Deaths in Iraq UP 20% in August. The violence is shifting and getting worse! The casualty figures were released yesterday in Iraq and they will overshadow anything the September Report says from Petraeus and Corker. The data does show some reduction in the Baghdad area but violence in both the north and south have more then offset the gains in Baghdad. Overall the number of deaths have increased by 20% in August. Add the almost total lack of progress on the political issues and t...
Bush got two more jolts this week. Yesterday the Joint Chiefs told Bush and Cheney that the Army and Marines CAN not sustain the troop levels in Iraq. The Joint Chiefs said we should cut the troop strength to 80,000. The Army Chief of Staff also wants to cut the tour length to 12 months from the current 15 month tour. T his may be at odds with what General Petraeus may want but the limits of the overall size of the ground forces will force the reduction of the troop levels in Iraq. Th...
On Tuesday Congress will receive the GAO Report on the situation in Iraq. The report is a detailed assessment of both the military and non military progress in Iraq. This report was requested by Congress and the person who released the 69 page draft copy to the Washington Post did so because they feared there would be an attempt by the White House to water down the very pessimistic GAO assessment on Iraq. The report says that only 3 of the 18 Benchmarks have been met by the Iraqi...
Two of the most important domestic initiatives of the Bush Presidency are the Economy and Education. We continue to hear how great a job the Bush policies have done in these two areas. This week we have definitive data on the results of the past 6 years on how well the economy has impacted most Americans and how well the Public Education system is performing (No Child Left Behind). First the Census Bureau has just released the data on the Economy and health Care in America. Here a...
On August 24th I posted this Blog which elicited many truly asinine comments that demonstrate the hypocrisy of many who Blog on Joe User- Bush & Rice Should be Impeached for NOT Protecting America! The United States spends Billions of dollars each year to collect and process intelligence for one propose—To provide the President and National Security Advisor information to help defend this country from attack. In my Blog I documented scores of such warnings provided ...
The NIE clearly depicts a paralyzed Iraqi Government unable to take advantage of the American sacrifice the Surge has provided. Although there have been some security gains from our increased military in Iraq, the overall violence has not materially reduced the numbers of dead and injured. In addition after over 4 years of training the Iraqi Military and Police, still can not operate without our help. The Report also said that the outlook for the Iraqi Government to be able to deal w...
Between March 2001 and 9/10/2001 George Tenet brought warnings to the White House, Rice and the Security Council that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on the United States. He documents those warnings in his book, At the CENTER of the STORM. Many of these warnings were given a 100% confidence rating by the CIA. In every warning, the CIA said these attacks were being planned by bin Laden and al-Qaeda. There was NO involvement of Saddam or Iraq. The CIA also documented that it was bin Laden ...
When I suggested we should peruse al-Qaeda into the border regions of Pakistan, some on Joe User were critical of my suggestion. When Sen. Barack Obama suggested the same thing Republicans were critical of his suggestion. Guess what—that has been the written policy of the Bush Administration since 2004. That policy came to light as part of the over 1,100 pages of documents that were part of the Tillman investigation. Our policy since 2004 says that certain elite units can enter Pakistan ...
The speech Bush gave to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday shows our President is totally out of touch with events of today as well as events from the past. His analogy of not learning the lesson from Vietnam when we withdrew is totally the wrong lesson. What we learned from Vietnam is that we should not have become involved in that war and we sent our military into what became a quagmire with no way to win. The issue was not how we got out as Bush suggested, but the mistake of our g...
The total lack of political progress and the attitude of the Iraqi Government has ended the argument to continue our failed Iraq Policy. The time that the Bush Surge was to provide for the Maliki Government to resolve the political issues was squandered and now al-Maliki is lashing out at the U.S. timetables for securing political progress in Iraq. The fact is that there has been NO progress and ALL the dead and injured Americans during this last surge were a total waste of the lives a...
The Pentagon has admitted it CAN NOT replace the 5 brigades that Bush sent to man the Surge in Iraq. The number of U.S. Army combat units needed to sustain the current troop levels in Iraq do not exist today in the Army. The only options to come up with the 5 brigades to continue the Bush Surge beyond the spring on 2008 are as follows: Use the National Guard Extend tours in Iraq for Army units beyond the current 15 month tours. Reduce the time out of Iraq below the current 1...
This week Secretary Paulson said the U.S. Economy was just fine. NOTHING could be further from the truth and we again see the White House SPIN DOCTORS at work. Paulson points to the continued creation of jobs but he does not acknowledge that those newly created jobs are paying substantially less then the jobs that were lost. He does not acknowledge that almost 14 Million Home mortgages are in danger or that mortgages companies are in danger of failing including the nations largest which h...
On 14 April 1994 Dick Cheney was asked if would have been a good idea to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. His answer was NO! Here are the reasons Cheney gave in 1994 to not invade Iraq: The U. S would be all alone and none of the Moslem countries would support such action. It would be looked upon as a U.S. Occupation. What do you put in place after you take down the Saddam Government? Pieces of Iraq would fly off and the country would become unstable. It would become a Quagm...
Voodoo Economics by George W. Bush To all that still claim the economy is good better take another look. The Real Estate market is in turmoil. Mortgage companies are teetering on collapse. Consumer purchasing is dropping even at low end retailers like Wal-Mart. The stock market has dropped 10% in a month. Personnel debt is at an all time high and GDP growth is way down with the prospect of showing little or no growth in the months ahead. All this and a continuing annual budget deficit in t...
To all those that want to defend Bush and his Iraq surge lets look at the facts: The so Called Unity Government has only one of the three factions participating in the government. The Maliki Government has agreed on none of the issues that are essential to ending the fighting among the factions in Iraq. A major Bridge north of Baghdad was destroyed. One of the governors was killed. A key Oil official was captured. Nine more Americans were killed and we lost another heli...