OK, so I didn't want us there in the first place, but since we're there I would not expect this kind of scene, repeated throughout Iraq. I expected us to do it right. We're creating martyrs, as many in one day, more sometimes, as US soldiers have been lost in the last year. Just how are we supposed to fight that?

Patrick Graham writing from South-Central Iraq for The Observer:
Observer | 'Damn the US and damn the resistance'

Once the fighting stops, it is hard to believe that the damage of the past week can be undone.

Perhaps the most surprising result of the fighting is the unlikely support of the poor Shias for the Sunnis. This has always been a difficult relationship for foreigners to understand. On the one hand, there is enormous distrust; on the other, they are fellow Muslims.

Before driving to Ramadi on Wednesday, we spent the night at the home of a Shia family in Sadr City. 'There is no difference between [Shia] Falluja and [Sunni] Sadr City,' said Nassir Salman, a barber who was working late. 'They are fighting and we are fighting. Inshallah , there will be jihad. But we are jealous of Falluja. We are waiting for our leaders to declare jihad. Now, it is worse than Saddam. He killed secretly - but the Americans kill us on the streets.'

Is this the uprising GHW Bush (41) was expecting back in 1991? We compared Saddam to Hitler and Stalin. These people regard Bush as no better. This was not how things were supposed to happen, but it is what many of us feared.

We have crossed the line from "liberators" to "occupiers." Will we have to become "conquerors?" If we do then count me out. Call me traitor, but I will not support this if we start supressing the population "in the name of freedom." We aren't there yet, but that line is getting dangerously close. If we don't back away from it, momentum alone will send us off into the abyss.

I am begining to believe that forcing Sadr's hand was no reconnaisence in force, but a terrible miscalculation of how our presence in Iraq was being tolerated. We better find someone with some true legitimacy to turn this mess over to, and quick. If all we got is the UN, so be it. If we don't then Bush might as well start calling this a crusade ... again.

What Kevin Said:

Treating 9/11 as just another way to hammer his political opponents was an act of unsurpassed callowness, the response of a man who is congenitally unable to view anything except in terms of smallminded partisan advantage. Instead of using 9/11 as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unite the nation, George Bush viewed it as a way to pick up a few seats in the House. It is this, more than any other single thing, that I most hold against him.

And this little titdbit from Phil Althouse:

Then Governor Bush lashes out at GWBush.com at a televised press conference, calling the site's owner "a garbage man" and saying "There ought to be limits to freedom."

My Favorite: "Vote Republican, it's easier than thinking."

You can read my entry from Thursday, April 08, 2004, titled The Plan to put this in full context. To sum it up, I rose to the challenge and wrote 5 points for an alternative foreign policy suggestion, in the liberal tradition, to counter those at Blogs4Bush who say all we do is Bush Bash, but offer nothing constructive.

The "Plan" will not work with Shrub in office:

1. Restart the Roadmap to Palestine/Israel peace.
2. Get NATO to help with Iraq security.
3. Expose and Shun the Saudi, Syrian and Iranian link to terrorists.
4. Go backto the UN, & pump Iraq's oil to pay for reconstruction.
5. Rejoin the Community of Nations to bring all humanity a better life, not just our own profits.

Here's your proof that not one of my ideas, many of which are also part of John Kerry's foreign policy theme, will come to pass as long as arrogance and hubris reigns on Pennsylbania Avenue:

From Kevin Drum (nee, Calpundit): The Washington Monthly

On Face the Nation today Joe Biden said he spoke with the President of France, who offered to commit troops to Iraq if the US would get the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council to agree to a plan to put the UN in charge of the political handover in Iraq (something the Bush admin is begging the UN to do anyway) and maintain control until it happens. That last bit is something the Bushies don't want. They want Bremer and then our new as-yet-unnamed ambassador to remain in charge.

Biden's plan would get us anywhere from 2,000 to 25,000 more foreign troops in Iraq, and more importantly, directly give the rest of the world a stake in the effort. Pat Roberts, the Republican chair of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was stunned by this announcement.

Only last week Powell was in Europe trying to work something out to get 1,500 troops to protect the UN commissioner in Baghdad. He came back with a lot of "we'll get back to you" and from the French "our plate is pretty full in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, etc."


Reference:
The Washington Monthly

Whoever wrote that 8/6/01 PDB should be stripped naked and dropped into downtown Fallujah with a sign thrapped to his/her butt saying "Mohammad Fucks Sheep."

By including the "fact" that 70 investigations were ongoing, POTUS (if he even read to the last paragraph) would have been under the delusion that people were indeed looking for the infiltrators, if there were any, and there were.!

FBI spokesman Ed Coggswell said the bureau was trying to determine how the number 70 got into the report.

The Aug. 6, 2001, memo was prescient in its title, which she divulged for the first time as "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

She said the briefing memo disclosed that the FBI had 70 "full-field investigations under way of cells" in the United States. And that, Rice said, explained why "there was no recommendation [coming from the White House] that we do something about" the flurry of threat warnings in the months preceding the attacks.

But Coggswell Friday said that those 70 investigations involved a number of international terrorist organizations, not just al-Qaida. He said that many were criminal investigations, which terrorism experts say are not likely to focus on preventing terrorist acts. And he said he would "not characterize" the targets of the investigations as cells, or groups acting in concert, as was the case with the Sept. 11 hijackers.

In addition to these investigations, Rice told the panel that FBI headquarters, reacting to alarming but vague intelligence in the spring and summer of 2001 that attacks were imminent, "tasked all 56 of its U.S. field offices to increase surveillance of known suspected terrorists" and to contact informants who might provide leads.

That, too, is news to the field offices. Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer told Rice that the commission had "to date ... found nobody, nobody at the FBI, who knows anything about a tasking of field offices." Even Thomas Pickard, at the time acting FBI director, told the panel that he "did not tell the field offices to do this," Roemer said.

READ IT ALL

Do you believe me now?

According to a report in the new edition of Vanity Fair, former British Ambassador to the United States Christopher Meyer said that President Bush made clear at a dinner with Prime Minister Tony Blair nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks that he wanted to confront Iraq. The assertion is corroborated by the Washington Post, which reported that President Bush personally signed a two-and-a-half page directive on September 17th, 2001 ordering the Pentagon to begin drawing up Iraq invasion plans. The assertion is also corroborated by CBS News, which reported on September 4, 2002 that, five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq."6 The account by the former British Ambassador confirms similar accounts by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.


Read the whole thing, with documentation:
Misleader.org: Daily Mislead

Now I'm no lawyer, just a political hack...no wait, I'M BOTH. And so as to the question, was Condi merely spinning, or did she overreach and commit perjury? Based on the evidence so far, that she explained what a classified document said, and upon declassification it appears she was in error, IF her mischaracterization was intentional then it was not just minimalization, but a misrepresentation of a material fact (which it was), it also was BOTH -- spin and perjury.

I know spin and I know perjury when I see them. Shame on you Condi. Covering your ass is always how the conspiracy is exposed.

Here's the evidence:

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?
RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Now here is where she overreached and fell into perjury. Ironically, Ben-Veniste tried to cut her off and that would have saved her, but she couldn't help herself.

* * *
RICE: You said, did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. ***

But it clearly did. Maybe not in a specific or actionable form to save the towers from being hit, but this was nothing if not a warning. Read it for yourself in the preceding post.

This was no mere "historical" curiosity, but a synopsis of what was the current state of intelligence regarding UBL and AQ, with some background notes to put it in context so the seriousness of the report could be made clear.

To be fair, the portions of the Rice/Ben-Veniste colloquy which I previously deleted are reproduced below.

BEN-VENISTE: Good morning, Dr. Rice.

RICE: Good morning.

BEN-VENISTE: Nice to see you again.

::Lie number 1: (couldn't resist, but she knew what was coming)::

RICE: Nice to see you.

BEN-VENISTE: I want to ask you some questions about the August 6, 2001, PDB. We had been advised in writing by CIA on March 19, 2004, that the August 6th PDB was prepared and self-generated by a CIA employee. Following Director Tenet's testimony on March 26th before us, the CIA clarified its version of events, saying that questions by the president prompted them to prepare the August 6th PDB.

Now, you have said to us in our meeting together earlier in February, that the president directed the CIA to prepare the August 6th PDB.

The extraordinary high terrorist attack threat level in the summer of 2001 is well-documented. And Richard Clarke's testimony about the possibility of an attack against the United States homeland was repeatedly discussed from May to August within the intelligence community, and that is well-documented.

You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al Qaeda cells were in the United States.

Did you tell the president, at any time prior to August 6th, of the existence of al Qaeda cells in the United States?

RICE: First, let me just make certain...

BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question, because I only have a very limited...

RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it's important...

BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the president...

RICE: ... that I also address...

(APPLAUSE)

::An obfuscation::

It's also important that, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment.

BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you...

RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will...

BEN-VENISTE: ... told the president.

RICE: If you'll just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that you've asked.

First of all, yes, the August 6th PDB was in response to questions of the president -- and that since he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al Qaeda's operations.

::Another obfuscation, meant to distract, not explain or enlighten::

Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum -- I remember it as being only a line or two -- that there were al Qaeda cells in the United States.

::A deliberate prevarication, the subject of the entire memo was about UBL's consistent attempts to enter and injure the US, and that there were 70 active investigations by our internal security apparatus (unless the FBI was operating inside foreign countries prior to 9/11, ok, maybe in Yeman, but the Cole retribution was shelved.)::

Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that?

::No, the question was, Did YOU tell POTUS::

And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6th memorandum it says that there were 70 full field investigations under way of these cells. And so there was no recommendation that we do something about this; the FBI was pursuing it.

I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the president.

::Um...that would be a "no", keep digging girl::

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

::Condi, honey, did you really read the PDB, you can tell us if you just skimmed it, it's ok::

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

::STOP, say not more, plead the 5th, just shut the hell up, right there and then!::

Now, the...

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

RICE: No, Mr. Ben-Veniste...

BEN-VENISTE: I will get into the...

RICE: I would like to finish my point here.

::Girlfirend, I'm telling you, enough already::

BEN-VENISTE: I didn't know there was a point.

RICE: Given that -- you asked me whether or not it warned of attacks.

BEN-VENISTE: I asked you what the title was.

RICE: You said, did it not warn of attacks. It did not warn of attacks inside the United States. It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.

::Ack!, the whopper, game over::

Reference:
Transcript: Rice's Testimony on 9/11 (washingtonpost.com)

And now, without editorial review, in its actual form: The confidential President's Daily Brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001 From From the Smoking Gun

Another Foreign Leader for Kerry

Muqtada to Bush: Back off or Lose the Election

The Saudi London daily ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Muqtada al-Sadr called Friday upon US President George W. Bush to "withdraw his forces from Iraq or face a true revolution." At the same time, one of al-Sadr's aids affirmed that US civil administrator Paul Bremer had rejected attempts to arrive at a ceasefire. Muqtada wrote in his Friday prayers sermon, which was read out by Jabir al-Khafaji, one of his aids, in the Great Mosque of Kufa before hundreds of his supporters,

"I direct my words at my enemy, Bush . . . If your justification for the war on Iraq was Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, then these issues are past, and you are now making war on the entire Iraqi people. I advise you to withdraw immediately from Iraq, otherwise you will lose the elections for which you are now campaigning, and you will lose your own people, and other peoples, as well." He explained, "America is not confronting a popular resistance, but rather a genuine revolution."

Read more at Juan Cole * Informed Comment *

There has been many historical comparisons to the situation in Iraq over the last few days. Many to Vietnam, and specifically the Tet Offensive, also I have seen or heard stories likening and/or differentiating this to the German or Japanese occupations after WWII, Kosovo and Somalia have been batted around, even the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.

I am surprised we haven't seen more of the obvious, and that is the comparison to Iran's 1979-80 revolution to the current Shia revolt. This is what we've been afraid of right along, and this is precisely what is happening. Bush Inc. better get it's act together damn quick on this one or the whole house of cards caves in.

Could this be the third most catastrophic intelligence failure in US history looming on the horizion, all three of which occured on the Shrub's watch? Where else have we seen kidnapping as an acceptable and somewhat effective tactic? When it came to influencing US elections, far more decisive than terrorism as I recall.

"You know, only an idiot could unite the Sunnis and Shiites together against the United States." Reference: GOP Hypocrite of the Week: George W. Bush -- A BuzzFlash Editorial