Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the only military officer charged in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail, goes before a court martial Monday in Fort Meade, Maryland.
More than three years after snapshots of Iraqi prisoners humiliated by their prison guards shocked the world, only a handful of US soldiers have been convicted, but none of their military or civilian superiors.
President George W. Bush on Saturday praised what he called “progress and reconciliation” achieved in some Iraqi communities, but pointedly avoided using US government-approved benchmarks in assessing the situation in the country.
“Americans can be encouraged by the progress and reconciliation that are taking place at the local level,” Bush said in his weekly radio address that came less than a month ahead of a crucial review of US military operations Iraq.
President Bush said Saturday that while political progress is moving too slowly on the national level in Iraq, positive steps in cities and towns are offering hope for future stability.
The Bush administration, facing a mid-September deadline to report to Congress on progress in Iraq, has long prodded the Iraqi government to finalize a national oil law, organize provincial elections and integrate former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party back into the central government.
Democratic presidential candidates argued Saturday night that organized labor is an essential part of the nation’s economy whose troubles mirror the deterioration of the middle class way of life.
“The only way to reinvigorate the middle class is to reinvigorate the labor movement,” Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware told several hundred union members at a labor forum in eastern Iowa.
For all the candidates, it was one stop in a busy several days leading to a Sunday morning debate in Des Moines. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York leads the Democratic field in national polls and has pulled into a three-way tie in Iowa, where the first votes of the 2008 campaign will be tallied.
Say what? The 2008 presidential campaign theme could be “Oops! What I meant was …”
Just about every Republican and Democrat has flubbed an answer to a question or made a borderline inappropriate comment — some so uncomfortable they make you cringe — only to take back the remarks or seek to clarify them later when under fire.