarily, the Iraqis are beginning to show much more self-sufficiency. They're a long way from being able to take it on their own and that's why we have to be careful not to withdraw too soon, but progress really is being made. RUSH: She says then, "So that's the category of progress? Some people would put in a list of things that are not going well, security, not only for US soldiers but for the Iraqi people, too." LIEBERMAN: Look, this is a war, and the more I go back there, the more I see it as a war between 27 million Iraqis -- that's their -- just about their total population -- who really want to live a better, freer, safer life, who feel liberated to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and 10,000 terrorists who are prepared to blow themselves up and to go at -- to go at the Iraqi people and American and Iraqi military, who are trying to protect the Iraqi people. Why do they do it? Because they want to establish a center, a base in Iraq to replace the one we took from them in Afghanistan. They don't want Iraq to be free and modern, because it sets back the terrorist's retched causes. If they should win there which is to say to get us out about the country is stable, I think it will have disastrous effects not only on Iraq and the Middle East but on American security. RUSH: All right, now, this is key, because what he says here, "Look it, we've got 27 million versus 10,000, and we're siding with the wrong people," meaning his party. His party siding with the wrong people. These 10,000 insurgents versus 27 million people who want a different life. One thing he is really right on the money about here is these terrorists are trying to keep Iraq as a stateless regime. Remember the history of bin Laden. Bin Laden only went to places that were stateless. He went to Somalia, a bunch of warlords, he could control them. Somalia. Afghanistan. All stateless. Taliban took over in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was running Somalia. Still may be. The Sudan is Al-Qaeda. But we kicked them out of Afghanistan. If we lose Iraq they're just going to go in and make Iraq the new Afghanistan. He's exactly right about that. But he's really gutsy, I think, because he's bucking his own party, he's standing up to his own party, standing up to Jack Murtha, standing up to the media, standing up to all the left out there and basically giving them the facts, and giving them reason and logic, and they don't want to hear it because they're invested in defeat. Lieberman is talking victory and these people don't connect with that. It's not in their lexicon. O'Brien says, "Well, here's what you wrote in the Wall Street Journal op-ed, runs today. It said, 'Almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if these forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.' I think you sum up in that line, which is when?" LIEBERMAN: Right. And the "when" cannot be set by us here in Congress or anybody in the White House or the executive branch on a kind of mechanical basis. The "when" has to be determined by conditions on the ground. And the basic question is, "When are the Iraqi security forces able to protect their country and fight these 10,000 terrorists on behalf of all the people of Iraq so we can begin to leave?" I see improvement. I think one of the most important things I saw on this trip, Soledad, is that the policy of the United States is following and our allies in Iraq has not remained stagnant, it's changed. RUSH: Imagine that! We have a Democrat senator who goes over there; he's doing a better job of explaining what's going over there than the administration is, but more than that one Democrat senator goes over there and tells an entirely different story than what we've been getting day in and day out from the leftist media. Progress. It's not stagnant. We are changing and we are adapting. James Q. Wilson, political scientist, sociologist, brilliant man, had a piece recently in OpinionJournal.com. His piece was basically, President Bush, if I were you and this is the speech I were to give in Iraq, this is what it would be and he wrote that speech, and it starts out, basically says: Forget about who's lying about this or that, talk about the fact that we're winning, give details about how we're winning and how it's going, how we're going to continue to win. Now, Bush has made it plain we're not going to accept defeat but here Lieberman has just summed up -- in three sound bites -- summed up what's happening in Iraq in a far more positive, accurate way, than I've heard from anybody, at least in political circles. END TRANSCRIPT Read the Background Material... (WSJ: America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists - Joe Liberman) (WSJ: The speech President Bush should give about Iraq - James Q. Wilson)

AT WAR Our Troops Must Stay America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists. BY JOE LIEBERMAN Tuesday, November 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn. Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress. There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it. It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority. Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right. In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it. None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country. The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead. Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory. The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them. Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week. We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle. Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come. The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq. These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too. I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates." Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi. Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut. Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

thinking aloud Don't try me, bitch! LOL J/K DUDE.....LOL

stockpiles or just "no wmd's"?

Actually, we meet every Wed. night @ our vast right wing conspiracy meetings. That's where we plot on how to touture the poor and conspire to take over the world! Or maybe great minds think alike? LOL

Lol U Beat Me To It

The Sunday Times November 27, 2005 Bruce Willis comes out fighting for Iraq’s forgotten GI heroes Sarah Baxter, Washington ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy. It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul. Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense. The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedomâ€. Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003. “I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,†he told MSNBC, the American news channel. He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics. Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. “What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,†the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.†Willis is likely to take on the role of the unit’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Erik Kurilla, 39, a Bruce Willis lookalike with a chest full of medals, more hair than Willis and a glamorous blonde wife. He was injured in August after being shot three times by insurgents “in front of my eyesâ€, Yon recorded in his blog: “He continued to direct his men until a medic gave him morphine and the men took him away.†Kurilla now has a titanium plate in his leg. He met Willis at the ball and said that his men were “very excited and appreciative that he was thereâ€. †Deuce Four has a chequered history. For decades it was a segregated black unit commanded by a white officer. It was disbanded in 1951 but veterans felt hurt that its past was considered to be a stain on the army and it was revived in the mid-1990s. When the battalion arrived in Mosul in November last year the city was under threat from insurgents. “We faced very heavy fighting for about three months,†Kurilla recalled. “Every patrol was making contact with enemy forces. We would hit them where they slept, where they worked and where they ate.†Today the picture was very different, he said. “I have watched a city that was in absolute chaos turn into one that has a viable Iraqi security force, which is taking the lead in fighting the terrorists.†Yon, 41, went to Iraq after a friend from high school, Scott Helveston, a former navy Seal, was hanged from a bridge in Falluja in an incident that shocked the world. Yon had never blogged before but was the author of Danger Close, a book about his experience as a green beret when he killed a man in a bar-room brawl. He was charged with murder and acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. “When I landed in Baghdad I was immediately struck by how much of a war zone it was,†Yon said. “Explosions were going off constantly. It was full-on.†His first experience of Mosul was worse: “I got attacked on my first mission. One of our vehicles got hit with a car bomb and three guys were killed.†In May, Yon took a photograph of a soldier from the Deuce Four cradling a little Iraqi girl who had been fatally wounded by a suicide bomber. He sensed that the inhabitants of Mosul were turning against the insurgents. “People began to realise that all the insurgents ever did was break things and kill people,†he said. “It started to switch from a firefight to an intelligence war. People started to talk more to us. They would pull us over and give us tips.†The Iraqi security forces began to take pride in their work, Yon added: “These guys were getting slaughtered but they continued to volunteer and fight. It’s very dangerous now to be a terrorist in Mosul. They’re still out there but it’s not like it was.†Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. “The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed,†he said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody want that?â€

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan waits for people to show up at her book signing near President Bush's ranch on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005 in Crawford, Texas. Sheehan, whose 24-year-old Casey died in Iraq, called for anti-war activists (AKA- DISPLACED AMERICA HATING PACIFIST, SOCIALISTS) to return to Crawford this week as Bush celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday. Sadly for Sheehan and the misguided social misfits using her to promote their anti-Americanism, not many people made the trip. Yes, I threw in that last line. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051126/480/txev10211261853

Call me crazy but.............. Didn't CNN go to extravagant measures to explain to the audience how this "computer glitch" happens? I think it was that CNN chic that Rush Limbaugh was/is dating, Daryn Kagan? So now it's "FREE SPEECH" and not,"this was a technical malfunction, not an issue of operator error"? NICE JOB CNN! Not only do the staff blatantly inject bias in the news, they blast "X's" over the face of the VP during a live speech, then when viewers call to complain, the staff starts blasting the caller? NICE! ========== XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN NOV 27 2005 17:05:23 ET XXXXX CNN OPERATOR FIRED AFTER SUGGESTING 'X' OVER CHENEY WAS 'FREE SPEECH' A CNN switchboard operator was fired over the holiday -- after the operator claimed the 'X' placed over Vice President's Dick Cheney's face was "free speech!" "We did it just to make a point. Tell them to stop lying, Bush and Cheney," the CNN operator said to a caller. "Bring our soldiers home." The caller initially phoned the network to complain about the all-news channel flashing an "X' over Cheney as he gave an address live from Washington. "Was it not freedom of speech? Yes or No?" the CNN operator explained. "If you don't like it, don't watch." Laurie Goldberg, Senior Vice President for Public Relations with CNN, said in a release: "A Turner switchboard operator was fired today after we were alerted to a conversation the operator had with a caller in which the operator lost his temper and expressed his personal views -- behavior that was totally inappropriate. His comments did not reflect the views of CNN. We are reaching out to the caller and expressing our deep regret to her and apologizing that she did not get the courtesy entitled to her. " Developing... ----------------------------------------------------------- Filed By Matt Drudge Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereport.com for updates ©DRUDGE REPORT 2005 Not for reproduction without permission of the author =============== Here it is: CNN Apologizes for X on Cheney's Face Nov 23 11:54 AM US/Eastern Email this story NEW YORK CNN has apologized for a "technical malfunction" that briefly flashed a black "X" mark over the face of Vice President Dick Cheney during the network's coverage of a speech on Monday. CNN, a unit of Time Warner Inc., later issued a mea culpa saying an investigation by senior management concluded "this was a technical malfunction, not an issue of operator error" and expressing regret for the incident. The network followed up with a special on-air segment during its "CNN Live Today" broadcast, in which anchor Daryn Kagan joined the network's technical manager, Steve Alperin, in the control room to offer a fuller explanation. The "X" image, a place-holding marker used by technicians to cue up graphics, is not supposed to be visible to viewers but was inadvertently projected onto the screen by a malfunction in a "switcher" device, they explained. "So, for all the conspiracy theories out there," Kagan said, " ... that's not what this is about. It's a computer bug that people deal with everyday. It's just that ours was in front of millions of people."

Now, now DESTRUCTION......plagiarism is crime, son! Don't B steal'n my lines,,,,you FOHK'N snake in the grass!! You know yo' mammy SHAT you! And I called you out on it too! Also, the "you wear a helmet and don't even play football" line was first posted by me too! Stick to the sheepboy and goatfucker lines.

yo Raver! he don't care. he's what normal people refer to as............ H A T E R................ PS...he is kinda fun to fuck w/ though. yes, it's wrong fuck w/ the cripple but I'm weak. I can't help myself sometimes.

anamalaka! skipsy skila, tora! putana muskila