NEW YORK, May 29, 2007
Iraq Goals Out Of Reach?
The Skinny: Military Officials Doubt Iraq Can Meet U.S. Objectives This Summer
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(CBS/AP)
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Iraq: 4 Years Later
The conflict wears on as the nation struggles to rebuild.
Top U.S. military officials say the main goals set last year by President Bush when he announced a troop buildup in Iraq are unlikely to be met before a crucial September report to Congress.
The Los Angeles Times reports military officials are increasingly convinced the three major U.S. objectives – sharing of oil revenues, provincial elections and a deal to integrate more Sunni Arabs into the Iraqi government – will be not be achieved before Gen. David Petraeus sends Congress an assessment of progress in Iraq.
Of the three goals, only the sharing of Iraq's oil revenues among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds is considered achievable – and even that's rated a long shot.
The officials told the Times they understood that a report that major goals had not been met would only add to skepticism about the war among Democrats in Congress. However, some "counterinsurgency advisors to Petraeus" said it was never realistic to expect the Iraqis to resolve such major disagreements after only a few months of the U.S. troop buildup.
Instead, military officials are seeking to redefine success, pointing to smaller, local deals that have been achieved, which they say "can be building blocks of wider sectarian reconciliation."
Secret Service Stressed Out By Campaign
The unusually large field of 2008 presidential contenders and the unusually early start to the campaign are putting an added stress on the already strained U.S. Secret Service.
According to a report in the Washington Post, the Secret Service "expects to borrow more than 2,000 immigration officers and federal airport screeners next year" to provide security for the ever-growing crop of candidates. Another 250 Secret Service agents will need to be shifted from investigations to security details.
The Post says the Secret Service, already burdened by the White House's security needs and the unrelenting threat of terrorist attack, was showing strain even before it was ordered to provide protection for Sen. Barack Obama on May 3 – the earliest a security detail was ever ordered for a presidential candidate.
The $110 million Secret Service budget for campaign protection – two-thirds more than the record $65 million for the 2004 campaign – was prepared when the agency was not expecting to be guarding any of the candidates until January.
The Post says the service has already had to cut back on resources devoted to battling counterfeiting and cybercrime.
Digital War In Estonia
What some are calling the first war in cyberspace was fought last month in Estonia, reports The New York Times, after the government's decision to remove a World War II-era Soviet statue set off a series of data-flooding attacks by opponents.
The Web sites of parliament, the prime minister and the president, as well as the Baltic nation's biggest bank and major newspapers were targeted, allegedly by Estonians of Russian descent. Estonian officials claim the Russian government was involved in the well-organized attacks that almost shut down the digital infrastructure of the extremely Internet-dependent country.
With help from other countries, the technically savvy Estonian government was eventually able to withstand the assault. The Times says computer security experts from around the world, including the U.S., have since converged on Estonia to "learn what they can about cyberwar in the digital age."
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One major thing still bothers me. We started training the Iraq forces in late 2003, it is now mid 2007. By now, they have to have been the best trained force in the world. Where do we stop training them? Can it actually be that we train these folks by day and they shoot back at us by night? Laughing at us all the time?
This can be proven and America can and should arrest Bush and Cheney their Entire Administration, Israeli NEOCONS TOO, and put them on trial for War Crimes just like we did the Nazis after WWII.
CHECK OUT THOSE REPRESENTATIVES THAT VOTE FOR THE WAR! If you follow the money trail you will find that most of those elected officials who support the war in Iraq are under the influence of AIPAC. AN ISRAELI POLITICAL LOBBY GROUP!
HERE ARE SOME OF AIPAC DEMOCRATIC SUPPORTERS! CONTACT THEM!
Levin, Carl- (D - MI)
Class II
269 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6221
Web Form: levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
St
eny Hoyer
http://hoyer.house.gov/contact/
READ AIPAC BRAG ABOUT THEIR INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN POLITICIANS!
http://www.aipac.org/for
ms/join_aipacClubs.htm
REMEMBER THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE IS RUN BY PRO ISRAELI GROUP! THEY ARE THE ONES WHO CAME UP WITH THIS SURGE IDEA!
EVEN AS AMERICAN MILITARY AID LANDS IN LEBANON, President Bush is funding Al Qaeda in Lebanon with funds from Iraq! http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/ar
ticles/070305fa_fact_hersh
50 years of American involvement in the Middle East ENOUGH it has nothing worth one more American Life!
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY STANDS IN NEW YORK HARBOR AND IS NOT KNEELING IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
WE THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA NEED TO KICK BUSH OUT OF OUR WHITE HOUSE AND RECLAIM OUR RESPECT AND ECONOMIC POSITION WITHIN THE WORLD. BUSH AND OUR OTHER POLITICIANS IN D.C. HAVE SOLD THIS GREAT NATION DOWN THE POTOMAC AND IT'S TIME FOR THEM TO GO.
Is it at all possible that George W. Bush and *** Cheaney are somehow benefitting from the mess in Iraq? How else do you explain the obvious abandoning of Bin Laden?
Monday, I told my son to mow the lawn. Tuesday, I told him that I wanted the lawn mowed that day, Wednesday, I told him that either the lawn was mowed by the end of the day or I would not take him fishing Thursday. When I got home Wednesday night, it had not been mowed. Thursday, I hired a kid to mow the lawn and even though he was packed and ready to go with me, I left him home. He threw a tantrum for a bit before I put my foot down.
He paid a price and I followed through on what I said would happen. Now, whenever I tell him to mow the lawn, he mows the lawn.
Moral: Goals or ultimatoms, whatever are no good at all unless there are consequences. For years, we continue to give Iraq goals but they continue to ignore them because they know there are no consequences.
- Posted by ramos937 at 05:34 AM : May 30, 2007
You'd think a point like this would be obvious.
But George W. Bush never held a real job in his life, before he entered politics. He always had his parents do for him: grease his way through school, pull influence to get him into the Texas ANG during Vietnam past a 500-man waiting list, help him avoid prison after his insider trading at Harken Energy.
He never held a real job, and he doesn't deadlines and consequences when you fail to meet them.
It is Bush himself who fears deadlines in Iraq.
He fears deadlines because he can't possibly meet them. His rich powerful dad can't get him off this time.
When time comes, and all the feces hits the fan, George Bush will be known as the worst, most crooked president in American history. Watergate will look like a child's prank compared to what George Bush has done and is doing to America.
Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?
I think it's another "hit" story by CBS to undermine this war in "support" of their pals in the Democrat party.............that's what I KNOW.