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[However, Kennedy adjusted the numbers to account for undecided black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and said the runoff election currently stands in Blanco's favor. With that adjustment, Blanco would get 53 percent of the vote, compared to Jindal's 47 percent]
Republican Primary Trial Heat (among Republican voters): Cecil Underwood 30% Robin Capehart 8% Sarah Minear 8% Dan Moore 3% Monty Warner 3% Doug McKinney 2% Other 3% Undecided 43%
Democratic Primary Trial Heat (among Democratic voters): Joe Manchin 46% Darrell McGraw 11% John Perdue 5% Jim Humphreys 4% Lloyd Jackson 3% Jim Lees 3% Spike Maynard 2% Robin Davis 2% Other 1% Undecided 25%
U.S. intelligence agencies warned Bush administration policymakers before the war in Iraq that there would be significant armed opposition to a U.S.-led occupation, according to administration and congressional sources familiar with the reports.
Although general in nature, the sources said, the intelligence agencies' concerns about the degree of resistance U.S. forces would encounter have proved broadly accurate in the months since the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle.
Among the threats outlined in the intelligence agencies' reporting was that "Iraqis probably would resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the U.S. and the West," one senior congressional aide said. The general tenor of the reports, according to a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence, was that the postwar period would be more "problematic" than the war to overthrow Hussein.
As U.S. military casualties mount and resistance forces wage a campaign of targeted bombings in Iraq, some administration officials have begun to fault the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being overly optimistic and failing to anticipate such widespread and sustained opposition to a U.S. occupation. But several administration and congressional sources interviewed for this article said the opposite occurred. They said senior policymakers at the White House, Pentagon and elsewhere received classified analyses before the war warning about the dangers of the postwar period.
"Intelligence reports told them at some length about possibilities for unpleasantness," said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. "The reports were written, but we don't know if they were read."
In the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, senior Pentagon officials were privately optimistic about postwar Iraq, and their assessment shaped calculations about the size of the occupation force that would be required and how long it would have to be there, as well as the overall cost of the U.S. management of Iraq after the fall of the Hussein government.
The more pessimistic view generally remained submerged, but the controversy did occasionally break into the open, most notably when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told Congress in February that several hundred thousand occupation troops would be needed. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz rejected his estimate at the time as "wildly off the mark."
Although the Pentagon has said it has no plans to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq -- now nearly 130,000 -- the Bush administration has launched a new diplomatic campaign to win foreign pledges of more troops to help stabilize the country.
Before the war, the CIA passed on intelligence that some members of Hussein's Republican Guard military units and his Baathist Party had plans to carry on resistance after the war, according to one senior intelligence official. "They had been given instructions should the regime fall," the official said. U.S. military and civilian leaders in Iraq have said they believe the daily attacks against U.S. forces are being carried out by Hussein loyalists.
CIA analysts last summer also expressed concerns that the "chaos after war would turn [Iraq] into a laboratory for terrorists," according to another former intelligence analyst. President Bush picked up on this theme in his nationally televised speech Sunday night, saying Iraq is attracting international terrorists and is now the "central front" in the war on terrorism.
There is not universal agreement about the clarity of the prewar intelligence that was forwarded by the CIA and its counterpart agencies at the Pentagon and State Department. Some administration officials said the intelligence was murkier than others now depict it.
"The possibility there would be armed opposition was based on inductive reasoning," one administration official said of reports from the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The analysts were guessing." Another congressional aide said the intelligence reports he had seen "were not very specific and had a range of outcomes and caveats depending on how the war would go."
However, the prevailing view within intelligence agencies, including the DIA, was that there would be resistance. Officials said this explained the thinking behind Shinseki's congressional testimony earlier this year. A DIA memo last fall said postwar Iraq would be "highly complex and driven by political and religious factions," according to one former Pentagon analyst. "They [Defense Intelligence Agency analysts] said it would be hard to keep the lid on and to keep the various areas of the country from falling apart."
Former Army secretary Thomas E. White said that during discussions he had in the Pentagon before the war, he was told "the situation once the war was over would be contentious." Although White said he did not see intelligence on postwar Iraq first hand, it was discussed in meetings with Shinseki, who said there were reports that "you could expect a major influx of Islamic fighters."
It was for those reasons, White said in a telephone interview, that Shinseki saw the need "to size the postwar force bigger than the wartime force."
Speaking of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, White said, "Their view of the intelligence was much different. Their notion of it was resistance would run away as the few remaining Saddam loyalists were hunted down."
White said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday that the postwar planning assumptions approved by senior Pentagon civilians were based on U.S. troops being "greeted in the streets by a euphoric public, glad of being rid of Saddam Hussein, and consequently we could very rapidly draw down the force structure."
White, who resigned his Army post in April, has published a new book sharply critical of the administration's Iraq policy.
Pentagon spokesmen did not immediately reply to telephone questions about the prewar intelligence.
A White House official said the administration is not surprised by the level of resistance U.S. forces are encountering. "It does not come as a surprise that some of the bitter fanatics continue to fight against a foregone conclusion and that foreign terrorists would seek to hold back progress made in Iraq over the last five months," the official said.
Several senior policymakers, however, have said recently that they were not totally prepared for what has occurred. On Sunday, for example, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked on CNN's "Late Edition" if there could have been better planning for the postwar period. She responded, "Obviously, there were things that were not foreseen. They have now -- [and] are now being addressed."
Before the war, intelligence analysts also questioned whether the administration would be able to achieve its goal of rapidly introducing democracy in Iraq, according to administration and congressional officials. Intelligence agencies reported that "any chance of achieving democracy was predicated on long-term active U.S. and Western military, political and economic involvement with the country," one administration official said.
On Feb. 26, the day Bush said in a speech that bringing democracy to Iraq would help democratize other Arab countries, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research completed a classified analysis that dismissed the idea.
The State Department analysis reportedly stated that "liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve" in Iraq and that "electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements." - Source
President Bush's $87 billion request for postwar costs is heavily weighted to maintaining military operations, with $65.5 billion directed to the armed forces, $15 billion toward rebuilding Iraq and $5 billion toward building its security forces, and $800 million to new spending for civilian programs in Afghanistan, administration officials said today.
The $87 billion price tag makes the package the most expensive postwar military and civilian effort since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Combined with the earlier $79 billion approved by Congress to conduct the war and pay initial postwar expenses, it would bring the cost to the United States of deposing Saddam Hussein and stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next to $166 billion. That is more than 25 times the $6.4 billion bill to American taxpayers, in today's dollars, for the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
Most of the cost of the 1991 conflict — $60 billion at the time or about $84 billion in today's dollars — was picked up by allies, including Saudi Arabia and Japan.
This time around, administration officials said, their main financial goal is to squeeze donations from other countries toward the difference between the $15 billion the United States plans to put toward physical reconstruction of Iraq and the total cost, which the White House put at $50 billion to $75 billion.
White House officials said Mr. Bush's request, higher than the $60 billion to $70 billion that Congress had expected, should cover all costs for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. But some analysts said the figure might still prove to be low, especially if the United States cannot quell the growing terrorist threat within Iraq.
"This is the beginning of the administration presenting realistically eye-popping numbers to the American people," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The number is probably on the low side of what's needed, but we're finally in the realm of realism."
In his speech on Sunday night, Mr. Bush himself compared his plans to rebuild Iraq with the effort after World War II, saying, "America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit."
His request, though, amounted to an abandonment of a more optimistic plan sketched by administration officials earlier in the year. The administration told Congress in the spring that Iraq's oil revenues would be sufficient to pay the bulk of the postwar costs, which they estimated then would be low.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a House subcommittee in March that Iraq could generate $50 billion to $100 billion of oil revenue over the next two to three years. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," Mr. Wolfowitz said at the time.
Last spring, when it sought the initial $79 billion for the war, the White House asked for $2.5 billion for reconstruction.
"It is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anyone on the outside anticipated," a senior administration official said today.
Administration officials said they now expect Iraqi oil revenues to increase from zero this year to $12.1 billion next year and $20 billion a year in 2005 and 2006.
The administration's proposal includes $51 billion for military operations in Iraq and $11 billion for military operations in Afghanistan. The military money for Iraq would include $800 million to help cover the costs incurred by other nations that agree to send troops to a multinational division, as well as $300 million to buy more body armor and armored vehicles for American troops, who have been subject to regular bombing and sniper attacks.
In addition to seeking $15 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, the proposal calls for $5 billion to be put toward building up Iraqi security forces, including an Iraqi Army, a police force and a border and customs agency.
In many ways, the $87 billion figure was the most compelling evidence yet of how Mr. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against taking on such jobs, has reversed course to take on a more ambitious role in remaking parts of the world than any president since Harry S. Truman.
From 1948 until 1952, the United States spent just under $13 billion on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, an amount equivalent to about $100 billion today. The parallels to the spending request for Iraq are not exact, because the United States was also spending considerable amounts after World War II to maintain a large military presence in Europe and square off against the Soviet Union in the cold war.
But the White House's overall estimate of $50 billion to $75 billion in civilian reconstruction costs for Iraq, much of which the United States expects to come from other countries, makes clear that the job in Iraq is one of huge scale. At that level, it would be on a par in today's dollars with the reconstruction costs shouldered by the United States for Britain, France and Germany under the Marshall Plan.
To put the request into a different kind of perspective, the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, said $87 billion is roughly equivalent to two years of unemployment benefits, 87 times what the federal government spends on after-school programs and more than 10 times the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. - Source
Pressure mounted on Sunday for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to quit over his part in the suicide of a weapons expert at the heart of a furious row over the government's case for going to war in Iraq.
A poll in the Mail on Sunday newspaper showed 43 percent of people believed Blair should resign over the affair, 42 percent believed he should stay in office and 15 percent were undecided.
The figures in the YouGov poll, taken the day after the judicial inquiry into the death of David Kelly adjourned for 10 days to allow Judge Lord Hutton to decided which witnesses to recall for cross examination, were the first to show that more voters are against Blair than for him.
The poll will come as a further blow for the once invincible leader of a Labour government with an unassailable parliamentary majority who has seen his personal trust ratings slump since the war to oust Saddam Hussein and who is facing a crescendo of criticism over his policies on education, health and crime.
Kelly, whose name was leaked by the government as the source of a BBC report accusing Blair's office of exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in order to strengthen the case for war, slit his wrist two days after a humiliating public grilling by a parliamentary committee.
His wife testified on Monday to the intense strain Kelly had been under and his sense of betrayal by his government employers.
Her moving testimony came just days after Blair took the stand, taking responsibility for the affair but rejecting the allegations and stating that if the charge of having knowingly mislead the country was proven he should resign.
FORMER MINISTERS ON OFFENSIVE
But it is not only from political opponents that Blair is facing sniping.
Increasingly militant trades unionists -- the former backbone of the Labour Party -- have gone on the offensive, as have some of Blair's own former cabinet ministers.
Former International Development Secretary Clare Short, who quit her post in May because she disapproved of the war in Iraq, wrote in the Independent on Sunday newspaper that Blair should stand by his own words over the Kelly affair.
"The prime minister has told us that the claim that he had knowingly exaggerated the threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons would be a resignation issue. It is now clear that the threat was exaggerated," she said.
Short, a maverick with a track record of speaking her mind, accused Blair and his chief aide Alastair Campbell, who quit a week ago, of effectively mounting a coup in the party, imposing their own policies by bludgeoning their opponents and lying.
"We have a prime minister so focused on presentation that there is inadequate consideration of the merits of policy.
"And beneath the smiling demeanor, a ruthlessness that is accompanied by a lack of respect for proper procedure, and a willingness to be "economical with the actuality," she wrote. "The cabinet has not functioned as a decision-making body since 1997."
Her attack followed an accusation by former Environment Minister Michael Meacher, who left the cabinet in June, in an article on Saturday that the United States had known about the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington but done nothing to prevent them as they were a perfect pretext for embarking on a long-planned war to get access to oil.
The article by inference accused Blair of at best naivety in his unflinching support of President Bush in his invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. - Source
Television viewers on Sunday night had a choice of two George W. Bushes. They could see him standing tall on a Showtime docudrama on 9/11 (produced by a prominent Hollywood conservative), in which a heroic Bush all but exclaims "damn the torpedoes" before all but parachuting Rambo-like into Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden single-handedly. (Remember bin Laden?) Or they could watch the real thing stiffly read a speech in which he did little than to urge Americans and allies to buck up and stay his course.
There's nothing like dropping to a 52-percent approval rating to send a president--especially a wartime president--rushing to the Cabinet room ( sans table) to deliver a primetime speech declaring "great progress." Bush both reiterated that Iraq was a crucial battle in the war against terrorism and asserted it now is "the central front." On the first point, he had nothing to say--literally--to back up his prewar assertions. He did not address the where-are-the-weapons criticism he has received over the past few months. Instead, he hailed his invasion for having overturned a regime that "sponsored terror" and "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction." Possessed and used, that is, if one looks back to the Iraq of the 1980s (when Saddam Hussein was being courted by the Reagan and Bush I administrations). In all his advocacy for war, Bush never based his case on a two-decades-old weapons charge. His argument was that Hussein had unconventional weapons now (not in the 1980s or early 1990s) and that this tyrant was sponsoring a particular set of terrorists, namely al Qaeda. None of that has proven true, and the available evidence to date supports the notion that Bush was lying to the American public. So as Bush continues to adhere to his pre-invasion fibs, what credibility does he carry when he now maintains he is willing to cooperate with other nations in the rebuilding of Iraq (as long as they pony up)?
But Bush's argument that Iraq was key to the war on terrorism has become self-fulfilling due to his own actions. It appears that the occupation has led to the rise of a terrorist claque within Iraq, attracting jihadists from elsewhere. US troops are indeed confronting terrorists in Mesopotamia. (What else do you call the brutal killers behind the blast at the UN compound?) Bush may have succeeded in achieving what neither bin Laden nor Hussein could have done: uniting the secular Ba'athists and the fundamentalist Islamic fascists. Iraq has become the frontline because Bush sent in the Marines--and the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Yet he keeps on pushing the neoconnish line that if Iraq were to be transformed into a democracy, that would be a blow to terrorists everywhere--especially the terrorists who aim to strike the United States. There remains no indication that Hussein enabled the mass-murderers of 9/11. So Bush's theory is just that--an assertion that may or may not be true. He told his television audience that the triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq would be a "grave setback to terrorists." Certainly, this triumph would be a good thing--but there is no telling whether or not such a development would have any impact upon the terrorist threat America faces.
During the speech, Bush also maintained that American misadventures in Beirut and Somalia (the first authored by Reagan; the second initiated by Bush the Elder) were partial causes of 9/11. These episodes--in which Washington ended up cutting and running--supposedly led anti-American terrorists like bin Laden to see the United States as a soft foe and, consequently, encouraged them to take on America. Indeed, bin Laden and others had wondered about US resolve, though I'd be willing to wager that bin Laden did assume that the 9/11 attack would result in serious payback. Bush dumbs down the analysis. "Terrorist attacks," he said, "are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness." Bush's self-acclaimed boldness, though, has given the terrorists in Iraq--whoever they are--more chances to kill Americans. The use of strength does not necessarily provide a disincentive to terrorists. See Israel. The goal should be the smart use of strength. But Bush is now depicting the Iraq war as justified because it sent a don't-mess-with-us message. And he argues, in a way, that the United States is now stuck with this message, like it or not. After all, would turning tail enhance American security?
Perhaps it might. If that would mean internationalizing the redevelopment of Iraq. Bush, who was willing to go to war alone, now says he is committed to a more multilateral approach in Iraq. But it's unclear what he is offering to allies--except the opportunity to pay for his occupation. In his address, he remarked that members of the international community must assume "a broader role" and that "past differences" cannot interfere with "present duties." But his administration was quick to snub the French and to signal that nations that went along with Bush's march to war would be rewarded, while those who resisted would be punished. In his speech, Bush also called for the Iraqis to get with the program, noting that "now they must rise to the responsibilities of a free people." A point of clarification: they are not a free people. The occupation authority has canceled local elections and still exercises censorship over some media. After first promising a speedy hand-off of power to the Iraqis, the US occupation authority then slowed the transition and, of late, has been trying to quicken the pace, perhaps to rid itself of sole responsibility for governing a problem-wracked nation.
In demanding that Iraqis meet their obligations, Bush seemed rather ungracious. He still has been unable to provide the security needed for political revival in Iraq. Members of the Iraqi governing council--who were handpicked by the Americans--have bitterly complained that the occupation authority has not responded to their requests for additional security for themselves. And it is clear that the Bush administration never had a plan on how it would "rise to the responsibilities" of an occupying power and provide security and generate economic development.
In his short address, Bush announced the occupation (and reconstruction in Afghanistan) would cost an extra $87 billion in the coming year--on top of the $79 billion already approved for the war and the occupation through September 30. He offered no explanation of how he would pay for that. He did not say, Sorry, but we're going to have to ask the major beneficiaries of the latest round of tax cuts--millionaires, investors, and the like--to do with a little less. Or, There's going to be less Medicare coverage for our seniors, but that's the price of defending freedom. Bush vowed he would do "whatever is necessary." But that does include asking Americans to make any sacrifices (other than those who serve in the military). Presumably, Bush will just charge it--add the price of the occupation to an already bulging deficit and let someone else worry about it down the road. Once more, this is hardly rising to responsibility.
Bush is in a fix. He's stuck in his Iraqmire. He did not prepare the country for a long drawn-out endeavor in Iraq, which keeps on claiming the lives of Americans. In fact, before the war, some Bush aides claimed that this would be a no-fuss occupation. Now Bush has little choice but to resort to the usual rah-rah about resolve. He points fingers at the international community and the Iraqis, failing, of course, to acknowledge his own miscalculations. And he's looking a tad desperate. Don't expect a Showtime sequel covering Bush's days as an occupier. - Source
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday opposition to the U.S. President was encouraging Washington's enemies and hindering his 'war against terrorism'.
Rumsfeld was speaking after a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq where he sought to highlight progress on reconstruction efforts and dampen criticism of the U.S. presence there and the almost daily casualties in a guerrilla campaign against occupation.
He said if Washington's enemies believed Bush might waver or his opponents prevail, that could increase support for their activities.
"They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power," he told reporters traveling with him on his plane.
"Obviously that does make our task more difficult."
"Terrorists studied...instances when the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," he said. "The United States is not going to do that, President (George W.) Bush is not going to do that."
Rumsfeld's comments came after Bush said he would seek $87 billion for fighting terrorism and rebuilding efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spoke also just three days before the second anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington which the United States blames on al Qaeda islamist militants.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
U.S. soldiers are attacked almost daily in occupied Iraq and are fighting efforts by Taliban fighters to regroup in Afghanistan. They are also hunting ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Democratic criticism of the Republican administration's invasion of Iraq and post-war rebuilding efforts complicated efforts to try and get the message out that progress was being made, Rumsfeld said. "It does complicate it, it makes it more difficult, but I guess that's life," he said.
Critics note the United States has so far failed to produce any evidence of the production of weapons of mass destruction though this had been cited as the main reason for the March invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam.
Rumsfeld met briefly in Baghdad with former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who is coordinating the hunt for the banned weapons. But he said the half-hour discussion centered on what assistance the Defense Department could provide rather than a review of the information being collected.
"We did not have much of a discussion on the substance of what he is turning up," Rumsfeld said. "I did not go into the half hour meeting and say 'OK lay out what you've found'. I went in assuming he'll (Kay) tell me if he's got something that he thinks I need to know." - Source
Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) released the following statement on 9/8/2003:
"President Bush is about to ask Congress for an additional $87 billion to continue operations in Iraq. That's about three times the homeland security budget. It would pay for all veterans' programs and benefits for every living American veteran for 15 months. It represents every federal dollar for transportation for all of this year and the first quarter of next year. He's asking for more than five times what we spend on public assistance for the entire United States.
I did not think the President was right to go into Iraq. Because of his actions, I believe we now have a mortal responsibility to the people and future of Iraq. We cannot abandon them.
However, Congress must not give the President a blank check after the many, many missteps that have been made in Iraq. If this level of mismanagement were found in any other federal program, my colleagues would be demanding it be shut down or turned over to the states.
Nation-building is not a strength of the Bush Administration. I think we've all realized that.
Nor is diplomacy a strength. Our stance seems to be that any right-thinking ally should salute and say "yes, sir!" whenever the U.S. government speaks.
This Administration must conclude an agreement with the United Nations on security and reconstruction of Iraq. We cannot go it alone. We cannot demand total control.
For these reasons, I believe Congress must deny any funding request for Iraq until an agreement with the United Nations has been concluded. The errors of President Bush and those around him must be corrected, not funded." - Source
One of the saddest statistics in the still eerily jobless recovery is that 1.3 million more Americans fell into poverty last year — almost half of them children. Whatever else is on the national agenda, there should be no higher priority than directing already available help to these least among us. But the growth in the poverty roll to almost 35 million — more than 12 percent of the population — has been accompanied by an equally disturbing drop in those impoverished families who are eligible for limited welfare actually managing to obtain the aid.
After the end of the old welfare system was legislated, time-limited help for the needy was enacted, with more than three in four eligible families benefiting in 1996. But by 2000, only half the eligible families were receiving this aid, for reasons not fully plumbed as government officials continue to simplistically trumpet the drop in the welfare caseload. Clearly, more poor people are hurting more, particularly in the vanishing of employment opportunities that were promised and prodded as part of the new, temporary aid program.
As more families sink below the poverty line, joblessness among single, undereducated mothers is up to 18 percent; and families whose temporary welfare help ends are increasingly unlikely to find jobs in the current resistant economy, according to recent data analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank. Years ago, the nation chose to proclaim a "war" on poverty. Priorities shifted as progress was measured. The poor are still out there at the edge of the scope, the last in line for recovery. - Source
By now everyone is familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger's controversial interview in 1977's Oui magazine, in which he boasted about smoking hashish and engaging in group sex at his gym. But the bodybuilder turned actor turned candidate for California governor gave another interview that year with the British publication Time Out, also seeking to promote the muscleman documentary "Pumping Iron."
The Time Out interview contains many of the same comments he made to Oui, including the observation that bodybuilding doesn't help increase penis size. But he also went off on Americans, accusing them of laziness compared to Europeans.
Here are a few bon mots culled from the Time Out interview:
* "The guys who own the most real estate in Los Angeles are Europeans. There are people coming over from Yugoslavia with hardly any money...a friend of mine came over from Czechoslovakia in '68 and he now owns four apartment buildings. Americans are still sitting on their asses waiting for it. Europeans are hungry because we don't have that much."
* "What I want to do is make Americans aware that they're fucked-up when they equate everything a person does with some sexual trip. . You know, if you hold a pencil in your hand, it's a phallic symbol and you really want to hold a cock in your hand. And a football coach doesn't really want to be a coach, he likes to slap football players' asses...he's a latent homosexual. And it goes on and on and on, all the fucking time."
* "America is so money-oriented. (Thank God! It's always helped me!) But it has its disadvantages because the psychiatrists know their business doesn't mean a thing if there are no sick people around, and so they make everybody feel guilty. You know, all New York City is running to a psychiatrist. All America thinks it has sexual hang ups. Everybody's running to shrinks."
* "Nixon was always being attacked sexually. It was always said that he was a fag and that he had no sexual relations with his wife for 15 years and that was why he liked power. And Hitler had only one ball, and that was why he wanted to conquer the world." - Source
In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.
It's now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts.
Now almost half the Army's combat strength is bogged down in a country that wasn't linked to Al Qaeda and apparently didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Bush tells us that he needs another $87 billion, right away. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but I (like many others) told you so. Back in February I asked, "Is this administration ready for the long, difficult, quite possibly bloody business of rebuilding Iraq?" The example of Afghanistan (where warlords rule most of the country, and the Taliban — remember those guys? — is resurgent) led me to doubt it. And I was, alas, right.
Surely the leader who brought us to this pass, and is now seeking a bailout, ought to make some major concessions as part of the deal. But it was clear from his speech that, as usual, he expects to take while others do all the giving.
The money is actually the least of it. Still, it provides a clear test case. If Mr. Bush had admitted from the start that the postwar occupation might cost this much, he would never have gotten that last tax cut. Now he says, "We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary. . . ." What does he mean, "we"? Is he prepared to roll back some of those tax cuts, now that the costs of war loom so large? Is he even willing to stop urging Congress to make the 2001 tax cut permanent? Of course not.
Then there's the issue of foreign participation. The key question here is whether the Bush administration will swallow its pride and cede substantial control over the occupation to the U.N. That's surely the price of a large contingent of foreign soldiers. Mr. Bush didn't address this issue directly, but he did say that he is seeking only one more multinational division, which suggests that he isn't going to make major concessions.
Yet as I understand it, one more division won't make much difference in the security situation. In particular, it will do little to alleviate the looming problem identified by the Congressional Budget Office: in March, the U.S. will have to start withdrawing most of its troops if it wants to maintain "acceptable levels of military readiness" in the Army as a whole.
Meanwhile, the administration is still counting on Iraq's receiving billions of dollars in aid from other countries. Unless the U.S. makes major concessions, forget about it.
But the most important concession Mr. Bush should make isn't about money or control — it's about truth-telling. He squandered American credibility by selling a war of choice as a war of necessity; if he wants to get that credibility back, he has to start being candid.
Yet in the speech on Sunday he was still up to his usual tricks. Once again, he made a rhetorical link between the Iraq war and 9/11. This argument by innuendo reminds us why 69 percent of the public believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, despite a complete absence of evidence. (There is, on the other hand, strong evidence of a Saudi link — but the administration's handling of that evidence borders on a cover-up.) And rather than acknowledge that the search for W.M.D. has come up empty, he declared that Saddam "possessed and used weapons of mass destruction" — 1991, 2003, what's the difference?
So will Congress give Mr. Bush the money he wants, no questions asked? It probably will, but it shouldn't. Mr. Bush created this crisis, and if he were a true patriot he would pay a political price to resolve it. Maybe it's time for him to do a couple of things he's never done before, like admitting mistakes and standing up to the hard right. - Source
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Sun Tzu Files 
and 
indicate whether the poll numbers are up or down from the previous poll. Incumbents are in italics. (prior results in '()')