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WASHINGTON - Democrats' momentum on their antiwar effort has stalled abruptly, ending weeks of hand-wringing by the White House. The reasons? A convincing four-star general, an activist group that overplayed its hand, and a plainspoken defense secretary who does not bother to defend the 2003 Iraq invasion. "I think it's better today," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) said of the war. "I think we're on a better path than we were." While a longtime skeptic of President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, Alexander joined his GOP colleagues in blocking each of the Democrats' three antiwar bills this week. The third...

Polls: Distaste for Iraq war unchanged WASHINGTON - Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress and President Bush's nationally televised address have had little impact on Americans' distaste for the Iraq war and their desire to withdraw U.S. troops, polls show. Fifty-four percent still favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, a measurement that has not changed in months, according to a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. And despite slight improvements in peoples' views of military progress, more said the U.S. will likely fail in Iraq than succeed by 47 percent to 42 percent, about...

In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed a million Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the invasion. How did Reid arrive at that figure? He probably got it from this poll. I know of no non-poll study suggesting anything like such a high number. A poll! Questions were asked of a ‘representative sample' of 1,461 adults in Iraq, and from that casualty figures are determined. The pollsters actually suggest that their results indicate as many as 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion. Among their conclusions, which they say are within plus or minus...

It may be the “cliché that won’t go away.” But it lingers - - and for good reason. It seems like good news from Iraq is, at the very least, not-so-good news for Democrats in Congress. In the aftermath of General David Petraeus’ recent report to Congress about our military‘s engagement in Iraq, responses from the political left depict a sad, if not potentially dangerous set of conditions. The horrific Move-On Dot Org advertisement in The New York Times, which sought to malign one of our military’s top brass by referring to him as “General Betray-Us,” marked a new low-point...

SIR, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff... ...This is why the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, including those more accurate than Mr. Bush's recent false analogies, can take us only so far. Our situation is graver than it was during Vietnam. ...Certainly there were some eerie symmetries between General Petraeus's...

...."Historically we are winning." The words were those of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. This is a scion of Baghdad Shiite aristocracy, at ease with French and English, a man whose odyssey had taken him from Marxism to the Baath, then finally to the Islamism of the Supreme Islamic Council. "We came from under the ashes, and now the new order, this new Iraq, is taking hold. If we were losing, why would the insurgents be joining us?" He had nothing but praise for the effort that had secured the peace of Baghdad: "Petraeus can defend the surge," he said....

An American president is constitutionally limited by the 22nd amendment, passed in 1951, to two terms in office. This amendment was pushed by the Republican-led 80th Congress elected in 1946, and in some measure was a response to the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt's winning four presidential elections between 1932 and 1944. Many Republicans later would regret this term-limiting amendment as it made lame ducks of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, each of whom most likely would have won third terms and Americans will never know what this would have meant for their country. If Eisenhower, a war-hero and five-star...

During a telephone conversation three days before Gen. Petraeus sat down next to Ambassador Ryan Crocker in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office building, my friend, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) told me that Democrats were conducting a “guerrilla campaign of character assassination” to impugn the general and that it would culminate with “a frontal attack” on his integrity. Congressman Hunter posited that based on my personal experience in a similar atmosphere, I would understand. But not even I could gauge how low the Democrats had sunk or how vicious they have become...... What happened this week to Gen....

A White House status report on Iraq yesterday said the Iraqi government has made some progress since July on benchmarks for political reconciliation, but spotlighted continuing sectarian meddling with the military and national police by politicians. Continues...============================================================= Libbies, how's that MoveOn.org ad working? First, liberals tried complaining hysterically that the 'surge is not working', and once they figured out what month they were in (January) and that the surge hadn't started, they tried passing non-binding resolutions and failed, so then they tried imposing deadlines for withdrawal and failed, so then they tried imposing absurd new requirements on the military and...

  For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretarySeptember 15, 2007 President's Radio Address   President's Radio Address  Audio  En Español       In Focus: Renewal in IraqTHE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before Congress on the progress of America's strategy in Iraq, including the surge in forces. They agreed that our Coalition faces formidable challenges. Yet they also said that security conditions are improving, that our forces are seizing the initiative from the enemy, and that the troop surge is working. Because of this progress, General Petraeus now believes we can maintain our security gains with...

Had anyone suggested six weeks ago that the GOP would emerge from the Petraeus hearings on the political front-foot, they'd have been laughed at all the way to Anbar. There's a lesson here for Republicans, in particular those most worried about how Iraq will play in next year's elections: Good military policy is good politics. That wisdom was a hard sell this spring, when the news out of Iraq was glum, the war supplemental debate raged, and dozens of Republicans were threatening to call it quits. The White House instead made an impassioned plea that the party hold tight through...

MAQUOKETA, Iowa - Despite the Iraq war's unpopularity, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Congress lacks the votes to force a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops and will focus instead on putting a ceiling on the number deployed. "One way of ending the war would be setting a timetable. We're about 15 votes short. Right now it doesn't look like we're going to get that many votes," Obama said, referring to the number needed to override an expected veto by President Bush. The Illinois senator said the most likely scenario would be to grant troops more time at...

Senator Clinton: I want to thank both of you, General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, for your long and distinguished service to our nation. Nobody believes that your jobs or the jobs of the thousands of American forces and civilian personnel in Iraq are anything but incredibly difficult. But today you are testifying about the current status of our policy in Iraq and the prospects of that policy. It is a policy that you have been ordered to implement by the president. And you have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy....

WASHINGTON - Even with cutbacks promised by President Bush, the United States may wind up with thousands more troops in Iraq next summer than before the buildup of forces he ordered in January. Bush approved the redeployment of five Army combat brigades and three Marine contingents between now and July 2008, but that does not account for thousands of support forces -- including military police and an Army combat aviation brigade -- that were sent as "enablers" and that apparently will stay longer. For example, the headquarters staff of the 3rd Infantry Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, was...

Good evening. In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment. In Iraq, an ally of the United States is fighting for its survival. Terrorists and extremists who are at war with us around the world are seeking to topple Iraq's government, dominate the region, and attack us here at home. If Iraq's young democracy can turn back these enemies, it will mean a more hopeful Middle East and a more secure America. This ally has placed its...

The Real Patreaus-Crocker StoryBy Robert Haddick | 12 Sep 2007 On Monday, September 10, 2007, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker delivered their long-awaited testimonies to a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. General Petraeus made the headlines when he announced that the U.S. force level in Iraq would begin to shrink, starting this month. But Ambassador Crocker delivered the day's real news with his description of Iraq's slowly simmering political development. In his testimony, Ambassador Crocker revealed that federalism, or decentralized governance, is a concept now beginning to find favor with Iraq's...

Today the President met with recipients of the 2007 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. Later tonight he will address the national and is expected to announce the gradual withdrawl of the extra troops in Iraq as a result of the success of the surge. Please feel free to use this thread as a "safe" live thread tonight. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Netherlands Defense Minister Elmert van Middlekoop. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

So hillary stated that it required "the willing suspension of disbelief" to accept General Petraeus' Report to Congress this week. Fortunately, this is an easy accomplishment for hillary. She is an expert at the Willing Suspension of Disbelief as she demonstrated over the years. Let's just think of some examples: It requires the willing suspension of disbelief to believe a novice trader, can turn $10,000 into $100,000 by a series of complex cattle futures trades and then, having demonstrated a greater ability to trade successfully than anyone before or since, She was so disbelieving she suddenly stopped trading, and has...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday called the administration’s plan to keep 130,000 or more troops in Iraq through mid-2008 unacceptable and promised to challenge the approach through legislation next week. Several proposals were being weighed, including one requiring the American military role to be shifted more to training and counterterrorism, in order to reduce the force by more than President Bush is expected to promise on Thursday. Another would guarantee troops longer respites from the battlefield, effectively cutting the numbers available for combat. Even if those proposals draw the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate...

Not enough attention has been paid, on the Iraq question, to the factor of universal access to information. For many years, in many wars, news reporters could not get near the front-line scene. And where high politics were concerned and dictators held sway, newsmen — and foreign diplomats — not only were stymied, they were deliberately misled. A report issuing from the foreign office in Berlin was often read, we know from postwar books and articles, as in a great game of tag: What do they want to make us think by handing out that bulletin about naval action in...