| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"elmer swanson" |
| Date: |
28 Sep 2004 02:00:30 PM |
| Object: |
We're making steady progress in Iraq! |
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=590914&src=rss/uk/worldNews§ion=news
Key Bush assertions about Iraq in dispute
Sun 26 September, 2004 22:43
By Adam Entous
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Many of President George W. Bush's
assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and
reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in
dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key
congressional aides on Sunday.
Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq
to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Senator John
Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating.
Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying
Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on
Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in
Iraq."
He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers,
police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and
that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.
And he promised more than $9 billion (five billion pounds) will be
spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several
months.
But many of these assertions have met with scepticism from key
lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents,
given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated
picture.
TROOP, POLICE TRAINING
The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police
force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.
Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006
before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong,
fully trained police force.
Six Army battalions have had "initial training," while 57 National
Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or
"awaiting equipment." Just eight Guard battalions have reached
"initial (operating) capability," and the Pentagon acknowledged the
Guard's performance has been "uneven."
Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force,
which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000
border enforcement guards have received any centralised training to
date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the
U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.
They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic
training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in
contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.
"Let me tell you exactly what the story is. They're saying they're
trying to train them, yet they have not trained," Senator Joseph
Biden, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, said on CNN.
The White House defended its figures, and a senior administration
official defined "fully trained" as having gone through "initial basic
operations training." Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command
that covers Iraq, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the number of
trained Iraqi forces "will continue to grow."
On CBS "Face the Nation," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina said Bush needed to deploy more troops to secure areas of
Iraq before the elections.
"We are making progress, but we need to adjust," Graham said.
ELECTIONS, RECONSTRUCTION DISPUTED
The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the
$232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral
commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House
Appropriations Committee staff.
While Bush said the commission has already hired personnel and begun
setting election procedures, congressional aides said preparations in
other areas were behind schedule.
According to a one-page election planning "time line," registration
materials are supposed to be distributed in early October and initial
voter lists to go out by the end of October, which is during the holy
month of Ramadan.
So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into
the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more
than eight working on the elections.
"The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn't even been set
up. The voter registration lists aren't set. There have to be hundreds
of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers.
None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of
State for President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, told ABC's "This Week."
With the violence expected to intensify in the run-up to the
elections, congressional experts were also sceptical $9 billion could
be spent on reconstruction projects within several months, as Bush
asserted.
A top Republican aide briefed by the administration said, "at best,"
the $9 billion would be disbursed by late 2005 or early 2006. A top
Democratic aide called Bush's projections "laughable."
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=590914&src=rss/uk/worldNews§ion=news
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| User: "elmer swanson" |
|
| Title: Kerry Flip-Flop his policy again and cannot be trusted |
28 Sep 2004 05:43:02 PM |
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(Colonelyu) wrote in message news:<20040928135620.16600.00001159@mb-m16.aol.com>...
Kerry Flip-Flop his policy again and cannot be trusted
John Kerry Reinvents New and Improved Campaign Strategy
By Sher Zieve on Sept. 7, 2004
"With his poll numbers receding, John Kerry has decided to change his mind
on the Iraq war again. Surprised? No? I didn?t think so. Intelligent people
always see another of the Kerry flips coming. ....
You know, sometimes partisan political sources say things that turn
out not to be true.
So let's see what factcheck.org (a `nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer
advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and
confusion in U.S. politics`) has to say, shall we?
http://www.factcheck.org/MiscReports.aspx?docID=70
***** *** **** *** *** *** *** QUOTE ON *** **** *** **** *** ***
Selective use of Kerry's own words makes him look inconsistent on
Iraq. A closer look gives a different picture.
September 27, 2004
Modified: September 28, 2004
Summary
Kerry has never wavered from his support for giving Bush authority to
use force in Iraq, nor has he changed his position that he, as
President, would not have gone to war without greater international
support. But a Bush ad released Sept. 27 takes many of Kerry's words
out of context to make him appear to be alternately praising the war
and condemning it.
[......]
"Right Decision"
Kerry is shown saying it was "the right decision to disarm Saddam
Hussein." What's left out is that he prefaced that by saying Bush
should have made greater use of diplomacy to accomplish that.
The quote is from May 3, 2003, at the first debate among Democratic
presidential contenders, barely three weeks after the fall of Baghdad.
The question was from ABC's George Stephanopoulos:
Q: And Senator Kerry, the first question goes to you. On March 19th,
President Bush ordered General Tommy Franks to execute the invasion of
Iraq. Was that the right decision at the right time?
Kerry: George, I said at the time I would have preferred if we had
given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right
decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the President made the
decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm
him.
(Note: We have added the emphasis in these and the following quotes to
draw attention to the context left out by the Bush ad.)
"As he should have"
The full "right decision" quote is actually quite consistent with the
next Kerry quote, "I don't believe the President took us to war as he
should have," which is from an interview with Chris Matthews on
MSNBC's "Hardball" program Jan. 6, 2004:
Q: Do you think you belong to that category of candidates who more or
less are unhappy with this war, the way it's been fought, along with
General Clark, along with Howard Dean and not necessarily in
companionship politically on the issue of the war with people like
Lieberman, Edwards and Gephardt? Are you one of the anti-war
candidates?
Kerry: I am -- Yes, in the sense that I don't believe the president
took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely. Do I think this
president violated his promises to America? Yes, I do, Chris.
Q: Let me...
Kerry: Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet
there was, and we should have done it right.
"Winning of the war was brilliant"
When Kerry said "the winning of the war was brilliant" he wasn't
praising Bush for waging the war, he was praising the military for the
way they accomplished the mission. He also repeated his criticism of
Bush for failing to better plan for what came next. This was also on
"Hardball," May 19:
Q: All this terrorism. If you were president, how would you stop it?
Kerry: Well, it's going to take some time to stop it, Chris, but we
have an enormous amount of cooperation to build one other countries. I
think the administration is not done enough of the hard work of
diplomacy, reaching out to nations, building the kind of support
network.
I think they clearly have dropped the ball with respect to the first
month in the after -- winning the war. That winning of the war was
brilliant and superb, and we all applaud our troops for doing what
they did, but you've got to have the capacity to provide law and order
on the streets and to provide the fundamentally services, and I
believe American troops will be safer and America will pay less money
if we have a broader coalition involved in that, including the United
Nations.
"Wrong war, wrong place"
When Kerry called Iraq "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the
wrong time" he was once again criticizing Bush for failing to get more
international support before invading Iraq. He criticized Bush for
what he called a "phony coalition" of allies:
Kerry (Sept 6, 2004): You've got about 500 troops here, 500 troops
there, and it's American troops that are 90 percent of the combat
casualties, and it's American taxpayers that are paying 90 percent of
the cost of the war . . . It's the wrong war, in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
Earlier that same day at another campaign appearance he repeated
pretty much what he's said all along:
Kerry (Sept 6, 2004): "I would not have done just one thing
differently than the president on Iraq, I would have done everything
differently than the president on Iraq. I said this from the beginning
of the debate to the walk up to the war. I said, 'Mr. President, don't
rush to war, take the time to build a legitimate coalition and have a
plan to win the peace ."
We May Find WMDs
Nine months of fruitless searching have gone by since Kerry said on
Dec. 14, 2003 that weapons of mass destruction might yet be found in
Iraq. But what's most misleading about the Bush ad's editing is that
it takes that remark out of a long-winded -- but still consistent --
explanation of Kerry's overall position on Iraq:
The exchange was on Fox News Sunday, with host Chris Wallace:
Q: But isn't it, in a realistic political sense going to be a much
harder case to make to voters when you have that extraordinary mug
shot of Saddam Hussein...looking like he's been dragged into a police
line-up?
Kerry: Absolutely not, because I voted to hold Saddam Hussein
accountable. I knew we had to hold him accountable. There's never been
a doubt about that. But I also know that if we had done this with a
sufficient number of troops, if we had done this in a globalized way,
if we had brought more people to the table, we might have caught
Saddam Hussein sooner. We might have had less loss of life. We would
be in a stronger position today with respect to what we're doing.
Look, again, I repeat, Chris, I have always said we may yet even find
weapons of mass destruction. I don't know the answer to that. We will
still have to do the job of rebuilding Iraq and resolving the problem
between Shias and Sunnis and Kurds. There are still difficult steps
ahead of us.
The question that Americans want to know is, what is the best way to
proceed? Not what is the most lonely and single-track ideological way
to proceed. I believe the best way to proceed is to bring other
countries to the table, get some of our troops out of the target,
begin to share the burden.
The $87 Billion
The final quote is the one in which the Bush ad takes its best shot.
Kerry not only said it, he did it. He voted for an alternative
resolution that would have approved $87 billion in emergency funds for
troops and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was
conditioned on repealing much of Bush's tax cuts, and it failed 57-42.
On the key, up-or-down vote on the $87 billion itself Kerry was only
one of 12 senators in opposition, along with the man who later become
his running mate, Sen. John Edwards.
It's not only Bush who criticizes Kerry's inconsistency on that vote.
Rival Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, a senator who
also had voted to give Bush authority to use force in Iraq, said: "I
don't know how John Kerry and John Edwards can say they supported the
war but then opposed the funding for the troops who went to fight the
war that the resolution that they supported authorized." Lieberman
spoke at a candidate debate in Detroit Oct. 26, 2003.
Another Democratic rival who criticized Kerry for that vote was Rep.
***** Gephardt, who said beforehand that he would support the $87
billion "because it is the only responsible course of action. We must
not send an ambiguous message to our troops, and we must not send an
uncertain message to our friends and enemies in Iraq."
But aside from the $87 billion matter, this Bush ad is a textbook
example of how to mislead voters through selective editing.
Sources
"Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate Sponsored by ABC News,"
Federal News Service, 3 May 2003.
"Interview with John Kerry," MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews, 6 Jan
2004.
"Interview with John Kerry," MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews, 19
May 2004.
Lois Romano and Paul Farhi, "Kerry Attacks Bush on Handling of Iraq,"
The Washington Post 7 Sep 2004: A8.
Calvin Woodward, "Kerry Slams 'Wrong War in the Wrong Place,'" The
Associated Press , 6 Sep 2004.
Fox News Sunday, "Interview with John Kerry," 14 December 2003.
Adam Nagourney and Diane Cardwell, "Democrats in Debate Clash Over
Iraq War," New York Times, 27 Oct 2003: A1.
Joe Klein, "Profiles in Convenience," Time magazine, 19 Oct 2003.
***** **** *** ****** *** *** QUOTE OFF **** *** *** **** *** **** ***
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| User: "A. Dulles Soberes" |
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| Title: Re: We're making steady progress in Iraq! |
28 Sep 2004 07:41:39 PM |
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(elmer swanson) wrote in message
Key Bush assertions about Iraq in dispute
Sun 26 September, 2004 22:43
By Adam Entous
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Many of President George W. Bush's
assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and
reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in
dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key
congressional aides on Sunday.
Of course to the bush-league supporters with bush-league intellect,
"progress" can be made as little as shoving pencils to the Iraqi
people. Ha, we bought them enough pencils that every Iraqi child
could use for the next twenty years, isn't that "progress enough?" Of
course the bush supporters are mostly superficial. They wanted the
war, but they just don't think they would have to pay for any of it
(in short-term that is). It is a free-for-all/thanks-for-nothing
world out there, where weasels with Dubya's type of character can find
safety in numbers.
Of all people, George W is not one who should whine about
"instant-news and instant gratification" generation, for he is one of
those; so are his supporters. As long as the posture makes them 'feel
good,' they are blinded to the cost or its effectiveness. It is a
matter of grand standing, but cowers when another calls the bluff; and
then they W-himper like a puppy dog with their tails between their
legs (as in the situation of North Korea). The idea of "pay any
price, bear any burden" does chime as long as the Bush-league
apologists don't have to pay more. Talk is cheap indeed.
What Allawi did in his trip was to talk up the situation in Iraq,
regardless what happens to ordinary iraqis on the ground. All that he
did was talk, talk, and talk with nothing to show for. Sigh... That
is what happened to America... Image is everything. Republicans
without result, iraq occupation regardless of the cost... Most things
they did is all for show instead of substance.
Under the "pay any price in the war against the terror" mantra, the
notion of examining what we get for what we paid is put to the
backburner and thus making every Bush supporter a sucker; a willing
sucker it may be. Everyone has an inalienable and undeniable right to
be a willing sucker. It is part of the declaration of independence,
ingrained in our culture of FREEdom!!! Price is no object, of course,
as long as they don't have to pay for any of these. They are like a
bunch of children in a ToyRus; "Mommy, Daddy, I want this and I don't
care what it costs!" "I will whine, cry, stump and punch until I get
the object of my affection." Everyone is FREE to be dumb. Some
bush-leaguers may be as ignorant as it gets about what it takes to
resolve the problem; they just wanted to kill off everyone they don't
like.
To the Bush supporters, it is all about Ego and nothing else seems
essential; Clothes makes the man. But I say, character makes the
man.
Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq
to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Senator John
Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating.
Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying
Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on
Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in
Iraq."
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,472023,00.html?cnn=yes
Have you forgotten that invading Iraq has nothing to do with the
culprits who perpetuated 9/11?
"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September
11." --Georgie, 9-17-2003, 182 days after the Invasion of Iraq began
=======================================================
ADS
"This is a hard country to defend... Our intelligence is good. It's
just never perfect, is the problem... But it is in a big country,
Burl. I'm from Texas. It is difficult to stop people coming across the
Rio Grande River, whether they be people looking for work or people
looking to do harm." -- George 'I Surrender' Bush, Washington D.C.,
4-21-2004 (Of course, Georgie Bush is now throwing up his hands and
give up.)
"He (George Herbert Walker Bush) is the wrong father to appeal to for
advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of
strength." -- Georgie in an interview with Bob Woodward, 60 minutes,
4-18-2004
"So what's the difference? (between Weapons of Mass Destruction Vs
'programs' of WMD)" -- Georgie, 12-16-2003, 272 days after the quest
for the head of his family's enemy began
"Yes, I think, first of all, remember I just said we've been there for
**90** days since the cessation of major military operations. Now, I
know in our world where news comes and goes and there's this kind of
instant--instant news... But it's going to take time for us to gather
the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles
of documents that we have uncovered."
-- Georgie, 7-30-2003 Rose Garden Press Conference, in response to the
question asking whether Georgie had "some definitive" links for the
Saddam-Al Qaeda claims before the Iraqi Invasion (apparantly, Georgie
was still on his fishing expedition 90 days after the invasion)
"Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of
great nations built armies and arsenals and set out to dominate the
weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of
cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of
Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free
peoples.."
-- Georgie, SOTU 2003
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