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It is common now to charge that the invasion of Iraq was a moment where America's ambitions surpassed its abilities. Various articles have surfaced of late declaring that even President George W. Bush may be grasping the folly of his ways. A great deal of attention earlier this month focused on a Time magazine cover story declaring "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy." The July/August issue of Foreign Affairs contains a piece entitled "The End of the Bush Revolution," as well as an essay by Joseph Nye proclaiming that the Bush Administration's transformational foreign policy is unlikely to survive. But has...

CAPITOL HILL (AP) Democratic Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and Jack Reed of Rhode Island say the sectarian violence in Iraq is reaching a critical phase. Biden, who has visited Iraq seven times, says Baghdad is "a city in tatters." The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee cites Sunday's killings of some 40 Sunni Arabs by Shiite gunmen "in broad daylight" as an indication of what he calls "a nascent civil war." Reed, just back from his eighth visit to Iraq, says the Iraqi leadership and U-S forces need to address the problems with the country's emerging government,...

US marine officers at all levels failed to investigate conflicting reports of killings in the Iraqi town of Haditha, a report quoted by US media says. *Snip* Gen Chiarelli's inquiry looked into how the military handled the killings on 19 November. According to US media reports, Gen Chiarelli has found that senior officers failed to investigate inconsistencies in the initial reports, which suggested the civilians were victims of a roadside bombing. *Snip* He added: "What some of these people did wrong is certainly not illegal or criminal, but administratively their actions are something that Gen Chiarelli wants to look at."

Well, finally we Democrats have found a strong voice to help lead us to victory surrender retreat an honorable exit from the hopeless quagmire that is Iraq. That voice is of course John Murtha, esteemed Democrat Representative from the great State of Pennsylvania.

Why is it that Republicans are united in their support of an unpopular war and Democrats are divided in their opposition? How is it that, speaking purely politically, the war right now seems to be working better as an issue for Republicans, who are forced to support the unpopular president and his ill-begotten war, than the Democrats, who are free to oppose it? Is it a question of leadership? Of competence? Can the Democrats simply not get their act together? That is certainly how it looked last week in the House, when the relieved Republicans -- relieved because they finally...

The lawyer for one of the marines accused of the massacre has told the BBC that criminal charges will probably be brought soon. And we have found that the marines were operating under some very disturbing conditions. The accusation is that after a US marine lance corporal died in a roadside bombing in Haditha last November, his fellow marines went on a killing spree. Twenty-four people died in the attack, including seven women and three children. A 12-year-old girl who survived says the Americans killed them indiscriminately. The marines said they had came under fire from the houses where the...

You've got to hand it to President Bush. For a pretty decent, straightforward guy, he sure has a knack for making enemies. The economy is booming. There has been no successful terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Qaida officials acknowledge we're winning the war in Iraq. Yet in the history of polling, only three presidents have had job approval ratings as low or lower than President Bush does now. The president's popularity problem isn't one problem, but three. Nearly all Democrats, most independents and a third of Republicans now disapprove of the job President Bush is...

US President George W. Bush isn't known for his willingness for giving interviews, but he recently sat down with German TV presenter Sabine Christiansen for 30 minutes. He answered her questions readily -- but also showed that he's become little more than a spectator of his own political decline. A man and a woman sit in front of an unlit fireplace in the White House. The woman is Germany's most well known TV presenter. The man is the most powerful man in the world -- or at least that's how he's introduced before the interview begins. And yet what we're...

If there's an unintended consequence of lousy poll numbers, as President Bush is fast discovering, it's that sagging fortunes beget plenty of unsolicited advice, in this instance, how to put President Humpty Dumpty back together. The Washington Post, a reliable Bush critic, suggests that the president rebound by taking on climate change and lobbying reform, and "fess up to detainee atrocities." Fred Barnes, a Bush devotee and executive editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, has suggested a White House shakeup of 1906 proportions: elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to vice president; shift Dick Cheney to the Pentagon after bidding...

What if we had a real bona fide chimpanzee for a president? You know, a little hairy ape like the ones in the zoo. Would he or she do a better job than George W. Bush? Sure, the chimp would soil the Oval Office. We all know the primate house isn’t a pretty place. But would the chimp have been smart enough to find and soil the US Constitution? Would the chimp have surrounded itself with larger, aggressive primates such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld? No crony chimps Would it have had the intelligence to poop its mark on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on Saturday accused the Republican-led Congress of providing tax cuts to oil companies at a time when the industry enjoys record profits and many motorists struggle to deal with rising gasoline prices. In his party's weekly radio address, Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan said "gas prices keep skyrocketing, and in Washington, Republicans continue to turn a blind eye to the oil industry's activities."

Is anyone familiar with the "Frontline" episode on the Iraqi insurgency? (It's on right now on my PBS station.) It's mostly a recruiting ad for the glorious "resistance."

The US public is being prepped for war on Iran in ways that echo to ill-fated war on Iraq, writes Emad Mekay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sabre rattling has started and the players look frighteningly similar to those who beat the drums of the ill- fated Iraq war. On Tuesday, US President George W Bush refused to rule out the use of force against Iran in order to prevent Tehran becoming a nuclear force. "All options are on the table," Bush said, even though earlier he had painted US news reports that Washington was contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against Iran...

When President Bush arrives in Irvine on Monday morning to pitch his immigration reform plan, one of his party's best-known local standard-bearers will be maintaining a respectful — and politically careful — distance. Dana Rohrabacher, the nine-term Republican congressman from Huntington Beach, generally supports the president, but disagrees with his immigration policies. So Rohrabacher plans to sit out Bush's speech to the Orange County Business Council. "I don't want to be behind him looking glum and not applauding," Rohrabacher said. "So as not to be rude to the president — which I think is inexcusable — I think I'll just...

President Bush has reached the lowest approval rating of any president as his disapproval rating is averaging almost 60 percent among Americans. Immigration issues, the war in Iraq, rising gasoline prices, a growing dissatisfaction among his base are all said to be factors in the dismal figures.

by Mark Finkelstein April 7, 2006 That didn't take long! Back in the MSM's Watergate heyday, it took a while for a steady drumbeat of revelations, stories and allegations to gather sufficient momentum. The pace has apparently quickened in the modern liberal-media world. On this morning's Today show, Matt Lauer, speaking of the allegation that President Bush authorized the disclosure of information by Scooter Libby, asked Chris Matthews: "scale of 1 to 10, [where] 10 is a deal-ender, where does this fall?" Matthews didn't hesitate: "heading to 10." Even Lauer seemed taken aback: "Really, that big?" For good measure, Matthews...

If only Clinton had been a Republican By Burt Prelutsky Apr 4, 2006 The way that so many people, especially politicians, went nuts over the ports deal reminded me once again what a difference party designation makes. One only has to compare how harshly Sam Alito was treated during his confirmation hearings with the way that the ACLU’s chief counsel, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, sailed through hers. Getting back to the matter of the ports, I’m still not sure if it was a good idea or a bad one to allow the United Arab Emirates to manage those installations on the...

The United States is faring poorly in its effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, in part because the government does not communicate effectively, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday. Rumsfeld made the remark in response to a question from a member of his audience at the Army War College, where he delivered a speech on the challenges facing the country in fighting a global war on terrorism. ''If I were grading I would say we probably deserve a `D' or a `D-plus' as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking...

Now it gets painful for George W. Bush. Iraq is wrapped around his presidency as tightly as Vietnam was around Lyndon Johnson's. Bush keeps telling the country he has a plan for victory, but the polls suggest the public doesn't believe it. Those big "Plan for Victory" signs at his rally in Wheeling, W.Va., this week read more like an exhortation than a statement of fact. Bush has lacked the tragic sensibility found in many of our great presidents. He works so hard at his show of easy informality that you rarely sense the inner man and the anguish that...

Less than a week after he denounced the "wayward path" of deficit spending to a gathering of 2,000 Republican Party stalwarts, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and would-be president, was busy presiding over business as usual in the Senate. Last Thursday, Mr. Frist, 49 of his fellow Republican senators and one Democrat approved a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. The budget vote came just hours after Mr. Frist and 51 other Republicans voted to raise the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years — this time by $781 billion, to nearly $9 trillion. All of...