Influential Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on Sunday the longer the United States stayed bogged down in Iraq, the more it looked like another Vietnam.
"What I think the White House does not yet understand and some of my colleagues, is the dam has broken on this (Iraq) policy," said Hagel, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee and possible presidential candidate in 2008.
Senior US politicians sparred over the US military presence in Iraq as lawmakers in Baghdad struggled to meet a second deadline to craft a new constitution.
Reflecting a growing public disenchantment with the course of US President George W Bush’s Iraq policy, several American lawmakers called for Bush to enunciate an “exit strategy” from Iraq while pressing Iraqi politicians to take hold of their own fate.
In his annual report to Congress last May, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained the military to a point where it runs a higher risk of not being able to quickly and easily defeat potential enemies.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
The U.S. State Department has said that the United States is moving closer toward normalizing ties with Libya but that the country needs to do more to improve its human rights record and to fight terrorism.
Asked whether Libya had done enough to be taken off the U.S. list of sponsors of terrorism, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Monday that there was more work to be done.
President George W. Bush charged on Tuesday that anti-war protesters such as Cindy Sheehan, who want the troops brought home immediately, are “advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.”
In remarks to reporters outside an exclusive resort where he is vacationing, Bush gave no indication that he would change his mind and meet with Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq and has emerged as a harsh critic of the war there, when he returns to his Texas ranch on Wednesday.
President Bush said Tuesday Iraq's Sunni minority has a choice between freedom and violence.
The president, during a day at an Idaho resort, met briefly with reporters, answering questions about constitutional negotiations in Iraq and the completion of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
The Bush administration proposed new fuel efficiency standards for pickup trucks, minivans and some sport-utility vehicles, the first significant change in nearly three decades, federal officials said Tuesday.
Environmentalists immediately faulted the plan as creating new loopholes that would weaken automobile fuel efficiency standards while failing to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
President Bush vowed Wednesday in Idaho he would not retreat from Iraq or the rest of the Middle East until U.S. troops "win the war on terror."
The president, who was speaking to a gathering of the Idaho National Guard, is on a three-day swing to try to garner support for his Iraq policy, which has been flagging in the polls.
"We will stay on the offense," Bush said to applause. "We'll complete our work in Afghanistan and Iraq.
President Bush's job approval ratings are at their lowest point of his presidency as only 40% of U.S. adults have a favorable opinion of his job performance and 58% have a negative opinion, according to a Harris Interactive poll.
This is a decline from two months ago, when the president's ratings were 45% positive and 55% negative. The war in Iraq and the economy climbed to the top of a list of issues Americans say are most important for the U.S. to address. Social Security declined sharply.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
US President George W. Bush on Wednesday contrasted a military mother whose five sons and husband have served in Iraq with anti-war protestors he said risked emboldening terrorists.
"There are few things in life more difficult than seeing a loved one go off to war. Here, in Idaho, a mom named Tammy Pruett ... knows that feeling six times over," the president said in a speech to citizen soldiers here.
A top US general has said al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, will try to relocate to the Horn of Africa if Iraq is stabilised.
Major-General Douglas Lute cited Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia as likely "safe havens" for jihadists.
USA Today on Wednesday examined the potential influence Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts might have on restrictions to abortion rights if he is confirmed to the "divided" court. Following the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court will have five justices who generally have supported legal abortion as defined under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that struck down state abortion bans.
_________________ "The age of excess is over. The age of entropy has begun"
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 10:41 pm Post subject: Re: United States of America.
Hi, all!
From a review of George Clooney's new movie about Ed Murrow and Joe McCarthy, that I think resonates well today:
Quote:
Knowing the outcome doesn't diminish the tension a bit, and Clooney and Grant Heslov's fine-chiseled script resonates with contemporary relevance. "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home," Murrow said in his 1954 McCarthy broadcast. The senator used fear to undermine traditional American freedoms and equate dissent with disloyalty. Any resemblance to the current administration's exploitation of 9/11 is no accident.
Sounds like a great movie--and a great point of view!--for our times, doesn't it?
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:47 am Post subject: Re: United States of America.
The Nobel Committee continues to slam Bush and the USA! This time, they gave Harold Pinter the Prize for Literature. A snippet from the story tells you WHY this is so delicious:
Quote:
Pinter: Silence in Plays, Rage in Politics
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 13, 2005
LONDON - Deft silences are the trademark of Harold Pinter the playwright. But thunderous, sometimes obscene, rage is his style in politics. The newest Nobel laureate in literature has fulminated against what he sees as the overweening arrogance of American power, and belittled Prime Minister Tony Blair as seeming like a "deluded idiot" in support of US President George W. Bush's war in Iraq.
He once compared his view of America with his personal nightmare of fighting cancer.
"I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world," Pinter said in 2002 when he accepted an honorary doctorate at Turin University in Italy.
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