reality-based educator

From the Associated Press:

"The State Department called Iraq too dangerous for American travellers on Wednesday, hours after President George W Bush pointed to 'significant progress' there.

'Attacks against military and civilian targets throughout Iraq continue,' and targets include hotels and restaurants, the State Department's travel warning said. 'There have been planned and random killings, as well as extortions and kidnappings.' The State Department issues warning against unnecessary travel to countries where internal conditions such as war, political unrest or terrorism may make American tourists, business people or other travellers targets. Wednesday's warning replaced a similarly worded warning issued in October.

Bush's speech on Tuesday night marked the first anniversary of the transfer of power from the US-led coalition to Iraq's interim government. The president cited advances in the past year, including the January elections, infrastructure improvements and training of Iraqi security forces.

'In the past year, we have made significant progress,' Bush said.

'Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder. Our progress has been uneven but progress is being made.'

The State Department warning said terrorism threatens travel over land and by air.

'There is credible information that terrorists are targeting civil aviation. Civilian and military aircraft arriving in and departing from Baghdad International Airport have been subjected to small arms and missiles,' the warning said.

US government personnel are not allowed to fly commercially aboard Iraq's national airline, Iraqi Airways. They must come and go to the country on US military or other government-owned aircraft, or by Royal Jordanian Airlines.

'All vehicular travel in Iraq is extremely dangerous,' the warning said. 'There have been numerous attacks on civilian vehicles, as well as military convoys. Attacks occur throughout the day, but travel at night is exceptionally dangerous.' More than 1,700 US troops have died in Iraq, with thousands more injured. The toll is even higher among Iraqis.

Ah, progress. It really sounds like we're "completing the mission."

From The New York Times:

"KABUL, Afghanistan, June 29 - The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.

Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.

The steady stream of violence has dealt a new blow to this still traumatized nation of 25 million. In dozens of interviews conducted in recent weeks around the country, Afghans voiced concern that things were not improving, and that the Taliban and other dangerous players were gaining strength.

An American Chinook helicopter that crashed on Tuesday was brought down by hostile fire as it was landing during combat in a mountainous border area, American military officials said Wednesday.

Afghans interviewed about the continuing violence also expressed increased dissatisfaction with their own government and the way the United States military was conducting its operations, and said they were suspicious of the Americans' long-term intentions.

'Three years on, the people are still hoping that things are going to work out, but they have become suspicious about why the Americans came, and why the Americans are treating the local people badly,' said Jandad Spinghar, leader of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Nangarhar Province in the east, just across the Khyber Pass from Pakistan.

Poverty, joblessness, frustrated expectations and the culture of 25 years of war make for a volatile mix in which American military raids, shootings and imprisonments can inflame public opinion, many here say.

'Generally people are not against the Americans,' Mr. Spinghar said. 'But in areas where there are no human rights, where they do not have good relations and where there is bad treatment of villagers or prisoners, this will hand a free area to the Taliban. It's very important that the Americans understand how the Afghan people feel.'"

Yikes. I thought Afghanistan was a success story for the preznit and vice preznit? Now it sounds like a resurgent Taliban and a resentful Afghan public are making the "success story" in Afghanistan a little less successful.

The good news is, Afghanistan isn't as bad as Iraq. The bad news? There's still plenty of time for things to get worse. And given that the American military is bogged down in Iraq for the conceivable future, if the situation starts to really tank in Afghanistan, I'm not sure how the preznit deals with it other than give primetime speeches and assure Americans that we are "completing the mission."

From Reuters:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA agents charged with kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan appear to have bungled their way into an international incident by ignoring the most basic rules of the spy trade, experts say.

Far from the suave discretion of James Bond, experts say the operatives who snatched radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on Feb. 17, 2003, sound more like the bumbling secret agent Austin Powers of movie fame.

"Instead of super-sleuths, they were like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints," said former CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle.

Media reports say the agents placed phone calls to CIA headquarters on unsecured lines, ran up $145,000 in bills at luxury hotels and operated far enough in the open for Italian authorities to learn their operational identities.

'Everybody knows that telephones can be traced. It's not exactly an emerging technology,' said one former spy.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials, who had no actual knowledge of Nasr's abduction, said Italian accounts depict an amateur operation.

Several other intelligence sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves a covert U.S. operation.

'The tradecraft was beyond appalling,' said an intelligence official with long experience in clandestine affairs. 'I'd have to wonder if these were CIA officers trained in the clandestine arts...'

...The abduction of Nasr, who court documents say was flown to Egypt and tortured there, threatens to rattle U.S.-Italian relations three months after U.S. troops shot dead an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq without facing disciplinary action.

Italian prosecutors are considering calling for the extradition of 13 people involved in the operation, while Italians are demanding to know if their own government was also involved."

Boy, this story makes me feel confident that the Bush administration can keep the country safe. Given the track record of the administration when dealing with officials who fuck things up, these 13 CIA agents who kidnapped Nasr and sent him to Egypt to be tortured should be getting promotions sometime soon.

Or Medals of Freedom, along with Paul Bremer, George Tenet, and General Tommy Franks. Cuz' the Iraq War has gone so well, you know?

From ABC News (Posted in Full):

The President's Speech on Iraq: Truth vs. Spin
Bush Is More Frank on Iraq, but Still Avoids Many Unpleasant Realities
Analysis By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Jun. 29, 2005 - President Bush was more frank about the problems we face in Iraq than he has been in the past.

The president talked in more depth than before about the need to make Iraqi forces effective, and why deadlines for U.S. withdrawal could present serious problems. He presented a case for not increasing U.S. troops and he at least seemed to commit the U.S. to not establishing bases in Iraq or maintaining any lasting presence:

"We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed -- and not a day longer," he said. "Sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are in fact working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave."

Key parts of his speech, however, were driven by spin, rather than a frank effort to warn the American people of the sacrifices necessary to win and the risks involved. The end result was to mislead in ways that could come back to haunt the administration and reduce longer-term public support.

Insurgency

One key failure was his effort to explain the insurgency in Iraq almost solely in terms of foreign Islamic extremists. The president correctly referred to hundreds of foreign fighters, their horrifying extremism, and the very real threat they pose. He totally failed to mention the thousands of native Iraqis that make up the core of the insurgency, the fact we have only some 600 foreign detainees out of a total of 14,000 total detainees, the fact most intelligence estimates put foreign fighters at around 5 percent of the total, and the fact we face a major native popular Sunni Muslim uprising and deep Sunni distrust.

He implied the liberation, elections and democracy had somehow unified Iraq when they clearly have not, and glossed over the major political turmoil that will accompany the efforts to draft the constitution and elections to come. The president fundamentally misstated the true nature of the threat and risks in Iraq.

At the same time, he tied the reasons for the situation in Iraq to "9/11," and ignored all of his previous rationale for going to war in Iraq, and the U.S. failure in Iraq to plan for stability operations and carry out effective nation-building. He ignored the CIA analysis indicating that the invasion and initial mishandling of the insurgency had made Iraq a magnet for Islamist extremists.

He dodged over the fact that much of their extremism is designed to provoke an Iraq civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and implied that Iraq is the center of such activity and not a center. The fact is that Iraq is not draining Islamist activity in other regions. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, and other Gulf states are just a few of the areas where Islamist extremist activity remains a major threat that in no way is diminished by involvement in Iraq.

Diplomacy, Economics and Aid

The president talked about democracy as a regional panacea, and not as part of a difficult and long-term process of reform that must be coupled to the rule of law and human rights, economic reform, social reform, and demographic change. As usual, he cast his call for such reform in ways likely to provoke considerable local hostility from both friendly regimes and reformers. He talked about Libya, but not challenges like Iran, and totally avoided the difficult subject of the linkage between progress in the Arab-Israeli peace process and success in Iraq. He made no mention of the problems in dealing with Iraq's neighbors or how he intends to address them.

The president did not approach honesty in addressing the military burden on the United States, and key allies like Britain and Australia. He talked about thousands of coalition troops, not the need to maintain a massive U.S. troop presence until Iraq forces are ready. He did not mention that several coalition allies now plan to leave or are considering doing so. He talked about 17 nations contributing to the NATO training mission without noting that these are at best a few thousand individuals, of which hundreds are actually deployed in Iraq. In doing so, he did not warn the American people that there are thousands of American killed and wounded still to come, or explain and justify this sacrifice.

He gave an equally meaningless and misleading picture of Iraq's economic situation. He talked about $34 billion pledged by 80 countries, but not about the fact many countries never keep such pledges and that some $23 billion of that total had come from the United States. He did not mention that it costs some $4 billion to $8 billion a month to stay in Iraq, that it will cost the U.S. at least $100 billion to $200 billion more to stay the course, and that Iraq faces major budget problems, the need for another major aid supplemental, and has not even begun to seriously recondition its oil fields.

He did not touch upon the massive failures and limits in the U.S. aid effort to date, the need to reorganize that aid effort and put the management of the Iraqi economy into Iraqi hands, or the fact that Iraq's per-capita income and services remain well under prewar levels, and that the lack of jobs and security feeds the insurgency.

Iraqi Forces

The president cited three major "new" steps in improving the quality of Iraqi forces. In fact, none were really new. Step one, having coalition units partner with Iraqi units has been necessary virtually from the start; they have needed such support because they are just beginning to acquire the leadership, experience and support capabilities that any new forces must acquire. The coalition training and advisory teams have been developing such efforts for a year.

Embedding "coalition transition teams" in Iraqi forces began as a result of the mission to Iraq by retired Gen. Gary Luck in January 2005, and has already been fully implemented in most Iraqi army, national guard, and special police units. It is under way in regular police units, but has been delayed by a lack of resources and support from civilian agencies and departments in Washington. The president did not talk about the need for enduring commitments and more help from outside the U.S. military.

The United States began working with the Iraqi ministry of defense and ministry of interior before the transfer of power in June 2004 -- more than a year ago. The progress in organization, training and other force-building activities is very real, but it is the result of a major restructuring of the U.S. advisory effort following a mission to assess Iraq's security forces by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry in the winter of 2003/2004, and work of the multinational command that began in the spring of 2004.

More important, the entire force-building effort is just beginning to acquire critical mass, and it will require at least another year of intense U.S. military support in combat. The president was right in saying that there are more than 160,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces, almost all of which are capable of performing at least low-level missions. This is a major rise in such manpower from a total of around 96,000 in August 2004, and Iraqi forces will be able to take over more and more of the mission with time.

However, the president did not mention that U.S. plans also call for expanding the Iraqi manpower pool through July 2006, and from 168,000 men in June 2005, to 200,000 in September, 230,000 in December, and 270,000 in July 2006, and just how much further the force-building effort must go.

The president did not talk about the time it will take to develop actual combat capability. Moreover, it will take a substantial amount of time to bring most Iraqi manpower from little or limited operational capability to fully operational capability.

The Iraqi army and national guard, security services, and police are now being rated by a new evaluation matrix developed by the MNSTC-I. This matrix was developed by a combination of Iraqi brigade and battalion commanders, and their U.S. advisers, and looked at factors like manning levels, equipment levels, training, command and control, leadership, and logistics. It rates Iraqi units as having one of four levels of mission capability.

The details of this readiness system are classified, but reports have been issued in various "blogs" and press reports. According to such press reports, the Iraqi army and national guard had a total of 81 battalions by late May 2005, but a new evaluation matrix developed by the MNSTC-I only rated three battalions at the top level of readiness and capability, and this did not mean they were capable of independent operations. Only one of 26 brigade headquarters had such a rating. If one included all of the special police battalions, the press reported that the total force rose from 81 battalions to 101, but the number rated in the top category only rose from three to five. The United States had also concluded that it needed to make further major increases in the number of U.S. advisory or "transition teams" embedded in Iraqi units and was seeking to rapidly deploy 2,500 more men by mid-June.

The new rating system found that Iraqi units were particularly weak in logistics; because they were being rushed into combat readiness, and lack support personnel like truck drivers, supply clerks, medics and engineers. Instead of the nearly 50-50 tooth-to-tail ratio in U.S. forces, only 4,000 of the 75,800 men in rated units were performing support function.

It must be stressed that all of these issues are now being addressed and that real progress is being made as quickly as it can without sacrificing force quality for force quantity. There was only one active Iraqi battalion in July 2004, and a few more national guard and special police battalions. The coalition advisory teams have, indeed, accomplished an amazing amount in the last year, and it may well be possible to begin steady reductions in U.S. and the remaining allied troop presence in early 2006. It seems almost certain, however, that a major U.S. presence will be needed through 2007 unless the Iraqi political process can change to include most of Iraq's Sunnis and defuse the native Iraq role in the insurgency -- issues the president deliberately avoided.

U.S. Troops

The president implied the U.S. had plans to totally leave Iraq once current plans are complete. It doesn't. Plans don't yet exist to give Iraq all the armor, artillery, airpower, and support it will need until the insurgency is truly defeated.

The president also gave a dangerously over-simplified rationale for not deploying more American troops, although he was honest in stating that foreign forces are resented by Iraqis, not seen as "liberators," and only Iraqi forces can lead to the kind of popular acceptance that can defeat the insurgency. The truth is we don't have large reserves of the kind of trained forces with the combat and area skills that are needed. The United States has the same problems with force quality versus force quantity as Iraqis, and our present force structure must be changed to avoid over-deploying the skilled actives and reserves that had largely already been in Iraq. Six years of near failure in effective force transformation have compounded the problem.

It is also all too clear that calls for limited amounts of additional troops might solve some problem at a local tactical level, but one outside call for 3,500 NATO troops to secure the Syrian border is a typical military absurdity. It would take tens of thousands more U.S. troops, since serious additional allied troops aren't coming and some allied troops are going. They then could only occupy space, not govern or establish the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. The president should have said that Iraqi forces sensitive to Iraqi needs, political inclusiveness, and the Iraqi government's ability to leave effective police and government structures in now-hostile areas are the answer; not more troops. To do so, however, he would have had to address the real nature of the insurgency.

In short, this was not the honest speech that Americans needed to hear; it was dominated by efforts at spin control. It did not explain the sacrifices needed, or the risks to be faced. It provided a partial and largely misleading explanation for the U.S. role in Iraq, without mention of our moral and ethical obligation to the Iraqi people and the vital strategic interests involved. Instead of "blood, sweat, and tears," we got spin, risk avoidance, and promises without cost. Normal perhaps by today's political standards, but scarcely the kind of realism and leadership that will inspire the continuing American support that U.S. forces, Iraq, and our allies will need during the difficult and uncertain years to come.

Anthony H. Cordesman is an ABC News military analyst, and an expert on the Iraq war as a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Wow. ABC News called the preznit on his bullshit. Cordesman notes that"Instead of 'blood, sweat, and tears," we got spin, risk avoidance, and promises without cost."

Sounds like a recapitulation of the entire Bush Presidency.

From the Associated Press (Via Randy MI's Diary at The Daily Kos):

"Two French journalists who were held hostage in Iraq told a British documentary program that their captors believed George W. Bush's re-election as US president would help radicalize Iraqis.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in August and released after four months, told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s 'Panorama' program that they were allowed to interview the leader of an Islamic militant cell within the group that seized them.

'We felt we were on planet bin Laden,' Malbrunot said on the program, which airs Wednesday night.

The cell leader trained with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told them the insurgents supported a Bush presidency because they believed it meant that 'there will be confrontation, occupation and radicalization of the Iraqi people,' Malbrunot said. "

Terrorists favor George W. Bush, oh yes they do. This preznit surely will keep us safer from terrorism. Or maybe he'll help recruit thousands new terrorists to the jihadi cause and aggravate an already intense resentment of America abroad. Hard to tell, ain't it?

If the United States wants to win the War on Terror, perhaps Americans should elect a few less demagogues and a few more statesmen who understand that the War on Terror is a battle of ideas and philosophies that cannot be won by torturing terror suspects or rendering them to Egypt to be tortured and murdered by our "allies."

I don't think the Elaine LaMangas of the country are smart enough to see that though.

From The Washington Post:

"About a third of an ounce of botulism toxin poured by bioterrorists into a milk truck en route from a dairy farm to a processing plant could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in economic losses, according to a scientific analysis that was published yesterday despite efforts by federal officials to keep the details secret.

The analysis by researchers at Stanford University, posted yesterday on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seeks to quantify security weaknesses in the nation's milk-supply chain and makes recommendations for closing those gaps.

Although some suggested changes are underway, federal officials felt the material had enough potential for misuse to warrant a last-minute effort to halt publication. That effort, which delayed the report's release by a month but ultimately did not keep it from becoming public, proved to be as contentious as the publication itself. It has assured the report's place in the scientific canon as one of the first test cases of how to balance scientific freedom and national security in the post-Sept. 11 era.

Study leader Lawrence M. Wein, whose previous research had forecast the likely effects of terrorist attacks involving anthrax and smallpox, said he was surprised by the government's push to block publication, which involved a flurry of phone calls and meetings with officers of the National Academies. The organization advises the federal government on matters of science and publishes the journal...

...The analysis by Wein and graduate student Yifan Liu considered what might happen if terrorists poured into a milk tanker truck a couple of gallons of concentrated sludge containing as much as 10 grams of botulinum toxin, a potent bacterial nerve poison now popular in low doses as a wrinkle eraser.

Because milk from many sources is combined in huge tanks holding hundreds of thousands of gallons, the toxin would get widely distributed in low, but potentially lethal, concentrations and within days be consumed by about 568,000 people, the report concludes.

The researchers acknowledge that their numbers are very rough. But depending on how thoroughly the milk was pasteurized (which partially inactivates toxins) and how promptly the outbreak was detected and supplies recalled, about 400,000 people would be likely to fall ill, they conclude.

Symptoms of botulism food poisoning arise within hours and progress from cramps, nausea and vision problems to paralysis and death by asphyxiation. Although only 6 percent of victims would generally be expected to die, the death rate could easily hit 60 percent, they conclude, because there would not be nearly enough mechanical ventilators or doses of antitoxin to treat so many victims."

Apparently the government didn't want the study published because it would harm the dairy industry and give terrorists ideas they don't already have about how to hurt us.

Let's face it, saving the dairy industry a few dollars is a paramount duty for all Americans. And everybody knows Al Qaeda can't think outside the box when it comes to planning terrorist attacks. Rumor has it they get all their ideas from CSI.

From Knight-Ridder:

"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Days after Iraq's new Shiite-led government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital's central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.

Faik Baqr, the director and chief forensic investigator at the central Baghdad morgue, said the corpses first caught his attention because the men appeared to have been killed in methodical fashion. Their hands had been tied or handcuffed behind their backs, their eyes were blindfolded and they appeared to have been tortured. In most cases, the dead men looked as if they'd been whipped with a cord, subjected to electric shocks or beaten with a blunt object and shot to death, often with single bullets to their heads.

Marks on the bodies were similar to the injuries found on prisoners who were rescued from secret Interior Ministry jails by representatives of the Iraqi ministry for human rights, according to family accounts and medical records.

Iraqi and American officials said the murders aren't being investigated systematically, but in dozens of interviews with families and Iraqi officials, and a review of medical records, a Knight Ridder reporter and two special correspondents found more than 30 examples of this type of killing in less than a week. They include 12 cases with specific dates, times, names and witnesses who said they might come forward if asked by law enforcement.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the Iraqi police, denies any involvement in the killings. But eyewitnesses said that many of the dead were apprehended by large groups of men driving white Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The men were wearing police commando uniforms and bulletproof vests, carrying expensive 9-millimeter Glock pistols and using sophisticated radios, the witnesses said.

U.S. officials, who have advisers in the Interior Ministry, have said that they're aware of the abductions and killings, but that they think the murders are the work of insurgents posing as police.

While he admitted that Interior Ministry troops have at times abused detainees, Casteel said he knew of only one instance in which they falsely detained an Iraqi and beat him. And in that case, the troops and their commander were convicted and jailed, he said...

... The murders and the allegations about who's committing them add another explosive element to Iraq's growing sectarian strife at a time when the Bush administration has begun saying that it's up to the Iraqi government to defeat the insurgency by attracting broader popular support, especially from Sunni Arabs.

If the killers are proven to be Sunni insurgents masquerading as Shiite police, the murders raise troubling questions about how insurgents are getting expensive new police equipment. The Toyotas, which cost more than $55,000 apiece, and Glocks, at about $500 each, are hard to come by in Iraq, and they're rarely used by anyone other than Western contractors and Iraqi security forces.

Further evidence that a police force created, trained and funded by the United States has been abusing human rights, on the other hand, would complicate the Bush administration's efforts to muster greater domestic support for its Iraq policy and more international support for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari.

The U.S. government has appropriated more than $11 billion for training and equipping Iraqi security forces, including the police. At least 55,000 Iraqi police officers have undergone training, including thousands trained in neighboring Jordan.

However, a March report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that police were trained mainly for civilian law enforcement duty.

'The Multinational Force in Iraq and the Iraqi ministries find it difficult to train a national police force that abides by the rule of law while operating in a hostile environment,' the report said.

Raad Sultan, an official in Iraq's ministry of human rights who monitors the treatment of Iraqis in prisons and detention centers, said some Interior Ministry employees have tortured Iraqis whom they suspected of supporting the insurgency.

Officials in the Interior Ministry's intelligence division deny having detainees, saying they only question those in Iraqi prisons. But one investigation by the Human Rights Ministry found 32 detainees, and another found 67 in Interior Ministry intelligence facilities. The majority of the detainees had been tortured, Sultan said.

Most of those who were tortured had their hands cuffed behind their backs, were blindfolded and had been beaten by cords or subjected to electrical shock, Sultan said. Baqr, at the morgue, said the bodies that have been brought to him handcuffed and blindfolded had been similarly abused.

But when battered corpses turn up outside Interior Ministry facilities, Sultan said, 'How can I prove it is the security forces?'

Ghathanfar al Jasim, who sits on Iraq's national judicial council and functions as an attorney general, said it's difficult to discuss extrajudicial murder.

'We cannot admit that our police are doing it; it would make them look weak,' Jasim said, adding that Sunni insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, especially commando units such as the Interior Ministry's Wolf Brigade.

'When a man kills another man (from their group), what do you think will be the result?' he said. 'How do you think the Wolf Brigade would behave? If you arrested (Osama) bin Laden, what would you do with him?'

Asked who he thought was behind the upsurge in such executions, Baqr said, 'It is a very delicate subject for society when you are blaming the police officers. . . . It is not an easy issue.

'We hear that they are captured by the police and then the bodies are found killed . . . it's obviously increasing.'"

Okay, so either the insurgeny has access to cop equipment and cop guns and is masquerading as police or the Iraqi police are torturing and murdering Iraqis in growing numbers.

As the preznit said in last night's speech, we're making progress in Iraq while training Iraqi police and Iraqi troops.

From the Associated Press:

"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A majority of California voters do not want to see Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger re-elected, according to the latest poll showing the Republican's political appeal sliding.

The nonpartisan Field Poll of registered voters found that just 39 percent said they were inclined to give Schwarzenegger a second term, while 57 percent were not. As recently as February, the numbers were almost reversed, with 56 percent saying they were inclined to re-elect Schwarzenegger and just 42 percent were not.

A series of polls released by Field researchers indicates Schwarzenegger has lost considerable ground among voters in recent months. The drop in the governor's popularity has coincided with his push for a fall special election for voters to consider several ballot measures aimed at curbing the power of Democrats and public employee unions in state government.

Earlier installments of the poll have shown that Schwarzenegger's job approval ratings have tumbled amid voters expressing skepticism about the special election and tepid support for his ballot measures.

Schwarzenegger has repeatedly said he would favor negotiating an agreement with legislators over the ballot measures that could avert a contentious showdown in the fall.

Still, the findings released Wednesday show that Schwarzenegger has fallen out of favor with almost every major demographic group.

The governor still enjoys considerable support among Republican voters, with 71 percent saying they were inclined to re-elect him.

But the poll found that 83 percent of Democrats, who form the majority of the state's registered voters, would oppose a second term, as would 61 percent of independent voters. Solid majorities of Hispanic voters and women also say they do not want to see the governor re-elected.

''This is a definite turn away from the governor,'' Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. ''It's fallen so far, so fast and in a very broad-based way.'"

Bye-bye, Ahnold.

From USA Today:

"WASHINGTON — President Bush was speaking Tuesday night to rows of straight-backed troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. But the targets of his message were people like Elaine LaMagna, 66, watching from her living room in Manchester Township, N.J.

She supported the war at first but fretted before Bush spoke, 'You just don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.' She predicted then: 'I would say troops will be there until the end of the Bush administration, then another administration will say, 'Come home.'

And after the speech?

She was impressed. 'An excellent speech,' she said. 'All you see in the media is the death and destruction. You don't see anything about what's being rebuilt and what's being done.'

Echoing Bush's core argument, she called the war in Iraq a way to avoid another Sept. 11-style attack at home. 'If you defend freedom over there, you may not have to defend it over here,' she said.

The woman in this article, Elaine LaMagna, is a perfect example of the type of people that Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Ari Fleischer and the rest of Bush's Orwellian word specialists have been manipulating since 9/11. Bush said nothing new in his speech. Bush offered no solutions, no exit strategy, nothing but the same half-truths and half-baked arguments he has offered before - namely that the Iraq War has made us safer at home and we will leave after we have finished training Iraqi troops to take over their own security. Neither argument is genuine. We are less safe from terrorism in 2005. Many in the Muslim world hate us because of the Iraq War, the images of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib, and allegations of Koran desecration that have been confirmed by the Pentagon. We cannot respond to a crisis with 138,000 American troops on their third tours of duty in Iraq/Afghanistan. The military has a recruiting problem here at home, as the Army has missed its targets for four month in a row. As for the training of the Iraqis to take over their own security, the 160,000 Iraqi troops Bush claims are in "various states of readiness" the military says amounts to about 60,000 troops. An additional problem is that these 60,000 battle-ready troops have been infiltrated by the insurgency so that the American military don't trust the Iraqis with any confidential information.

So nothing Bush said last night changes any of the problems facing the United States as it becomes bogged down indefinitely in Iraq and suffers troop shortages. Yet Elaine LaMagna listens to the preznit's words and comes away saying, "Oh, everything is going okay in Iraq. I didn't know because I was just seeing the car bombs and the suicide bombings and the helicopter crashes. But now that the preznit says we're rebuilding stuff, well, I can see this war is worth it. Plus we're definitely safer fighting the terrorists over there than here."

Elaine LaMagna is a moron. She is too stupid to be given the right to vote and should have her name scratched off the voting rolls this minute. She cannot think critically for herself, she is easily manipulated by a bullshit speech, and she is the type of American citizen who has allowed the Bush administration to get away with the sheer incompetence of the post-Iraq war planning, the deception of the pre-war intelligence claims, the horrendous treatment and torture of "terror suspects" in Gitmo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the "extraordinary rendition" of suspects to nations that torture and kill them in our name.

Elaine LaMagna typifies what is wrong with modern America. Rather than hold the preznit accountable for mistakes, she parrots the preznit's propaganda back to us as her own original thoughts. As long as there are lots of Elaine LaMagnas in this country, Bush and Rove will get away with saying "Ignore the carnage and the explosions and the dead bodies on your television and look at the reconstructed school behind the flames. See, we are rebuilding Iraq, one schoolhouse at a time." And the Elaine LaMagnas all nod hypnotically and say, "Yes, Mr Preznit, you are right. Thank you, Great Leader, you know how to keep us safe from terrorism."

At some point, harsh reality and the Elaine LaMagnas of the world are going to come face to face and the results aren't going to be pretty. When we are faced with pulling out from Iraq 2 or 3 years down the road because we don't have enough troops in our volunteer army anymore and Americans don't have the political will to reinstitute a draft, let's see what Elaine LaMagna thinks. When the Iraqi government falls after we pull out and radical Islamic fascists take power, let's see what Elaine LaMagna thinks. When all of the jihadis trained in urban terrorism in Iraq start bleeding out of the Middle East and back to their home countries to try out their deadly skills, let's see what Elaine LaMagna thinks. When we count up the total cost of the war in lives and money (1744 Americans, over 12,000 Iraqi civilians, $200 billion dollars and counting) while Americans here at home contine to lose their pensions, health care, and jobs to outsourcing, let's see what Elaine LaMagna thinks. And when some of those jihadis trained inIiraq, especially the ones from Africa who are black and will fit right in at Grand Central Station in New York or the Loop in Chicago, start blowing people up here the way they have in Iraq, let's see what Elaine LaMagna thinks then.

If she thinks at all.

From the BBC:

"The United Nations says it has learned of serious allegations that the US is secretly detaining terrorism suspects, notably on American military ships.

The special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak said the accusations were rumours at this stage, but urged the US to co-operate in an investigation.

He said the UN wants lists of the places of detention and those held.

The comments come five days after the UN accused the US of stalling on their requests to visit Guantanamo Bay.

Investigators have been asking to visit the jail in Cuba to carry out checks into allegations of human rights abuse.

The UN said for over a year there had been no response to its requests, and it would begin an inquiry into alleged abuses with or without US co-operation.

Washington had yet to grant their request, Mr Nowak said.

He told the BBC there were a number of allegations from reliable sources that the US was holding terrorist suspects in secret places of detention, including vessels abroad.

He said that according to the reports, the ships were believed to be in the Indian Ocean.

Mr Nowak said the charges of secret detention camps were very serious, amounting to enforced disappearances."

These "prison ship" accusations are more allegations over the administration's handling of terror suspects that Preznit Bush and Vice Preznit Cheney will call "absurd." Yet the administration stonewalls any independent inquiry into the overseas detainee system so we have to take Bush and Cheney at their words that there are no prison ships and that terror suspects are not being abused, tortured, humiliated, or murdered.

I don't know about you, but I don't believe a word either Bush or Cheney say. Not even "is" or "the." I want an independent inquiry into the handling of terror suspects. I don't want Rummy running the inquiry or Attorney General Abu Gonzalez or Condi Rice or Senator Pat Roberts or Majority Leader Frist or any other member of the Washington establishment who has a vested interest in making sure Bush comes off looking good. Pat Roberts has already killed the pre-war intelligence commission we were promised would come after the "2004 political season." I guarantee you that Bush will do everything in his power to make sure no independent investigation is made of any of the prison abuse allegations because once somebody fair-minded and independent shines a light on the inner workings of the administration's "War on Terror," Americans are going to find that the frat boy antics of the Abu Ghraib nightshift was just the tip of a shameful, deviant episode in our nation's history that will make the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II seem like summer camp outings.

From CNN:

"(CNN) -- The number of Americans disapproving of President Bush's job performance has risen to the highest level of his presidency, according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

According to the poll, 53 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush's performance, compared to 45 percent who approved.

The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The 53 percent figure was the highest disapproval rating recorded in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll since Bush became president in January 2001.

The approval percentage -- 45 percent -- matches a low point set in late March. The 8-point gap between those who disapproved and approved was the largest recorded during Bush's tenure.

As Bush prepares to address the nation Tuesday to defend his Iraq policy, just 40 percent of those responding to the poll said they approved of his handling of the war; 58 percent said they disapproved.

The approval rating on Iraq was unchanged from a poll in late May, and the disapproval figure marked an increase of 2 percentage points.

But the poll also found that issues other than the Iraq war may be dragging down Bush's numbers.

Respondents expressed even stronger disapproval of his handling of the economy, energy policy, health care and Social Security."

The lone bright spot for the president in the poll was his handling of terrorism, which scored a 55 percent approval rating, compared to just 41 percent who disapproved.


What's a preznit to do when his poll numbers tank because he's bogged the nation down into a war of choice that Americans increasingly think will either go on indefinitely or end badly?

HAVE A PRESS CONFERENCE!!! From the Associated Press:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush is using the first anniversary of Iraq's sovereignty to try to ease Americans' doubts about the mission and outline a winning strategy for a violent conflict that has cost the lives of more than 1,740 U.S. troops and has no end in sight.

In a prime-time address from Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division, Bush was to argue that there is no need to change course in Iraq despite the upsetting images produced by daily insurgent attacks.

His assessment comes on the heels of a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll that showed public doubts about the war reaching a high point -- with more than half saying that invading Iraq was a mistake.

Although attacks frequently take the lives of American troops, Bush has said they will not leave until Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped to keep the peace. He has refused to give a timetable for troop withdrawal, even though some Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress are supporting a resolution that calls for Bush to start bringing them home by Oct. 1, 2006...

...Bush's speech is part of a new public-relations campaign from the White House to try to calm anxieties about the war. It comes after several conflicting or perplexing messages about the nature and duration of the conflict.

Vice President Dick Cheney made headlines last month with his assertion that the insurgency in Iraq was 'in its last throes.' He was later contradicted by the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, and by Rumsfeld, who said the insurgency could drag on for years.

Rumsfeld also told an interviewer this month that Iraq is 'statistically' no safer today than it was before the ouster of Saddam Hussein, although he maintains progress is being made.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a conference on Iraq's reconstruction last week that defeating terrorism in Iraq would 'be a death knell for terrorism as we know it.'''

The piece goes on to say that we will get plenty of allusions to 9/11 tonight during Bush's speech. Obviously Karl Rove can read the tea leaves and see that in nearly every poll released in the past month, the only numbers Bush has logging in over 50% are his terrorism numbers. Therefore Bush is going to remind Americans about 9/11 and subtly (or not so subtly) suggest that defeating Saddam helped defeat the 9/11 terrorists and has made the nation safer from terrorism.

Will America be bamboozled tonight? Will they believe Bush's argument that the Iraq War has made us safer even though the conflict that has bogged our military down indefinitely in a war of choice and stretched our forces thin with two and three tours of duty overseas? Will they believe Bush's assertions that we are making progress in Iraq when all evidence in the newspapers and on the television contradicts that statement? In other words, will they believe their eyes or Bush's words?

For most of his presidency, George W. Bush has been able to lie, deceive, mislead, and manipulate the American public with his well-written speeches and public statements. Americans have believed the myth that Bush is a "straight-shooter" who says what he believes and tells it like it is to America. But the disconnect between his rhetoric on Iraq and the body count showing up in the news has eradicated much of Bush's "straight-shooter" mythos.

I will be interested to see whether Bush tries to level with the American people tonight and say we've got years of fighting in Iraq ahead of us if we want to succeed or if he continues to bamboozle the nation by saying we are making progress and we must stay the course despite the awful casualties. And if Bush tries the bamboozling root, I can't wait to see if Americans buy it or not.

// posted by Reality-Based Educator @ 7:21 AM 0 comments