Bush tries hypocrisy to win over Dems
President George W. Bush Saturday claimed no one’s patriotism should be questioned because they oppose his Iraq war policies — an incredible piece of political hypocrisy from an administration that has long branded opponents as “un-American” and “aiding the enemy.”
“You know, I welcome debate in a time of war and I hope you know that,” Bush said in opening remarks at the guest speaker at a retreat that drew about 200 lawmakers to a Virginia resort in Williamsburg.
Iraq car bomb
Part of the devastation that left more than 121 dead from car bombs in Iraq on Saturday (Reuters Photo).
OK! It’s official! Iraq is a mess!
By DALE McFEATTERS
The 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have weighed in with their collective judgment on events in Iraq, and their findings, which should come as no surprise to anyone who keeps up with the news, are: The situation is bad and getting worse.
A declassified version of their National Intelligence Estimate became public this week and its pessimism seems to have silenced even that dwindling cadre of Bush cheerleaders who insist the war would be going well if only the press reported it that way.
Suicide bomber kills 121 in Baghdad
By KIM GAMEL
A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing as many as 121 people among the crowd buying food for evening meals, one of the most devastating attacks in the capital since the war started.
The attacker was driving a truck carrying foodstuffs including oil and flour when he detonated a ton of explosives, destroying stores and stalls in the busy outdoor Sadriyah market, police said.
War, rhetoric and ‘Fluffernutter’
By MARSHA MERCER
Until Joe Biden burst into the presidential race with mouth blazing, my favorite quote of the month was from Chuck Hagel.
Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, made an emotional appeal to his colleagues to support a non-binding resolution against President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq.
All 100 senators ought to be on the record about the president’s plan, he said.
“What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected?” he demanded Jan. 24 in a Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Official resigns over detainee remarks
A controversial Senior Pentagon official who urged a boycott of lawyers who defends represent terrorism suspects had heeded the call of critics who demanded his resignation.
Charles “Cully” Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, handed in his resignation this week after a half-hearted apology failed to quiet critics.
Reports The Associated Press:
Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Stimson told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Now this is going too far
Let’s just let the Star and Stripes newspaper tell the story the way it did in Friday’s Mideast edition:
In response to continuing financial strains, U.S. Army Europe has canceled all welcome-home celebrations for units returning from deployment through this fiscal year, halting the tradition of free food, rides and other community festivities for returning soldiers and their families.
No free beer, either.
Wait a second. This is just plain wrong. Eighteen-hour days, no days off, dust, danger, separation — and no party at the end of it?
From the mean streets of racism to the mean halls of Capitol Hill
By TRISH CHOATE
He knew the railroad tracks in the Texas town he grew up in marked the color lines between black and white.
But no boundary could hold back the black youngster who was born in a two-room shack, played football on the concrete of the projects and makes laws today here as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II.
Cleaver, who took a leading role at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington last week, harbors no illusions about the discrimination of his youth in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Studying the ice age
By LES BLUMENTHAL
McClatchy Newspapers
Congress is reviving legislation to create a trail that would trace the route of catastrophic ice-age floods that left scars across the Pacific Northwest.
Visitors could drive the 600-mile trail and stop at interpretive centers and roadside pullouts to learn about the floods that were unleashed when an ice dam in what’s now Montana collapsed, draining a lake the combined size of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in two days.