Day: January 13, 2007

President George W. Bush’s only backup plan for his continued failures in Iraq is to stay and fight and allow more Americans to die.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed this strategy — if indeed it can be called one — when she declared “we’re not pulling the plug on Iraq.”

Pentagon military planners admit privately that there is no “Plan B” if Bush’s latest troop surge plan — the fifth such surge in five years — does not work (and few expect it to work).

The chatter is rising in New Mexico political circles that the state’s governor is close to announcing he will be a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For one thing, Bill Richardson had told reporters he would reveal his intentions before the state legislature convenes, which it does Tuesday. For another, Richardson just returned from a successful free-lance diplomatic trip to Sudan that resulted in at least a temporary cease-fire in Darfur.

A Texas congressman has made a remarkable journey from a hardscrabble life as the son of a poor Mexican migrant to a top post in Congress that will focus on the readiness of American troops sent to Iraq.

Long before officially becoming the first Hispanic chairman of the House Armed Services Military Readiness Subcommittee Thursday, Rep. Solomon Ortiz joined the Army to help his widowed mother support his four younger siblings.

“I have never forgotten where I came from,” Ortiz said. “There were days when we didn’t have anything to eat or any clothing to wear.”

BRYAN, Ohio — A man who hacked into the computer system of a weekly newspaper office — destroying so much information that the company did not publish for weeks — was sentenced to probation in that case and on a child nudity count.

Chad Buckner, 30, was found guilty in a Williams County Common Pleas Court trial on Oct. 5 of two counts of unauthorized use of a computer, tampering with records, and vandalism.

Those counts were all in relation to damage to the Advance Reporter.

Unless you were watching cable news, you probably missed Sen. Dick Durbin’s Democratic response to President Bush’s televised address on building up U.S. forces in Iraq.

“Instead of a new direction, the president’s plan moves the American commitment in Iraq in the wrong direction,” he said. Fair enough. That’s the view of a lot of people, including members of Congress of both parties, as the White House found out when it deployed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Capitol Hill to sell the plan.

In his prime-time speech last week, President Bush asked the American people for more patience, sacrifice and resolve when it comes to the war in Iraq.

He should have addressed that plea to the Iraqis.

The president’s new war strategy makes the United States more dependent than ever on the Iraqis to help us get out of Iraq.

The president’s plan to send about 21,000 more troops into Iraq to fight alongside Iraqi military units against insurgents means Americans will be relying on the al-Maliki government and the Iraqi military in new ways.