That's how disgusting this stalmate in Iraq has gotten. The Republicans want to debate over how to count the dead...while they continue to stack up in piles all over the roadways and marketplaces throughout Iraq.

Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.
The Republicans have been playing fast and lose with statistics ever since they decided that burger flipping at McGreasy's was manufacturing instead of service jobs so they could claim that jobs in the manufacturing sector went up.
This is deja vu all over again. Petraus' report is like the Viet Nam body counts. All covered with crap because someone pulled it out of their butt.

What does Bush's Administration do to the good hard working Generals? Is hypnotism being used on the Military runing this war under Bushs Command?

cooked books and distorted actual incidents. surprise, surprise.

This has been a propaganda war since day one. If you believe otherwise then you are one of the die-hard repubs. Don`t waste your time here common Joe. Yeh right common guy.

No matter what happens in Iraq between now and when the next President is sworn into office in 2009, Bush will require all his generals to present rosie pictures of the situation in Iraq and attempt to use that to give cover to the Congressional Republicans who will remain in lockstep behind him. I hope American voters don't fall for it. This war has possibly revealed a serious defect in the checks and balances written into our Constitution. And it has also revealed the extent of the control that neocon philosophy has over the Republican Party.

Petraeus is a wonderful patriot and the Democrats in MoveOn are a bunch of jerks. Our Democrats in Congress said so. So who the heck cares if he made up all the numbers?

What explanation can there be for the Democratic Congress not stopping this war???? Not returning our Constitution to us???? What has changed since you took control????

ericval:

How can anyone be a wonderful patriot that is making up the evidence for which they are assumed to be a patriot? Patriotism to what? Who do you think is benefiting from this supposed patriotism?

Patriotism as a propagandistic frame is meaningless.

MoveOn is right, It is General Betray Us. It was not the General's report, but what Bush told him he wanted to hear.

MoveOn is right, It is General Betray Us. It was not the General's report, but what Bush told him he wanted to hear.

MoveOn is right, It is General Betray Us. It was not the General's report, but what Bush told him he wanted to hear.

I just want to say GOOD JOB condemning the home team, Move-On.org. Now the republicans introduce a bill to SUPPORT RUSH'S COMMENTS ? When are we democrats going to STOP GETTING PUNKED ? I guess when the leadership wakes up. Lets hope they do before its too late.

Iraq: The Never-ending War That Could Have Been Averted

Five years ago - October 3, 2002 - the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, by large and vocal majorities, were championing and stampeding to approve George W. Bush's "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq." In speech after speech, familiar names - Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd - parroted and rallied around the Bush Administration's warnings of imminent threat, weapons of mass destruction, terrorist collaboration, and national security risk.

That day five years ago, one Congressman, un-swayed by the "intelligence" and unmoved by the growing clamor and pressure from his colleagues, took to the floor of the U.S. House to say - emphatically and without hesitation - "No."

NO credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. NO connection to 9/11. NO imminent threat to nations in the region or to the United States. NO reason to go to war.

On that day, it took courage for Dennis Kucinich to stand before the Congress, the nation, and the world against a tidal wave of political support for an impending war he knew to be wrong. It took keen insight to see through the flaws of a policy destined to failure and ruination. And it took leadership to rally more than 120 of his House colleagues to join him in voting NO five days later.

Dennis Kucinich was right when it counted.

On this 5th Anniversary of that historic speech, the terrible and tortured history of the war in Iraq has proven that Dennis was right. And those who helped Bush launch his illegal and immoral war - Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Dodd - and those who, year after year, continued to fund that awful war, including Barack Obama, were dreadfully, totally, and inexcusably wrong. However they explain and defend themselves, however they try to rewrite history, they were wrong on the most important decision in their political careers.

Thousands of American lives have been lost because of that decision. Tens of thousands of brave, young men and women and their families have suffered. And hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have lost their lives, their loved ones, their homes and property, and any hope for a peaceful future.

Five years ago, when this nation needed leadership and courage, Dennis Kucinich stepped forward while others fell lock-step in line with George Bush. Those same Senators, now seeking the highest office in the land, promise no end to the war that they authorized and have funded for the past five years. Dennis, who has voted consistently against funding the war, has pledged to withdraw all U.S. troops within three months.

Dennis Kucinich was right when it counted.

Dennis Kucinich has a plan to end the war.

Dennis Kucinich has the courage to stand against all odds. And,

Dennis Kucinich is beholden to no one but the people of the United States of America.

If these qualities of Dennis Kucinich are the qualities you want in your next President, support the ONLY candidate who meets YOUR qualifications to be President of the United States of America: Dennis Kucinich.

Published on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
From WMDs to Social Security: More Bush Stories
by Dean Baker

You remember George W. Bush, the guy who tricked the country into a never-ending war in Iraq with stories about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and links to Osama bin Laden. Well, he still has 16 months left in the White House and he’s determined to do yet more damage with his famous “Bush stories” before he leaves town.

The latest Bush story is the cry that Social Security is going bankrupt and will impose an unbearable burden on our children and grandchildren. Of course, this is not the first time President Bush has gone after Social Security. Immediately after the 2004 election, he tried to use his new political capital to privatize Social Security. As a result of a massive nationwide organizing campaign, the privatization drive soon hit a dead end.

But Bush is not through with Social Security. In an apparent effort to lay the groundwork for a future president to privatize and/or cut the program, the Treasury Department is circulating a new set of Bush stories designed to convince the public the Social Security program must be changed.

The main thrust of these Bush stories is the old massive burden line. The first point highlighted in Bush Social Security Story I is that the program faces a $13.6 trillion shortfall. That should make everyone really scared.

This number looks considerably less scary if we examine it more closely. The bulk of this projected shortfall is attributable to deficits projected for the 22nd century and beyond. The problem is, life expectancies are projected to continue to rise through time. If we never change the retirement age, then we end up supporting ever-longer retirements.

Somewhere down the road, our great-great grandchildren will have to decide how much of their life they want to spend working and how much they want to spend in retirement. Assuming our great-grandchildren teach their kids arithmetic, this should not be a very difficult problem. Remember also, in 2100 living standards are projected to be three times higher than they are today; so we probably should not shed too many tears if the Social Security tax rate is somewhat higher in 2107 than in 2007.

If we retreat from the science fiction future to Social Security’s 75-year planning period (ending in 2082), the Social Security trustees project a shortfall of $4.7 trillion. This still sounds very scary because almost no one has any idea how much money $4.7 trillion is over a 75-year period. If we express it as a share of projected income over this period, the projected shortfall comes to 0.7 percent or 70 cents on every hundred dollars of income.

Still scared? Suppose we use the numbers from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) instead of the Social Security trustees, since four of the six trustees are political appointees of the President. CBO tells us the projected shortfall over the next 75 years is equal to 0.4 percent of projected income. This is approximately 40 percent of the current spending on the war in Iraq and about one-fifth the size of President Bush’s tax cuts. In other words, if the projected Social Security shortfall has you worried, you should be absolutely terrified about the cost of the war in Iraq and paralyzed with fear by the revenue lost as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts.

Of course, the projected Social Security shortfalls are not trivial, but at this point they are still relatively distant. CBO projects the program can pay full benefits, with no changes whatsoever, for almost 40 years. It is entirely possible the situation will have improved somewhat by then so that any tax increases and/or benefit cuts can be pushed even further into the future.

One of the main reasons Social Security is projected to face a shortfall is the government has implemented trade and labor policies that shifted income upward, away from Social Security-tax-paying workers. If we reverse these policies in the years ahead, then we could get a more equal distribution of income, and at the same time eliminate much of the projected shortfall.

There are other reasons the shortfall may prove to be smaller than currently projected, most obviously through more rapid growth. However, the main point is there are no serious projections that show Social Security facing any sort of crisis or a situation requiring action anywhere in the next two decades. The country already got led into a seemingly endless war by accepting one Bush story. It would be an entirely preventable tragedy if another Bush story played a role in dismantling Social Security.

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer ( www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect’s web site.

olddemocrat, old vet- old vet,that dosn't give you a free pass to disrespect anyone who disagrees with you."SNOT NOSED LITTLE PUNKS"you want respect here than you have to give some too.

Oil and Betrayal in Iraq
By George Lakoff
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 20 September 2007

Alan Greenspan should know. It was oil all along. The former head of the Federal Reserve writes in his memoir, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Greenspan even advised Bush that "taking Saddam Hussein out was essential" to protect oil supplies.

Yes, we suspected it. In a deep sense, many of us knew it, just as those in Washington did. But now it's in our face. Greenspan put the mother of all facts in front of our noses. And we can no longer be in denial. The US invaded Iraq for the oil.

Think about what it means for our troops and for the people of Iraq. Our troops were told, and believed because they trusted their president, they were in Iraq to protect America, to protect their families, their homes, their friends and neighbors, our democracy. But they were betrayed. Those troops fought and died and were maimed and had their marriages break up for oil company profits. An utter betrayal of our men and women in uniform and their families, a betrayal of their sacrifices, day after day, month after month, year after year - and for some, forever! Children growing up fatherless or motherless. Men and women without legs or arms or faces - for oil company profits.

And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, more maimed, and millions made refugees. For oil profits.

And what profits they are! Take a look at the study of Iraqi oil contracts by Global Policy Forum, a consultant to the United Nations Security Council. Or read this editorial from The Daily Times in Pakistan.

The contracts the Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to accept are not just about the distribution of oil among the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The contracts call for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies, rights that cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments. They are called "production sharing agreements" (or "PSA's") - a legalistic code word. The Iraqi government would technically own the oil, but could not control it; only the companies could do that. ExxonMobil and others would invest in developing the infrastructure for the oil (drilling, oil rigs, refining) and would get 75 percent of the "cost oil" profits, until they got their investment back. After that, they would own the infrastructure (paid for by oil profits), and then get 20 percent of oil profits after that (twice the usual rate). The profits are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Iraqi people would have no democratic control over their own major resource. No other Middle East country has such an arrangement.

Incidentally, polls show the Iraqi people overwhelmingly against "privatization", but "production sharing agreements" were devised so they are technically not "privatization," since the government would still own the oil but not control it. The ruse is there so the government can claim it is not privatizing.

But none of this will work without military protection for the oil companies. That is what would keep us there indefinitely. The name for this is our "vital interests."

Greenspan's revelation and the contracts need to be discussed openly. The question must be asked, "Is our military there for the sake of oil?"

I have been struck by the use of the word "victory" by the right wing, especially by its propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch. Usually, "victory" is used in reference to a war between countries over territory, where there is a definable enemy. That is not the case in Iraq, where we have for four years had an occupation, not a "war," and there has been no clear enemy. We have mostly been fighting Iraqis we were supposed to be rescuing. "Victory" makes no sense for such an occupation. And even Petraeus has said that only a political, not a military, settlement is possible. In what sense can keeping troops there for nine or ten years or longer, as Petraeus has suggested, be a "victory"?

What is most frightening is they may mean what they say, that they may have a concept of "victory" that makes sense to them but not to the rest of the country. If the goal of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been to guarantee access to Iraqi oil for the next 30 years, then any result guaranteeing oil profits for American oil companies would count as "victory." Suppose the present killing and chaos were to continue, forcing us to keep our troops there indefinitely, but allowing the oil companies to prosper under our protection. That would be a "victory." Or, if the Iraqi army and police force were to develop in a few years and keep order there protecting American investments and workers, that too would be "victory." If the country broke up into three distinct states or autonomous governments, that too would be "victory" as long as oil profits were guaranteed and Americans in the oil industry protected. And it doesn't matter if a Republican president keeps the troops there or a Democratic president does. It is still an oil company "victory" - and a victory for Bush.

Indeed, Kurdistan's PSA contract last week with Hunt Oil suggests the latter form of "victory." As Paul Krugman observed in The New York Times on September 14, "the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body." Hunt Oil seems to have had the first taste of "victory."

If that is "victory," what is "defeat" and who is being "defeated?" The troops who would have to stay to protect the oil investments would, person by person, suffer defeat - a defeat of the spirit and, for too many, of the body. And most of America would suffer a defeat, especially our taxpayers who have paid a trillion dollars that could have gone for health care for all, for excellent schools and college educations, for rebuilding Louisiana and Mississippi, for shoring up our infrastructure and bridges, and for protecting our environment. Victory for the oil companies, defeat for most of America.

Is Greenspan right? Is this what "victory" could possibly mean? I do not want to even think the answers might be "yes." The thought itself is too disgusting. But Greenspan has put the questions before us, and we have a duty to pursue the answers. Because, if the answer is even half "yes," then the troops and most Americans have been, and continue to be, betrayed beyond measure.

Perhaps the most honest and straightforward way to pursue such answers would be for Congress to frame the issue directly in terms of oil, as Greenspan did. Here's a way to do it: The Constitution gives Congress authority over military matters through its power to fund continued military action. Without such funding, the troops cannot continue. Suppose Congress were to pass a bill saying no funding would be forthcoming for military action in Iraq unless the Iraqi government drops all provisions for PSA's - production sharing agreements - in its legislation. This would actually give the Iraqi government sovereignty over its oil indefinitely and take oil control away from Western oil companies. Even proposing such a bill seriously would have two effects: To raise the constitutional issue: the president has been overriding the constitution. And it would bring the oil issue front and center, so we can all see if "victory" is really about oil interests.

Suppose Greenspan is right, that oil was a primary factor in the Iraq invasion, that "victory" means victory for oil companies, and that "sacrifice" means sacrifice for the American oil industry. While I held the very possibility this might be true, I clicked on the following web site. Perhaps you will feel as I felt.

George Lakoff is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.

-------

Slippery Slope
By David Strahan
The Guardian UK

Wednesday 03 October 2007

More and more oil executives maintain that there are just a few years left before production reaches its peak, and that we are sleepwalking into economic catastrophe. David Strahan reports on dwindling global reserves.

The Irish chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (Aspo) could hardly have wished for better. Last week, on the first day of Aspo's recent conference in Cork, the oil price obliged by striking a new all-time high. And in the following days it struck three more in a row.

This was no mere serendipity. The price has since drifted a little, but at the time of going to press remains around $8o a barrel. That is an eightfold increase in less than a decade, and several analysts now forecast $100 oil by the end of next year. All of which reflects not only the usual short-term vicissitudes of the oil market - hurricanes, Iran, trouble in the Niger Delta - but also the gnawing realization that global oil production is approaching some fundamental geological limits.

For many years, the idea that global oil production will soon start to fall, with potentially catastrophic economic consequences, has languished on the fringes of the environmental debate, with nothing like the recognition of climate change, and shunned by the industry itself. But when the history is written, 2007 is likely to go down as the year the issue of peak oil production went mainstream. In Cork, the former US energy secretary, James Schlesinger, used his keynote speech to tell delegates that they were no longer a tiny minority crying in the wilderness: "You can declare victory . . . and prepare to take yes for an answer."

It was a bold claim, but true. Although most senior oil executives continue to deny publicly what is becoming more obvious by the month, the industry-wide "omerta" is beginning to crack. Thierry Desmarest, chairman of Total, declared last year that production would peak in 2020, and urged governments to suppress demand to delay the witching hour. In Cork, the former Shell chairman, Lord Oxburgh, told me he expects demand to outstrip supply within 20 years, and that the oil price may well hit $150. He warned: "We may be sleepwalking into a problem that is actually going to be very serious, and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware."

It is no surprise that most senior oil executives still refuse to accept their business may soon start to contract, but the evidence is becoming increasingly hard to ignore, as companies struggle to maintain production or adequately replace the oil they do produce with fresh reserves.

A recent study by analysts John S Herold showed that the world's 230 biggest oil companies raised their upstream spending by 45% to more than $400bn in 2006, but that oil and gas reserves inched up by just 2%. There would have been no oil reserve growth at all without the inclusion of hard-to-produce bitumen deposits in Canada. The report concluded that peak oil has become part of the industry's long-term planning, and this would force oil companies to choose from four options: "Try to become a dominant participant, find a niche operational talent, harvest assets, or liquidate quickly."

No Surprise

The international oil companies' difficulties should come as no surprise since they are largely excluded from the areas with the greatest remaining potential, such as the Middle East, and predominantly confined to the most mature regions, such as the North Sea, where British production peaked in 1999 and has already plunged by well over 40%. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development oil production has been falling since 1997, and it is now widely agreed that output in the world, outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), will peak by about 2010. This much is accepted even by those who reject the idea of an impending global peak, such as ExxonMobil's chief executive, Rex Tillerson, who told me recently that he expected no further output growth from non-Opec production beyond the end of the decade.

This matters because there are severe doubts about the size of Opec's reserves, buttressed last year by the leak of internal documents from the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). The paperwork revealed that although Kuwait has for two decades been telling the world it has about 100bn barrels of proved reserves, KOC's internal assessment was just 24bn, apparently confirming the widely held suspicion that the reserves of many Opec countries were inflated in the early 1980s, when members were vying for larger shares in the new quota system.g> In 2005, the consultancy PFC Energy briefed US vice-president Dick Cheney that, on a more realistic reading of Opec's reserves, its production could peak in 2015.

Opec recently announced a production hike of 500,000 barrels a day, but some analysts doubt that the cartel has the capacity to deliver even this modest increase. With the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasting demand to rise by 2m barrels a day to almost 88m barrels a day by the end of this year, the most important question in the oil market is whether Opec's current production ceiling is entirely voluntary. Even if Opec can raise its production, oil consumption in member countries, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia, is growing so fast that exports may soon start to fall in any case.

The one Opec member with the capacity to raise its oil production dramatically - in theory at least - is Iraq, where for many years production was held below its natural potential by war with Iran and UN sanctions. The country's pivotal importance was recently recognized by IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, who warned: "If by 2015 Iraqi production does not increase exponentially, we have a very big problem, even if Saudi Arabia fulfils its promises. The figures are very simple, there's no need to be an expert."

The war it seems was not just "largely about oil" as even Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, now concedes, but all about deferring peak oil. But if so, the strategy has failed miserably. With almost daily attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines, output languishes at about the pre-invasion level, and chances of a significant increase in the foreseeable future are close to zero - with or without the introduction of the long-disputed oil law.

Territorial Claims

Opponents of the idea claim that peak oil is not imminent because there remains lots of oil to be discovered in areas such as West Africa or the Arctic, where Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are now scrambling to establish territorial claims. These views are often justified by reference to a study of the world's potential oil resources produced by US Geological Survey (USGS) in 2000, which concluded that the industry could discover another 650bn barrels of oil by 2025. Since the amount of oil discovered each year has been falling since the mid-1960s, and amounts to just 9bn barrels a year, less than a third of annual consumption, this forecast has long been regarded as wildly optimistic by peak oil forecasters.

But in another sign of how quickly the debate is moving, the USGS figure has also been discredited by oil industry experts at a private enclave held in Colorado last November - the Hedberg research conference on understanding world oil resources. It was organized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists to try to resolve the wide range of estimates of future oil availability, and it was a closed-door affair, attended by technical experts from all the super-majors - ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron - along with some of the biggest state-owned oil companies, such as Saudi Aramco.

According to Ray Leonard, a senior executive with Kuwait Energy Company, the experts challenged the USGS's optimistic assessments on the basis of their companies' more detailed proprietary data. Leonard says the majority opinion at the conference was that future oil discovery will total 250bn barrels - little more than a third of the USGS number.

On the basis of that rough consensus, Leonard concludes that global oil production will peak and then plateau at between 95m and 100m barrels a day - bringing soaring oil prices - in around five years' time. He says: "If there's a world recession, it could be a little longer. If the US invades another oil producing country, it may happen a lot sooner. But it's going to happen in around five years, so we need to make some preparations." Leonard's forecast matches that of the IEA, which predicts a "supply crunch" in 2012.

But we may have left it too late for planning, since a number of oil chiefs - such as James Buckee, chief executive of the Canadian independent Talisman - are convinced we have already reached the peak. And with some reason: total liquid fuels production is lower today than it was a year ago. Yet still the British government continues studiously to ignore the issue - at least in public. My own view is that we have a few more years, but with demand forecast to keep rising strongly, we will soon find out. It could be that 2007 is the year peak oil goes mainstream because this is the year it arrives.

David Strahan is the author of The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man, published by John Murray (£12.99 ). To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

-----------

In-depth interviews with key sources for this article can be read at lastoilshock.com.

Rush Limbaugh's "Phony Soldiers" Slur Means Nothing

Propagandist, Rush Limbaugh doesn't appear to know what having CHARACTER means, since he has NO VALUES and NO STANDARDS, much less have character like the honorable soldiers standing against an unjust war.

Rush Limbaugh could have served militarily in some way but chose not to honorably serve his country militarily in any way at all, just skipped out on all military service account an "anal cyst" on his butt. How honorable is that?

http://www.snopes.com/military/limbaugh.asp

Rush Limbaugh, the father of phonies, hid behind an ingrown hair on his butt to keep from serving in the military. Any honorable person with any degree of character would have served their country as these soldiers are doing. Rush Limbaugh's "anal cyst" was not a good enough reason for him not to have served his country militarily at all, but it was good enough for Rush Limbaugh.

When phony is talked about, the only phony is Rush Limbaugh who was so cowardly he hid behind a pimple on his ass to keep from having to serve his country honorably.

Rush Limbaugh's cowardly life of disrespect for his country and his "anal cyst" values and standards gives him no room to criticize honorable soldiers with REAL CHARACTER who have come to realize the phoniness of this "war for profit", and do not choose to kill their fellow man for corporate profit, instead of protection of their country, as is required.

In making any determination one has to have values and standards that the determination is based upon, as for Rush Limbaugh -- Rush Limbaugh has "anal cyst" values and standards.

On the basis of "anal cyst" values and standards: Are "anal cyst" values and standards sufficient for Rush Limbaugh to judge the military service of others?

This is the question as regards to Rush Limbaugh. "Anal cyst" values and standards of Rush Limbaugh OR "NOT anal cyst" values and standards of Rush Limbaugh, this is the question regarding Rush Limbaugh.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20071004/cm_uc_crjcox/op_454003

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKM_NsTswco