Reading this just makes me wonder why Joe Biden is not the front runner for the Democratic nomination. What is the DNC thinking? Biden is so obviously the best candidate, with the best ideas about the biggest issue- Iraq. Democrats are going to be very sorry if the Hillary vs. Barak show continues and our candidate is chosen for us by big media corporations.

Unfortunately, thats what they want. The 2009 republican president will keep it going for another 4 years.

Spanky:

Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, Dodd and Richardson are ALL Republican EXTREME COOPERATORS. The only two that aren't Republican cooperators are Kucinich and Gravel, the two that have been marginalized, but Gravel and Kucinich are the only two that it even closely appears will represent the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION. Representing the DLC is not representing the COMMON POPULATION. The DLC's priority is to marginalize the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION, so that the DLC will continue to have a controlling fiefdom between the 10% Elite Capitalists and the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION that refuses to be responsible to the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION. The 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION MUST STOP ALLOWING THE MINORITY POPULATIONS TO CONTROL.

VOTE FOR GRAVEL FOR PRESIDENT -- WRITE HIM IN -- DO NOT VOTE LIKE A LEMMING FOR THE DLC.

VOTE FOR KUCINICH FOR VICE PRESIDENT - WRITE HIM IN -- NEITHER KUCINICH OR GRAVEL ARE MEMBERS OF THE Republican DLC in the Democratic Party.

Democratic Leadership "Weaselship" Council, DLC Information:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1463

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-goff/unmasking-the-dlc_b_39287.html

The DLC is the instigator of the majority of our country's ills and WE THE PEOPLE MUST VOTE OUT THE DLC.

VOTE FOR DEMOCRACY -- VOTE DEMOCRATIC AND VOTE OUT THE DLC in the PRIMARIES

We can easily end this war if the Democratic members of Congress have enough guts. Simply inform the Administration that additional requests for funding the war be balanced with proposed tax increases to cover the costs, ie., taxes on the rich, since the poor and middle class are already over taxed. It is time that they (the super rich) bear some of the sacrifice that is being caused by this war. Also, and additional tax on war profiteers would help. If it were no longer profitable for Haliburton and Martin-Marietta to be supplying the war, they would try and end it. At the present time, they are making too much money to oppose it.

THE REPUBLICAN/DLC PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

Official Website for the DLC - NEW DEMOCRAT/REPUBLICAN LITE NEW LIBERAL REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT MOVEMENT:

http://www.ndol.org

This IS the DLC's website. Be sure and open this site because Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton are front and center with their REPUBLICAN LITE NEW FAUX-LIBERAL PROPAGANDA that is against the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION.

The following is an alphabetical list of some members of the DLC, if you are unsure as to whether your Senator, Representative, Governor or Mayor, is of the DLC, then use their names and SEARCH this site to find out if they are members of the DLC. There are only a few democratic members in Congress who haven't been led to the autocratic RIGHT against the best interest of the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION:

http://www.nndb.com/group/269/000093987/

Name------Occupation------ Birth------Position
Brian Baird-Politician 7-Mar-1956 Congressman, Washington 3rd
Max Baucus-Politician 11-Dec-1941 US Senator, Montana

Shelley Berkley-Politician 20-Jan-1951 Congresswoman, Nevada 1st
David L. Boren-Politician 21-Apr-1941 Governor & Senator, Oklahoma
John Breaux-Politician 1-Mar-1944 US Senator, Louisiana,1987-2005
Maria Cantwell-Politician 13-Oct-1958 US Senator, Washington
Lois Capps-Politician 10-Jan-1938 Congresswoman, California 23rd
Russ Carnahan-Politician 10-Jul-1958 Congressman, Missouri 3rd
Thomas Carper-Politician 23-Jan-1947 US Senator, Delaware
Ed Case-Politician 27-Sep-1952 Congressman, Hawaii 2nd
Ben Chandler-Politician 12-Sep-1959 Congressman, Kentucky 6th
Bill Clinton-Head of State 19-Aug-1946 42nd US President,1993-2001
Hillary Clinton-First Lady 26-Oct-1947 US Senator, New York
Kent Conrad-Politician 12-Mar-1948 US Senator, North Dakota
Bud Cramer-Politician 22-Aug-1947 Congressman, Alabama 5th
Joseph Crowley-Politician 16-Mar-1962 Congressman, New York 7th
Artur Davis-Politician 9-Apr-1967 Congressman, Alabama 7th
Jim Davis-Politician 11-Oct-1957 Congressman, Florida 11th
Susan Davis-Politician 13-Apr-1944 Congresswoman, California 53rd
Cal Dooley-Politician 11-Jan-1954 Congressman,California,1991-2005
Byron Dorgan-Politician 14-May-1942 US Senator, North Dakota
John Edwards-Politician 10-Jun-1953 2004 Vice Presidential candidate
Rahm Emanuel-Politician 29-Nov-1959 Congressman, Illinois 5th
Eliot Engel-Politician 18-Feb-1947 Congressman, New York 17th
Bob Etheridge-Politician 7-Aug-1941 Congressman, North Carolina 2nd
Dianne Feinstein-Politician 22-Jun-1933 US Senator, California
Harold Ford-Politician 11-May-1970 Congressman,Tennessee,1997-07
Dick Gephardt-Politician 31-Jan-1941 Congressman, Missouri, 1977-2005
Al Gore-Politician 31-Mar-1948 US Vice President under Clinton
Bob Graham-Politician 9-Nov-1936 US Senator, Florida
Jane Harman-Politician 28-Jun-1945 Congresswoman, California 36th
Brian Higgins-Politician 6-Oct-1959 Congressman, New York 27th
Rush Holt-Politician 15-Oct-1948 Congressman, New Jersey 12th
Darlene Hooley-Politician 4-Apr-1939 Congresswoman, Oregon 5th
Jay Inslee-Politician 9-Feb-1951 Congressman, Washington 1st
Steve Israel-Politician 30-May-1958 Congressman, New York 2nd
Tim Johnson-Politician 28-Dec-1946 US Senator, South Dakota
Bob Kerrey-Politician 27-Aug-1943 Governor and Senator, Nebraska
John Kerry-Politician 11-Dec-1943 US Senator, Massachusetts
Ron Kind-Politician 16-Mar-1963 Congressman, Wisconsin 3rd
Herb Kohl-Politician 7-Feb-1935 US Senator, Wisconsin
Mary Landrieu-Politician 23-Nov-1955 US Senator, Louisiana
Rick Larsen-Politician 15-Jun-1965 Congressman, Washington 2nd
John Larson-Politician 22-Jul-1948 Congressman, Connecticut 1st
Joseph Lieberman-Politician 24-Feb-1942 US Senator, Connecticut
Blanche Lincoln-Politician 30-Sep-1960 US Senator, Arkansas
Zoe Lofgren-Politician 21-Dec-1947 Congresswoman,California 16th 1995-
Terry McAuliffe-Politician 1957 Clinton's Chairman of the DNC
Carolyn McCarthy-Politician 5-Jan-1944 Congresswoman, New York 4th
Mike McIntyre-Politician 6-Aug-1956 Congressman, North Carolina 7th
Mack McLarty-Government 1946 Clinton's Chief of Staff
Gregory Meeks-Politician 25-Sep-1953 Congressman, New York 6th
Juanita Millender-McDonald 7-Sep-1938 Congresswoman, California, 1996-2007
Dennis Moore-Politician 8-Nov-1945 Congressman, Kansas 3rd
Jim Moran-Politician 16-May-1945 Congressman, Virginia 8th
Ben Nelson-Politician 17-May-1941 US Senator, Nebraska
Bill Nelson-Politician 29-Sep-1942 US Senator, Florida
Gavin Newsom-Politician 10-Oct-1967 Mayor of San Francisco
Sam Nunn-Politician 8-Sep-1938 US Senator, Georgia, 1972-97
Nancy Pelosi-Politician 26-Mar-1940 Speaker of House of Representatives
David Price-Politician 17-Aug-1940 Congressman, North Carolina 4th
Mark Pryor-Politician 10-Jan-1963 US Senator, Arkansas
Harry Reid-Politician 02-Dec-1939 US Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Robb-Politician 26-Jun-1939 US Senator, Virginia, 1989-2001
Timothy J. Roemer-Politician 30-Oct-1956 9-11 Commission member
Loretta Sanchez-Politician 7-Jan-1960 Congresswoman, California 47th
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin-Politician3-Dec-1970 Congresswoman, South Dakota
Adam Schiff-Politician 22-Jun-1960 Congressman, California 29th
Allyson Schwartz-Politician 3-Oct-1948 Congresswoman, Pennsylvania 13th
David Scott-Politician 27-Jun-1946 Congressman, Georgia 13th
Adam Smith-Politician 15-Jun-1965 Congressman, Washington 9th
Debbie Stabenow-Politician 29-Apr-1950 US Senator, Michigan
John Tanner-Politician 22-Sep-1944 Congressman, Tennessee 8th
Ellen Tauscher-Politician 15-Nov-1951 Congresswoman, California 10th
Tom Udall-Politician 18-May-1948 Congressman, New Mexico 3rd
Anthony A. Williams-Politician 28-Jul-1951 Mayor of Washington, DC 1999-
David Wu-Politician 8-Apr-1955 Congressman, Oregon 1st

http://www.nndb.com/group/269/000093987/

Why is it that Bush is always promising improvements at some point in the future, never in the present?

The USA with other World Figures were able to stop Hilter. The USA was able to stop Saadam, why can't we stop Bush and Chaney? Why do we want thousands of other Good young men and women to die? Lets force the draft and get Bush's girls in the streets of Bagdad?

What about all the re-deployments? Who is going to have to return to this hell hole yet another time so Bush can say next summer that he's finally made some progress?

So next summer we go back to the same substandard status quo in Iraq that we've been living with for the past five years? Bush sure isn't any Truman and Petraeus isn't any Eisenhower.

Hell, Daffy Duck and the Three Stooges had a better plan to stop Hitler than Bush has to stop al Sadr and al Sistani...and they were smart enough not to stay where they weren't welcome.

Jack Cafferty was discussing this very topic and relaying recent comments by Nancy Pelosi. He brought up the fact that for allocating money, it is the job of the House of Representatives, everything that is brought up in the House is done so only by permission of the Speaker of the House. Therefore, before Ms Pelosi blames too many people, why hasn't she brought forward a bill to cut funding for the war as she was directed to do by voters when she was elected to this current position? Why has she not allowed any other democrat permission to bring forward legislation about funding? All we really need to do is blame her for allowing Bush to continue this war.

I will never understand humans? When they want a raise in pay. It will pass in one day. When they want to STOP KILLING. They fight little kids in a sand box. Humans?? The most stupid species on this planet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) said it appears that Bush will merely bring the country back to where it was before the election that put Democrats in control of Congress--with 130,000 troops in Iraq.

As I said above, Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, she has the power to put an end to it, why hasn't she used her power?

A Look At How Petraeus Helped Arm Warring Sunni and Shia Militias in Iraq

As Americans across the country marked the sixth anniversary of September 11th on Tuesday, President Bush's top military commander in Iraq returned to Capitol Hill for a second day to urge the continuation of the war in Iraq.

But over the past two days neither General David Petraeus nor the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker have given any indication that the U.S. has a strategy to end the war that began almost four and a half years ago.

Petraeus predicted at least 100,000 American troops would still be in Iraq a year from now.

One State Department official told the McClatchy Newspapers the U.S. will still have 80,000 troops on the ground during the summer of 2009. And that figure includes only uniformed personnel, not private contractors.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this "sounds to me like a 10-year, at least, commitment to an open-ended presence and war."

When Republican Senator John Warner asked Petraeus whether the strategy in Iraq was making America safer, the four-star general responded by saying: I don't know.

Later Petraeaus clarified his statement and said Iraq "has very serious implications for our safety and security." President Bush is scheduled to address the nation Thursday night to voice his full support for General Petraeus's recommendations to continue the so-called surge.

On Tuesday Democratic Senator Robert Byrd grilled General Petraeus about why he was ordered to testify on Sept. 11th and about the military's strategy of arming former Sunni insurgents.

* Sen. Robert Byrd (D - WV) questioning Gen. David Petraeus

To talk more about the Petraeus hearings, Arun Gupta joins us in our firehouse studio.

* Arun Gupta, an editor "The Indypendent", a bimonthly newspaper based in New York, is currently writing a book on the history of the Iraq War to be published by Haymarket Press. His most recent article is titled "Meet Gen. David Petraeus: His Militia Strategy Plunged Iraq Into a Civil War, And Now He's Back for More."

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: As Americans across the country marked the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks Tuesday, President Bush's top military commander in Iraq returned to Capitol Hill for a second day to urge the continuation of the war in Iraq.

But over the past two days, neither General David Petraeus nor the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, have given any indication the US has a strategy to end the war that began almost four-and-a-half years ago. Petraeus predicted at least 100,000 American troops would still be in Iraq a year from now. One State Department official told the McClatchy Newspapers the US will still have 80,000 troops on the ground during the summer of 2009. And that figure includes only uniformed personnel, not private contractors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this, quote, “sounds to me like a ten-year, at least, commitment to an open-ended presence and war.”

When Republican Senator John Warner asked Petraeus whether the strategy in Iraq is making America safer, the four-star general responded by saying, “I don't know.” Later, Petraeus clarified his statement and said Iraq “has very serious implications for our safety and security.”

President Bush is scheduled to address the nation Thursday night to voice his full support for General Petraeus’s recommendations to continue the so-called surge.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd grilled General Petraeus about why he was ordered to testify on September 11 and about the military’s strategy of arming former Sunni insurgents.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: I don't think it’s a coincidence that this important hearing is taking place on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. There seems to be another attempt to link in the mind of a confused public the war in Iraq to the attacks perpetrated on us on 9/11 by al-Qaeda. Is this just a big sales job? Please answer this clearly and succinctly, so that the American people can understand: is there and was there any connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and Iraq?

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Not that I am aware of, Senator.

SEN. ROBERT BYRD: General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, it’s getting to be like the change of seasons around here. Every few months someone from the administration comes up and says, “Just give us six or twelve more months, and things will look better.”

Your argument for the surge back in January was that military success would create space for political progress. That didn't work. Now, the new buzzword is “bottom-up.” You’ve talked about military success, but, by the President's own reckoning, that success is meaningless without political reconciliation.

Are six months or twelve months really going to make a difference on the big questions. Why should we keep giving you more and more time? Why? Why should we keep giving you more and more time, General Petraeus?

You’ve touted success in Anbar province. Just a few months ago, the tribes in Anbar province were shooting and killing Americans. Recently they decided they dislike the terrorists there more than they dislike Americans, so they are cooperating with us for the time being, while we give them money and arms. This recalls to my mind our policy in the 1980s in Afghanistan of arming the Taliban to fight the Soviet Union. We all know how that short-term policy hurt our long-term interest. What guarantee can you give us that the tribes in Anbar are not going to turn around and use the guns that we gave them against our troops once they feel we no longer serve their interest? Isn't that a short-sited policy?

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Senator, first of all, we are not arming the tribes. We have not provided weapons to them. What we did initially is basically give a thumbs up when they asked if it would be OK if they pointed the weapons they did have -- they were already well enough armed -- at al-Qaeda, because they had come to reject the Taliban-like ideology and barbarity of al-Qaeda in the Euphrates River Valley.

AMY GOODMAN: That was General David Petraeus responding to questions from Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

To talk more about the Petraeus hearings, Arun Gupta joins us here in the studio. He’s a reporter and editor of The Indypendent, a bimonthly newspaper based here in New York. His most recent article is called “Meet Gen. David Petraeus: His Militia Strategy Plunged Iraq Into a Civil War, And Now He's Back for More.” Arun Gupta is currently writing a book on the history of the Iraq war that will be published by Haymarket Press.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Your assessment of what Petraeus’s message was to Congress?

ARUN GUPTA: Well, I think his message is the same thing the Bush administration has been saying for the last four years, which is “stay the course.” And there is no real strategy that the White House has, beyond trying to stave off defeat for the next year, so it can leave the war to its successor. And all this stuff about, “Well, you know, the surge is working, and we're going to draw it down next summer,” again, it’s part of the same kind of treadmill we’ve been on, the same rhetoric that we’ve been hearing.

Tell us who David Petraeus is. Arun, you’re the first person to mention General Petraeus on our show years ago.

ARUN GUPTA: Yeah. What we were talking about two-and-a-half years ago was Petraeus’s role in helping to set up the Special Police Commandos. In 2004, 2005, he was given the mission to train all Iraq military and police forces. And, in fact, in July 2004, Newsweek had this cover of him, saying that Petraeus was going to train Iraqis to take over the fight. Now, the reality is, is that was, of course, a failure, because three years later he was back with an escalation of US forces.

Now, one of the key things that Petraeus did was they decided -- him and his command decided -- that they were going to create this paramilitary force, the Special Police Commandos. They armed them. They funded them. They trained them. And they also issued the usual denials: “Oh, we're not giving them any weapons. This is an Iraqi initiative.” And so, now he’s saying the same thing with the Sunni militias.

So, anyway, the Special Police Commandos quickly morphed into Shiite death squads that were used against the Sunni insurgency and against Sunnis, in general, throughout Iraq. And this played a key role in terms of stoking and fomenting the civil war, because you had these death squads wearing government uniforms, being armed and trained by the US, going around killing Sunnis randomly. It generally alienated the Sunni Arab population from the government and drove them into the arms of the resistance.

Now what Petraeus is doing is he’s funding and arming these Sunni militias. And there are reports that have stated clearly with these militias saying, like, “Yes, we’re getting weapons from the US government.” And part of it is, is that they do want to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is another Sunni-based group. It’s an Iraqi-based group. But their main purpose is they want this money and weapons and aid to fight the Shiite militias.

So here we have them, like in 2004, setting up these Shiite militias, and now he’s setting up these Sunni militias to fight these Shiite militias. And what it portends is just an absolute disaster for Iraq. And, of course, it will also be used as justification: “Well, we can't leave because a bloodbath will result.” But we’re not looking at the fact that it’s the US that’s creating this bloodbath.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about General Petraeus and the missing arms, the missing weapons?

ARUN GUPTA: Also during his tenure, 190,000 weapons went missing. These were Pentagon weapons that were supposed to go to Iraqi Security Forces. A report came out last month stating that there was no proper bookkeeping done. There were more weapons, but what it found was that 190,000 assault rifles and handguns, along with all sorts of body armor and other military equipment, had just completely gone off track. There were no records of it kept. Such simple things as recording the serial numbers were not done.

And, of course, the fear is that this is just going to turn up all sorts of places. The Turkish government has already claimed that it has seized more than 1,000 of these guns in Turkey that are being used by anyone, from criminal enterprises to anti-government militants. And there’s also reports that they’ve turned up as far away as Italy.

So -- and this was part of the Petraeus strategy, that he was just throwing all this money and weapons and aid at the Special Police Commandos, because they were so desperate to create a strategy to defeat the Sunni insurgency. And, of course, by the time he left his mission in 2005 of training Iraqis, there was only one battalion that was considered ready. In one year, that’s what his work amounted to.

And now a report just came out, a commission set up by Congress of four retired US generals, in which they stated that the National Police, which is what the Special Police Commandos are now known as, the National Police are so corrupt, so riven with sectarianism, they’re so hated by the public, the Iraqi military and other police services, that they should just be completely disbanded. And yet, none of this is being talked about in Congress or the media.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about General Petraeus's comments about Iran?

ARUN GUPTA: I don't think there is any real credibility in terms of talking about what Iran is involved with, because this administration clearly has been trying to stoke a war against Iran. And it also beggars the imagination that somehow Iran is going to be supplying groups that it’s hostile with, whether it's Sunni insurgents in Iraq or whether it's the Taliban, who it went to war with in the 1990s. So I think this is just part of the administration's drumbeat to create some sort of military action against Iran before it leaves office.

AMY GOODMAN: Last question: the Democrats' questioning of Petraeus?

ARUN GUPTA: I think they missed a great opportunity, in terms of focusing on Petraeus’s past record, because he's been given a free pass, that he’s someone who has great credibility and impartiality, rather than, you know, really revealing that he played this critical role in stoking the civil war. But more so, you know, what we need to focus on is how Petraeus and Crocker are really just trying to play down the clock so that the Bush administration doesn't have to have a significant withdrawal, so it could dump the problem on his successor, probably a Democratic president, and then leave them the enormous burden of figuring out what to do with Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Arun Gupta, I want to thank you very much for being with us; editor of The Indypendent, currently writing a book on Iraq. Thank you very much.

The following is the url for the above DemocracyNOW article that I posted:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/12/1410237

For some reason DLC Senator Evan Bayh was removed somehow from my 9/12/07 02:14 Post, and by all means all DLC members must be known for who they are:

Evan Bayh-Politician 26-Dec-1955 US Senator, Indiana

This Indiana DLC Senator needs to be voted out of the Democratic Party. NO DLC MEMBER REPRESENTS THE 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION that they are suppose to represent.

The Iraq war is a complete failure and it should never have been begun in the first place. The situation over there is getting worse and worse and if the troops don't get redeployed asap, we are heading right towards a new Vietnam and more and more people will die or get severely injured and traumatized or get into other deep trouble. Bush and his Republicans haven't learned much from the past. I even would like to say Bush has not learned anything from his own past back then and he is getting people into deep trouble with his policy. The human cost of the Iraq war is way too high and there's no way to win that war and this is obvious and every delay aggravates the problem only. And the money spent into that war is missing somewhere else and that causes huge problems on the social level. It's a disastrous flop altogether, to summarize it briefly, and it's extremely detrimental for America herself. It doesn't help at all to counter Al-Qaida. If we really want to do something for freedom and democracy and against fundamentalism and terrorism, we need to support the Afghan Women's Rights Act championed by Senator Barbara Boxer. For despite the overthrow of the Taliban, the Afghan women are not yet liberated and we can't actually talk about freedom and democracy in Afghanistan yet.

I must oppose what freeforall says. That was horrible back then with the Vietnam war and the draft and it is absolutely terrible to try to force people to do something they don't want to do!!! In that case, even more young people would have to go to Canada in order to avoid participation and it would mean a big loss for the American economy. Bush has been exploiting both insufficient welfare and 911 and the fear of many people to be accused of not being patriot enough and he and his Republicans are gaining from that. Remember Canada doesn't have the draft either and is not within the Iraq war. Get the troops out asap, bring them home and tax the rich higher, they can afford it way better than the poorer and the middle class people. And the argument that Bush's daughters should be sent to Iraq is nothing but instigation to domestic violence. His daughters are not his property and they can decide for themselves what jobs they want to take. It's not their fault Bush is their father, it's merely something biological. Just imagine Bush pressuring his daughters to go to Iraq and them running away to Canada...

Cornelia: The "Draft the Bush twins" slogan is not meant to be taken literally.
The Bush twins are a symbol for all the rich Republicans who traditionally get us into wars, like Viet Nam and then hypocritically find loopholes to keep their kids out of the conflict while our kids are over there dying, like Bushdaddy, who bought Dubya a slot in the Texas National Guard. (Then the little ingrate went and deserted, but that's another issue.)
The Bush twins would probably need a bunch of waivers to get in anyway. It doesn't sound like either of them could pass a piss test. The apples didn't fall far from the tree.

Thanks so much for explaining. I say Bush has not learned anything! He is worse than a boss I once had who had been a former controller and thought he needn't learn anything new when he became boss of staff. Of course, his performance wasn't the best! But Bush is in a position to cause way more serious harm. I mean, if people get additional responsibility as part of a new job which they have no professional experience with, they better learn and get training so that they can do it well. But the guy was so keen on starting the Iraq war despite all the well-based warnings. Clinton had no military experience (and the Republicans bullied him for that in their election campaign) either but he didn't cause such a disaster. That's my point.

Thanks so much for explaining. I say Bush has not learned anything! He is worse than a boss I once had who had been a former controller and thought he needn't learn anything new when he became boss of staff. Of course, his performance wasn't the best! But Bush is in a position to cause way more serious harm. I mean, if people get additional responsibility as part of a new job which they have no professional experience with, they better learn and get training so that they can do it well. But the guy was so keen on starting the Iraq war despite all the well-based warnings. Clinton had no military experience (and the Republicans bullied him for that in their election campaign) either but he didn't cause such a disaster. That's my point.

Sorry for posting it twice, that was an error.

The next DEMOCRATIC President will end this war.
If another Republican President win the election on November 2008, then the war will go on further!
My favorite candidates are:

HILLARY CLINTON for PRESIDENT!

Barack Obama OR John Edwards for VICE PRESIDENT!

Then on February 2009 this new DEMOCRATIC President will PUSH the RESET button and START all again for a NEW century without WAR and hate!
For PEACE AND PROSPERITY for ALL mankind!
I am convinced, that the american people will do the RIGHT choice on the next year's presidential election.

Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge
By Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Washington - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say.

The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia - the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.

Fallon also expressed great skepticism about the basic assumption underlying the surge strategy, which was that it could pave the way for political reconciliation in Iraq. In the lead story Sep. 9, The Washington Post quoted a "senior administration official" as saying that Fallon had been "saying from Day One, 'This isn't working.' "

One of Fallon's first moves upon taking command of CENTCOM was to order his subordinates to avoid the term "long war" - a phrase Bush and Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates had used to describe the fight against terrorism.

Military sources explained that Fallon was concerned that the concept of a long war would alienate Middle East publics by suggesting that U.S. troops would remain in the region indefinitely.

Fallon also privately vowed that there would be no war against Iran on his watch, implying that he would quit rather than accept such a policy.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091307L.shtml

---------

Brain:

Are you trying to take over the world, Brain? These DLC candidates are helping to take over the world for the RIGHT WING EXTREME.

Every one of the candidates you have chosen are members of the DLC. Are you aware of the Republican originated and funded DLC -- Democratic Leadership Council, an unconstitutional organization leading Congressional Democrats to the EXTREME RIGHT. The DLC is the major cause of all the problems 70% of the U.S. population face today? Somehow you must realize that the DLC is the enemy. Republicans aren't the enemy. The Republican funded DLC Democrats are the enemy, the ONLY enemy.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1463

http://www.nndb.com/group/269/000093987/

I think Bush and his Republicans actually ARE the enemy but I also oppose the right-wing tendencies of unfortunately quite a lot of Democrats strongly and see them as a big problem. Besides, I think Hillary as President and Obama as Vice-President would be quite good, but I also like Joe Biden, Howard Dean, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore. But when a Democrat gets elected in November 2008, I hope and trust things will definitely improve a great deal again. The Republicans are worst but I also favor the very liberal, not the kind of right-wing Democrats.