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Obama Meets With The Presidents
Take a look at this video of Obama meeting with all the living presidents. It makes for a powerful picture. The only one stinking up the joint is Carter, but I’m willing to overlook that for this occasion. It would be fascinating to sit in a room with all those men and chat. Bush 41, 43, Clinton, and Carter have such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom between them. The kind of wisdom one can only get through having been the president and traveling the world in that capacity.
Shoe Throwing Journalist Asks For Pardon
The brazen shoe throwing journalist in Iraq is now describing the incident as an “ungly act” and asking Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki for a pardon:
The jailed journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush has asked for a pardon for what he described as “an ugly act,” a spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister said Thursday.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, Egypt, could face two years imprisonment for insulting a foreign leader. He remained in custody Thursday night.
“It is too late to now to regret the big and ugly act that I perpetrated,” al-Zeidi wrote in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the prime minister’s spokesman.
The spokesman, Yassin Majid, told The Associated Press that al-Zeidi went on in the letter to recall an interview he conducted with the prime minister in 2005 when al-Maliki invited him into his home, saying: “Come in, it is your home too.”
“So I ask for your pardon,” al-Zeidi wrote, Majid said.
The Iraqi PM can’t give al-Zeidi a pardon for something that has become so public, because it would set a terrible example. What that asshole did was a disgrace and an insult to America. No journalist would ever consider doing such a thing in any other country in the Middle East, because they would be killed. Ironically, it’s the very freedom that president Bush brought and al-Zeidi curses that allowed him to throw his shoes in the first place.
I think the guy is a scumbag and I hope the Iraqi police work him over good before they send him to prison.
Video: Yes, That Really Is Bush Kissing Barbra Streisand
Notice how the old bag kinda pulls away when the president leans in to whisper something after the kiss. Having to be cordial to one of the biggest left-wing shrews in America has gotta be rough.
(hat tip Hot Air)
Ex-White House Spokesman Writes Tell-All Book
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a 400 page book about his time in the Bush inner circle. The book is called What Happened and it chronicles among other things the Valerie Plame leak case.
His publisher released a little taste of what you can expect in the book:
The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
There was one problem. It was not true.
I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.
Scott McClellan has been a close friend of the Bush family for around 15 years, so I have my doubts that he’s gonna drop any bombshells. It should still make for an interesting read.
-Samantha Giles
Bush blasts House for ‘wasting time’ on investigations
President Bush on Tuesday slammed Congress for not getting its work done and focusing too much on investigating his administration and repeatedly attempting to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.
“We’re near the end of the year, and there really isn’t much to show for it,” Bush told reporters following a meeting with House GOP leaders.
“The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq,” the president said.
The president, referencing reports that Democrats could attempt to tie an Iraq supplemental spending bill and the Veterans Affairs funding legislation to the Labor/HHS appropriations bill, said it is “hard to imagine a more cynical political strategy than trying to hold hostage funding for our troops in combat and our wounded warriors in order to extract $11 billion in additional social spending.”
Bush Wants $46 Billion More to fund Wars
President Bush will ask Congress for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and finance other national security needs.
The figure, which Bush was expected to announce later Monday at the White House, brings to $196.4 billion the total requested by the administration for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for the budget year that started Oct. 1. It includes $189.3 billion for the Defense Department, $6.9 billion for the State Department and $200 million for other agencies.
Congress has already provided more than $455 billion for the Iraq war, with stepped-up military operations running about $10 billion a month.
After Nancy Pelosi and “dingy” Harry throw a fit and pass a couple of resolutions I’m betting Bush gets the money. While most Americans do want the war to end, they want it to end with a victory.
-Chris Jones
Rep. Pete Stark Smears Troops and President During SCHIP Debate
Rep. Pete Stark said this during the House debate on overriding the SCHIP veto:
First of all, I’m just amazed they can’t figure out, the Republicans are worried we can’t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where ya gonna get that money? You going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement. This bill would provide healthcare for 10 million children and unlike the President’s own kids, these children can’t see a doctor or receive necessary care. [...]
But President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up. In Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.
Hey! I thought Democrats supported the troops? Making the assertion that our troops are using the war funding to blow up innocent people doesn’t sound very supportive to me.
I have to give Stark credit though, that was a pretty good tantrum for a grown man. If he would’ve stomped his feet and cried at the end, it could have been even better.
-Chris Jones
Bartlett Weighs-In on GOP Candidates
Dan Bartlett who was until recently President Bush’s closest advisor gave his frank assessment of the current crop of candidates hoping for the Republican nomination.
Bartlett’s opinion is very significant, because he has spent nearly his entire life working for George W. Bush and though he doesn’t work at the White House anymore he’s still considered Bush’s alter ego. So it’s believed that Bartlett’s opinion of the GOP candidates is most likely Bush’s opinion.
Fred Thompson is the campaign’s “biggest dud,” Mitt Romney has “a real problem in the South” because people will not vote for a Mormon, Mike Huckabee’s last name is too hick and John McCain could end up repeating 2000 by winning New Hampshire but losing the nomination.
The only candidate that Bartlett wasn’t critical of was Rudy Giuliani, saying in part that Rudy had the best message. He pointed out that Rudy was also smart for going after Democrats instead of fellow Republicans.
He indicated that he feels like Rudy will get the nomination, but thinks Huckabee is the very best candidate.
By Chris Jones
Bush cites past conflicts to urge staying in Iraq
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – President George W. Bush on Wednesday tried to reinforce his case for perseverance in Iraq by placing the unpopular war in the historical context of the U.S. experience in Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, but critics said he missed the mark.
Speaking to thousand of veterans, many of whom served in Asia, Bush laid the groundwork for a key mid-September report on Iraq that is expected to show some progress on the security front but little in the way of political reconciliation.
Bush said it was in the U.S. interests to continue to work to stabilize Iraq and held out the modern democracies in Japan and South Korea as potential models. He also raised the example of the emergence the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and violence in Vietnam after U.S. troops pulled out to warn of the consequences of leaving Iraq.
“Despite the mistakes that have been made, despite the problems we have encountered, seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy is critical to keeping the American people safe from the terrorists who want to attack us,” he said.
The comparison Bush drew to Vietnam was a risky argument and one his administration has tended to avoid in the past.
Many Democrats have likened Iraq to Vietnam, calling the war a quagmire that has exacted a big toll in American lives and treasure without furthering U.S. interests.
Bush also used his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars to insist that he supported Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, despite comments he made a day earlier highlighting frustration with the Iraqi leader’s inability to reconcile warring factions there.
“Prime Minister Maliki’s a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him,” Bush said. “And it’s not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his position. That’s up to the Iraqi people.”
Bush said that like World War Two, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq was an “ideological struggle” as he again depicted the conflict as part of the broader U.S. “war on terror.”
“The militarists of Japan and the communists in Korea and Vietnam were driven by a merciless vision for the proper ordering of humanity,” Bush said.
“Like our enemies in the past, the terrorists who wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places seek to spread a political vision of their own: a harsh plan for life that crushes freedom, tolerance and dissent,” he added.
Pressure is building on Bush over Iraq in the run-up to the release of a report to Congress due by September 15 by U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.
That report will evaluate the progress of the troop buildup Bush ordered early this year aimed at reducing the violence there and comes as the Democratic-led Congress steps up its effort to bring about a withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada dismissed Bush’s historical comparisons and said the decision to invade Iraq was “one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history.”
Reid pledged Democrats would seek in coming weeks to force a change in Bush’s “failed strategy in Iraq.”
Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Bush for the presidency in 2004, said Bush’s comparison to that war was “irresponsible” and “ignorant.”
“It is unfortunate that President Bush would want to invoke a false comparison of Vietnam to Iraq, but not surprising that he would oversimplify the differences and overlook the tragic similarities,” said Kerry, who served in Vietnam.
“If the President wants to heed the lessons of Vietnam, he should change course and change course now,” he added.
[Reuters]
Bush defends Iraq war; details al Qaeda threat
CHARLESTON AIR FORCE BASE, South Carolina (CNN) — President Bush insisted that al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq are part of the same terrorist network, during a speech Tuesday at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.
“Some say that Iraq is not a part of the broader war on terror,” Bush said. “They claim that the organization called al Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon — that it’s independent of Osama bin Laden and it’s not interested in attacking America. That would be news to Osama bin Laden.”
Bush made his case as a Democratically controlled Congress moves to set timetables for U.S. forces to pull out of the unpopular Iraq war and as the president’s job-approval rating dips low in opinion polls.
“However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it, and we can win it,” Bush told members of the military who were clad in camouflage.
“Al Qaeda is in Iraq and they’re there for a reason,” Bush said. “Surrendering the future of Iraq for al Qaeda would be a disaster to our country.” 
Watch Bush tie together al Qaeda and Iraq »
The president said “al Qaeda’s top commander in Iraq” issued an audio statement saying “that he will not rest until he has attacked our nation’s capital.”
Ahead of the speech, a White House official said Bush would reveal “newly declassified information” about the links between al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.
“I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection,” said Bush. “The facts are that al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they’re fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they’re plotting to kill Americans here at home again.”
The speech comes a week after a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate named al Qaeda “the most serious terrorist threat” to the U.S. homeland and said that al Qaeda in Iraq was the main group’s “most visible and capable affiliate.”
Bush traveled to the Air Force base in South Carolina a day after Democrats vying to succeed him held a debate in nearby Charleston. The war in Iraq was a major element of that debate, with the administration’s management of the war the target of blistering criticism by its eight participants.
Critics of the war have complained about the administration’s insistence that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, saying the war has been a recruiting tool for terrorists. They say that the administration has erred in Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban is fighting to regain control, and Pakistan, where both the Taliban and al Qaeda have tried to regroup.
Both the NIE and a separate intelligence assessment created for policymakers said that al Qaeda had regrouped and restrengthened in the tribal areas of Pakistan. 
See what previous reports have said »
“Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror,” Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana, said Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.” “As the National Intelligence Estimate indicates, it’s Pakistan and Afghanistan. We’ve got to finish the job in Afghanistan. We were attacked from there. And Pakistan is where the al Qaeda leadership is reconstituting itself today.”
“We’ve turned Iraq into a training ground, unfortunately, for al Qaeda terrorists who are practicing on our soldiers,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer,” also on Sunday.
Although earlier this month, the administration announced the recent capture of an insurgent they described as a “conduit” between al Qaeda’s leadership and al Qaeda in Iraq, the connections between the two groups are unclear.
Al Qaeda in Iraq’s then-leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in October 2004. Al-Zarqawi was killed in an American airstrike in June 2006.
The administration defends its reliance on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to lead the fight against al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas, despite complaints — rejected by both Musharraf and the U.S. government — that his policies have allowed the group to strengthen there.
[CNN]
Report on Iraq Shows Mixed Results
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Iraqi government has not yet fully met any of 18 goals for political, military and economic reform, the Bush administration said Thursday in an interim report certain to inflame debate in Congress over growing calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
In an assessment required by Congress, the administration accused Syria of fostering a network that supplies as many as 50 to 80 suicide bombers per month for al-Qaida in Iraq. It also said Iran continues to fund extremist groups.
The report said that despite progress on some fronts by the government of Nouri al-Maliki, “the security situation in Iraq remains complex and extremely challenging,” the “economic picture is uneven” and political reconciliation is lagging.
At a news conference that coincided with the report’s release, President Bush said, “I believe we should succeed in Iraq and I know we must.”
In remarks clearly aimed at his critics, he added, “When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will (be) because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it’ll be good politics.”
The report warned of “tough fighting” during the summer, as U.S. and Iraqi forces “seek to seize the initiative from early gains and shape conditions of longer-term stabilization.”
While Bush announced last winter he was ordering thousands of additional troops to the war zone, the full complement has only arrived in recent weeks. “The full surge in this respect has only just begun,” the report said.
In an evident jab at critics of Bush’s war policies, the report also said progress toward political reconciliation was hampered by “increasing concern among Iraqi political leaders that the United States may not have a long term-commitment to Iraq.”
The report was issued in the fifth year of a war that has taken the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops, and is costing the United States an estimated $10 billion a month.
In all, it credited the Iraqi government with satisfactory progress on eight benchmarks, unsatisfactory progress on another eight and mixed results on the other two.
At the White House, press secretary Tony Snow said the fact that “satisfactory progress” has been made in several security areas “should provide some space for the government of Iraq to make progress on key political benchmarks.”
“The report is balanced and sober,” he said in a statement. “It documents the challenges faced by U.S. and Iraqi forces and provides a basis for measuring progress as the surge enters the stage of full implementation.”
The report was designed as an interim assessment of the shift in policy that Bush announced last winter, in the wake of Republican defections in an election in which the war played a significant role.
A second report is due in September from Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The new assessment landed as both houses of Congress debated legislation to order the withdrawal of U.S. troops by next spring. The House appeared on track to approve its version of the bill later in the day, but opponents in the Senate appear to have the strength to prevent a final vote next week in the Senate.
In either event, Bush has pledged to veto the legislation, and has enough support to make his rejection stick.
Still, with polls showing scant public support for the war, and the U.S. casualty count climbing, Republicans whose names will be on the 2008 election ballot have shown increasing signs of restiveness in recent weeks.
Several veteran Republicans have called on Bush to change course, and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, on Wedneday became the first member of his party to announce on the Senate floor that he will support legislation that orders a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days, to be completed by next April 30.
That announcement, along with other calls for a dramatic change in policy, prompted an acerbic response from Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio. “Wimps,” he called fellow GOP lawmakers who part company with the president on the war.
Bush in recent days rejected calls for any shift in strategy before September.
But neither he nor administration officials have speculated about what might happen after that.
The administration’s report, however, referred repeatedly to the Iraq Study Group that issued a report last winter that drew widespread praise in Congress.
The bipartisan panel said Bush should start handing off the combat mission to the Iraqi forces and pave the way for a drawdown of U.S. forces in 2008.
“While all of those conditions have not yet been met, and the new strategy is still in its early stages, there are some encouraging signs that should, over time, point the way to a more normalized and sustainable level of U.S. engagement in Iraq, with a decreasing number of U.S. combat forces increasingly focused on a core set of missions, such as those set out by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group,” the report states.
[AP]
Bush says a pullback will occur ‘in a while’
WASHINGTON: Fearful of a Republican rebellion over Iraq that his own aides believe could force him to change course, President George W. Bush said Tuesday that the United States would be able to pull back troops “in a while,” but called on Congress to wait until September to debate the future military presence there.
The president, speaking to an economics club in Cleveland, sharply rejected a new round of efforts by Senate Democrats, as part of a two-week debate on a military spending bill, to force the withdrawal of American troops.
“We can accomplish and win this fight in Iraq,” Bush said, urging an increasingly restive Congress to wait until top U.S. military and diplomatic officials report back from Iraq in September before revisiting the war debate.
His message was carefully calibrated, emphasizing that Bush is open to shifting course – without stating precisely when.
Key Republican defections reportedly have some White House officials fearful of a collapse of support for the war. With a new poll showing record public opposition to the war, Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, speaking on ABC television, warned strongly against any supposition that the president’s grip on the war was slipping and against “accepting this panic mode thing that I’ve heard reported.”
“That’s bunkum,” he said. “That’s just flat wrong.” Things, he said, are not “falling apart.”
He and other administration officials seemed intent on making clear that Bush would support no hasty withdrawal.
A convergence of events has the war debate peaking again. Under a congressional mandate, Bush must provide a progress report on Iraq no later than Sunday. Administration officials, including Snow, say it will be a mixed assessment, with violence persisting and some of the benchmarks set by the White House far from being reached.
Meantime, Senate Democratic leaders on Tuesday opened a new debate on limiting the U.S. presence in Iraq. One proposal would require soldiers and marines to be given more leave time between deployments in Iraq – equal at least to their time served there – in a move that would limit the available pool.
But the president did receive one strong vote of support Tuesday: Senator John McCain, whose Republican presidential campaign has suffered because of his strong backing for the war, returned from Iraq and made clear he still vigorously supported U.S. military efforts there, ending speculation he might join a growing list of Republican defectors.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “is not functioning as it must,” he said from the Senate floor. But “the progress our military has made should encourage us.”
“The terrorists are in this war to win it,” McCain said. “The question is: Are we?”
The president, speaking in Cleveland, made clear that he had no intention of backing down from his current plan, which sent thousands more troops to Iraq in the first half of this year in an effort to quell violence, particularly in Baghdad, to create conditions for greater political progress.
In remarks before a speech, he said he would remind his listeners that “troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C., and that we’ve got a plan to lead to victory.”
But even as Bush insisted on the need for more time, public patience has waned. A USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday indicated that 62 percent of Americans believe it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq. It also said that Bush’s public approval rating had slipped to a record low of 29 percent.
Several lawmakers agreed Tuesday that the Iraqi government had made too little progress, but they differed sharply about the remedy.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, proposed legislation to order Bush to begin pulling out troops in 120 days and end combat by April 30, 2008, leaving some troops behind for counterterrorism operations, to train Iraqi security forces and to protect the U.S. presence.
“There is much too little pressure on Iraqi leaders to do what they have to do,” Levin told reporters.
It remains an open question whether the series of Democratic proposals, including those calling for timelines and troop withdrawals, will gain the 60 votes needed for initial passage in the Senate.
Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and his new Iraq coordinator, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, were both on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to lobby senators, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates was fielding phone calls from lawmakers.
Snow, appearing on ABC, played down the import of the president’s impending report on Iraq. The troop increase was barely in place, he said. It was too soon to make long-range judgments. The report, he said, “gives you a snapshot at the very beginning of a new way forward.”
Snow said that Americans would not “see a report that says everything has been met at the outset, because obviously it hasn’t.
“But there are going to be some benchmarks that we’ve met,” he said, “some that we can’t quite judge at this juncture.”
He cautioned against portraying the current delicate situation as “some drama where all of a sudden people are defecting and things are falling apart, and the dam’s bursting.”
“This is a war,” Snow said. “This is not a political game.”
The defections of some prominent Republican war supporters – including Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio and, on Monday, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine – have greatly complicated the administration’s calls for patience.
But McCain, freshly back from Iraq, said that there was little choice but to persist and prevail there.
McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, thus stuck with his past outspoken support of the war effort. Had he joined the other defectors, it could have been a serious blow to the administration’s cause. As his presidential campaign has encountered fund-raising difficulties, there was speculation that he might at this time begin to separate himself from the unpopular war.
“I know that senators are tired of this war, tired of the mounting death toll, tired of the many mistakes we have made in this war and the great efforts it requires to reverse them,” McCain said. “I understand this fatigue, and yet I maintain that we, as elected leaders with a duty to our people and the security of their nation, cannot let fatigue dictate our policies.”
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