Well so much for that great “War on Terror” we were fighting, because a new report released this evening has shown that terrorist attacks are up 25% over last year, and 40% more people are dead in those attacks. Solid proof that Bush is “War on Terror” really was nothing more than an excuse for him to go into Iraq. If you’ll recall Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (no matter what Cheney says), it had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden (Saddam Hussein was a secular leader, he feared Islam because it would not allow him to do what he wanted), and up until just a few years ago were friends of the US.

So I can only assume that we have lost the war on terror, or we never went to go fight it anyway. given that Bush has squandered the resolve of the American people, we are gaining nothing from the war in Iraq, and our President and his cultlike followers has forgotten all about Afghanistan, I say we just bring everybody home, arrest George Bush for war crimes, and go in and clean up the mess after those countries that we so screwed up get done imploding. As bleak as this sounds it is my opinion is the only option the “President” has given us.

This war is getting us nowhere, and we brave soldiers are dropping all over. END THIS WAR NOW!

Ironic it was 4 years ago tomorrow Bush had his "Mission Accomplished" speach. 4 Years, and we are still there!!!!

From AP

Five U.S. military personnel were killed over the weekend in Iraq, including three by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the military said Monday, pushing the American death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year.

Four Army soldiers died in eastern Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite Muslim area where U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations in the security crackdown that began Feb. 14. A Marine was killed in Anbar province, a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold west of the capital.

An al-Qaida-linked group, meanwhile, vowed to pursue a "long-term war of attrition" in Anbar against U.S. forces and an alliance of Sunni tribal leaders who have turned against the terror network.

In violence Monday, a suicide car bomber apparently targeting an Interior Ministry convoy struck an Iraqi checkpoint near a busy square in the predominantly Sunni Arab area of Harthiyah in western Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 10, police said.

The bomber detonated his payload, causing part of the road to buckle, as he emerged from an underpass heading toward a checkpoint manned by Interior Ministry commandos. Those killed included two commandos and two civilians.

On Sunday, Iran agreed to join the U.S. and other countries at a conference on Iraq this week in Egypt, raising hopes the government in Tehran would help stabilize its violent neighbor and stem the flow of guns and bombs over the border.

Well it is not really making it up, it is leaving it out. In order to make sure that the numbers look good, and that Republican talking heads have something to point to and say "See it's working" the administration had to leave out the scores of people who have dies because of car bombs. To Bush, those don't count.

From McClatchy (bolds are mine)

U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.

But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.

Oh the shit is about to hit the fan, the subpoenas are in the mail.

From RawStory

In a meeting considering the issuing of a series of subpoenas from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday, the chairman said he had hit a 'brick wall' in dealings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"We have hit a brick wall with the Secretary of State," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). "She will not propose a date to testify, she will not agree to testify, and she insists that our Committee be satisfied with partial information that was previously submitted to other committees."

Waxman's remark came in a fractious hearing on issuing three subpoenas. One sought Rice's testimony on May 15 concerning the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq. The other two concerned the deletion of e-mails on accounts supplied the Republican National Committee and used by White House employees, as well as RNC documents concerning the use of the General Services Administration to assist Republican political efforts.

All three subpoenas were agreed to by the Committee. Waxman attempted to show that his willingness to have a hearing with votes was a new direction for the Oversight Committee.

"Under the rules of this Committee, the Chairman has the power to issue subpoenas without debate or votes in the Committee. That is what Dan Burton used to do. In fact, that is what he did over 1,000 times," he said. "But I am taking a different approach today. I believe the entire Committee should have a chance to participate in the subpoenas we will consider today."

It has been reported that we lost 9 of our finest in one day in Iraq. For the love of all that is good and holy in this world, can we please end this pointless war. George, you have won, the military is broken and your friends are richer than they ever dreamed. You won, so can we now end the death?

END THIS WAR NOW AND BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. IT IS NO LONGER ABOUT SUPPORTING THE TROOPS, IT IS ABOUT SAVING THEM FROM THE MESS YOU HAVE CREATED!

Contrary to the right-wing talking point of the “surge” is turning out to be nothing more than a disaster. Today marked one of the deadliest single days for Iraq for civilians since we invaded the damn country. Today in Baghdad for car bombs exploded, just one of them killed 127 people,With another 148 wounded. Totally a bloodbath from the four car bombings as well as the various bodies scattered throughout the city death toll today alone in Baghdad was 208.

President Bush is doing his best to beg the Democrats not to cut funding for his failure in Iraq. He cites three reasons why the will of the American people should not be listened to, all three of them are total bullshit.

• His first reason is that Indian war in Iraq will somehow hurt the troops, I'm not sure how one can justify the troops are safer in a war zone then they would be stateside, but then again this is Bush's America.

• His second justification for the continued war in Iraq is September 11, that Iraq is somehow got something to do with September 11 regardless of the vast piles of paper that say otherwise, I can only guess that since our President does not read newspapers and his only source of news is those around him, he must be listening to Dick Cheney, Not the Department of Defense, United Nations, FBI, CIA, and several foreign intelligence services who have released reports that show no connection between Iraq and the attackers on September 11.
• His final reason for not ending the war in Iraq is that his “surge” plan is going swimmingly, just ignore the 200 and eight dead people today alone.

It's time for the Democrats to give Bush an ultimatum, sign the legislation were about to send your desk work is your war funding goodbye because a second bill will not come to the floor. If the Democrats played their cards right outcome would clearly show that the war funding was vetoed by Bush, That the Democrats gave him the exact amount he was looking for.

John McCain has a long history of not caring what the American people thing. Look no further than his comments on Sept of '06.

Well it looks like the American people don't really think John McCain is being honest when it comes to his desperate defense of the Bush Iraq plan. According to a new CBS Poll 39% of Americans thing John McCain is a liar when it comes to his rosy assessment of Iraq. 29% think he is right on (we call that the Bush base, the 28% or so of people that think Bush can do no wrong, ever).

This is the guy that wants to be the president, he hates Americans, he hate what we think, and what we say. He wants to parent us, not lead us.

End this damn war now!

From AP

Beginning immediately, all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve 15-month tours - three months longer than the usual standard, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

It was the latest move by the Pentagon to cope with the strains of fighting two wars simultaneously and maintaining a higher troop level in Iraq as part of President Bush's revised strategy for stabilizing Baghdad.

"This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step," Gates told a Pentagon news conference, adding that the goal is to eventually return to 12 months as the standard length of tour in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the new policy does not affect the other main components of the U.S. ground force in Iraq: the Marines, whose standard tour is seven months, or the Army National Guard or Army Reserve, which will continue to serve 12-month tours.

Gates acknowledged that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are making life difficult for many in the military.

"Our forces are stretched, there's no question about that," Gates said.

He said the new policy also seeks to ensure that all active-duty Army units get at least 12 months at home between deployments. He said it would allow the Pentagon to maintain the current level of troops in Iraq for another year, although he added that there has been no decision on future troop levels.

Without changing the standard tour length to 15 months, the Army would have been forced to send five brigades to Iraq before they completed 12 months at home, Gates said.

Some units' tours in Iraq had already been extended beyond 12 months by varying amounts. The new policy will make deployments more equitable and more predictable for soldiers and for their families, Gates said.

"I think it is fair to all soldiers that all share the burden equally," he said.

The frustration of the boy king is becoming apparent to everyone. Today in a speech at the VFW George Bush stringed so many mistruths together in one sentence it was almost hard to wrap your mind around it. For instance he said, “It's now been 64 days since I have requested that Congress pass emergency funding for these troops. We don't have all of them there”, What he is not telling you is his last request for Iraq war funding was made to a Republican-led Congress and it took them 119 days to comply. The Democrats acted twice as quickly as the Republicans ever did. He went on to say, “…the Democrat leadership in Congress has spent the past 64 days pushing legislation that would undercut our troops, just as we're beginning to make progress in Baghdad.” This is also nothing more than spin, what the Democrats have done is to fully comply with his war funding request giving him every penny he asked for him. Bush is not happy with is that the Democrats have said that they understand what the American people want and this will be the last request Bush sees. The Democratic message is clear “You have about a year to finish the job because the will of the American people is all but gone.” In short Bush is panicking because he sees the gig is up, in chaos he could steal, and the Democrats have chosen to end the chaos.

As I said in the beginning of this post, President Bush is holding the troops hostage. You need to look no further than the following statement made by him today, “Some of our forces now deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq may need to be extended, because other units are not ready to take their places. In a letter to Congress, the Army Chief of Staff, Pete Shoemaker, recently warned, 'Without approval of the supplemental funds in April, we will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures, which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our soldiers and their families.'" This is a slap in the face to the troops, today in the news it was reported that over 15,000 troops will have their current tours of duty extended. Also reported today National Guard troops in three states to the tune of 13,000 troops have received notice that they will be shipped to Iraq, in direct violation of agreements made between the states and the Department of Defense that state National Guard troops will not be deployed more than once every five years. One unit that received letters today have been stateside less than two years. So how can the president say that if the Democrats don't fully comply with this failed policy that somehow the troops will be redeployed or extended when in fact that is exactly what is happening and they have all the money they need. Bush is using the troops and their families as hostages to keep the war in Iraq going so he and his buddies at Halliburton can keep bilking money from the war zone.

Bush's surge plan is so important to “Operation Save my Legacy” that he is sending untrained troops into Iraq and causing them to die. This is how the Republicans support our troops, they rush the necessary training our troops need, not to win, but to survive.

From Editor & Publisher (bolds are mine)

Two soldiers killed in Iraq in February may have died as a result of friendly fire, Army officials said Wednesday, not from enemy fire, as the press reported.

The military suspected friendly fire later in February but did not inform the dead soldiers' families of these new doubts.

One of the soldiers died just hours after arriving in Iraq — and was one of those troops rushed to the country in the "surge" who did not receive full training.

The Army said it is investigating the deaths of Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, 18, of Glendive, Mont., and Spc. Alan E. McPeek, 20, of Tucson, Ariz., who were killed in Ramadi, in western Iraq on Feb. 2. The families of the soldiers at first were told they were killed by enemy fire.

According to Col. Daniel Baggio, unit commanders in Iraq did not initially suspect they were killed by U.S. forces, but an investigation by the unit found they may have been.

A supplemental report filed Feb. 28 suggested that the initial report might be wrong and an investigation was under way. It took another month before the families of the two soldiers were told, on March 31, that friendly fire was suspected.

On February 9, the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News reported: "At least 143 soldiers joined Fort Stewart's 1st Brigade too late to participate in a final combat exercise before their units deployed to Iraq. Last week, one of those soldiers - Pvt. Matthew T. Zeimer, 18 - was the first from the brigade to be killed when he was hit by enemy fire in Ramadi, the stronghold of Iraq's Sunni insurgency.

with a Commander in Chief like this who needs enemies.

This administration just can’t stop lying about everything. They lie even when the truth is a much easer route. FBI used to detain American war protesters, said never happened… but that is a lie.

From the Washington Post

A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.

For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.

But a civil lawsuit, filed by the protesters, recently unearthed D.C. police logs that confirm the FBI's role in the incident. Lawyers for the demonstrators said the logs, which police say they just found, bolster their allegations of civil rights violations.

The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black — a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.

FBI agents dressed in street clothes separated members to question them one by one about protests they attended, whom they had spent time with recently, what political views they espoused and the significance of their tattoos and slogans, according to interviews and court records.

The revelations, combined with protester accounts, provide the first public evidence that Washington-based FBI personnel used their intelligence-gathering powers in the District to collect purely political intelligence. Ultimately, the protesters were not prosecuted because there wasn't sufficient evidence of trespassing, and their arrest records were expunged.

If you hear McCain tell the story, Iraq is a desert playground where pixies and sand sprites frolic in morning dew. Where people are happy and safe. In short McCain has host his fucking mind.

So to prove his point on how great Baghdad is, he went to Iraq and strolled around. It was a great photo-op for propaganda, but it is what was not in the photos that shows McCain is a coward, and liar. In his little walking tour of a market the brave McCain had over 100 soldiers, 3 Blackhawk helicopters above, and 2 Apache gun ships. Well if I had that much protection I would stroll the streets of hell.

What a Coward, is this the guy we want as president?

Is Bush ever going to tell us why we are there still. I thought that they were doing all the work, that we were just there as backup.

From the AP (Bolds are mine)

The U.S. military death toll in March, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence in the capital, surrounding cities and Anbar province, according to figures compiled on Saturday.

The Associated Press count of U.S. military deaths for the month was 81, including a soldier who died from non-combat causes Friday. Figures compiled from officials in the Iraqi ministries of Defense, Health and Interior showed the Iraqi military toll was 44. The Iraqi figures showed that 165 Iraqi police were killed in March. Many of the police serve in paramilitary units.

According to the AP count 3,246 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

At least 83 American forces died in January and 80 in February, according to the AP tabulation.

The Iraqi figures were gathered from officials who released them on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give out the numbers.

Additionally, the Iraqi ministry figures listed 1,872 Iraqi civilian deaths for the month, about 300 more than the AP tabulation, which is mainly gathered from daily police reports nationwide.

The civilian death toll for the month was down significantly from 2,172 in December, the highest month casualty figure since the AP began keeping records of civilian deaths in April 2005.

However, the number of civilians killed in March was in the same range as for the first two months of this year; 1,604 in January and 1,552 in February, according to the AP count.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi civilian deaths, more than 500 people, where killed in three big bomb attacks in the last week of the month and revenge killings of Sunni men in Tal Afar the night after a Shiite market was bomb in the northwest Iraqi city.

I am glad to see that the Democrats are growing a set of balls and standing up for our troops against the abuse of the President. The Democratically controlled Congress on both side passed the war funding bill. Bush is scared out of his scull, never before has Congress ever stood up to him, and he does not know what to do.

He is calling all of the House Republicans to the White House, attempting to shore up support for his veto. Never in my life have a ever heard of a president needing to shore up support for a veto. Why is he doing this? Easy, the Republicans know that if he vetoes this bill, a real argument can be made that the Republican president stopped funding for the war. If you want proof of this theory, you need look no further than the Senate vote on this bill, even with the timetables, the Republicans would not filibuster this, because they knew it would not look good to filibuster the funding of the troops. The Republicans also fear that if the President vetoes this bill the Democrats my not bring it’s successor to the floor, ending the war by default, and the blame will be on the Republicans. This president has only vetoed one bill in his whole life, a stem cell research bill, do Republicans really want the other bill Bush vetoes to be funding for our troops? The war is unpopular to the American people, and the Republicans are already bleeding to death, they may be willing to throw Bush under the bus to save their asses.

I would warn the President not to veto the Iraq War spending bill, because when it is all said in done the fact remains that the Congress passed the funding, and a Republican president vetoed it.

The US Military is so overtaxed that the DOD has notified 1800 Ready Reserve Marines that they may be called up for a tour in Iraq. Here is what the Ready Reserve is, when someone signs up for the service, say 4 years, their contract says that are to spend 4 years active duty, and 4 years inactive duty, in other words the Ready Reserve. For the most part, these people leave the service and go on about their civilian lives.

It is almost unheard of to call up these forces, the DOD is strapped, and god knows that we would never ask for a draft, because nothing would end this war faster.

From the Stars and Stripes

The Marine Corps plans to notify 1,800 Marines in the Individual Ready Reserve this month that they could be mobilized for one year, to include an expected seven-month deployment to Iraq, said Maj. Steven O’Connor, Reserve liaison officer at Headquarters Marine Corps Public Affairs.

Troops in the IRR have left active duty but still have time on their obligation to serve. Unlike other reservists, they do not drill.

Of the Marines notified, about 1,200 are expected to get orders to join the I Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, O’Connor said Monday.

That breaks down to 1,067 sergeants and 133 captains, said Lt. Col. Jeff Riehl, of Manpower and Reserve Affairs.

Of the roughly 60,000 Marines in the IRR, about 25,200 are eligible for this callup, Riehl said.

Riehl gave the following breakdown of how many Marines the Corps is looking to call up per Military Occupational Specialty:

• Aviation maintenance, 361
• Logistics support, 225
• Infantry, tanks and artillery, 223
• Motor transport, 178
• Communications, 97
• Intelligence, 95
• Military police, 21

In August, the Corps announced that it planned to mobilize up to 2,500 Marines in the IRR to stem a shortfall of 1,200 Marines. The Corps had been relying on volunteers from the IRR, but fewer Marines in the IRR had volunteered to be mobilized.

Since then, 150 Marines in the IRR have been notified they could deploy, of which 69 have received orders to go to Iraq, O’Connor said.