Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

I've got his books, "The Truth" and "Lies and the lying liars who tell them"
I hope the guy wins...

Lee,
Yep, I been tried and convicted by a patent lawyer.
Anyhow, who was it that said "trust but verify", or something to that effect...

Is this another case of a "slam-dunk" gone bad?
The joint chiefs and other assorted generals/admirals plus our new defense secretary now appear to contradict White House claims that the Iranian government is directly behind the decision to supply shaped-charge explosives to Iraqi insurgents. While one general thinks they're made in Iraq, none have evidently seen any evidence of the Bush administration's claims that such weapons have been ordered by "the highest levels" of the Iranian government to be supplied to Iraqi insurgents.
So is this another case of a "slam-dunk" gone south and/or more Bushit!

As usual with most politicians, when the going gets rough, they get going.
Ditto for Dick.
Cheney is leaving for a week long hiatus in Asia. According to the LA Times, things aren't going very well for the VP these days. As per the Times, "many in Washington are wondering whether he might be grateful for an excuse to high-tail it out of town." The reasons? As per the Times, "Last week, a close ally was dressed down by the inspector general for skewing intelligence before the Iraq war." Who'd ever think that? In addition, "The trial of his former chief of staff has depicted the vice president's office as a center of underhanded intrigue." "And this week's announcement of a nuclear agreement with North Korea appears to be a repudiation of Cheney's long-term opposition to a deal."
But Cheney remains vintage Cheney. He'll visit Japan but news reports state he won't meet with the minister of defense because he opposes the war in Iraq. That's classic Cheney, never missing a chance to avoid an opposing point of view...

The Iraqi deputy prime minister was almost killed today during an attempted assassination in which nine of his family members were killed. The deputy PM survived with shrapnel in his chest when a suicide bomber entered his home and detonated. The identity of the suicide bomber? The PMs body guard!
That should tell you something.
Just as US intelligence says, the vast majority of the insurgents are indigenous Iraqis and not foreign fighters. US troops doing duty with Iraqi troops operate under one unwritten rule: don't trust them. The Iraqi troops and police are infiltrated with insurgents. Saturated would probably be a better word.
Today's report reminds me of a report a few years ago of a couple of US troops on patrol with an Iraqi national guardsman who dropped behind them and emptied his clip into them.
Bush and his fellow Republican supporters have got to get it through their heads that the war on terror and the civil war in Iraq are two different entities and their nonsense statement of: "If we don't 'em fight over there, we're going to have to fight 'em over here" is just as wrong and inane as was "stay the course" and "we're winning" and "the insurgency is in it's last throes" and they're going to "throw rose pedals at our feet" and the like...

Several key Republicans are now openly criticizing Gonzales but appear to be waiting on the attorney general's appearance on April 17 before they ask for his resignation.
Gonzales had maintained he essentially knew little about the intended firings of the eight attorneys in question but now it has been shown that he was at an hour long meeting that had preceded the firings of the attorneys.
Perhaps his story will morph again by the time April 17 rolls around. The explanations for the firings themselves have changed four times since the story broke with the guys in the Whitehouse and the Justice Administration being unable to get their story and their act together.
When the Democrats question all of this, the answer from Bush is it's essentially all "political". I wonder what he calls it when the Republicans do the same?...

Senior counsel to Gonzales, liason to the White House, big wampum with the Justice Department will take the fifth before congress. The inane reason given? The senators have already supposedly "decided" there's wrong doing! So why not explain under oath what really happened?!
This just gets better!

"Iran is out of control".
It's out of control because it was formerly "in control" by remaining in a check and balance state with Iraq. But thanks to Dubya, that situation is grossly unstable and Iran to free to run wild in the region.
The consensus of the pundits on the seizure of the Brits is that it represents a "push-back" against the US and the Brits for the pressure that's been applied to Iran for its nuclear program and military preparations near its borders.

In case you don't know, John McCain is just dog nuts on the troop surge in Iraq. If he had his way, we'd probably have 100,000 more troops over and above what Bush wants. He was in Iraq the other day giving a speech from an Iraqi market place in Baghdad proclaiming the troop surge is working.
Do you know how he got there? By escort in armored humvees.
Do you know what he wore to the event? Kelvar and ballistic body armor.
Do you know who provided security? Snipers on the roof tops.
Did he talk with thousands of displaced Iraqis who are afraid to go home? Nope.
Did he stop by the morgues in Baghdad and offer to direct traffic? Nope.
Did he comment on Tal Afar in which Bush had prolaimed to be THE example of American success in Iraq? Nope. (For those of you who don't know, Bush, in essence, proclaimed of city Tal Afar to be the garden spot of Iraq, a virtual mecca in a sea of insurgents "liberated" by the United States. Iraqis were shown shopping and prospering at a nearby market place. It now has the greatest bomb-death toll in Iraq.)
When are these Republicans going to learn?...

The "Italian Letter" is the title of a new book by Peter Eisner from the Washington Post. In it, Eisner and a co-author describe how easy it was, via a search on google, to determine a letter, reportedly uncovered by Italian Intelligence Services, and used by the Bush administration to claim Saddam was preparing to buy uranium from Niger, was, in fact, a fake.
Bush claimed Saddam was buying uranium from Africa in his now infamous state of the union speech even though the CIA had discounted the idea. Eisner was able to show the letter demonstrated the president of Niger claimed he had the authority to conduct the sale of uranium under the constitution of his country but the constitution referenced in the letter was the wrong one. Numerous mistakes and errors in spelling names of officials in the letter were also tip-offs to the fact that the letter was a fake. Nevertheless, it was one of the cherry-picked reports of the Bush administration in their zeal to go to war...