Replies

Wolfstar:
THANK YOU for the awesome DOSE tonight . . . love the photos of our President 'piloting' his own electric car -- once a pilot always a pilot!!

Of course, someone MUST post the President's cycling photos from yesterday:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060715/481/d3899a39b240486a82fcbe1abe7273f4
and
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060715/481/3414a66729d14edb821c82c58d67de57

MUST READS . . .

STRIKES ARE CALLED PART OF BROAD STRATEGEY
U.S., Israel Aim to Weaken Hezbollah, Region's Militants
[We Dosers had already discerned the President's strategery . . . Remember, our Dubya plays chess not checkers!!]
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006; A15

Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombing in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.

For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat -- or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.

For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.

You can read the entire article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071500957_pf.html

BUSH'S FAB FIVE
The president's favorite foreign leaders.
by Fred Barnes
07/24/2006, Volume 011, Issue 42

PRESIDENT BUSH, en route to last weekend's G8 summit in Russia, paused for a day in what used to be Communist East Germany, where he learned from German chancellor Angela Merkel the proper way to carve a roasted boar.

Earlier in the day she and Bush had sat in front of a fireplace in the town hall of Stralsund, Merkel's hometown, and chatted. "It's a little warm for a fire," Bush noted, though there was no fire going in the fireplace. They conferred privately past the scheduled time for their joint press conference. At the press event, the president referred to Merkel as "Angela." He said: "We found that there is a lot that we agree on."

Of course, there is. Bush knew this from her visit to Washington last January, shortly after she had become head of a new Christian Democrat-led government in Germany. Following talks at the White House, Merkel predicted their meeting "will open up, also, a new chapter, as I hope, in our relationship"--the one between Germany and the United States. And it did.

Merkel is one of Bush's favorite foreign leaders. From discussions with administration officials and watching the president, I've come up with a list of the leaders Bush gets along with best. There are five of them. Besides Merkel, they are the prime ministers of Australia (John Howard), Japan (Junichiro Koizumi), Denmark (Anders Fogh Rasmussen), and Great Britain (Tony Blair). The new conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is a potential Bush favorite.

You can read the rest of the article at
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/445qgcvk.asp

BIRTH OF AN ARMY
With the Iraqi forces in Ramadi.
by David Bellavia, Owen West & Wade Zirkle
07/24/2006, Volume 011, Issue 42

Ramadi
On the fourth day of operation-no-name in Al Anbar's deadly provincial capital, Ramadi, an Iraqi infantry squad moves into a dingy alley on the eastern edge of the Mu'saab district. It's quiet. As their combat boots pick a trail along the garbage-strewn street, the crunch of glass can be heard. The operation is subdued, nameless by design. After two years and dozens of urban battles in Iraq announced with catchy titles, reverberating tank engines, and even rock music, this late-June operation is a slow squeeze. And Iraqis are leading.

American troops have heard that before, of course. Since early 2004, when defense department officials first began touting Iraqi leadership in battle, U.S. soldiers have been wondering where exactly this phantom was, sometimes bumping up against a group of insurgents and sarcastically shouting, "It's the ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], leading from the front again!" Here in Ramadi, it's real.

You can read the rest of the article at
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/443zhpmy.asp