Just how desperate do you have to be to use our experiences in Vietnam to support our policies in Iraq? Lets ask the President.

"Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people," he was to say. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."

"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, or execution. In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished," he was to say.

"Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea," said Bush, who pleaded for patience with the US-led security crackdown in Iraq.

Of course anybody with any sense of history can see that this is not an argument for staying in Iraq until "the job is done", but rather an argument to not tell the people of a country you will never abandon them on Monday and then run for the border on Wednesday.

We need to start reducing the number of troops in Iraq as soon as possible, but do it in a controlled manner which does not appear that we are being chased out.

No matter if we stay or if we go, there are going to be more Iraqi casualties. And it is almost certain that the months around our pullout will see an increase in violence against the Iraqis and Americans. But it simply has to be done. Because until we leave this thing will just never end.

And we better make some considerations for the Iraqis who supported us, because they will be the first ones killed when we do leave. I don't have a good solution for this problem.

When we went in we should have known that we would cause a bloodbath. Hell we killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these people ourselves in the lead up to the war.

All of this is our fault. We have no moral ground to stand on here.

Bush is lying about Congress dropping the ball on the FISA update.

In his speech today, Bush said:

When Congress sends me their version, when Congress listens to all the data and facts and they send me a version of how to close those gaps, I'll ask one question, and I'm going to ask the DNI: Does this legislation give you what you need to prevent an attack on the country? Is this what you need to do your job, Mr. DNI? That's the question I'm going to ask. And if the answer is yes, I'll sign the bill. And if the answer is no, I'm going to veto the bill.
And so far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign. We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk.

There's only one problem with Bush's statement: it isn't true.

A key Democrat in the negotiations, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), says that a deal had in fact been reached with McConnell, who has been busy lobbying Congress on a FISA update all week. "We had an agreement with DNI McConnell," Hoyer spokeswoman Stacey Bernards tells TPMmuckraker, "and then the White House quashed the agreement."

Bush is trying to get as much leeway as he can to spy on all communication coming and out of this country. Do you trust him with this information?

Bush is still desperately trying to facilitate the coming Armageddon.

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

"I can't confirm or deny whether such a program exists or whether the president signed it, but it would be consistent with an overall American approach trying to find ways to put pressure on the regime," said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA senior official who dealt with Iran and other countries in the region.

So while we pretend to be opening diplomatic talks with Iran for the first time we are also trying to undermine their government, and we expect this to make them trust us?

Look the facts are that George W. Bush believes that he has been chosen by God to help bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ. He does not care about diplomacy, or global warming, or future political considerations because he is out of his freaking mind!

I know that this sounds a little crazy as well, and I thought so to the first time I heard it, but if you examine closely the things that Bush has focused on, like filling his cabinet with "born again" Christian's, and trying to expand the Executives power, and fanning the flames in the Middle East, I think you have to put your skepticism aside and consider that Bush may in fact be insane which is why impeachment really is the only hope our country and the world has left.

I know reading the above post may make you want to send me all of your unused tin foil for my new hat, but the more of these things I see the more I am convinced that Bush truly believes that the end times are just around the corner. If you have been hearing excerpts from Ronald Reagan's diary being read on television you may have become aware that Ronnie expected the end times to occur on his watch as well. But the difference is that Reagan did not seem to be dedicated to making it happen. I think that Reagan trusted that God would do it in his own time, but Bush does not like to wait for anything. He wants it now, and he is in a position to make it happen.

Scared yet? You should be.

Bush veto comics.

Historian Chalmers Johnson tells us that the damage that George Bush has done to our country may in fact be terminal.

George W. Bush has, of course, flagrantly violated his oath of office, which requires him "to protect and defend the constitution," and the opposition party has been remarkably reluctant to hold him to account. Among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that, under other political circumstances, would surely constitute the Constitutional grounds for impeachment are these: the President and his top officials pressured the Central Intelligence Agency to put together a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear weapons that both the administration and the Agency knew to be patently dishonest. They then used this false NIE to justify an American war of aggression. After launching an invasion of Iraq, the administration unilaterally reinterpreted international and domestic law to permit the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, at Guant·namo Bay, Cuba, and at other secret locations around the world.

Nothing in the Constitution, least of all the commander-in-chief clause, allows the president to commit felonies. Nonetheless, within days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush had signed a secret executive order authorizing a new policy of "extraordinary rendition," in which the CIA is allowed to kidnap terrorist suspects anywhere on Earth and transfer them to prisons in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Uzbekistan, where torture is a normal practice, or to secret CIA prisons outside the United States where Agency operatives themselves do the torturing.

On the home front, despite the post-9/11 congressional authorization of new surveillance powers to the administration, its officials chose to ignore these and, on its own initiative, undertook extensive spying on American citizens without obtaining the necessary judicial warrants and without reporting to Congress on this program. These actions are prima-facie violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and subsequent revisions) and of Amendment IV of the Constitution.

I suggest that you read it carefully even though it will do little to comfort you about the future of America.

China reminds America that it owns our ass.

Chinese officials on Tuesday ruled out major changes demanded by U.S. lawmakers in Beijing's currency controls ahead of a high-level meeting and called on critics in Congress not to politicize trade disputes.

The Finance Ministry official said China is "firmly against any threatening rhetoric or steps to politicize economic issues," saying that would harm the economic interests of both parties.

We owe China billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, and if they decide to call in those markers they will destroy the U.S. economy.

This is how George Bush has been able to fund this disaster of a war without raising our taxes. Bush does not "pay as he goes", he is going to leave this gigantic debt on the heads of our children. He is the kind of person who never considers the true consequences of his actions and does not really care since his world view tells him hat Jesus is coming and when the Rapture happens all of his debts will be wiped out.

And this man was elected to run the most powerful nation on the planet twice!

(Hat tip to Skippy who brought my attention to this story.)

The Daily Show shows just how much bullshit Bush sends our way.

I love how the Daily Show finds those old clips of Bush saying things that come in direct conflict with what he is saying now.

It must take his people hours, and hours to sift through all of that Bush speech footage to find what they need. And I would like to say to them that I really appreciate your hard work. Every one of you deserves a raise.

I am not buying this change of heart.

President Bush offered his first public concession to try to resolve the impasse over Iraq war spending today, as he confronted new pressure from his own party over the conflict and House approval of a plan that would provide money for combat operations only through midsummer.

“It makes sense to have benchmarks as a part of our discussion on how to go forward,” Mr. Bush said, even as he threatened to veto the House plan, which was approved on a vote of 221 to 205, to require him to seek approval in two months for the balance of the war money.

I call bullshit on this one.

I do not believe for one instant that President Head-Up Ass has really changed his mind one iota. He is playing a game for time and just trying to run out the clock until his presidency is over. He knows our next President will be Democrat and he, and his lying party members, want desperately to be able to blame the loss of this conflict on them.

I know that the conservatives would say that my attitude just shows that we liberals are never satisfied. We call for time lines, we get them, and we still complain. My answer to that is we are not getting anything, except the same old bullshit in a different container.

That relabeling crap works on the Republican base not on those of us with more then a few braincells to work with. We know a load of poo when we see it.

Even Republicans are finally getting fed up with Bush's Iraq policy.

A group of Republican lawmakers warned President George W. Bush this week at a private White House meeting that conditions in Iraq must improve quickly or he will lose more support from his own party, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Eleven moderate House Republicans were unusually candid with Bush in a meeting that lasted more than an hour, telling him public support for the war was crumbling in their swing districts, the Times said, sighting participants in the Tuesday session.

NBC Nightly News quoted an unnamed participant in the meeting as saying that they had an "unvarnished conversation" with Bush about the war.

The delegation, headed by Mark Kirk of Illinois and Charles Dent of Pennsylvania, told Bush: "We need candor. We need honesty," and that the White House had lost its credibility on the war, NBC reported.

You know the Republicans have so little credibility with me that I don't even know if I should trust that this is genuine or not.

Even if it really means that moderate Republicans are finally going to join the Democrats is holding Bush responsible for Iraq it still means they sat on their ass while this thing went on and did nothing until they felt pressured politically to act.

I see no ethical courage here.

Retired General says George Bush has gone AWOL.

“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave."

“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.


“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.

“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.


“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

This is not information that most of us don't already know, but it is remarkable the types of military people that are coming forward to tell us that they share our opinions of George Bush's Iraq policies. My only question is where were you when this whole thing began? We could have really used more of these dissenting opinions back then.

E-mails prove that US attorneys were removed for political reasons.

A Justice Department e-mail message released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for United States attorneys nearly a year before they were dismissed in December 2006. The department has repeatedly stated that no successors were selected before the dismissals.

The Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail message, written by D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as the top aide to Mr. Gonzales, identified five Bush administration officials, most of them Justice Department employees, whose names were sent to the White House for consideration as possible replacements for prosecutors slated for dismissal.

Some of the new documents show the department’s acute awareness of individual United States attorneys’ political and ideological views. An undated spreadsheet attached to a Feb. 12, 2007, e-mail message listed the federal prosecutors who had served under President Bush along with their past work experience.

It is getting clearer that the point of these firings was to create a buffer between any litigation that might be filed against this administration and the White House. They were clearly trying to reinforce their ramparts for the siege that is about to come their way.

However doing so is clearly against the law. I have a feeling that this is the way the Democrats will see it as well.

Administration in a panic as Pelosi does their job by talking to Syria.

Ms. Pelosi, in a telephone interview from Lisbon on Friday, said she could not account for the Bush administration’s assault, which she at one point equated to a tantrum. (She said her children were teasing her about Mr. Cheney’s accusation of bad behavior.) Defending her trip, Ms. Pelosi said that members of Congress had a responsibility to play a role in national security issues and that they needed to be able to gather information on their own, and not be dependent on the White House.

“I am used to the administration; nothing surprises me,” she said. “Having said that, I hope we can have the opportunity to convey to the president what we saw.”

Ms. Pelosi seams to be handling the name calling and Republican attacks with some dignity. And that must be pretty hard with these kinds of statements being directed at her.

“Don’t you get enraged when this kind of thing happens?” Rush Limbaugh asked Mr. Cheney during a radio interview on Thursday.

“I think it is, in fact, bad behavior on her part,” the vice president replied. “She doesn’t represent the administration. The president is the one who conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.”

But the sad fact of this President and his administration is that they do not "conduct foreign policy". They either bully other countries into compliance or they label them evil and just stop talking to them altogether. That is not a negotiation. That is how schoolchildren solve their problems.

The Democrats are trying to repair some of the damage George Bush and his cronies have done to our international relations over the last six and a half years. They have much, much more left to do.

Bush may be using the captured British sailors to justify a possible increase in hostility.

The Iranian prisoner crisis revealed a widening schism between Britain and the United States Sunday as U.S. leaders called for tough action and British officials confirmed that they are trying to free their 15 imprisoned sailors by quietly reaching a compromise with Tehran.

“We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible, and that it be resolved by diplomatic means, and we are bending every single effort to that. ... We are in direct bilateral communication with the Iranians,” British Defence Minister Des Browne told reporters Sunday.

But Britain's delicate diplomatic efforts were set back by U.S. President George W. Bush, who made a statement Saturday in which he characterized the imprisoned sailors as “hostages” — a phrase that Britain has been carefully avoiding to prevent the crisis from becoming a broader political or military conflict.

There is no limit to what Bush and his cronies will stoop to to further their agenda. And they could care less about the lives of these British military members. Every one of us is seen simply as pawns to accomplish some divine goal that George Bush believes God has delivered to him.

He is a mad man.

Top Bush aide has finally lost faith in George Bush.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said. He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

This guy is part of that last 29% who still support the President, and now we are seeing them finally unable to take it anymore.

It cannot be much longer before Bush finds his wife and his dog really are the only ones who still support him. And I have to believe that Laura is just hanging on by the thread at this point.

Americans are done being lied to and want Bush aides to be subpoenaed.

Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.

Finally Americans have pulled their heads out of their asses and are demanded to know the truth! Where have you fuckers been?

US Generals ready to quit over Iran attack strategy.

Some of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.
Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

Is it even possible for the administration to engage Iran with this level of mistrust?

I don't think so.

But then the next question is will that stop Bush from trying?

Can we even imagine how horribly incompetent this aggression will appear with so little support from the military, the Democrats, and the American people? It would make Iraq look like raging success.

US media and bloggers are not the only ones who think that Bush is preparing to invade Iran.

Senior British government officials fear that US President George W. Bush will attack
Iran before his final term in office ends in a little less than two years time, a newspaper reported in an early Friday edition.

They fear that Bush will seek to "settle the Iranian question through military means," The Times reported, quoting unidentified senior British government sources.

"He (Bush) will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor," one of the sources told The Times.

The administration keeps acting as if we are all overreacting and seeing mountains where there are not even molehills. But the fact is that any rational person who hears the rhetoric, and sees the military buildup, cannot help but reach the conclusion that we are preparing to attack Iran.

The only way that the Iran invasion will not take place is if there is just so much scrutiny on the government that they cannot get an invasion plan off of the ground.

And I am going to do my best to keep us focused on them and their lies. After all I have a child to protect.

Not news: US official lies about Iran involvement in Iraq. News: Media calls him on it. When did this start happening?

An anonymous U.S. official, assigned to provide a recent “background” briefing to the news media in Baghdad, strayed from his script and overstated evidence linking Iranian leaders to weapons found in Iraq, according to four U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the matter.

At some point during the Baghdad presentation, however, one of the briefers apparently went beyond the text of the slide show. The briefer claimed that senior Iranian government officials had authorized the Quds Force to supply insurgents with weapons designed to kill Americans. If true, it would be powerful evidence that high-level elements of the Iranian regime were directly involved in the targeting of U.S. soldiers—arguably an act of war.

Apparently that claim, which Bush himself has been using for over a week, is on pretty shaky ground.

Another official who has monitored relevant intelligence reporting said allegations that top Iranian leaders approved alleged Quds Force activity in Iraq is at best circumstantial. "There is no evidence Quds has authorization to kill Americans ... or that the ayatollah knows what an EFP is," the official said.

This just serves as another indication of how desperate the Bush administration is in trying to start some shit with Iran. They constantly say they are not trying to build a case for war, but every bit of evidence points to just the opposite.

I am beyond certain that Bush wants to have a conflict raging with Iran before he leaves office.

Why?

Because in his fundamental belief system a war with Iran may help to usher in the Rapture. I know that sounds nuts, but the evidence is getting harder to ignore.

Condoleezza Rice rejected Iran's 2003 offer to create a dialogue.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled the U.S. Congress when she said last week that she had not seen a 2003 Iranian proposal for talks with the United States, a former senior government official said on Wednesday.

Flynt Leverett, who worked on the National Security Council when it was headed by Rice, likened the proposal to the 1972 U.S. opening to China. He said he was confident it was seen by Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell but "the administration rejected the overture."
Speaking at a conference on Capitol Hill, Leverett said "this was a serious proposal, a serious effort" by

Iran to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.

"The Bush administration up to and including Secretary Rice is misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran proposal," he said.

So the only two choices available are that Rice and the administration are incompetent idiots who did not respond appropriately to Iran's offer to begin negotiations, or that they purposefully refused to cooperate in an effort to paint Iran as unreasonable and dangerous.

And why would they want to label Iran as dangerous? Because Americans do not respond well when you bomb innocent people.

This has happened before, in almost exactly the same way. Do you remember Saddam?

In December 2002, a representative of the head of Iraqi Intelligence, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti, contacted former CIA counterterrorism head Vincent Cannistraro, stating that Saddam "knew there was a campaign to link him to September 11 and prove he had weapons of mass destruction." Cannistrano further added that "the Iraqis were prepared to satisfy these concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it." Cannistrano stated that the offers made were all "killed" by the Bush administration because they allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power - an outcome viewed as unacceptable.

For the Bush administration to continue to say that they are not gearing up to attack Iran, is to say that they consider us to ignorant to put two and two together. They are mistaken.