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Related Links Arizona Politics Neither of the frontrunners has publicly committed to running. McCain repeatedly has said he will not decide until after the mid-term elections in November. Clinton also has been vague. Among Republicans, McCain was the top choice among more than 40 percent of those surveyed in the Rocky Mountain Poll. McCain unsuccessfully sought the party’s nomination in 2000. He was followed in the survey by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Next were former Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sen. George Allen of Virginia. “Seeing McCain...

Democrats put their distinguished soldiers on stage at their state convention with messages of patriotism and a strong national defense. Four-star Gen. Wesley Clark and decorated Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, a former Georgia senator, told delegates Saturday that the administration has botched the war in Iraq and Democrats would be better at handling national security. "We're strong on defense. That's the message that I want people to hear," Clark said, during one of the few times he raised his voice during the keynote speech. "We've got to talk it up." Clark, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2004, said the...

WHILE the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America's friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct. While American troops have been fighting, and dying, against the Sunni rebels and foreign jihadists, the Shiite clerics...

Dear upchuck,It is no coincidence that for every month that the White House has refused accountability, for every month that the Republican Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibilities, Iraq has sunken deeper into turmoil. With Members of Congress home in their districts this week, they will find that America is demanding answers, and that they can no longer simply sit on their hands.Republicans refused accountability for the lack of equipment for our troops, and to this day soldiers are still buying their own body armor. Republicans refused accountability for the White House's role in Abu Ghraib, and our reputation in...

I'm so honored to be on Wesley's email list. Here's his latest spew... Dear upchuck, The 2006 elections may still be over a year away, but the Democratic Party has already reached a critical juncture. Right now is the moment when candidates must decide if they will run for office next year. If we're going to put more Democrats in office in 2006, we have to do everything we can to recruit and support the strongest possible candidates and help them get their message out today. We certainly need solid candidates to run for the U.S. Senate and House, but...

The grief and outrage that Cindy Sheehan and the other dissenting military families have evoked this week in Washington, D.C., is palpable, as is the evidence they muster of just how careless this administration was in putting their loved ones at risk for the Iraq war. But in calling for an immediate withdrawal, the peace movement can't duck a central question: Just how do we leave On Friday, Sheehan appeared on a Congressional Black Caucus breakfast panel with General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander and presidential hopeful, who was there to address the issue of whether the U.S. can...

Former presidential candidate and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark told a crowd Thursday at UNLV that America is in a transition period and needs to have a unified military strategy to protect its citizens in a volatile world. Clark, a four-star general and former NATO commander, said America lacked a cohesive military strategy in various military operations since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Democratic told the crowd that he was speaking on a nonpartisan basis. "We lost our adversary and we lost our purpose in the world," Clark said of U.S. military planning at the...