Here they go again

First we had lost the war. Now the surge has failed, if you listen to Democrats. This pronouncement comes despite the fact that the military has said it will be at least September before they can make preliminary assessments. September is three months away.

op US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop "surge" policy was a failure.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

"As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results," the two leaders wrote.

"The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

"It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

"In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.

It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.

Pelosi and Reid told Bush in the letter that they planned to send him new legislation to "limit the US mission in Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of US forces, and bring the war to a responsible end."

On Tuesday, Reid said that Senate Democrats would attach troop withdrawal deadlines to a Defense Department Authorization bill, due to be debated within weeks.

Anyone who can't see that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to force a loss in Iraq simply has blinders on. They're just far too eager to proclaim the whole thing a lost cause.

And of course, unless they're just complete idiots, they know Bush will simply veto any timelines and restrictions they attempt to place on him. This is the 'death by a thousand bills' approach. Keep sending doomed bill after doomed bill until Bush gives up. It's not the action of a responsible leader, but then the Democrats are not leading. They're still playing opposition party to Bush's agenda.

Harry Reid's favorable rating way down

Someone recently told me that I had a Pelosi fixation. It's actually Harry Reid that earns more scorn from me. I'm therefore pleased to see that this lying fraud's approval numbers from the public are considerably lower than George Bush's numbers. Apparently even Democrats don't like him.

Saturday, June 09, 2007
Advertisment

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now viewed favorably by 19% of American voters and unfavorably by 45%. Just 3% have a Very Favorable opinion while 22% hold a Very Unfavorable views.

Reid has been very visible over the past week in the furor over immigration reform. The effort to pass a bill that was more popular in Congress than among voters may have hurt public perceptions of the Democratic leader. His ratings are down from a month ago when 26% had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Senator. Reid’s highest ratings were 30% favorable in February.

Each week, Rasmussen Reports updates favorability ratings for a number of political figures and others in the news.

Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. Now if only his constituents will vote him out of office just like South Dakota voted Tom Daschle out a few years ago. We can only hope.

Good riddance to the "immigration" bill

If you've listened to talk radio for five minutes during the past two weeks, or even read some of the mainstream news reports, you can't have missed the anger in Republican circles over this debacle of an immigration bill. We expect Republicans to show more sense than they've shown, particularly after losing the election this past November. But they haven't learned their lesson yet, or at least some of them haven't.

And despite generally being a supporter of President Bush, I have to strongly disagree with him on immigration reform.

The more I learn about this bill, the worse it looks. And it may come back. Take a look at some of the provisions:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/6/8/101354.shtml?s=lh

-Allows illegal immigrants who were in the country as of Jan. 1, 2007, to come forward, pay fees and fines, pass a background check and receive an indefinitely renewable four-year Z visa to live and work legally in the U.S.

-Allows Z visa holders to get on a path to citizenship after an approximately eight-year green card backlog is cleared if they pay fines, hold down jobs and learn English. Heads of households would have to return to their home countries to apply.

-Creates a new temporary worker program that would allow up to 200,000 guest-workers per year to enter on two-year Y visas that could be renewed twice, provided they returned to their home countries for a year between each stint. Sunsets the program after five years.

-Prevents the Y and Z visa programs from taking effect until security and enforcement triggers are met, including adding 20,000 border agents, 370 miles of fencing, 300 miles of vehicle barriers, and a new worker verification system to prevent the hiring of illegal workers.

-Creates a new employment-based point system for new immigrants to qualify for green cards based on their education and skill level, and eliminates or limits visa preferences for family members of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

-Includes a special, less burdensome path to legal status for undocumented agricultural workers and high school graduates who came to the U.S. illegally with their parents.

Here's the bottom line: this bill is not about fixing our illegal immigration problem. It's about legalizing twenty million government dependents who will vote Democrat, and who will provide cheap labor for big business. This isn't a case of either Democrats or Republicans singly giving in to lobbyists. This is bipartisan wrecking of the country.

I've been more involved with letting my voice be heard on this bill than on anything so far. I called and e-mailed both my state senators to express my opposition to the bill. I e-mailed Mitch McConnell to express my hope that he would oppose the bill. I went to a town meeting held by my local representative to get my point of view across.

The bottom line is this: once the bill is signed, all bets are off. Given that the government has had no desire to enforce immigration law for the past twenty years, I have no reason to believe that new laws will be enforced either. Once these illegals are made legal, there will be no incentive to penalize them or send them home. It will never happen. To be even more plain, the government cannot be trusted to enforce the laws that they have written.

Immigration doesn't need to be dealt with in one massive comprehensive boondoggle of a bill. It needs to be done one step at a time. First things first: seal up the border. Second, revamp the system so it's not so difficult for those who want to legally come here to do so. Third, take away all incentive and then penalize employers who hire illegals. Those who are just here for money will leave on their own sooner or later, and those who want to assimilate and become Americans can do so. Finally, make English the national language. Make it the glue that helps to create our common culture.

RIP Immigration bill. Good riddance. Let's keep it dead. Sorry President Bush. Sorry John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty. You're wrong on this one.

Senators rebukes Joe Wilson

The whole question of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson and the 'sixteen words' in Bush's state of the union speech about Nigeria have come up again and again. Since we've discussed them here from time to time, and people are still of the impression that Bush made it all up, when I saw this article, I thought it was worth posting. I'm still looking to see if CNN or Reuters publishes anything, but it wouldn't surprise me if they ignore this completely. Having used the Valerie Plame non-scandal to attack Bush for years, they're not likely to be interested in the truth.

http://www.inboxrobot.com/news/senate-select-committee-intelligence

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1843217/posts

[quote]In a rare rebuke of a public official by name, the [B]Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV[/B].

The report claims [B]Wilson mislead the public and the intelligence committee about his trip to Niger in 2002[/B] on behalf of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa.

Best know as the husband of former CIA officer Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson was catapulted to the limelight after he published an Op-Ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence on Iraq to make the case for war.

In his New York Times article, Wilson said that in February 2002 he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency to travel to Niger to investigate "a particular intelligence report" that documented the sale of uranium to Iraq by the Niger government.

The CIA wanted him to "check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office," after Vice President Dick Cheney had raised questions about the purported uranium deals, he wrote.

Once he arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, Wilson says he met with U.S. Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, then "spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea" and meeting with former government officials and others involved in the uranium business. "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."

And that is what he reported back to the CIA and to the State Department African Affairs Bureau, Wilson wrote. [B]But according to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, released last Friday, much of what Wilson wrote in the article, and has said since, about the trip "is not true."[/B]

Wilson wrote to the committee in July 2004 when they released an exhaustive investigation into the Niger uranium story that included the finding that he had been sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Wilson claimed that was "not true."

At the time, the Committee did not release the full text of the e-mail sent by Valerie Plame on Wilson to her superior that recommended him for the job, "thinking it was unnecessary in light of the other evidence" they had made public.

But now, "considering the controversy surrounding this document," the Senate committee decided to make the full text available to the public. The Valerie Plame e-mail shows without any doubt that she recommended her husband for the mission in Niger.

After recounting an earlier fact-finding mission he had carried out in Niger for the Agency, as well as his good contacts "with both the [prime minister] and the former minister of mines," she concluded by saying that her husband "may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything to pursue here."

In sworn testimony before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March of this year, however, Plame denied categorically that she had suggested her husband's name. "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," she said.

It was Valerie Plame's recommendation for the mission that caught the eye of Vice President Dick Cheney when Wilson's Op-Ed first appeared and ultimately led to the Special Counsel investigation into how her name — supposed classified — was "leaked" to the press.

[B]The committee found that internal intelligence community notes of meetings in which Valerie Plame participated "did not mark her name with a (C) as would be required to indicate that her association with the CIA was classified," as both Plame and her husband have said. These aren't the only instance where Wilson's account did not square with the facts, the senators found[/B].

Wilson has said in his book and in numerous public appearances that reports he reviewed from the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, "indicated that there was nothing to the Niger-Iraq uranium story . . . This too is untrue," the committee found. On the contrary, Owens-Kirkpatrick wrote a cable to the State Department which said that the initial CIA reporting of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal "provides sufficient details to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales."

Although Nigerien officials insisted in meetings with the Americans that no uranium would be sold to rogue nations, "we should not dismiss out of hand the possibility that some scheme could be, or has been, underway to supply Iraq with yellowcake from here," she wrote.

Perhaps the most damning conclusion of the Senate report has been known for nearly three years, but has remained classified until now. [B]In the initial July 2004 report, the Senate committee reported that the intelligence community "used or cleared the Niger-Iraq uranium intelligence fifteen times before the President's State of the Union address and four times after, saying in several papers that Iraq was ‘vigorously pursuing uranium from Africa.[/B]'"

Despite that finding, Democrats led by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin blasted President Bush for the "16 words" in the January 2003 speech that described Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, calling them an effort to "cherry-pick" intelligence and to "mislead" the country and the world in a "rush to war."

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community continued to believe in the veracity of the Niger uranium story for many months after the speech, and didn't call back its original reporting until June 2003 — well after the liberation of Iraq.[/quote]