September 11, 2008 archive

1. So much for John McCain’s Strategy for Victory in Iraq.

   In an interview with BBC News, Gen. David Petraeus said there will be No victory in Iraq, at least in his view. Responding to a question from the BBC interviewer, Petraeus, said “that he will never declare victory there.”

   Interviewer: Do you think you’ll ever use the word victory about Iraq?

   Petraeus: I don’t know if I will. I think that all of us at different times have recognized need for real restraint in our assessments, in our pronouncements, if you will, and we have tried to be very brutally honest and forthright in what we have provided to Congress, to the press, to ourselves… In fact, we said that you have to be first with truth…

   Does anyone want to tell McCain? (I’m not going to touch upon the blatant distortions Petraeus has made about the situation in Iraq, but AntiWar News does so briefly: Iraq War Will Never End in Victory.)

   According to The Guardian, Petraeus warns of long struggle ahead for US in Iraq. “Petraeus adopted a cautious tone in his interview with BBC’s Newsnight, saying he did not know that he would ever use the word ‘victory’.”

   “This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade,” he said. “It’s not war with a simple slogan.”

   Yeah… I know. For the McCain campaign touting the “surge”, I remind them of this McClatchy Newspaper story from Tuesday, Experts: Bush’s Iraq withdrawal small because gains are, too. Bush will leave office with the “surge” fully still in place. Not until February 2009, one month later, does the U.S. begin the troop withdraw.

Four at Four continues with no bid oil contracts in Iraq, Pakistan’s reaction to U.S. military action within their country’s borders, and how Obama’s fighting back against McCain and the Republicans.

Original article via the BBC:

The outgoing commander of US troops in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has said that he will never declare victory there.

Is John McCain Running For

School Yard Bully or

President Of The United States?

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan



  By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

Published: September 10, 2008    

WASHINGTON – President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department



By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: September 10, 2008  

WASHINGTON – As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal – including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

USA

From Families’ Grief, a Symbol of Loss and Hope



 By Nick Miroff

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, September 11, 2008; Page A01  

Jim Laychak arrived at the corporate headquarters of Anheuser-Busch on a windy afternoon in April, thinking through his pitch. A company photographer snapped his picture beside a giant bronze eagle in the lobby, and executive Laura Reeves invited him upstairs. He had come to ask for a million dollars.

It was not an unreasonable sum. After all, the St. Louis brewing giant had helped the Pentagon Memorial Fund get started five years earlier with a $1 million donation. Laychak sat down at a wooden table in a suite with Reeves, senior director of the company’s charitable foundation, and took out his promotional materials.

Dear Senator McCain,

Enter public life determined to tell the truth; to put problem-solving ahead of partisanship; to defend the public interest against the special interests; to risk your personal ambitions for the sake of the country and the ideals that make her great. Keep your promise to America, and you will keep your honor. You will know a happiness far more sublime than pleasure.  source

It rains down on you like a cold shower, doesn’t it?  These are your own words, Senator.  In the rush of the past couple of weeks, have you stopped to take a look at what you are doing, what path you are taking?

We all understand that the truth gets stretched in a political campaign.  Usually there is at least the facade of truth, a plausible link to the truth, that lets the practice be tolerated.  But you’ve chosen to dispense with the facade of truth.  You choose to lie.

Your ambition to be President is so great that you have completely sublimated your identity and personality to grasp that which you covet.  Your ability to make decisions and stand for yourself is gone.

I have no sense of humor.

I’m sadly forced to this conclusion after reading a day’s worth of commentaries about lipstick.

And pigs.

Now it is a fact that I have kissed a pig because I lost a bet at my club but it was on the forehead and very chaste even though I am a heck of a kisser.

I didn’t check the sex of that pig.

But I did kiss it and one thing I can tell you is it didn’t have lipstick.

It was a clean and friendly animal, like a dog.  On the other hand I cook with pork.  Yum.

I’m not sure what moose burgers taste like.

My advice is to oink oink oink.